TAREK FATAH

Pakistan a bigger threat than Iran

7:26 am, June 26th, 2013

Ramzi Yousef was convicted in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

Credits: FILE PHOTO

TAREK FATAH | QMI AGENCY

It seems Israel and America are blind beyond Iran. While Iran possesses no nuclear warheads, it is considered the primary threat to world peace. On the other hand, Pakistan, with an arsenal of more than 100 nukes, continues to be fed billions of American dollars while Israel seems oblivious to Islamabad's threat.

A catalogue of Pakistan's role in international terrorism, much of it long before its territory was used by Osama bin Laden and Khaled Sheikh Mohammed to plan the 9/11 attack on the U.S., should clarify matters.

1. September 1986: Armed men attempt to hijack a Pan Am jet on the tarmac of Karachi airport in which 20 people died. Among the arrested were five Palestinians belonging to the Abu Nidal group and seven Pakistanis.

2. January 1993: The CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia is attacked, killing two, wounding three. The perpetrator is a Pakistani, Aimal Kansi. Four years later, in 1997, he is captured by FBI agents and returned to America. He is executed in 2002.

3. February 1993: The World Trade Center is attacked using a truck bomb. The mastermind, Ramzi Yousef, is later arrested in 1995 in Islamabad, Pakistan.

4. August 1998: American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania are bombed, killing 223 people and wounding over 4,000 others. The planner of this atttack, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, is arrested in 2004 in Gujrat, Pakistan.

5. October 2000: Jihadi terrorists carry out a suicide attack on the U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Cole while it is harboured and being refuelled in the Yemen port of Aden. Seventeen American sailors are killed, 39 injured. The suspected Saudi mastermind behind this attack, Walid Bin Attash, is later captured on April 29, 2003 in Karachi, Pakistan.

6. May 2002: A suicide bomber kills 11 French naval engineers outside the Sheraton Hotel in Karachi, Pakistan. Three years later the suspected bomb maker, Mufti Muhammad Sabir, is arrested in Karachi, Pakistan.

7. October 2002: Jihadi terrorists attack the Indonesian tourist resort of Bali, killing 202 people and injuring another 240. Nine years later, the chief suspect in the bombing, Umar Patek, is arrested in Abbotabad, Pakistan.

8. July 2005: Jihadi terrorists carry out the now infamous 7/7 suicide bombings in London, UK, killing 52 people and injuring 700. Three of the four suicide bombers are of Pakistani ancestry. In January 2009, one of the suspected planners of the London 7/7 bombings, Saudi national Zabi uk-Taifi, is arrested in a village just outside Peshawar, Pakistan.

9. December 2008: Pakistani jihadi terrorists carry out a sea-borne suicide attack on Mumbai, India, killing 166 people including a rabbi and his pregnant wife at a Jewish Centre, and injuring 308 others. The mastermind of the Mumbai attack was the Pakistani-American David Coleman Headley (born Daud Sayed Gilani). His alleged Pakistani-Canadian accomplice, Muhammad Tahwwar Rana, was acquitted in the Mumbai attacks but convicted of working for the terror group, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), long suspected of being supported by Pakistan's ISI.

10. May 2010: A bombing at New York's Times Square is foiled when street vendors discover smoke coming from a vehicle and alert an NYPD patrolman. The bomb had ignited, but failed to explode, and was disarmed before it caused any casualties. Two days later federal agents arrest a man at John F. Kennedy International Airport after he tried to board an Emirate Airlines flight to Dubai. He is Faisal Shahzad, a 30-year-old Pakistani-American.

So, what is ground zero of international terrorism? Iran or Pakistan?

Thursday, June 27, 2013