Al Qaida deeply split over Musharraf

Islamabad/New York: A deep split has emerged within Al Qaida over the wisdom of the terror network's drive to overthrow and kill President Pervez Musharraf, according to radical extremists allied to the terror network.

Osama Bin Laden's deputy, Ayman Al Zawa-hiri, ordered a series of retaliatory attacks on Pakistani targets following the storming of the Red Mosque by Musharraf's troops this month.

In the latest atrocity, 13 people, mostly police officers, were killed and 50 injured in a suicide attack near the mosque on Friday as authorities tried to re-open the compound. Nearly 200 people have now died in revenge attacks and bombings.

But some senior figures within Al Qaida are alarmed that Al Zawahiri's mission to topple and kill Musharraf will provoke a military backlash that could jeopardise their safe havens in the mountainous tribal areas on the Afghan border.

Heir presumptive

A rival so-called "Libyan faction" led by Abu Yahya Al Libi, who escaped from the US Bagram base near Kabul in 2005, apparently suspects that Al Zawahiri, an Egyptian-born doctor, is trying to position himself as Bin Laden's heir presumptive with his personal crusade. Bin Laden himself is believed to be in hiding, fearful of his whereabouts being discovered.

US intelligence operatives closely involved in the hunt for Bin Laden told The Sunday Telegraph they received reports of Al Qaida rifts from senior sources within the Pakistani jihad-0ist community.

The US officials believe Al Zawahiri is running anti-Musharraf operations without consulting other leaders, hoping to foment a revolt that will result in an Islamic regime taking control of Pakistan's nuclear weapons. They are investigating reports of other factions which want to consolidate their operating bases on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

US intelligence believes the feud has developed in a power vacuum in Al Qaida's high command. Bin Laden rarely holds face-to-face meetings with senior lieutenants for security reasons, has only issued occasional instructions to his followers, and may be seriously ill.

Al Zawahiri, by contrast, has fired off a flurry off video and audio messages, including three in two weeks earlier this month. In the final one, issued two days after the Red Mosque shoot-out, he exhorted Pakistanis to "revolt", warning that otherwise "Musharraf will annihilate you".

"There seems to be a debate within Al Qaida about whether to accelerate the conflict in an effort to destabilise Pakistan or continue the attritional battle," said John Arquilla, an intelligence analyst at the US Naval Postgraduate School.

"Pakistan is the great strategic prize if they could install a friendly regime in possession of nuclear weapons. Pakistan is central to the war on terror in a way Iraq is not."

Resurgent

The high stakes were brought home by a new US National Intelligence Estimate this month. The report concluded that a resurgent Al Qaida, now based in Pakistan's lawless tribal belt, has regained the same strength and organisation as before the September 11, 2001 attacks that prompted the US assault that drove it from Afghanistan.

The report prompted a fresh round of debate in Washington about whether to launch military strikes inside Pakistan. Fran Townsend, the White House homeland security adviser, provoked outrage in Pakistan when she said the US would consider using military force inside the country if it identified key Al Qaida targets there.

Different tone

In Islamabad in his first overseas trip as Britain's Foreign Secretary, David Miliband signalled a different tone from Washington last week, emphasising a military solution alone would not quash the insurgency in tribal areas.

US intelligence has repeated warnings that it is probably only a matter of time before Al Qaida stages another major attack inside the US.