Al-Qaeda under tremendous pressure: Richard Holbrooke

Al-Qaeda, the world's foremost terror outfit, is under tremendous pressure in the Af-Pak border region with half of its top 20 commanders eliminated, US special representative Richard Holbrooke has said as he ruled out prospects of a military takeover in Pakistan.
   
"Al-Qaeda leadership is under fantastic pressure since losing half of its top 20 people in the past year," Holbrooke, Obama Administration's pointsman for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said.

"It looks like they are less an organisation that plans operations now than an organisation that summons people to aspirational jihad," he Holbrooke said in an interview to CNN, adding that al-Qaeda in a sense has blown it.

"Their excessive brutality, the backlash against things, like the bombing of the wedding in Jordan, the beheading of people, the videotape in Swat of the flogging of the young girl, has created a revulsion against them.
   
"They stand for absolutely nothing except destruction, and they destroy people's life in a random and insane way," he said.

Attributing the success against al-Qaeda and Pakistani Taliban to increased communications between Washington and Islamabad, he cited the arrest of Taliban's No 2 as evidence of Pakistan's evolution from the country on the verge of collapse to a more stable political system now.

In a separate interview to Pakistan's private TV channel, the US envoy said he saw no prospects of a military takeover in Pakistan. He said the the army is no longer interested in country's complicated politics.

The envoy also claimed that Pakistan had moved around 100,000 of its troops from it's the eastern borders to the western borders.

Seeing a "significant improvement" in the relationship between US and Pakistan, Holbrooke said "no government on earth has received more high level attention" than Pakistan.
   
Foreseeing a continued push against terrorism in Pakistan, Holbrooke said the distinction between Afghan Taliban and Pakistani Taliban -- if it ever existed -- has eroded, which has led Pakistanis to take "a very much" forward leaning position.

He said, "Above all, the backlash from the (Taliban's) attacks in places like Lahore or Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Kashmir, Karachi have all contributed to the evolution."