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.I have only one pressing need, to get out of this place and go back to the Shiite riots in the street, the wailing flood of bloody and hysterical faithful whose threats seem almost reassuring when you are emerging from the house of the Devil.Later that day, I ask the same questions to other people, elsewhere in the city.For example, the station chief of a Western intelligence agency, who fills me in on some of the missing pieces.It was here in Binori Town, early in 2000, that Masood Azhar and the Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai, the mosque’s reigning holy man whom I was unable to meet, announced the foundation of the Jaish e-Mohammed.Here, in the presence of—and with the blessing of—the country’s most respected ulémas, the organization that would furnish the elite battalions of al-Qaida was baptised.A month later, in March, a quarrel broke out between Azhar and Fazlur Rahman Khalil, the man who had, while Azhar was in an Indian prison, risen in the hierarchy of Harkat ul-Mujahideen and usurped control of the organisation.As Jaish is a splinter group of the Harkat, to whom should the offices, the fleet of 4x4s, the arms and the safe-houses belong? The deep conflict inflamed the Islamist movement of Karachi.Once again, it was at Binori Town, under the authority of the same Nizamuddin Shamzai, that the appointed scholars gathered to arbitrate the question and to arrive at a harkam.They decided the Harkat should retain everything and pay financial compensation to the Jaish.Binori as a tribunal! Binori as the arbitration court for the internal conflicts of the al-Qaida conglomerate!In October, when the Americans launched their political and military offensive, word circulated around Karachi of a possible inclusion of the Jaish on the American’s list of terrorist groups.Once again, Nizamuddin Shamzai rose to the defense of the organization—from his base at Binori, he organized a new group, the Tehrik al-Furqan, of which he immediately assumed leadership, to replace the threatened group, taking over its financial assets, its bank accounts, its files and its activities.Binori—the linchpin of politico-financial trafficking.the spiritual head of one of the world’s largest seminaries transformed into a front for an association of assassins.After the fall of Kabul in November, bin Laden’s defeated troops fled Afghanistan, and the survivors of Pakistani paramilitary groups tried to escape the crossfire of the Northern Alliance and the American bombers.Some of them (members of Harkat ul-Mujahideen and Harkat ul-Jihad al-Islam) retreated to Kashmir.Others (like the Lashkar e-Toïba), headed for hideouts in the tribal zones of the North, at Gilgit and Baltistan.But the most radical, Lashkar i-Janghvi, Jaish, and a Harkat subgroup, the Harkat ul-Mujahideen al-Almi-Universal, found refuge in Karachi, and, in particular at Binori.Are they still there? Did I pass an hour in the sanctuary of bin Laden’s lost soldiers? Is that what the portraits I saw meant?The famous audiocassette of 12 November 2002—in which bin Laden spoke of the terrorist attacks in Djerba, Yemen, Kuwait, Bali, and Moscow, and called for new actions not only against U.S.President Bush, but also his European, Canadian, and Australian allies—originated at Binori, and was sent from there through Bangladesh to the Qatar television station of Al Jazeera.A recording studio in a mosque? Binori transformed into a logistics base for al-Qaida propaganda? Yes! This is the hypothesis of the American, British, and Indian intelligence services.They don’t know what Bangladesh has to do with it, or to what degree ISI is involved in the operation.But they have no doubt whatsoever that the cassette was put together here, in the depths of the terrorist Vatican.Finally, Osama bin Laden himself is said to have stayed at Binori on several occasions.The most-wanted terrorist on earth, global Public Enemy Number One, the man worth $25 million or more, this shadowy character who may or may not be alive, or who may survive only as a legend, is said to have stayed here in the center of Karachi right under the nose of the Pakistani police during 2002.A serious wound necessitated special medical treatment (and may explain his silence of the past several months).Binori as a hospital.Binori the sanctuary, inviolable by any authority, where Pakistani military doctors are said to have come with impunity to care for him.Other madrasas are said to have given him sanctuary as well.I heard the name Akora Khattak cited several times [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]