It seems that leaders of Al Qaeda and afghan Taliban are haunting everyone around including the premier intelligence outfits of super powers. They have been claiming knowledge of their whereabouts but could not help capture them. The intelligence sometimes turns out to be motivated in order to prepare grounds for future action by US forces. Same is happening these days when US agencies are claiming the existence of Quetta Shura to justify their increase presence of in the restive region of Balochistan which has now turned into the playground for the Great Game of this century. Now when Karachi is facing worst ever challenges of law and order, the agencies working under ex-CIA spies have made a calculated leak through Washington Post which has reported that Mullah Omar, the elusive, one-eyed leader of the Afghan Taliban, had a heart attack Jan. 7 and was treated for several days in a Karachi hospital with the help of Pakistan’s spy agency. The intelligence network, operating under the auspices of a private company, “The Eclipse Group,” said its source was a physician in the Karachi hospital, which was not identified in the report, who said he saw Omar struggling to recover from an operation to put a stent in his heart.
“While I was not personally in the operating theater,” the physician reported, “my evaluation based on what I have heard and seeing the patient in the hospital is that Mullah Omar had a cardiac catheter complication resulting in either bleeding or a small cerebral vascular incident, or both.”
U.S. officials, however, said they could not immediately verify the report.
“No one on this end has heard this,” said a U.S. official from Kabul. “It doesn’t mean it’s not true — we just have no information to confirm or dispute these facts.”
A spokesman at the Pakistan Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.
“Sometimes intelligence tips received by professionals turn out to be wrong. The story about Mullah Omar falls under that category. You might recall a similar story from 2001 about Osama bin Laden receiving dialysis treatment that turned out to be incorrect, and the fabrication of those who wanted to give Pakistan a bad name.”
Haqqani added, “Pakistani intelligence, military and law enforcement personnel continue to hunt down wanted Al-Qaeda and Taliban figures and will apprehend anyone if and when we have hard intelligence, which is very different from speculation circulated by contractors.”
The report said Omar was “rushed” to the hospital on Jan. 7 and after the operation, there seemed to be some brain damage with Mullah Omar having slurred speech.
The Eclipse Group is run by Duane “Dewey” Clarridge, a former head of the CIA’s Latin American operations who was the first chief of the CIA’s counter-terrorism center; Kim Stevens, a retired U.S. diplomat who served in Bolivia and Italy; and Brad A. Patty, a civilian adviser to the U.S. Army’s 30th Heavy Brigade Combat Team in Iraq from 2007 to 2009.
The paper also reported that by all appearances, the Eclipse network is the just the latest iteration of a shadowy, Pentagon-backed operation that began contracting with former CIA and military operatives to supply intelligence in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2009. Amid adverse publicity last year, the Pentagon supposedly cut off its funding.
The Passive Voices 