Confirming the killing of militant commander Badr Mansoor in a drone strike, al Qaeda’s spokesman for Pakistan Ustad Ahmad Farooq said Pakistan was fully complicit in the US drone campaign. In a statement released on jihadist web forums and translated by the SITE Intelligence Group, Farooq described Mansoor, killed on February 9 in a US drone strike, as “the brave son of this soil, a gem of the Ummah, a great military leader, and the beloved personality of local and emigrant mujahideen who dedicated more than 15 years of his life to jihad on various fronts of Kashmir, Afghanistan and Pakistan”.
“This brave son of the brave soil of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province was martyred in a drone attack carried out with the help of intelligence inputs provided by Pakistani intelligence agencies,” Farooq continued.
He also claimed that Mansoor’s wife was wounded in the strike and accused the US and President Obama of intentionally targeting civilians. Farooq described the rupture between the US and Pakistan after the clash in Mohmand Agency at the end of November 2011 that resulted in the deaths of 24 Pakistani troops as an “eye-wash.” “On one hand, the Pakistani government is dramatising the so-called tensions with the US, and on the other hand, it is helping the Americans kill Pakistani people in the Tribal Areas to appease their masters,” Farooq said. “We know that this drama of Pak-US strained ties is being orchestrated to regain the army’s image that suffered immensely during last ten years of its anti-jihad campaign in the Tribal Areas, Swat and Balochistan.”
Farooq also said the US “is prioritising the targets that directly threaten the Pakistani Army”, and accused the government and military of trying to “fool” and “lie to the people of Pakistan that drone strikes are being carried out without their permission”. “They claim that they are opposed to drone strikes, but if they are really opposed to drone strikes, why do the spies we arrest confess working for the Pakistani Army to detect actionable targets for drone strikes?,” he asked. He also noted that the Pakistani Air Force and army did nothing to stop the drones. “Is it possible that Pakistani radars always fail to detect these drones? In fact, the drone campaign is running with full support from the Pakistan Army,” he said. “Therefore, this institution is as much responsible as the Americans for the killing of innocents in the Tribal Areas.”
