Aged 38 he had been a reporter at the high-powered New York financial paper for

Aged 38, he had been a reporter at the high-powered New York financial paper for 12 years, graduating from domestic newsbeats to London and Paris, from where he covered the Middle East, and finally to Bombay as the paper’s South Asia correspondent.”He was used to working in treacherous, unstable environments,” a close colleague, Khozem Merchant, of the Financial Times, said yesterday.But Pearl’s goal in Pakistan was particularly risky: he “was in Karachi,” wrote Helene Collins of the Wall Street Journal, “seeking to interview leaders of Islamic groups for possible articles on the war’s impact on the region.”For two weeks he laboured to set up meetings with men committed to using terrorist violence to achieve their aims, whether in Afghanistan or Kashmir or Manhattan. “We apologise to his family for the worry caused,” ran a message received on Wednesday 30 January, “and we will send them food packages just as amreeka apolgised for colleateral damange and dropped food packages on” the relatives of Afghans “that it had killed.” “We hope Mr Danny’s family will be grateful for the food packets.”The story of Daniel Pearl’s descent into hell began more than three weeks ago. Pakistani prisoners in Guantanamo Bay should be returned, for example, because “Pakistan was a full member of the international coalition against terror and it deserves the right to try its citizens.”This is not unreasonable; it might almost be a secret memo to President Musharraf from an unhappy official in his government.In later communications, too, there is no pious Islamic bluster, but instead a vein of acrid humour. The demands are not preposterous, nor is the reasoning behind them. This group, by contrast, sounds as if it was set up as a discussion group by discontented intellectuals in one of the sleeker suburbs of Lahore.And the distinctiveness is carried through into the rhetoric: no blood-curdling references to holy war, to infidels, to the will of Allah, the duty of the faithful.Instead, points are made about the treatment of the US’s prisoners that merely amplify the sort of statements voiced by western liberals. And the group is not merely unknown: its name is quite unlike those preferred by the sort of Islamic militant groups that litter the Pakistani landscape.These always adopt fearsome, overtly fanatical Arabic titles, names which translate “Army of the Pure” or “Militia of Mohammed”, spelling out their commitment to jihad. Who are these people? What do they really want? As there is no realistic hope that it will alter US policy towards its prisoners, what do they suppose they can achieve?No one had ever heard of the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty, the group that claims responsibility for Mr Pearl’s capture.

No-one is going to negotiate with kidnappers.”That fact – the self-evident futility – is only one of the baffling aspects of this case. As the former Beirut hostage Terry Anderson put it last night, Mr Pearl’s kidnapping “is not useful – it doesn’t work… Then this cycle will continue and no American journalists could enter Pakistan…”So the pressure and the drama continue to mount But it is pressure of a strange sort. Just as the original deadline was expiring, his kidnappers sent new messages to western media, announcing: “We will give you one more day If America will not meet our demands, we will kill Daniel. Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter kidnapped in Pakistan as he tried to unravel the trail of the British shoe-bomber Richard Reid, got a short new lease of life last night. Iran, he declared, “is proud to be at the receiving end of the anger of the most hated Satanic power of the world.”. On a visit to Washington yesterday, King Abdullah of Jordan warned that any attack against Iraq would be “extremely destabilising” for the Middle East.From Iran, another member of the axis, came a tirade from the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Although detailed evidence has not been forthcoming, the Philippines – along with Somalia – has long been seen as the most likely place for phase two of the anti-terror campaign, and was directly mentioned by President Bush in his State of the Union address this week.But the fighting will not be easy – indeed for veterans, the rugged jungle terrain of Basilan brings back memories of the harsh conditions of the Vietnam war, 30 years ago.Meanwhile Mr Bush’s “axis of evil” remarks continue to reverberate. They are believed to belong to a communist guerrilla movement and may also have been protesting the US military involvement.Weeks after the September 11 attacks, Abu Sayyaf was already being linked with al- Qa’ida by US officials. But the Philippine government insists that the Americans are there exclusively to proved training and equipment, and will not take part in the fighting.As the Abu Sayyaf operation began, news came of the murder of a US citizen.The man was shot dead in an ambush on Mount Pinatubo, the volcano some 60 miles northwest of Manila, by unidentified gunmen. In the capital, police clashed with protesters brandishing placards saying, “Yankee Go Home.”At Zamboanga, demonstrators chanting “Gloria US Puppet” (a reference to the Philippines President Gloria Arroyo) and “We need food and houses, not bombs.”Opponents of Ms Arroyo say that the presence of the US soldiers violates the country’s constitution which forbids foreign soldiers from operating in the Philippines. The group, which US officials say has provided logistical help to al-Qa’ida, has taken numerous hostages, several of whom have been killed.In a brief ceremony to mark the start of the operation, at the mainland city of Zamboanga, the acting US ambassador to the Philippines, Robert Fitts, said the US would help the country’s armed forces “hone their skills to eliminate the Abu Sayyaf scourge”.But not all Filipinos see things that way. In the first avowed military extension of America’s “war against terrorism” beyond Afghanistan, US and Philippines forces began a joint military operation to root out an extremist Islamic group which Washington claims has links with Osama bin Laden’s al-Qa’ida organisation.Some 160 US special force troops will join regular Filipino units in “training patrols” in the mountainous southern Philippines island of Basilan, in the initial phase of a scheduled six months of exercises which will involve 600 American and 3,800 Filipino soldiers.Their target is the Abu Sayyaf guerrilla group whose stronghold is Basilan and which has long been conducting an insurgency against the Manila government. Khazai Mohammed, a businessman from Paktika province, said: “Karzai does not look strong enough to impose his strength Everybody is frightened.”.