Baitullah Mahsud: A Bogeyman or Musharraf's Achilles' Heel?
By Adnan Gill
Rancho Palos Verdes, CA
Among the first graders a common excuse for missing their homework is, my dog ate it, or my brother ripped it. Similarly, our leaders too have their favorite bogeyman to divert attention off their failures. President Bush has Osama bin Laden/Al-Qaeda, President Putin has Chechnyan terrorists, President Karzai has Taliban, Indians have ISI, and President Musharraf’s all-time favorite is Baitullah Mahsud.
The Pakistani government insulted our intelligence by releasing the so-called audio of Baitullah Mahsud in which he allegedly congratulated his partner-in-crime on the successful assassination of Benazir Bhutto. The question arises: If the government was smart enough to have intercepted his conversation on a mobile-phone or on a satellite-phone, then why was it not able to triangulate onto his position and arrest him?
We know the government has access to technology that can decipher particular audio signature out of millions of other conversations, and pinpoint the source of transmission within a few hundred feet. Why did it fail to apprehend him? How do we know that the government has access to such an exotic technology? We know it, because the government boasted about it when they hunted down Nawab Bugti.
Naturally, one has to wonder if Baitullah Mahsud is a mythical bogeyman, or in fact, a living breathing person bent on embarrassing the Musharraf government with his unhindered violent sprees?
