It's All One War Now; From Pakistan to Europe to Iraq, post 9/11 strife is global and growing. Inside our secret battle for allies and intel.

Publication: Newsweek

Publication Date: 29-MAR-04

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Byline: Michael Hirsh and Mark Hosenball, With Michael Isikoff, John Barry and Tamara Lipper in Washington, Stefan Theil in Berlin, Scott Johnson in Baghdad, Christopher Dickey in Casablanca, Stryker McGuire in Madrid and Ron Moreau, Zahid Hussain and Sami Yousafzai in Pakistan

So elusive is the terror threat today--so deeply burrowed in the globe's darkest crannies--that even a wily old commander like Pervez Musharraf seemed confused about exactly which bad guys his soldiers had cornered last week. Pakistan's Frontier Constabulary troops went into the rugged tribal region of South Waziristan, acting on an intelligence tip. They thought they might find two senior tribesmen high on the government's most-wanted list for harboring Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Suddenly the troops came under a hail of small arms, rocket-propelled grenade and mortar fire from towers, hillsides and nearby apple orchards. They were surrounded and mowed down: at least 16 soldiers died, with as many as 18 more taken hostage. By late last week President Musharraf had sent in an Infantry brigade and helicopter gunships, with a dozen or so CIA and Special Forces on hand to help. And Musharraf was excitedly suggesting to CNN that the fierce resistance indicated that his forces had trapped a "high-value target."

News reports indicated it could be Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's deputy, who had been spotted in the area months before. But the excitement subsided when officials discovered that most of the 100 or so prisoners they took were radical Chechens, Uzbeks and ethnic Chinese Uighurs. It was still possible that an Egyptian like Zawahiri was with them, but not likely. "The 'high value' these guys may be fighting for may be their own lives," said retired Pakistani Army Lt. Gen. Talat Masood. Despite suspected aerial surveillance by U.S. aircraft with infrared and other types of sensors, some of the terrorists may have escaped under cover of darkness.

Musharraf's earnest but stumbling effort showed that even with real cooperation--after two years of...

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