Civil War is being Incited in Pakistan - a new murderous phase begins

[bigron]

The US vs. Pakistan: With Allies Like These

By SIMON ROBINSON / ISLAMABAD Simon Robinson / Islamabad
Wed Oct 22, 3:10 pm ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20081022/wl_time/theusvspakistanwithallieslikethese

 



For one 34-year-old Pakistani soldier, it is a simple matter of respect. The soldier, a Major in the Frontier Corps in the mountainous badlands along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, says recent U.S. military incursions into Pakistan not only breach an agreement between the two countries, but call into question the very spirit of the alliance President Bush says is the most important in the war on terror. "As a Pakistani, nobody likes someone to enter their home. It raises doubts about American credibility and the sincerity of their alliance with Pakistan," says the Major, who asked not to be named because military rules discourage soldiers from speaking to the media. "We have clear territorial limits and when you cross them, it is humiliating for us. The Americans are pushing us against the wall." Far from helping in the fight against terrorist groups, the incursions hurt it, says the Major. Under the circumstances, he adds, "I have to ask myself: 'Why am I doing this?'"


How Pakistan answers that question could help determine the fate of the war on terror. U.S. military leaders have long grumbled that Islamabad's commitment to fighting extremism was ambiguous at best - and duplicitous at worst. The new post-Musharraf government says it is serious about the fight, and offers as proof its two-month long military offensive in Bajaur, the northernmost chunk of the tribal belt. But, say Pakistani officials, U.S. incursions over the past two months, including an incident on Sept. 25 in which two U.S. helicopters and Pakistani soldiers in a border post engaged each other in a five-minute-long firefight, are alienating the Pakistani people and cramping Pakistan's ability to move.


The tensions come as the militants have stepped up their campaign inside Pakistan, strengthening their hold over huge swathes of the country and launching ever more deadly strikes in its cities, including a Sept. 20 truck bombing that killed more than 50 people at Islamabad's Marriott Hotel. U.S. Army General David McKiernan, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, believes the militants are now so strong that they pose an "existential threat to the future of Pakistan." Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told reporters at the Pentagon on September 26 that the terrorist safe haven in Pakistan "has gotten safer this year. The insurgency has gotten more sophisticated."


Pakistan's leaders say their own response to the terrorist threat has likewise stepped up a notch. They point to the Bajaur offensive as exhibit A: The operation, which began in early August, was initially a defensive action to stop militants overrunning the regional headquarters of Khaar. Over the past few weeks, Pakistani troops have gone on the offensive, using aerial attacks and ground troops supported by tanks and artillery in one of the fiercest battles inside Pakistan since 9/11. Pakistan's army bosses say they have killed more than 1,200 militants, including foreign fighters from the Middle East and Central Asia. The militants, who are armed with Kalashnikovs, sniper rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, and who have built sophisticated defenses from which to fight, have destroyed at least one Pakistani tank and killed dozens. Pakistani soldiers. Local tribesmen, who have long resented the presence of foreign militants in the region, have formed their own militias to take up the fight. "This is a war which we are fighting," says Rehman Malik, the advisor to Pakistan's prime minister on interior affairs. "As far as recognition, I think our allies are now realizing what we are doing."


Though initially skeptical about the offensive, U.S. military officials now believe the battle in Bajaur is having an impact, not least because it is sucking in militants from around the region. Pakistani officials say the number of attacks in Afghanistan's Kunar Province, across the border from Bajaur, has gone down in the past few weeks, as militants head to Pakistan to help their brothers there. (Coalition officials in Afghanistan say they have noticed no change in activity in Kunar.)


Pakistani officials see Bajaur as a turning point. On President Pervez Musharraf's watch, they say, military offensives were repeatedly cut short to allow deals to be struck with the militants, and the deals invariably failed. This time, says advisor Malik, the militants asked for a ceasefire "which we have declined." The army will fight on, he promises, "until the operation is done to its full conclusion."


But U.S. incursions hurt that fight, Pakistani officials say. Opinion polls routinely show that an overwhelming majority of ordinary Pakistanis oppose U.S. actions inside their country. The government has to respond to public sentiment, leading to harsh, uncompromising language from political and military leaders. General Ashfaq Kayani, Musharraf's successor as military chief, has publicly railed against U.S. operations on Pakistani soil, saying they help the cause of the militancy; he has promised to protect the borders from such incursions. After the September 25 incursion, chief military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas told TIME that Pakistani troops would hereafter shoot at any force "seen as hostile or in an offensive posture," coming across the border. Any Americans making the crossing, he warned, should not expect Pakistani soldiers to ask questions before shooting. "At the level of a [border] post [Pakistani troops] are not to be given shades of an order... they're supposed to engage."


All the same, U.S. officials privately say that air strikes into Pakistan will continue, as will "hot pursuits" across the border, when appropriate. After all, The Bajaur operation is a long way from over, and there is still no guarantee that it won't end in the kind of messy compromise that has marked previous actions. The offensive has already forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes; 20,000 families have fled across the border into Afghanistan to avoid the fighting, taking their stories and grievances with them. If history is any judge, a new generation of militants - as anti-Pakistani as they are anti-American - will emerge from these camps. If Bajaur is a crucial front for the Pakistani military, the terrorists know not to get cornered into any last stands; they are striking across the country. Al-Qaeda and Taliban bombers are now able to strike Karachi and Islamabad; following the Marriott bombing, militants have targeted political leaders across the country. Their reach also imperils the U.S. military's supply lines into Afghanistan - 80% of dry cargo and 40% of the fuel used by U.S. forces in Afghanistan goes through Pakistan.


U.S. military officials plainly want to keep their supply lines running through Pakistan, but are preparing alternate routes if Islamabad orders them shut down. "We're working our way through to understand rail, pipelines, customs, what it would take, are they there in a sufficient scale to allowus to do this?" Marine General James Cartwright, vice-chairman of the JointChiefs told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Sept. 23. Under the circumstances, say U.S. officials, it makes little sense to give up the option of cross-border operations - the Pakistanis have not yet demonstrated that they can fight this on their own.


Many Pakistanis agree, but argue that the assistance they require doesn't include American boots on Pakistani soil. The Frontier Corps Major says Pakistan needs more help with equipment, not to be marginalized as an ally. "We want to fight this war with such conviction that no one can accuse us offighting this war incompetently," he says.


- With reporting by Mark Thompson/Washington and Omar Waraich/Islamabad

[bigron]

Pakistan Will Give Arms to Tribal Militias

Plan Bolsters U.S. Faith In Ally's Anti-Extremist Efforts

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 23, 2008; A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/22/AR2008102203708_pf.html


Pakistan plans to arm tens of thousands of anti-Taliban tribal fighters in its western border region in hopes -- shared by the U.S. military -- that the nascent militias can replicate the tribal "Awakening" movement that proved decisive in the battle against al-Qaeda in Iraq.

The militias, called lashkars, will receive Chinese-made AK-47 assault rifles and other small arms, a purchase arranged during a visit to Beijing this month by Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistani officials said.

Many Bush administration officials remain skeptical of Pakistan's long-term commitment to fighting the Taliban, al-Qaeda and other extremist groups ensconced in the mountains near the border with Afghanistan. But the decision to arm the lashkars, which emerged as organized fighting forces only in the past few months, is one of several recent actions that have led the Pentagon to believe that the Pakistani effort has become more aggressive.

Since early August, the Pakistani army has launched several offensives in Bajaur, one of seven regions in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), and in the nearby Swat Valley. According to Pakistani military assessments, more than 800 insurgents died during fighting in Bajaur in August and September, along with nearly 195 government soldiers and 344 civilians.

Last week, after months of Pakistani delays, about 30 U.S. military trainers were permitted to set up operations north of the region, a U.S. official said. The trainers will provide counterinsurgency instruction to Pakistani army soldiers, who in turn will train members of the Frontier Corps, the government's paramilitary force in the FATA.

"We are very encouraged by what we're seeing from the Pakistani military in the tribal regions," said Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell. Pakistani offensives in the FATA over the past two months are "making a difference on the other side of the border," where U.S. forces are fighting in Afghanistan, he said.

Pakistani officials insisted that arming the lashkars was their own idea and that they are paying for it, although the United States has provided more than $10 billion in relatively unrestrained counterterrorism funds to Pakistan's military over the past seven years. "The Americans are not giving us a bloody cent" for the program, one Pakistani official said. "This is us, doing it ourselves."

Zardari and the government of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani have been at pains to balance their support of U.S. objectives with a recognition of widespread Pakistani distrust of the United States -- among the population as well as the political class. In the wake of Gillani's visit to Washington in July, and a meeting in New York last month between Zardari and President Bush, the Pakistani Parliament yesterday passed a resolution calling for the immediate development of an "independent foreign policy" and a new attempt at dialogue with Islamist insurgents.

Much distrust also remains on the U.S. side, particularly within intelligence agencies that have long been suspicious of ties between the Pakistani intelligence service and the Taliban. The CIA has increased its operations against resurgent extremist forces in the FATA, with at least 11 missile attacks launched by Predator unmanned aircraft against al-Qaeda and Taliban targets in August and September, compared with six in the previous eight months, according to knowledgeable officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence issues.

In its talks with the Bush administration, Gillani's government maintains that its counterterrorism cooperation surpasses that of retired Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who was ousted from the presidency in August. Last month, Gillani and army chief of staff Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani replaced the head of the Interservices Intelligence (ISI) agency with an army general considered more responsive to civilian leaders and more palatable to the Americans.

New ISI chief Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha will arrive in Washington this weekend for meetings with CIA head Michael V. Hayden.

A number of U.S. officials cautioned that Pakistan has made little progress in other aspects of a wider counterinsurgency strategy needed to make long-term gains against the extremists. "There is a significant, but not a comprehensive, bump up in the security element," one official said. While there are more soldiers on the ground, he said, the military strategy is not sustainable because Pakistan "is still doing virtually nothing about extending the government's political authority into the tribal areas, and virtually nothing about economic development" in the region.

"The secret to success in this kind of operation is tea," the official said, referring to the need to establish a positive presence in local villages, sit down with tribal leaders over tea and ask them what it would take to make their lives better. Unlike Pakistan's four provinces, the FATA are only nominally controlled by the central government and are largely ruled by tribal elders.

U.S. military officials warn, however, that expanding the movement will be more difficult than it proved in Iraq, where the Awakening began in 2006 among Sunni tribes in Anbar province. Unlike the Iraqi tribes, the FATA Pakistanis are poorly armed with aging rifles and little else -- although the provision of new, Chinese-made AK-47s and other small arms will increase their firepower.

Extremist groups are widespread throughout the poverty-stricken region and are entrenched in social and economic structures; many of the tribes receive regular financial support from al-Qaeda in exchange for providing sanctuary, a senior U.S. military official said.

Most important, the extent to which the program is perceived to be coordinated with U.S. aims in western Pakistan is likely to help determine its effectiveness. In Iraq, tribal security forces readily accepted an alliance with the U.S. military as well as direct U.S. payment for their services. U.S. officials see neither as likely in the FATA.

Despite the newly aggressive U.S. military posture -- reflected in the Predator attacks as well as Bush's authorization last summer of ground commando raids on extremist targets inside Pakistani territory -- U.S. officials say they are acutely aware of the need to tread carefully with Pakistan.

Early this month, U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson and Adm. Michael LeFever, the senior U.S. military officer in Pakistan, sent a joint cable to Washington criticizing the overall U.S. effort in Pakistan as disjointed and uncoordinated. It recommended a comprehensive new strategy that would better meld the same three counterinsurgency "legs" -- military, political and economic -- that the United States has pushed the Pakistani government to adopt.

The proposal, one U.S. official said, offered examples of current U.S. aid programs that have little relationship to political aims, and political objectives that dismiss military concerns. "It said things like, 'If you really want to understand Pakistan, you've got to understand food security as something a lot of people are worried about,' " especially in the tribal areas, the official said. "Where is the initiative on agriculture?"

The cable quickly circulated through the administration and caught the attention of Gen. David H. Petraeus, who next week will become head of the U.S. Central Command, or Centcom, in charge of U.S. forces in the Middle East and South and Central Asia. Petraeus, who plans to travel to Afghanistan and Pakistan two days after he takes over Centcom on Oct. 31, hopes to replicate in both countries elements of the strategies employed in his previous command in Iraq. Among them, officials said, is the close coordination he enjoyed with Ryan C. Crocker, the U.S. ambassador, and the development of local security units akin to the Awakening movement.

The emergence in Pakistan of the lashkars, headed by tribal elders who are said to resent the intrusion of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, began in earnest over the summer. So far, three lashkar militias, totaling as many as 14,000 men, have been established in Bajaur, according to Pakistani military estimates. In the FATA region of Orakzai, tribal leaders have amassed an estimated 4,000 indigenous fighters; an additional 7,000 are said to have enlisted in Dir, a tribal region just outside the FATA boundary.

The fighters have skirmished with extremists, at times in coordination with the Pakistani military. They have already begun to pay a price, with at least eight beheadings this month and a suicide bombing in Bajaur two weeks ago that killed more than 50 tribesmen gathered to enlist in a militia.

[Optimus]

‘Pakistan on the brink of anarchy’
http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14783211
Thursday, 23 October , 2008, 13:48 
 
London: Pakistan is on the brink of political and economic anarchy and a conflict that may be resembling a civil war, a British newspaper reported on Thursday, quoting US intelligence and Pakistani politicians.

The Independent said the military offensive to root out Taliban militants in the north has created “a flood of up to 200,000 refugees and pitched Pakistani against Pakistani, Muslim against Muslim, in a conflict some are beginning to regard as a civil war.”

Zardari vows to 'suck oxygen out of Taliban's system'

It quoted a new US intelligence estimate as warning that renewed insurgency, coupled with energy shortages and political infighting, means that the world's only Islamic nation with nuclear weapons is "on the edge."

Opposition Tehriq-e-Insaf leader Imran Khan told the paper on a visit to London on Wednesday that Pakistan is in the throes of a political and economic meltdown that "is leading to a sort of anarchy.”

Terror attacks in Pak handiwork of insiders: Govt

"How does a country collapse? There's increasing uncertainty, economic meltdown, more people on the street, inflation rising between 25 and 30 per cent. Then there's the rupee falling," Khan said.

"The awful thing is there's no solution in sight - neither in the war on terror nor on the economic side," he added.

Pakistan, which has asked the International Monetary Fund for a $15 billion bailout, is in turn being pressed by the US to deepen its fight against Islamic militants in regions bordering Afghanistan.

The country's main opposition leader Nawaz Sharif of the PML (N) has said in a leaked letter, "Pakistan is going through the worst crisis of its history."

"I have never known as much uncertainty as this," said Khan, who is in London to see his children, the Independent said.
 
 
 

[bigron]

 
Nine killed in US air strike on Pakistan school

US claim religious school belonged to a pro-Taliban cleric



Matthew Weaver and agencies guardian.co.uk,
Thursday October 23 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/23/pakistan-usa


A suspected US air strike killed nine people at a religious school in north-west Pakistan, intelligence officials said today.

It was claimed the school, on the outskirts of Miran Shah, the main town in the North Waziristan region, had links to the Taliban.

Four of those killed in the attack were found in the rubble of the school. Two others were injured.

The attack is being seen as a sign of US frustration at Pakistan's approach to counter-terrorism.

It came within hours of Pakistan's parliament warning against any incursions on Pakistani soil. MPs called for a review of national security, making talks with militants the top priority.

Unnamed intelligence officials told the Associated Press that the religious school belonged to a local pro-Taliban cleric who had been linked to the veteran Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani, considered a top target of the US.

Militants in the north-west are blamed for rising attacks on US and Nato forces in neighbouring Afghanistan, as well as suicide attacks within Pakistan.

Cross-border US missile attacks have angered Pakistan, which sees them as a violation of its sovereignty.

Yesterday's parliamentary resolution on security had few details, apparently a result of political compromise after two weeks of debate.

It did not directly mention two of the most divisive issues surrounding the terror fight: army offensives in the north-west and calls for unconditional talks with the extremists.

The major opposition parties recognise the need for military action against the insurgents, but rarely express it forcefully because they want to maintain support among ordinary Pakistanis who are deeply suspicious of the war.

The seven-month-old government hailed the 14-point document as a "historic moment for the country". The information minister, Sherry Rehman, said: "This will definitely help to improve the situation and to rid the country of the menace of terrorism."

The resolution calls for an "independent foreign policy", a sign of wariness of American influence.

It states Pakistan will not let its soil be used for terrorist attacks elsewhere — an apparent acknowledgment of US complaints about militants hiding in north-west Pakistan.

The resolution alludes to the US missile attacks, stating that Pakistan "stands united against any incursions and invasions of the homeland, and calls upon the government to deal with it effectively".

While saying dialogue "must now be the highest priority," it stipulates that talks should be pursued with those elements willing to follow the constitution and the rule of law.

Pakistan is in the midst of an economic crisis brought about by high fuel prices, dwindling foreign investment, soaring inflation and militant violence.

The government has formally requested financial help from the International Monetary Fund to avoid a possible loan default, a decision that could cost the administration political support at home.

[David Rothscum]

It seems that insiders want to escalate the civil war:

Pakistan Will Give Arms to Tribal Militias
Plan Bolsters U.S. Faith In Ally's Anti-Extremist Efforts
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/22/AR2008102203708_pf.html
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 23, 2008; A01

Pakistan plans to arm tens of thousands of anti-Taliban tribal fighters in its western border region in hopes -- shared by the U.S. military -- that the nascent militias can replicate the tribal "Awakening" movement that proved decisive in the battle against al-Qaeda in Iraq.

The militias, called lashkars, will receive Chinese-made AK-47 assault rifles and other small arms, a purchase arranged during a visit to Beijing this month by Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistani officials said.

Many Bush administration officials remain skeptical of Pakistan's long-term commitment to fighting the Taliban, al-Qaeda and other extremist groups ensconced in the mountains near the border with Afghanistan. But the decision to arm the lashkars, which emerged as organized fighting forces only in the past few months, is one of several recent actions that have led the Pentagon to believe that the Pakistani effort has become more aggressive.

Since early August, the Pakistani army has launched several offensives in Bajaur, one of seven regions in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), and in the nearby Swat Valley. According to Pakistani military assessments, more than 800 insurgents died during fighting in Bajaur in August and September, along with nearly 195 government soldiers and 344 civilians.

Last week, after months of Pakistani delays, about 30 U.S. military trainers were permitted to set up operations north of the region, a U.S. official said. The trainers will provide counterinsurgency instruction to Pakistani army soldiers, who in turn will train members of the Frontier Corps, the government's paramilitary force in the FATA.

"We are very encouraged by what we're seeing from the Pakistani military in the tribal regions," said Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell. Pakistani offensives in the FATA over the past two months are "making a difference on the other side of the border," where U.S. forces are fighting in Afghanistan, he said.

Pakistani officials insisted that arming the lashkars was their own idea and that they are paying for it, although the United States has provided more than $10 billion in relatively unrestrained counterterrorism funds to Pakistan's military over the past seven years. "The Americans are not giving us a bloody cent" for the program, one Pakistani official said. "This is us, doing it ourselves."

Zardari and the government of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani have been at pains to balance their support of U.S. objectives with a recognition of widespread Pakistani distrust of the United States -- among the population as well as the political class. In the wake of Gillani's visit to Washington in July, and a meeting in New York last month between Zardari and President Bush, the Pakistani Parliament yesterday passed a resolution calling for the immediate development of an "independent foreign policy" and a new attempt at dialogue with Islamist insurgents.

Much distrust also remains on the U.S. side, particularly within intelligence agencies that have long been suspicious of ties between the Pakistani intelligence service and the Taliban. The CIA has increased its operations against resurgent extremist forces in the FATA, with at least 11 missile attacks launched by Predator unmanned aircraft against al-Qaeda and Taliban targets in August and September, compared with six in the previous eight months, according to knowledgeable officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence issues.

In its talks with the Bush administration, Gillani's government maintains that its counterterrorism cooperation surpasses that of retired Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who was ousted from the presidency in August. Last month, Gillani and army chief of staff Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani replaced the head of the Interservices Intelligence (ISI) agency with an army general considered more responsive to civilian leaders and more palatable to the Americans.

New ISI chief Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha will arrive in Washington this weekend for meetings with CIA head Michael V. Hayden.

A number of U.S. officials cautioned that Pakistan has made little progress in other aspects of a wider counterinsurgency strategy needed to make long-term gains against the extremists. "There is a significant, but not a comprehensive, bump up in the security element," one official said. While there are more soldiers on the ground, he said, the military strategy is not sustainable because Pakistan "is still doing virtually nothing about extending the government's political authority into the tribal areas, and virtually nothing about economic development" in the region.

"The secret to success in this kind of operation is tea," the official said, referring to the need to establish a positive presence in local villages, sit down with tribal leaders over tea and ask them what it would take to make their lives better. Unlike Pakistan's four provinces, the FATA are only nominally controlled by the central government and are largely ruled by tribal elders.

U.S. military officials warn, however, that expanding the movement will be more difficult than it proved in Iraq, where the Awakening began in 2006 among Sunni tribes in Anbar province. Unlike the Iraqi tribes, the FATA Pakistanis are poorly armed with aging rifles and little else -- although the provision of new, Chinese-made AK-47s and other small arms will increase their firepower.

Extremist groups are widespread throughout the poverty-stricken region and are entrenched in social and economic structures; many of the tribes receive regular financial support from al-Qaeda in exchange for providing sanctuary, a senior U.S. military official said.

Most important, the extent to which the program is perceived to be coordinated with U.S. aims in western Pakistan is likely to help determine its effectiveness. In Iraq, tribal security forces readily accepted an alliance with the U.S. military as well as direct U.S. payment for their services. U.S. officials see neither as likely in the FATA.

Despite the newly aggressive U.S. military posture -- reflected in the Predator attacks as well as Bush's authorization last summer of ground commando raids on extremist targets inside Pakistani territory -- U.S. officials say they are acutely aware of the need to tread carefully with Pakistan.

Early this month, U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson and Adm. Michael LeFever, the senior U.S. military officer in Pakistan, sent a joint cable to Washington criticizing the overall U.S. effort in Pakistan as disjointed and uncoordinated. It recommended a comprehensive new strategy that would better meld the same three counterinsurgency "legs" -- military, political and economic -- that the United States has pushed the Pakistani government to adopt.

The proposal, one U.S. official said, offered examples of current U.S. aid programs that have little relationship to political aims, and political objectives that dismiss military concerns. "It said things like, 'If you really want to understand Pakistan, you've got to understand food security as something a lot of people are worried about,' " especially in the tribal areas, the official said. "Where is the initiative on agriculture?"

The cable quickly circulated through the administration and caught the attention of Gen. David H. Petraeus, who next week will become head of the U.S. Central Command, or Centcom, in charge of U.S. forces in the Middle East and South and Central Asia. Petraeus, who plans to travel to Afghanistan and Pakistan two days after he takes over Centcom on Oct. 31, hopes to replicate in both countries elements of the strategies employed in his previous command in Iraq. Among them, officials said, is the close coordination he enjoyed with Ryan C. Crocker, the U.S. ambassador, and the development of local security units akin to the Awakening movement.

The emergence in Pakistan of the lashkars, headed by tribal elders who are said to resent the intrusion of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, began in earnest over the summer. So far, three lashkar militias, totaling as many as 14,000 men, have been established in Bajaur, according to Pakistani military estimates. In the FATA region of Orakzai, tribal leaders have amassed an estimated 4,000 indigenous fighters; an additional 7,000 are said to have enlisted in Dir, a tribal region just outside the FATA boundary.

The fighters have skirmished with extremists, at times in coordination with the Pakistani military. They have already begun to pay a price, with at least eight beheadings this month and a suicide bombing in Bajaur two weeks ago that killed more than 50 tribesmen gathered to enlist in a militia.

[Optimus]

Now that the Pakistani parliament has voted to abandon the US war on terror, this could get very serious.
http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=66584.0

Pak lawmakers condemn US missile strikes in tribal region
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Pakistan/Pak_lawmakers_condemn_US_missile_strikes_in_tribal_region/articleshow/3637792.cms

ISLAMABAD: Coming out in strong voice against increasing number of missile strikes by US drones in its restive tribal region bordering Afghanistan, Pakistani lawmakers on Friday said such attacks were "unacceptable".

Lawmakers in the senate or upper house of the parliament expressed concern that such attacks were continuing despite assurances from the US.

Senators took up the issue a day after a missile strike on a madrassa, run by a Taliban strong man Jalaluddin Haqqani in North Waziristan, killed 10 people and injured several others.

According to official figures placed before the Senate, 67 cross-border strikes have been carried out over the past two years and 32 of them occurred during the past seven months.

These attacks have killed hundreds of people and injured scores, the government told the house, prompting the lawmakers to urge the authorities to adopt a strong resolution condemning the incident and ask the armed forces to secure the country's territory.

Ruling Pakistan People's Party leader Raza Rabbani said, "The government has no two opinions on this issue. It stands by its previous stance that such violations (of Pakistan's territory) are unacceptable.

"I want to make it abundantly clear that the government will not allow anybody to violate the country's territorial integrity. We had strongly protested (against the missile strikes) at the highest level and condemn this violation again," said Rabbani, the leader of the house in the senate.

President Asif Ali Zardari and prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani have taken up the issue of missile strikes and made it clear to the US that Pakistan strongly condemns such acts, he said.

[bigron]

Published on Friday, October 24, 2008 by The Guardian/UK


Pakistan Rejects 'America's War' On Extremists

Parliament vows to end military action on border • Relations with US will be strained by new strategy


by Saeed Shah in Islamabad

ISLAMABAD - Serious doubts multiplied yesterday about Pakistan [1]'s commitment to America [2]'s military campaign against al-Qaida and the Taliban after parliament overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling for dialogue with extremist groups and an end to military action.

Members of religious party Jamaat e-Islami yesterday at a protest against US airstrikes along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan. (Photograph: Fayyaz Hussain/Reuters)The new strategy, backed by all parties, emerged after a fierce debate in parliament where most parliamentarians said that Pakistan was paying an unacceptable price for fighting "America's war". If implemented by the government, support for Pakistan from international allies would come under severe strain, adding further instability to a country facing a spiral of violence and economic collapse.

"We need to prioritise our own national security interests," said Raza Rabbani, a leading member of the ruling Pakistan People's party. "As far as the US is concerned, the message that has gone with this resolution will definitely ring alarm bells, vis-a-vis their policy of bulldozing Pakistan."

The resolution, passed unanimously in parliament on Wednesday night demanded the abandonment of the use of force against extremists, in favour of negotiation, in what it called "an urgent review of our national security strategy".

"Dialogue must now be the highest priority, as a principal instrument of conflict management and resolution," said the resolution. "The military will be replaced as early as possible by civilian law enforcement agencies." It also said Pakistan would pursue "an independent foreign policy" and, in a pointed reference to US military incursions into Pakistani territory, proclaimed that "the nation stands united against any incursions and invasions of the homeland, and calls upon the government to deal with it effectively".

The force of the resolution was unclear last night, with differences in interpretation between the ruling People's party and opposition. The document is not binding on the government even though it was party to it. The army remains the ultimate arbiter of security policy. Some analysts believe that differences between the parties will see a tussle over implementation that could temper the resolution's thrust. The US response was muted, with officials saying they considered it rhetoric for domestic consumption.

But the intense American pressure on Islamabad to take on the militants was underlined yesterday by another US missile strike inside Pakistani territory, an instance of the heavy-handed intervention that parliament railed against. The attack came in Pakistan's border area with Afghanistan, at an Islamic school being used by suspected extremists, killing 11. The madrasa was linked to Afghan Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani, who has an extensive network in Pakistan.

There have been about a dozen US missile strikes inside Pakistan since the beginning of September and a ground assault, fanning widespread anti-Americanism in the country. The US and Nato depend on Pakistan to prevent its tribal area being used as a safe haven for Afghan Taliban.

Past attempts by Pakistan at making peace with militant groups in the tribal area have allowed them to regroup and led to a sharp increase in cross-border attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan.

Yesterday a US official made clear what it expected. "Pakistan needs to and is attacking insurgents in its northern areas," Patrick Moon, a deputy US assistant secretary of state, said during a visit to Kabul. "Sanctuaries for Afghanistan Taliban in Pakistan complicate our security operations. Pakistani Taliban and other extremists such as al-Qaida are posing a threat to the stability of Pakistan."

Pakistan is confronting multiple crises, political, security and financial, which threaten to overwhelm the nuclear-armed country and push it into chaos. It is heading towards bankruptcy, forcing Islamabad this week to approach to the International Monetary Fund for a rescue package. But the IMF bailout could be jeopardised if Washington is not on board.

Ordinary people complain that the country feels like it is falling apart, with a severe shortage of electricity causing blackouts of 12 hours or more in many areas, and crippling food price inflation, running at up to 100%, swelling the numbers living below the poverty line.

The country's north-west, especially its tribal border area with Afghanistan, is under the control of Taliban and al-Qaida, who are connected to militant groups that have networks across the country. Yesterday, in what is now a typical day for Pakistan, aside from the US missile strike, eight anti-Taliban tribal leaders were killed by militants in the Orakzai part of the tribal area, and the army killed 20 fighters in Bajaur, another part of the tribal belt.

In Swat, a valley in the north-west, the headless body was found of a policeman, previously kidnapped by Taliban, and posters went up in Swat warning women against shopping in markets, saying it was "unIslamic".

"Our country is burning," said Senator Khurshid Ahmad, a member of Pakistan's upper house of parliament for Jamaat-e-Islami, a mainstream religious party. "We don't want Bush to put oil on the fire. We want to extinguish this fire."

Sherry Rehman, minister for information, said the motion was a "firm resolve to combat terrorism". But Talat Masood, a retired general and security analyst, said: "The army will be disappointed there was not a clear consensus. I think the army will continue with the existing policy."

Backstory
Pakistan's tribal territory, formally known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), is a legacy of the Raj, a 10,000 square mile sliver of territory that has become central to geopolitics and the homeland security of the US, Britain and Europe.

The laws of Pakistan do not extend to the tribal belt, which is run under its own punitive laws and tribal custom, a system developed by the British. Fierce customs mean that men all carry guns, and guests, including al-Qaida militants, must be protected.

Al-Qaida's leadership and thousands of Taliban escaped the US war in Afghanistan after September 11 2001 by slipping into the tribal area, which runs along the border.

Under a treaty with the tribes, the Pakistan army was not allowed to enter the Fata, but the accord broke in 2004 under US pressure calling for al-Qaida bases to be disrupted. This sparked a tribal insurrection and pushed the locals towards extremism, creating a Pakistani Taliban. Taliban militants killed hundreds of traditional leaders and now control most of the Fata, imposing a rough and ready Islamic law, though it is believed that most tribesmen remain moderate.

 

© 2008 Guardian News and Media Limited

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/10/24-4

[bigron]

Published on Friday, October 24, 2008 by Agence France Presse


Imran Khan Warns Against US 'Surge' in Afghanistan

by Agence France Presse


Pakistan ex-cricket star turned politician Imran Khan, seen here on October 23, warned against any Iraq-style surge to tackle violent militancy in Afghanistan, telling AFP the two situations were "completely different". (AFP/Shaun Curry)


LONDON - Pakistan ex-cricket star turned politician Imran Khan warned against any Iraq-style surge to tackle violent militancy in Afghanistan, telling AFP the two situations were "completely different".

Pakistan ex-cricket star turned politician Imran Khan, seen here on October 23, warned against any Iraq-style surge to tackle violent militancy in Afghanistan, telling AFP the two situations were "completely different". (AFP/Shaun Curry)While stressing his support for US Democratic White House hopefuls Barack Obama and Joe Biden, he said in an interview Thursday that any move to increase the US military presence would be a bad move.

Obama wants to pull US troops from Iraq and send them to Afghanistan, pledging to "take out" top Al-Qaeda figures thought to be hiding in the mountainous Pakistan-Afghanistan border region.

Khan also said any international bail-out to help Pakistan overcome its current economic crisis would be "like treating cancer with disprin", adding the problem could only be addressed long-term by reforms to halt corruption.

"Most American politicians haven't a clue," the chair of the Pakistan Movement for Justice said during a visit to London.

"So it's very easy, they say, you know a surge, but do they understand a surge in Afghanistan and Pakistan is completely different to urban centres in Iraq?

"It's a spread-out area, they don't understand that this (the violence) has morphed into Pashtun nationalism now... they have huge men and guns to draw from."

There are thought to be about 50 million ethnic Pashtuns living in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Khan said Biden had a good grasp of the area's politics, adding: "It looks as if they might understand the situation better than (Republican candidate John) McCain, who's basically owning all (US President George W.) Bush's policies."

He was scathing about the Pakistani government's attempts to tackle its balance of payments crisis and said any international bail-out would have a minimal effect without structural reforms to tackle corruption.

The violence-plagued country, a key ally of the US in the "war on terror", must find up to 4.5 billion dollars in foreign exchange in the next 30 days.

"It's like treating cancer with disprin (pain relief tablets)," Khan said of a possible bail-out deal with the International Monetary Fund, which has held discussions with Pakistan.

"There are fundamental flaws within Pakistan. The problem is not the aid -- (ex president Pervez) Musharraf had something like, after 9/11, 65 to 70 billion dollars of fiscal space available because of loans writeoff, loans rescheduling...

"But what happened? There was still an economic meltdown. So there are fundamental structural flaws in the economy. They need to get the governance system right."

The former Pakistan cricket captain also said that Pakistan's government would become more subservient to the United States if it had to borrow more money from it.

"Yes, it's going to be more difficult for Pakistan government because when you beg and borrow money, you have no ability to take a stand," Khan said.

The 55-year-old is not currently a lawmaker -- his party boycotted elections this year in protest at the lack of an independent judiciary.

And he said it would not attempt a return to parliament until independent-minded chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who was ousted under Musharraf, returns.

"We will wait until the chief justice gets reinstated," Khan said.

"Until he gets reinstated, in our opinion fighting elections will only produce dummy parliaments and a puppet prime minister."

© 2008 Agence France Presse

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/10/24-1

[bigron]

Pakistan troops 'seize tribal town' 

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2008/10/2008102663817338879.html



 
The army began its offensive against fighters in Bajur in early August [AFP]

 
Pakistan's army has said it has recaptured a key town in the Bajur tribal region, following a two-month offensive in which 1,500 anti-government fighters and 73 soldiers died.

But fighting was continuing in the tribal areas on Sunday, with helicopters and artillery pounding targets in Bajaur.

Jamil Khan, a Pakistani official, told the Associated Press that eight anti-government fighters have been killed in fresh fighting.

Khan said reports from the region indicated several others had suffered injuries in the latest assault, but he gave no information about troop or civilian casualties.

Reports said that nearly 200,000 civilians have fled Loi Sam, the town captured by the Pakistani army.

'Mega-sanctuary'

Major-General Tariq Khan, a spokesman for the military, said government forces captured Loi Sam earlier this week "and killed the militants who were hiding there".

Pakistan's tribal regions are considered a stronghold for the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

The army launched its offensive in Bajaur in early August, saying the region had become a "mega-sanctuary" for fighters who had set up a virtual mini-state.

Khan said troops had by Saturday overrun the area and were in "complete control" of the town, though he forecast it could take between six months and a year before authorities could gain complete control of Bajaur.

But some analysts criticised the military move.

"This is not the first time that the military or the Pakistani government has claimed that they have captured an important person or claimed to have attacked and been successful in destroying the sanctuary of the Taliban," Khalid Rahman, the director general of the Institute of Policy Studies in Islamabad, told Al Jazeera.

"Perhaps the whole strategy is not correct ... I am really afraid that this military strategy is going to increase the problem, unless it is accompanied by a genuine, sincere dialogue."

'Mini-jirga'

Talks are meanwhile expected to take place in Islamabad on Monday between Pakistani and Afghan political leaders with an aim to end violence in the border regions. Ethnic Pashtun tribal chiefs are also expected to participate.

The meeting, dubbed a Pakistan-Afghanistan "Jirgagai", or mini-jirga, is a follow-up to a grand assembly in Kabul last year in which delegates called for talks with Taliban fighters.

Around 50 political leaders, Pashtun elders and Muslim clerics from both countries will to ponder growing violence by al-Qaeda and the Taliban fighters on both sides of their disputed border.

"The two main objectives of the jirgagai are to expedite the ongoing dialogue process with the opposition and monitor implementation of decisions of the (Kabul) jirga," Mohammad Sadiq, a Pakistani foreign ministry spokesman, said.

But critics say the mini-jirga will be little more than a talking shop without the participation of representatives of the Taliban.
 
 

[Biggs]

'US strike' kills Taleban leader
 
The US military has been using drones armed with missiles in Afghanistan

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7692373.stm



A suspected US missile strike has killed 20 people, including a top Taleban commander, in north-west Pakistan, witnesses and officials say.

Mohammad Omar was among the dead when the missile, reportedly fired by a pilotless US drone, hit a compound owned by him in South Waziristan.

Omar fought with the Taleban in Afghanistan in the late 1990s.

The US has launched many missile strikes from Afghanistan against suspected militant targets recently.

The latest strike on Sunday night was launched at a compound owned by Mohammad Omar in Mandatta village in the troubled region of South Waziristan.

Mohammad Omar was a close associate of the dead Taleban commander Nek Mohammed, who was killed in a suspected US strike in the area four years ago.

Witnesses said that the missile strike completely destroyed Mohammed Omar's house, and partially damaged two neighbouring houses.

Panic

They said locals rushed to the targeted compounds to rescue the people inside and there was panic in the area after the attack.

Local officials confirmed that 20 bodies had been dug up from the debris of the compound.

Two others are reported to have been injured in the attack, they said.

The US has made no comment.
 


The attack comes three days after a missile attack in Dande Darpakhel area of North Waziristan area killed seven students of a religious school.

Over a month ago, US troops conducted a ground operation in the Musa Nikah area of South Waziristan area in which more than 15 people were killed.

In recent weeks the United States has launched many missile strikes against suspected militant targets in the Afghan border region.

Washington says the strikes are used against militant targets, but correspondents say that intelligence failures have sometimes led to civilian casualties.

Figures compiled by the BBC Urdu service show that some 80 people have been killed in a number of suspected US missile strikes in South and North Waziristan region over the past month.

The United States rarely confirms or denies such attacks.

Tensions between the US and Pakistan have increased over the issue of cross-border incursions against militants by American forces based in Afghanistan.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has said he will not tolerate violations of his country's territory.

The US state department has affirmed "its support for Pakistan's sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity".

[Triadtropz]

they are suspected US missle attacks..the key word being suspected..these drones are from Gods army, and Christ is giving the orders..the CIA is just stealing his thunder..

[bigron]

October 27, 2008

U.S. Takes to Air to Hit Militants Inside Pakistan

By MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/27/washington/27intel.html?_r=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin


WASHINGTON — The White House has backed away from using American commandos for further ground raids into Pakistan after furious complaints from its government, relying instead on an intensifying campaign of airstrikes by the Central Intelligence Agency against militants in the Pakistani mountains.

According to American and Pakistani officials, attacks by remotely piloted Predator aircraft have increased sharply in frequency and scope in the past three months.

Through Sunday, there were at least 18 Predator strikes since the beginning of August, some deep inside Pakistan’s tribal areas, compared with 5 strikes during the first seven months of 2008.

At the same time, however, officials said that relying on airstrikes alone, the United States would be unable to weaken Al Qaeda’s grip in the tribal areas permanently. Within the government, advocates of the ground raids have argued that only by sending Special Operations forces into Pakistan can the United States successfully capture suspected operatives and interrogate them for information about top Qaeda leaders.

The decision to focus on an intensified Predator campaign using Hellfire missiles appears to reflect dwindling options on the part of the White House for striking a blow against Al Qaeda in the Bush administration’s waning days.

After months of debate within the administration and mounting frustration over Pakistan’s failure to carry out more aggressive counterterrorism operations, President Bush finally gave his approval in July for ground missions inside Pakistan.

But the only American ground mission known to have taken place was a Special Operations raid on Sept. 3, in which the roughly two dozen people killed included some civilians. American officials say there has not been another commando operation since.

American officials acknowledge that following the Sept. 3 raid they were surprised by the intensity of the Pakistani response, which included an unannounced visit to Washington, three weeks after the incursion, by the country’s national security adviser, Mahmud Ali Durrani. He registered his anger in person with top White House officials.

A senior administration official said Sunday that no tacit agreement had been reached to allow increased Predator strikes in exchange for a backing off from additional American ground raids, an option the officials said remained on the table. But Pakistani officials have made clear in public statements that they regard the Predator attacks as a less objectionable violation of Pakistani sovereignty.

“There’s always a balance between respecting full Pakistani sovereignty, even in places where they’re not capable of exercising that sovereignty, and the need for our force protection,” said the administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Top American officials have justified the Sept. 3 ground raid as a self-defense response against militants who use havens in Pakistan to launch attacks against American and allied forces in Afghanistan. Those attacks have increased by about 30 percent from a year ago, according to military officials.

As part of the intensified attacks in recent months, the C.I.A. has expanded its list of targets in Pakistan and has gained approval from the government there to bolster eavesdropping operations in the border region, according to United States officials.

Once largely reserved for missions to kill senior Arab Qaeda operatives, the Predator is increasingly being used to strike Pakistani militants and even trucks carrying rockets to resupply fighters in Afghanistan.

Many of the Predator strikes are taking place as deep as 25 miles into Pakistani territory, not just along the border.

Spokesmen for the White House and the C.I.A. declined to comment for this article.

The information about the American operations inside Pakistan was described in interviews by a dozen military and civilian officials from the United States and Pakistan, who insisted on anonymity because of diplomatic concerns and because details remained classified.

While Pakistan is now headed by a new civilian government, under President Asif Ali Zardari, the tense discussions between the countries over counterterrorism operations appear to echo at least some of the uneasiness that long characterized the partnership between Mr. Bush and Pervez Musharraf, the former president. He was defeated in parliamentary elections in February and left office in August.

Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, told the Council on Foreign Relations this month that the two nations were cooperating in deploying “strategic equipment that is used against specific targets.”

On Oct. 16, a Predator strike in South Waziristan killed Khalid Habib, a senior Qaeda operative. But the strikes sometimes have unintended consequences. On Sept. 8, one in Miranshah on a compound owned by a Taliban leader, Jalaluddin Haqqani, failed to kill him but did kill women and children. On Aug. 27, a Predator strike near the village of Wana missed its target; it is unclear whether civilians were killed.

Senior military and counterterrorism officials say the increased Predator strikes have disrupted planning, pushed some insurgents deeper into Pakistan, prompted some militant commanders to post additional sentries and forced the militants to use their cellphones and satellite phones, which American eavesdropping operations can monitor.

“It’s fair to say that it has caused key Al Qaeda figures to focus even more on their safety and security,” said a Western counterterrorism official. “It has caused them to be more suspicious of people they don’t know well, and it also has caused frictions between Al Qaeda and tribal elements.”

But the official acknowledged that the intensified operations have failed to shake Al Qaeda’s hold on the tribal areas. “Things haven’t gotten to the point that they would even consider another option,” he said.

Pakistan and the United States are also taking steps to repair the relationship between their intelligence services, which reached a nadir this summer after evidence emerged that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate had a hand in the July bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Pakistan’s top military official, recently replaced not only the ISIs commander but also four midlevel generals believed to have had advance knowledge of the embassy bombing.

The C.I.A. has also put a new station chief in Islamabad, replacing one whose tour of duty had ended and whose relationship with the ISI had become contentious.

Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the new head of the ISI, is in Washington this week and is scheduled to meet with the C.I.A. director, Michael V. Hayden.

Pentagon officials have publicly praised the Pakistan Army’s aggressive campaign against militants in the Bajaur tribal agency. But privately, some American officials are wincing at a full-scale military operation that is taking a heavy toll on civilians as well as insurgents, and has not diminished the cross-border attacks.

“They don’t have a concept of counterinsurgency operations,” one senior American officer said. “It’s generally a heavy punch and then they leave.”

More than 200,000 people have now fled the attack helicopters, warplanes, artillery and mortar fire of the Pakistani Army, and some officials in Washington say the Pakistani government has been slow to follow up with food, water and other assistance to help displaced villagers. The United States has approved $8 million to aid the refugee effort.

Still, a senior official in the State Department said the situation was a vast improvement from years of Pakistan’s off-again-on-again military operations in the tribal areas.

“They have shown more fight than ever before,” that official said of the Pakistanis. “They show no desire to negotiate with the militants.”

The official said that Pakistan’s civilian government had been moved to act in part by large-scale terrorist attacks in Pakistan, like the Sept. 20 bombing at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, which killed more than 50 people.

[bigron]

An Occupation Government In Islamabad?

Pakistan Daily

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m48304&hd=&size=1&l=e


Monday, 27 October 2008 21:41

They invaded Iraq to set up an occupation government in Baghdad. But in Islamabad, they have done it without firing a bullet. Read this fascinating insight into what seems like an American-imposed proxy occupation administration with Pakistani faces.

Is Pakistan under occupation? If one is living in the capital, this seems to be the picture as our democratically elected leaders and their state apparatus increasingly behave like an occupation force. Perhaps given our ever increasing concession to the U.S., one can actually regard the Pakistani state as a proxy occupation force for the U.S.. How else can one explain the present government's desire to recreate the "Green Zone" of Iraq in Islamabad? After all, Iraq's Green Zone basically was necessitated to protect the hated American occupiers and their local Quislings. Obviously, for an occupation force their lives are more valuable to them than the lives of the local people.

In Islamabad, the Navy had sealed its E-8 occupied area from the common Pakistani while the civilian citizen of the capital has not created any hurdles in the movement of naval officers in their residential and workplace areas. More recently the Air Force took the same apartheid-like approach for their E-9 occupied area so a civilian has to undergo many trials before moving in these areas – if allowed at all.

But is this how our democratically elected leaders also think? Now for our civilian leaders it seems all citizens are suspect, barring officialdom and the members of parliament. Too bad elected people can easily forget who sent them there in the first place. So now, thanks to the desire of the new leadership to isolate itself and become an occupation force rather than a representative government, we can undergo the same experiences as our brethren in Iraq. Now if only the wild boars could also realize that, democracy or not, leaders in Pakistan will protect their isolation, come what may, so their forays into the presidency will only result in dire poisoning! Of course, at the end of the day, if people rise up against occupation and increasing hardships, what happens to the self-designed occupiers? A problem has to be resolved and mere cutting off from the problem is no solution but an impediment towards one.

Coming back to the Pakistani state and its concessions to the U.S., while a complete picture is probably not possible, one does not require an in-camera briefing to make some general assessments as to what has been conceded by Pakistan post-9/11 to the U.S. But a reminder would be timely right now when we are seeing a resumption of the silence on continued U.S. attacks in FATA against our citizens and our sovereignty.

Certainly, in the early days of our entering the U.S.-led "war on terror," we offered certain strategic bases of which Jacobabad has since been returned apparently over two years ago (or so one is informed, but there is always the trust factor that is not totally there for us ordinary citizens). In any case, since our initial giving on this count, we have clearly given some base-like facilities to the U.S. around Warsak, although, ostensibly, here there are only "trainers" for the FC and other Pakistani units involved in anti-terror operations. But as we all know, even the presence of a few U.S. trainers requires a whole base-like infrastructure in terms of food (they do not trust the local variety), entertainment, logistics, communications (heaven forbid that they have to rely on ours), security, and so on. So, even if informally, we have a base presence in the Warsak area now. As for the Shamsi base in Balochistan where there are Predators, one can safely assume that the U.S. would find it tempting to target Iran from this prime location (westward of Khuzdar). It is time we took back this base which is undermining our own regional security parameters.

Beyond bases, Pakistan also agreed to information/intelligence sharing and so all the equipment at airports, ports, and so on, through which information is gathered is shared with the Americans. But it seems there is little reciprocity from the U.S. side on this count. What is unclear, and I wonder if we will ever know truly, the compromises made by Pakistan on renditions and the handing over of Pakistani citizens to the U.S.. What we do know is that some agreement on this count was also put in place, with some individuals actually making money as a result – to Pakistan's eternal shame. It would also appear that this agreement continues since Zardari, despite grandiose statements, did not even mention Dr Afia Siddiqui's name while in the U.S. recently.

It also appears that we allowed, and continue to do so, 24-hour overflights for U.S. and NATO tactical operations over/through Pakistani airspace. Such instructions have been given to our air traffic controllers. In addition, over briefings given in the past, we were told that all Predator/missile attacks the U.S. undertook were initially done with permission from Pakistan. But now it appears they have stopped seeking that permission. In fact, the Libbi strike was also carried out without Pakistani permission so we do not know when the U.S. altered policy and chose not to inform, let alone seek Pakistani permission for attacks on Pakistani territory.

What we do know is that there was no agreement on ground attacks by U.S. forces. Tut since the present government has been in power a question mark hangs over this aspect of so-called cooperation with the U.S. Especially since, after Zardari declared in New York, that Pakistani forces had not fired on U.S. intruders, there has been not even a murmur of protest at the increasing U.S. violations against Pakistani sovereignty and Pakistani citizens. In fact, so emboldened have the U.S. and NATO become that, for the first time, in a reversal of the earlier stance, the NATO command has declared support for U.S. intrusions into Pakistan! So, an intelligent conclusion would be that our new government has added to the concessions made by Musharraf.

As for the money Pakistan supposedly has received in return, first it should be clear that no amount of money can justify handing over a chunk of our sovereignty to the U.S. for military purposes. In any case, the Coalition Support Fund went to the government and was to be shared 40:60 by them and the military, but from all accounts the military never got the full 60 percent. As for weapons, it is a cruel joke that continues to be played on the Pakistanis – or is our military so desperate for U.S. equipment and training? It should not be since the army especially has managed without for many decades.

In any case, the largesse of night-vision goggles and supplies for our Cobra helicopters is hardly state-of-the-art transfers! More humiliating for the army has been the regular accounting of these goggles by U.S. personnel which requires the army to collect all the goggles from far and wide and show them to their Yank givers before being returned to use! Now we had yet another absurdity of the U.S. giving us a 32-year-old frigate which we have to restore at a cost of $65 million. If you want to see a proper military partnership simply look at what the U.S. is giving India in terms of weapons systems and weapons technology and then realize where you stand with the so-called ally, the U.S.!

But if our parliamentarians still think the U.S. is our ally, Boucher's latest visit should have made things clearer. No talks, the Americans simply want to kill all our people who they classify as Taliban! This has been the other compromise we made with the U.S.: No successful talks with our people on the pattern of the IRA-UK-Ireland talks and others of a similar pattern–only military response. After all, what seems to have remained hidden to all our leaders, although it has been clear to the rest of us for some years now, is the disruptive and negative U.S. agenda for Pakistan. But our rulers continue to play the U.S. game and our legislators do not seem to have the will to assert their democratic force to change course for the better. There are other solutions to our terrorism/extremism problem, but someone in power has to be prepared to move away from the U.S. and listen to their own people. Until then, they are becoming our occupiers by proxy. Shireen Mazari
 

[Triadtropz]

October 27, 2008

U.S. Takes to Air to Hit Militants Inside Pakistan

By MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/27/washington/27intel.html?_r=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin


WASHINGTON — The White House has backed away from using American commandos for further ground raids into Pakistan after furious complaints from its government, relying instead on an intensifying campaign of airstrikes by the Central Intelligence Agency against militants in the Pakistani mountains.

According to American and Pakistani officials, attacks by remotely piloted Predator aircraft have increased sharply in frequency and scope in the past three months.

Through Sunday, there were at least 18 Predator strikes since the beginning of August, some deep inside Pakistan’s tribal areas, compared with 5 strikes during the first seven months of 2008.

At the same time, however, officials said that relying on airstrikes alone, the United States would be unable to weaken Al Qaeda’s grip in the tribal areas permanently. Within the government, advocates of the ground raids have argued that only by sending Special Operations forces into Pakistan can the United States successfully capture suspected operatives and interrogate them for information about top Qaeda leaders.

The decision to focus on an intensified Predator campaign using Hellfire missiles appears to reflect dwindling options on the part of the White House for striking a blow against Al Qaeda in the Bush administration’s waning days.

After months of debate within the administration and mounting frustration over Pakistan’s failure to carry out more aggressive counterterrorism operations, President Bush finally gave his approval in July for ground missions inside Pakistan.

But the only American ground mission known to have taken place was a Special Operations raid on Sept. 3, in which the roughly two dozen people killed included some civilians. American officials say there has not been another commando operation since.

American officials acknowledge that following the Sept. 3 raid they were surprised by the intensity of the Pakistani response, which included an unannounced visit to Washington, three weeks after the incursion, by the country’s national security adviser, Mahmud Ali Durrani. He registered his anger in person with top White House officials.

A senior administration official said Sunday that no tacit agreement had been reached to allow increased Predator strikes in exchange for a backing off from additional American ground raids, an option the officials said remained on the table. But Pakistani officials have made clear in public statements that they regard the Predator attacks as a less objectionable violation of Pakistani sovereignty.

“There’s always a balance between respecting full Pakistani sovereignty, even in places where they’re not capable of exercising that sovereignty, and the need for our force protection,” said the administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Top American officials have justified the Sept. 3 ground raid as a self-defense response against militants who use havens in Pakistan to launch attacks against American and allied forces in Afghanistan. Those attacks have increased by about 30 percent from a year ago, according to military officials.

As part of the intensified attacks in recent months, the C.I.A. has expanded its list of targets in Pakistan and has gained approval from the government there to bolster eavesdropping operations in the border region, according to United States officials.

Once largely reserved for missions to kill senior Arab Qaeda operatives, the Predator is increasingly being used to strike Pakistani militants and even trucks carrying rockets to resupply fighters in Afghanistan.

Many of the Predator strikes are taking place as deep as 25 miles into Pakistani territory, not just along the border.

Spokesmen for the White House and the C.I.A. declined to comment for this article.

The information about the American operations inside Pakistan was described in interviews by a dozen military and civilian officials from the United States and Pakistan, who insisted on anonymity because of diplomatic concerns and because details remained classified.

While Pakistan is now headed by a new civilian government, under President Asif Ali Zardari, the tense discussions between the countries over counterterrorism operations appear to echo at least some of the uneasiness that long characterized the partnership between Mr. Bush and Pervez Musharraf, the former president. He was defeated in parliamentary elections in February and left office in August.

Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, told the Council on Foreign Relations this month that the two nations were cooperating in deploying “strategic equipment that is used against specific targets.”

On Oct. 16, a Predator strike in South Waziristan killed Khalid Habib, a senior Qaeda operative. But the strikes sometimes have unintended consequences. On Sept. 8, one in Miranshah on a compound owned by a Taliban leader, Jalaluddin Haqqani, failed to kill him but did kill women and children. On Aug. 27, a Predator strike near the village of Wana missed its target; it is unclear whether civilians were killed.

Senior military and counterterrorism officials say the increased Predator strikes have disrupted planning, pushed some insurgents deeper into Pakistan, prompted some militant commanders to post additional sentries and forced the militants to use their cellphones and satellite phones, which American eavesdropping operations can monitor.

“It’s fair to say that it has caused key Al Qaeda figures to focus even more on their safety and security,” said a Western counterterrorism official. “It has caused them to be more suspicious of people they don’t know well, and it also has caused frictions between Al Qaeda and tribal elements.”

But the official acknowledged that the intensified operations have failed to shake Al Qaeda’s hold on the tribal areas. “Things haven’t gotten to the point that they would even consider another option,” he said.

Pakistan and the United States are also taking steps to repair the relationship between their intelligence services, which reached a nadir this summer after evidence emerged that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate had a hand in the July bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Pakistan’s top military official, recently replaced not only the ISIs commander but also four midlevel generals believed to have had advance knowledge of the embassy bombing.

The C.I.A. has also put a new station chief in Islamabad, replacing one whose tour of duty had ended and whose relationship with the ISI had become contentious.

Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the new head of the ISI, is in Washington this week and is scheduled to meet with the C.I.A. director, Michael V. Hayden.

Pentagon officials have publicly praised the Pakistan Army’s aggressive campaign against militants in the Bajaur tribal agency. But privately, some American officials are wincing at a full-scale military operation that is taking a heavy toll on civilians as well as insurgents, and has not diminished the cross-border attacks.

“They don’t have a concept of counterinsurgency operations,” one senior American officer said. “It’s generally a heavy punch and then they leave.”

More than 200,000 people have now fled the attack helicopters, warplanes, artillery and mortar fire of the Pakistani Army, and some officials in Washington say the Pakistani government has been slow to follow up with food, water and other assistance to help displaced villagers. The United States has approved $8 million to aid the refugee effort.

Still, a senior official in the State Department said the situation was a vast improvement from years of Pakistan’s off-again-on-again military operations in the tribal areas.

“They have shown more fight than ever before,” that official said of the Pakistanis. “They show no desire to negotiate with the militants.”

The official said that Pakistan’s civilian government had been moved to act in part by large-scale terrorist attacks in Pakistan, like the Sept. 20 bombing at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, which killed more than 50 people.

you could shoot down a predator drone with a rifle...these drones have outfoxed fighter jets..this is a huge cover-up..thats why the CIA has no comment, on the NY times allegations..because they arent predator drones doing the strikes..

[bigron]

Published on Monday, October 27, 2008 by The Australian



Bigger Role For US CIA Drones in Pakistan




by Bruce Loudon


Twenty people were killed last night in a missile strike by CIA Predator drone aircraft inside Pakistan amid reports that Washington is intensifying its aerial bombardment of the country after being forced to back away from plans to send in ground forces.

Department of Defense (DOD) file photo shows an unmanned Predator surveillance plane. Sources close to the jirga said the latest Predator strike, and reports that Washington was intensifying its aerial bombardment, were likely to reinforce sentiment in favour of the militants and make it even more difficult to achieve peace. . (AFP/DoD-HO/File/Jeffrey S. Viano)The attack - the 18th in the past few weeks - targeted what was described as a "militant compound" close to Wana, the main town of the South Waziristan tribal agency that is the fiefdom of top jihadi commander Baitullah Mehsud - a man closely linked to al-Qa'ida and the Taliban.

The latest strike and others carried out by the CIA were described last night by Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani as "disastrous".

"Such actions are proving counter-productive to (the Government's) efforts to isolate the extremists and militants from the tribal population which is involved in the formation of tribal lashkars (armies)," Mr Gilani said.

In Islamabad yesterday, the first serious moves at peace talks with the Taliban in both Pakistan and Afghanistan began when a tribal jirga (assembly) convened at the instigation of both governments.

The jirga brings together more than 50 tribal elders from both sides of the Durand Line that notionally divides the two countries, and is seen as a modest first attempt to begin negotiations with the militants.

Participants said the viability of peace talks was likely to form the basis of the discussions, with strong opposition certain to emerge against US policy, including the Predator drone strikes, as well as the presence ofUS and other coalition forces in Afghanistan.

A leading participant, former Pakistani ambassador to Afghanistan Rustam Shah Mohmand, said it would be impossible to deal with the Taliban as long as Western forces remained in Afghanistan.

Sources close to the jirga said the latest Predator strike, and reports that Washington was intensifying its aerial bombardment, were likely to reinforce sentiment in favour of the militants and make it even more difficult to achieve peace.

Washington appears to take a different view. The New York Times reported yesterday that the CIA had intensified Predator strikes in the region after objections from Islamabad forced it to retreat from its plan to send ground forces in.

According to the paper, Washington is said to believe that Pakistan regards the Predator strikes as "less objectionable" in terms of violating the country's sovereignty than ground attacks.

A Bush administration official told the Times: "There's a balance between respecting full Pakistani sovereignty, even in places where they're not capable of exercising that sovereignty, and the need for our force protection."

As with most of the previous attacks, yesterday's strike appeared to have failed to hit high value targets, initial reports said. Just one of the 18 attacks carried out in recent weeks is said to have killed a major al-Qa'ida figure. The rest claimed mostly civilian lives, provoking greater hostility towards Washington.

© 2008 The Australian

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/10/27-1

[bigron]

Published on Monday, October 27, 2008 by The Guardian/UK


Thousands Stuck In Camps of No Return


by Saeed Shah

 Timergara, Pakistan - Bewildered, angry and thrown into squalor, the refugees created suddenly by Pakistan's frontline role in the 'war on terror' know they could be stranded in camps [1] for years to come.


An Afghan girl in a refugee camp on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan. (Photograph: Emilio Morenatti/AP)



Up to 300,000 people have had to flee fighting in Bajaur, an extremely poor part of Pakistan's tribal border area with Afghanistan [2]. Refugees in their own country, they live in vast government camps or beg shelter from friends and family. In an ominous sign for the government, their rage is directed not at the Pakistani Taliban, who took over their area, but the army, whose onslaught with jets and helicopters forced them to abandon their homes and livelihoods.

Packed together in tented cities, these deeply conservative Islamic refugees have had to drop the strict purdah that the women observed at home. Large families - of eight or sometimes 12 - live together in single, draughty tents. They are all preparing for a bitter winter.

At the sprawling Kungi camp, set on a hill just outside the town of Timergara, the only toilet is a communal ditch over which the men squat. The women use the surrounding woods.

'We get little food. We don't have enough water to drink, let alone the chance to bathe,' said Gul Mohammad, 25, who arrived at Kungi with seven family members. 'We brought nothing. We just came here to save our lives.'

There is no electricity. Water is trucked in and food is distributed by the government and aid agencies, but supplies are very short. Inhabitants spend much of their day foraging for wood as cooking fuel, or buy it with the little money they have.

There are at least eight similar camps scattered across the North West Frontier Province, which adjoins Bajaur. Already there are outbreaks of disease, with acute diarrhoea and respiratory illnesses being treated by medical aid workers. There are 30,000 people living in official camps and there are contingencies being prepared by the United Nations to accommodate 100,000, as people continue to flood out of Bajaur. Soon Bajaur will be virtually empty. The UN believes that a further 200,000 will be put up in houses by 'host families', often relatives.

The Pakistani government has had to scramble to set up camps for these 'internally displaced people' as a result of the military assault in Bajaur, now into its third month. Aid agencies and the UN have rushed to provide support. At first it was thought the army would finish the job within a month, but with no signs of the operation ending these camps are being given more permanent facilities.

There are fears that the sites could be infiltrated by Taliban militants, whose wives and children are already living there. When one Western aid worker asked a group of women at prayer who they were praying for, back came the reply: 'Our men fighting the army.'

Pakistan's security forces are engaged in a fitful war with Taliban and al-Qaeda extremists who largely control the country's tribal border with Afghanistan.

The Bajaur operation appears to be Pakistan's most determined attack on its home-grown extremists since 9/11. So far there is little action in other parts of the tribal belt. Should Pakistan finally decide that war is the only way to deal with the extremists, the fate of the people of Bajaur could be replicated across the tribal area, home to around three million people.

The armed forces attack indiscriminately, according to Mohammad Ibrahim, 15. 'Our village is completely vacant now. There was constant shelling, so we ran. They drop bombs on mosques, on schools, they don't look. We're the ones dying, but they say that terrorists have been killed.'

Pakistan's battle against Islamic extremists coincides with two other crises: political turmoil and economic collapse. They are pushing the country towards becoming a failed state, which nevertheless possesses nuclear arms.

Bajaur is a strategically important position for the militants - a conduit to the rest of the tribal area and Afghanistan - which they are fighting hard to defend. The army claims to have killed more than 1,000 militants in the operation, a statistic that few believe. It has not released the number of civilians killed or wounded.

'Houses are being used by the militants as bunkers. They're firing from there. Therefore all houses from where the firing is coming are being engaged by the security forces,' said the chief army spokesman, Major-General Athar Abbas. 'To our knowledge, the civilians of this area have left.'

Bajaur shows how intimately linked the campaigns in Pakistan and Afghanistan are. The Pakistani Taliban are defending the region with help from Afghan Taliban, Arabs, Chechens and other foreigners from al-Qaeda. The movement in Bajaur is being directed by Qari Ziaur Rahman, an Afghan Taliban commander, who is also overseeing the insurgency in the neighbouring Afghan provinces of Kunar and Nooristan.

'The mujahideen have completely gained control on the ground [in Bajaur]. The American agenda to destroy the mujahideen and all the [Pakistan] government options have failed to defeat us,' Rahman said in an interview with a local journalist.

On the outskirts of the provincial capital, Peshawar, an old refugee camp for Afghans, who were forced out of it only a year ago, has had to take on a grim new existence, this time for Pakistan's own people. There are already about 5,500 Bajaur refugees at the Kacha Garhi camp, a wide, flat, wind-blown expanse, and there are plans to expand it to accommodate 21,000. Even here, in a city, there is little food and water and no electricity or gas, so people gather brushwood and branches to cook.

Mohammad Jan, standing outside his family's tent at Kacha Garhi, ran from Bajaur when nine people from his village were killed by the army. 'There were no Taliban in our area,' Jan insisted. 'It is ordinary people who are dying. This is some kind of game, a double game that I don't understand.'

One newly arrived elderly woman died of dehydration in the long, chaotic queue to register with the authorities at Kacha Garhi, causing a mini-riot. Mohammad Zahra said he had 20 mouths to feed, his children and those of three brothers. 'But we only get a little food,' he said, displaying a handful.

One old man, Mohammad Amin, has been passed from camp to camp. 'When will we get the blankets and bedding?' he asked. 'After dying?'

© 2008 Guardian News and Media Limited

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/10/27-7

[sociostudent]

Okay, wait a minute..
If 300,000 people had been displaced in DARFUR, Don Cheadle and Doctors without Borders would be all over it like a fat kid on a cupcake. The only reason this kind of stuff is being allowed to continue is because The Taliban ("Al-CIA-duh") is there. Unless that little girl is toting an Uzi underneath that dress, this looks to me like some hardcore genocide.

Also, what is so hard about getting the Red Cross, IMF or UN peacekeepers or (God Help Us) even Bono? *methinks I just threw up a little in my mouth-- *

God, they need to do SOMETHING to get those people some more water, food, and a pot to piss in (literally--the chicks are having to go in the woods and sleep in the same room as males they're not married too--it's getting ridiculous.)

[sociostudent]

Okay, wait a minute..
If 300,000 people had been displaced in DARFUR, Don Cheadle and Doctors without Borders would be all over it like a fat kid on a cupcake. The only reason this kind of stuff is being allowed to continue is because The Taliban ("Al-CIA-duh") is there. Unless that little girl is toting an Uzi underneath that dress, this looks to me like some hardcore genocide.

Also, what is so hard about getting the Red Cross, IMF or UN peacekeepers or (God Help Us) even Bono? *methinks I just threw up a little in my mouth-- *

God, they need to do SOMETHING to get those people some more water, food, and a pot to piss in (literally--the chicks are having to go in the woods and sleep in the same room as males they're not married to--it's getting ridiculous.)

[Biggs]

Pakistan 'needs IMF loans soon'
   
IMF forced marriage?


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7694969.stm
The German Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, has said that Pakistan has just "a few days" to raise billions of dollars in foreign loans.

After meeting senior members of the government, he said that Pakistan had no choice but to seek a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Mr Steinmeier said that the loan was needed to avoid a deepening crisis.

Economists say that the country needs needs up to $15bn over the next 24 months to stabilise the economy.

They say that can best be achieved by sustained foreign assistance and investment in the agricultural, industrial and energy sectors.

Little assistance

"I hope the decision (with the IMF) will be taken soon. It won't help to have it in six months, or six weeks. Rather, we need it in the coming six days," Mr Steinmeier said at a joint news conference conference with his Pakistani counterpart, Shah Mehmood Qureshi.

"We will support your country in the negotiations with the IMF," he said.
 
Some economists fear that Pakistan faces economic meltdown


The German foreign minister said that his country would also be willing to step up development assistance to Pakistan but he declined to give a figure.

Correspondents say that Pakistan's seven-month-old government has been reluctant to go to the IMF and has been looking for help from friendly governments - but so far little assistance has materialised.

The BBC's M Ilyas Khan says that the country has plenty of long-term commitments from a group of countries called the Friends of Pakistan, but any default on international obligations in the short term may hurt its ability to attract future investment.

Our correspondent says that the decision by two of its closest allies, China and Saudi Arabia, to decline providing cash for an immediate bailout means that only one short-term window remains open, that of the IMF, with its strategy of achieving stabilisation by cutting growth.

With donors pre-occupied with their own financial problems because of the worldwide financial crisis, experts say that many countries would apparently prefer to wait for IMF involvement before they lend Pakistan money, because that would make the country more financially disciplined.

Pakistan has said that is has not yet formally asked the IMF for a loan, but an IMF spokesman said on Friday talks going on in Dubai between the fund and Pakistani officials would enable the IMF to respond swiftly should a request be made.

[bigron]

Pakistan declared as a war Zone


Asif Haroon Raja

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m48332&hd=&size=1&l=e

October 28, 2008

In the 9/11 terrorist attacks on twin towers in New York in which about 3000 persons died, no Afghan or Pakistani was involved. All the 19 perpetrators of the crime were Arabs, mostly hailing from Saudi Arabia. Yet the wrath of USA fell on Afghanistan for a bizarre reason that the so-called master mind behind the attacks was Osama bin Laden based in Afghanistan. Mullah Omar kept requesting that proof of his complicity should be furnished to enable him to hand over his guest but none was provided.

Terrorism became a buzzword and the fuming sole super power pounced upon militarily extremely weak and economically impoverished Afghanistan with utmost ferocity and decimated it. The whole world including UNSC supported the ghoulish invasion and its occupation under the hope that it would help in eliminating global terrorism.

Iraq too was pulverised on a cooked up story of WMDs and linkage with Al-Qaeda. Both charges turned out to be totally fabricated. Saddam as well as UN inspectors kept saying till the last that there were no WMDs, but Bush and Blair ignored them as well as world protests and went ahead with the second invasion without UNSC blessing. After destroying the two countries, USA is now bent upon destroying one of its close allies Pakistan which had played a key role in ousting Taliban and in getting Karzai elected. Without Pakistan's all out military support, it may not have been possible for US-NATO forces to stay in Afghanistan for that long.

In case of Afghanistan and Iraq, both Mullah Omar and Saddam Hussein refused to buckle under US repeated threats followed by troop mobilisation. Instead of submitting to US diktat they opted to fight the aggressor well knowing that they were non-nuclear states and their conventional means were no match to the military prowess of sole super power duly aided by all the advanced nations of the world. In our case, we had nuclear weapons and adequate conventional means to defend our homeland. However, our commando General who never tired of bragging about his boldness, turned into a kitten when he received a phone call from Washington. He hastily threw in his towel and provided US spy agencies and its military forces large-scale facilities to make easy USA task of achieving its long term objectives. He justified his cowardly act of ditching the friendly Taliban and befriending USA on the premise that had he not done so Pakistan for sure would have been destroyed.

He promised his mentors in USA that not only he would rid Pakistan of the menace of religious extremism, he would secularise the society through its enlightened moderation program. He agreed to blindly follow American dictates and develop close friendship with India by closing the chapter of Kashmir as well as other contentious issues. In other words he agreed to gradually weaken Pakistan from within by erasing the concept of Jihad and the warrior spirit from the minds of the people of Pakistan, follow the secularist path of his idol Kamal Atta Turk and accept Indian hegemony. Fortunately for Pakistan, he had to quit because of relentless lawyers movement and unexpected election results, but not before allowing CIA and RAW to make sufficient inroads into Pakistan?s tribal areas in Baluchistan and FATA, weakening the administrative and political structures, destroying the judiciary, creating a mirage of economic prosperity and giving a death blow to accountability and Kashmir cause.

By officially accepting charges of cross border terrorism, religious extremism, nuclear proliferation, he energised our detractors to launch a vicious propaganda campaign and paint Pakistan in black. While Karzai began to drum up the Indian tutored theme of cross border terrorism, western media pasted libellous stories about our nuclear program and Pakistan army to tarnish its image. Charges levied against Pakistan were never contested because of overall policy of appeasement. Having gained foolproof evidences of RAW and RAM involvement in our troubled spots, yet our leaders did not pick up courage to name them. This was in spite of Indian leaders? traditional policy of promptly throwing the blame of each and every terrorist act taking place in India at the doorsteps of ISI. Musharraf allowed US influence to permeate into each and every department and a stage came when no decision could be made without US involvement and blessing. The US spy drones fitted with cameras were allowed to operate in our territory at will to acquire intelligence.

Having entrenched itself fully within the decision making circles of Pakistan and blackmailed the new leadership through power sharing deal and NRO, Musharraf was eased out and replaced with even more loyal and acquiescent Zardari ready to do US bidding. This change had become necessary since Musharraf was not acquiescing on enfeebling ISI, handing over AQ Khan, allowing US troops to operate in FATA and abandoning Iran-Pakistan gas pipe project. Zardari has been mandated to remove remaining impediments and to open up areas where full penetration could not be made.

The major assault was made on the ISI with a view to defang it. In order to carryout offensive ground and aerial incursions inside Pakistan, it was alleged that the army and ISI were linked with the Taliban and as such the US could ill afford to share intelligence with ISI before striking the suspected targets. The purpose behind drone strikes is to target pro-government elements and to sever peace deals between militants and the army. RAW and other foreign agencies spies are stoking militancy so as create fear and lawlessness and make Pakistan ungovernable. It also hopes to strike high-value Al-Qaeda targets and thus swing the poll results in favour of Republicans.

Bogey of cross border terrorism has been sensationalised and magnified out of all proportions asserting that unless sanctuaries in FATA are destroyed Afghanistan could not be normalised. Pakistan has been declared as the biggest threat to world security, with nuclear weapons that could hit Israel and western nations. This wild charge has been made well knowing that Pakistani missiles cannot reach the stated targets. Bush and other leaders have categorically mentioned that any attack on US territory would emanate from Al-Qaeda leadership entrenched in mountains of FATA.

Pakistan has been declared as a war zone and the Pentagon authorised to carryout attacks as deemed feasible. Having heard the bellicose statements of the presidential hopefuls of the two parties, it is crystal clear that both regard Pakistan as the most dangerous threat to their homeland security. Obama as well as McCain strongly feel that the threat must be neutralised at the earliest with or without the support of Pakistan.

The eventual goal of Americans is to deprive Pakistan of its nuclear weapons. Axis of USA-Israel-India is keen to denuclearise Pakistan without having to wage a full-fledged war. They are constantly working upon our timid leadership to hand over nuclear assets voluntarily. For this purpose, Pakistan is being deliberately destabilised and the ongoing disinformation campaign is part of the sinister plan to create misgivings and sense of disillusionment among the Pakistanis and also conditioning the minds of the world that Pakistan is a threat to world security.

Pressure of all sorts is mounted on our leadership to convince them that it is neither in a position to govern Pakistan nor capable of preventing it from becoming a failed state or protecting its nuclear assets. They warn that before nuclear bombs are stolen by extremist forces they must be taken away and stored in a safe place by US troops or else UN should step in and take control. Instead of helping Pakistan to control militancy, USA is stoking it and continuously adding fuel to fire. The axis of evil based in Kabul is hell-bent to create anarchic conditions in Pakistan to attain their laid down objective.

Asif Haroon Raja is a defence and political analyst.

- ASian Tribune -





 

[Optimus]

It's easy to see how these missile strikes are destabilizing Pakistan amid a financial crisis.


Pakistan to US: Stop missile strikes near border
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081029/ap_on_re_as/as_pakistan_us;_ylt=AnLB12Cw1v3H3ZtvFqUbN4ZvaA8F
By STEPHEN GRAHAM, Associated Press Writer Stephen Graham, Associated Press Writer – Wed Oct 29

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Pakistan's government summoned the U.S. ambassador on Wednesday to urge an immediate halt to missile strikes on suspected militant hide-outs near the Afghan border.

Missile strikes have killed at least two senior al-Qaida commanders in Pakistan, putting some pressure on extremist groups accused of planning attacks in Afghanistan — and perhaps terror strikes in the West.

However, a marked uptick in frequency of the missile attacks has badly strained America's seven-year alliance with Pakistan, where rising violence is exacerbating economic problems gnawing at the nuclear-armed Islamic republic's stability.

Having called in U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson on Wednesday, "a strong protest was lodged on the continued missile attacks by U.S. drones inside Pakistani territory," a Foreign Ministry statement said.

The attacks have led to the loss of "precious lives and property" and "undermine public support for the government's counterterrorism policies," the statement said.

"It was emphasized that such attacks were a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty and should be stopped immediately," it said.

A U.S. embassy spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

American commanders complain that Pakistani forces have not put enough pressure on militants in its remote and impoverished border regions, an area considered a possible hiding place for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri.

Reflecting that frustration, U.S. military and CIA drones that patrol the frontier region are believed to have carried out at least 15 strikes since mid-August, including one that killed about 20 people at the home of a Taliban commander on Monday.

The United States rarely confirms or denies involvement.

Lawmakers on Monday pass a resolution condemning the attacks and calling on the government to take "more effective measures" to stop them.

The Foreign Ministry said it gave a copy of the resolution to Patterson on Wednesday.

[Optimus]

Suspected US missile strikes kill 27 in Pakistan 
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D945JM9G0&show_article=1&catnum=0
Oct 31 01:02 PM US/Eastern
By ISHTIAQ MASHUD
Associated Press Writer

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (AP) - Intelligence officials say suspected US missiles have hit two houses in northwest Pakistan, killing 27 people.
Two suspected missiles hit a house in North Waziristan on Friday, killing 20 people, the officials said.

They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

A second house in northwest Pakistan was hit late Friday, killing seven including suspected foreign militants. That strike took place in Kari Kot in South Waziristan.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (AP)—Suspected U.S. missiles hit a house frequented by an Arab militant near the Afghan border Friday and killed 20 people, intelligence officials said, in the latest alleged American attack on targets inside Pakistan.

It was unclear if the Arab, identified as Abu Kasha Iraqi, was among those killed in the attack, the officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Suspected U.S. unmanned planes have fired at militant targets in Pakistan at least 16 times since mid-August, putting pressure on extremists accused of planning attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan—and perhaps terror strikes in the West.

But the marked uptick in their frequency is straining America's seven-year alliance with Pakistan, where rising violence is exacerbating economic problems gnawing at the nuclear-armed country's stability.

The United States rarely confirms or denies firing the missiles and the identities of those killed are also rarely made public. Locals frequently say civilians, sometimes women and children, are among the dead.

Two missiles were fired Friday into Mir Ali village in North Waziristan after drones had been flying overhead for several hours, the officials said, citing reports from agents and informers in the area.

They said 20 people were killed in the attack, but their identifies were unknown.

The first missile hit the house frequented by the Arab militant, while seconds later another blew up a car parked close by, the officials said.

Pakistan says the strikes are violations of its sovereignty and insists it is tackling the militants, pointing out an ongoing military offensive just north of Waziristan that has killed some 1,500 insurgents.

Earlier Friday, a suicide bomber attacked a police chief outside his house in the northwestern city of Mardan, missing him but killing three other officers and five civilians, officials said.

The suicide attacker, who was on foot, hit the first vehicle in a convoy as it emerged from the police chief's residence in the city, but the officer was in another car behind the gate.

"I was the target but such attacks cannot stop us from doing our duty," said the chief, Akhtar Ali Shah.

TV footage showed a badly damaged police pickup truck just outside the police chief's residence and rescue workers loading bloodied survivors into ambulances.

There have been more than 90 suicide attacks on civilian, military and Western targets since July last year, killing nearly 1,200 people, according to military statistics.

[Biggs]

and they keep doing these attacks when the Pakistani government will be bankrupt within days unless it gets an IMF bailout, yet the US military machien says "who gives a f*** " and keeps bombing anyway, the situation there could really deteriorate quickly

[sociostudent]

and they keep doing these attacks when the Pakistani government will be bankrupt within days unless it gets an IMF bailout, yet the US military machien says "who gives a f*** " and keeps bombing anyway, the situation there could really deteriorate quickly

Yes, it could. In essence, isn't what they're doing over there "genocide"?

[Biggs]

Yes, it could. In essence, isn't what they're doing over there "genocide"?

no not quite, although with DU and future potential catastrophes it could well amount to genocide in the long term

[David Rothscum]

and they keep doing these attacks when the Pakistani government will be bankrupt within days unless it gets an IMF bailout, yet the US military machien says "who gives a f*** " and keeps bombing anyway, the situation there could really deteriorate quickly

It's a win/win situation for them. Either the IMF gets the country or the country goes bankrupt. One way or another the international lenders will gain control over the country.

[Biggs]

It's a win/win situation for them. Either the IMF gets the country or the country goes bankrupt. One way or another the international lenders will gain control over the country.

yep, and if they resist there is also the likelihood of a large scale civil war incited by the western elites in one way or another supplying and provoking each side into violence

[Biggs]

Car bomb kills Pakistani soldiers

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7704678.stm
 
Pakistani troops have been battling Taleban fighters near the border


Eight Pakistani soldiers have been killed in a suicide bomb attack on a security checkpoint near the Afghan border, officials say.

The attack happened near Wana, the main town in South Waziristan in Pakistan's restive north-west.

Correspondents say the tribal area is considered a haven for al-Qaeda and Taleban-linked militants.

Pakistan troops have been deployed in the area to combat growing militancy, but attacks have continued.

Pakistan's chief army spokesman said the bomber hit a convoy leaving the checkpoint, where troops were protecting a deployment of Pakistan's Frontier Corps.

The attack came two days after suspected US missile strikes in the region killed around 20 people.

"I can confirm eight soldiers were killed," Maj Gen Athar Abbas told the BBC.

"The convoy was just leaving the fort when the attack happened. We believe the actual target was the fort itself."

Locals told the BBC that security forces had closed down the main road in the area following the attack, forcing traffic off the road.

Ongoing operations

South Waziristan, a tribal district in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), was the first significant sanctuary Islamist militants carved for themselves outside Afghanistan after the US-led invasion of that country in 2001. 


In recent times, Azam Warsak has been the scene of many such attacks on the Pakistani soldiers, the BBC's Syed Shoaib Hasan reports from Islamabad.

On 22 June 2002 it was the scene of the first operation against al-Qaeda by the Pakistan army. The army lost 11 soldiers on that day, which marked the beginning of conflict between the army, al-Qaeda and the Taleban.

The area is currently controlled by Taleban commander Mullah Nazir, who is believed to be behind many cross-border attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan.

Mullah Nazir rose to prominence in March 2007 when he chased Uzbek militants from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) out of South Waziristan, our correspondent says.

He was on good terms with the Pakistani army until the recent missile strikes began in Waziristan.

Local residents say Friday's attack has heightened tensions, and could cause major problems for the army in Waziristan.

This could complicate matters, as security forces are still caught up in a massive operation in the nearby tribal region of Bajaur.

[Biggs]

Mortar shell kills 11 in Pakistan
Irish Sun
Saturday 1st November, 2008 
(IANS)

http://story.irishsun.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/2411cd3571b4f088/id/425084/cs/1/

Islamabad, Nov 1 (Xinhua) At least 11 people were killed when a mortar shell landed near a check post in northwestern Pakistan's Swat valley Saturday, state television reported.

Reports said an unspecified number of people were injured in the blast at Wanai village in the troubled valley.

Pakistan's security forces have intensified military operations in the mountainous valley since late July.

Swat valley was once a tourist spot dubbed the 'Switzerland of Pakistan' but has now turned into a stronghold of pro-Taliban militants.

[Biggs]

Report: Pakistan accepts IMF conditions for financial aid

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-11/02/content_10295817.htm

www.chinaview.cn  2008-11-02 18:28:44          Print


Special Report: Global Financial Crisis

    ISLAMABAD, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan has accepted 11 tough conditions from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to overcome its pending balance of payment crisis, local newspaper reported on Sunday.

    The IMF had proposed 16 conditions for financial assistance to Pakistan during the talks in Dubai last month, and "11 of the 16 conditions have been accepted with slight changes," The News newspaper quoted a finance official as saying.

    Pakistan is lobbying for possible financial help from friendly countries and financial institutions as it faces severe economic difficulties with plunging foreign exchange reserves and high inflation.

    Analysts said the foreign exchange reserves can only afford one or two months imports for the country.

    The rating agency Standard & Poor's has downgraded the country's sovereign debt to level of CCC-plus, close to defaulting on its commitments of external loan repayment.

    Shaukat Tareen, advisor to prime minister on finance, said on Oct. 23 that Pakistan needs 4 to 5 billion U.S. dollars in 30 days for stabilizing the country's economy.

    Pakistan now pins its hope on possible loans from member states of Friends of Pakistan group, which will convene a meeting later this month in the United Arab Emirates.

    But Pakistan insists it will resort to IMF's help as the last option as the IMF often provides loans with conditions attached.

    Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza told media earlier that he hopes Pakistan can avoid IMF assistance if it wins billions of dollars in aid from friendly governments.

    An IMF package often involves cutting government spending, raising taxes, accelerating privatization, increasing interest rates, etc..

    According to the conditions, the Pakistan government has agreed to gradually impose the Central Excise Duty (CED) on services and agriculture sectors at the rate of 8 to 18 percent in place of the General Sales Tax (GST), the finance official told The News newspaper.

    The Pakistani currency will also be devalued after slight changes in the discount rate and exchange rate will be decreased officially by 6 to 7 percent, the official added.

    Despite all the tough conditions, Pakistan would be compelled to seek the IMF assistance package because no friendly country has so far agreed to extend loan to Islamabad to meet its repayment obligations, the official said.

[bigron]

US carries out more airstrikes in Pakistan


James Cogan, WSWS

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m48485&hd=&size=1&l=e

3 November 2008

In open contempt of the repeated protests by the Pakistani government, the US military carried out another two air strikes on October 31 against houses inside Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Agencies (FATA), killing at least 27 people.

Last Wednesday, the government of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani issued a formal protest to the US ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson, over an air strike on October 26 that killed 15 people. According to Pakistani officials cited by the New York Times, Patterson was told "such attacks were a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty and should be stopped immediately".

The US answer was given two days later. In the first attack, a remotely-controlled, unmanned Predator plane launched missiles into the home of a local cleric in the village of Asori, in the agency of North Waziristan. It then fired more missiles at a vehicle attempting to leave the scene. It is believed that 24 people died, including women and children. In unconfirmed reports, Pakistani officials have alleged that a senior Al Qaeda leader, Abdur Rehman, also known as Abu Akasha al Iraqi, was among the slain. As with all previous claims, no evidence has been presented.

The second Predator attack was carried out against a home near the town of Wana, in the agency of South Waziristan. The suspected target was the Pakistani Taliban leader Maulvi Nazir, who is believed to have close relations with Afghan Taliban militants who are fighting against the US-led occupation. Nazir reportedly escaped with only minor injuries, but three other people were killed.

The air strikes were the latest in an escalating campaign of attacks into Pakistan. As many as 20 air strikes and one ground incursion have been carried out in the past two months.

The Pakistani prime minister on one occasion denounced the US operations as "acts of terrorism". It is not only suspected Al Qaeda or Taliban leaders who are being killed, but their wives, children, elderly parents and any other innocent civilians who happen to be in the vicinity of the houses that are being blown to pieces. The attacks are provoking mass outrage throughout the country and are fuelling support for Islamist organisations that are opposed to the civilian government and supporting the anti-US insurgency in Afghanistan.

The official position in Washington is to refuse to confirm or deny that US forces are responsible for the reported attacks.

The reality is that since July, the US military has had carte blanche from the Bush administration to order attacks that violate the sovereignty of Pakistan—an ostensible US ally. Previously, such operations had to be personally approved by the president. Now, the military head of Centcom (Central Command), which covers the Middle East and Central Asia, can unilaterally decide to launch an attack on alleged "terrorist havens".

Reports are now surfacing that any country, not only Pakistan, can be targeted under Bush's secret directive. On October 26, US special forces carried out an assault on the Syrian village of Abu Kamal—the first such incursion into Syria. Seven civilians were killed. The operation would have been ordered in close liaison with General David Petraeus, the former commander of US forces in Iraq and the favourite of the most militarist wing of the American ruling class. Petraeus assumed command of Centcom on the same day as the latest Pakistani airstrikes.

The US national security commentator Eli Lake, writing in the New Republic last Tuesday, reported that Bush had authorised Central Command to strike anywhere in its designated region. The only limitation is that Petraeus requires the approval of at least the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to attack targets inside Iran—as the Iranian military theoretically has the capacity to strike back in the Western hemisphere.

If this is correct, the Bush directive has far-reaching implications. It means that Petraeus has the power to order unprovoked acts of war against nations throughout the Middle East and Central Asia, without even the knowledge of the incoming president, let alone a debate and vote in the US Congress.

Roger Cressey, a former aide to Richard Clarke, the chief counter terrorism advisor of the Clinton administration, told the New Republic: "The bar for military operations will be lowered because the downsides for the president are minimal."

According to Lake, other countries that could be targeted include Yemen, Kenya, Mali and Sudan—the last three are covered by the US military's newly inaugurated Africa Command.

Barack Obama, the Democratic Party presidential candidate and most likely victor in Tuesday's election, has made no public comment on either the raid into Syria or Friday's attack in Pakistan. The silence testifies to his consent. Throughout his campaign, Obama has declared his willingness to order unilateral attacks into Pakistan or other countries allegedly providing a safe haven to terrorists.

Lake commented in the New Republic: "His campaign rhetoric has now become the official war policy he will inherit." Any administration Obama heads would not only boost the number of US troops in Afghanistan, but intensify the operations over the border.



 

[Triadtropz]

US carries out more airstrikes in Pakistan


James Cogan, WSWS

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m48485&hd=&size=1&l=e

3 November 2008


The US answer was given two days later. In the first attack, a remotely-controlled, unmanned Predator plane launched missiles into the home of a local cleric in the village of Asori, in the agency of North Waziristan. It then fired more missiles at a vehicle attempting to leave the scene. It is believed that 24 people died,

A predator drone fires only 2 missles...how did the drone launch missles, plural. into the house..then turn on the cars and fire more missles.?..you just gave up the cover-up..they arent predator drones at all..and it's not the CIA running them..

[Biggs]

well it is even worse if the USAF is using manned planes to make these attacks

although it is worth noting that there are versions of the predator which can carry more than 2 munitions - the Britsh army have a small number of them

[sociostudent]

Report: Pakistan accepts IMF conditions for financial aid

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-11/02/content_10295817.htm

www.chinaview.cn  2008-11-02 18:28:44          Print


Special Report: Global Financial Crisis

    ISLAMABAD, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan has accepted 11 tough conditions from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to overcome its pending balance of payment crisis, local newspaper reported on Sunday.

    The IMF had proposed 16 conditions for financial assistance to Pakistan during the talks in Dubai last month, and "11 of the 16 conditions have been accepted with slight changes," The News newspaper quoted a finance official as saying.

    Pakistan is lobbying for possible financial help from friendly countries and financial institutions as it faces severe economic difficulties with plunging foreign exchange reserves and high inflation.

    Analysts said the foreign exchange reserves can only afford one or two months imports for the country.

    The rating agency Standard & Poor's has downgraded the country's sovereign debt to level of CCC-plus, close to defaulting on its commitments of external loan repayment.

    Shaukat Tareen, advisor to prime minister on finance, said on Oct. 23 that Pakistan needs 4 to 5 billion U.S. dollars in 30 days for stabilizing the country's economy.

    Pakistan now pins its hope on possible loans from member states of Friends of Pakistan group, which will convene a meeting later this month in the United Arab Emirates.

    But Pakistan insists it will resort to IMF's help as the last option as the IMF often provides loans with conditions attached.

    Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza told media earlier that he hopes Pakistan can avoid IMF assistance if it wins billions of dollars in aid from friendly governments.

    An IMF package often involves cutting government spending, raising taxes, accelerating privatization, increasing interest rates, etc..

    According to the conditions, the Pakistan government has agreed to gradually impose the Central Excise Duty (CED) on services and agriculture sectors at the rate of 8 to 18 percent in place of the General Sales Tax (GST), the finance official told The News newspaper.

    The Pakistani currency will also be devalued after slight changes in the discount rate and exchange rate will be decreased officially by 6 to 7 percent, the official added.

    Despite all the tough conditions, Pakistan would be compelled to seek the IMF assistance package because no friendly country has so far agreed to extend loan to Islamabad to meet its repayment obligations, the official said.

Here comes the genocide...

It's gonna be like in Africa when UNESCO rolls in.

[Optimus]

Pakistan warns Petraeus against missile strikes
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hkiMxbHNH0BqgpWA2ZG6VD6wVTmAD947FV1G1
By NAHAL TOOSI – 1 hour ago

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistani officials warned Gen. David Petraeus on Monday that frequent missile strikes on militant targets in Pakistan fan anti-American sentiment in an Islamic country vital to the struggle against terrorism.

The new U.S. commander of America's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq met Pakistani officials, including Defense Minister Ahmad Mukhtar and army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, as part of his first international trip since taking over U.S. Central Command three days earlier.

There is growing U.S. concern about how Islamic militants are using pockets of Pakistan's northwest region as sanctuaries from which to support the escalating insurgency in neighboring Afghanistan.

Complaints from U.S. commanders about Pakistan's efforts to counter the insurgents have been accompanied by a surge of missile strikes, which have continued despite strong condemnation from Islamabad.

A Defense Ministry statement said Mukhtar told Petraeus and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher that the missile strikes from drones "generate anti-America sentiments as well as create outrage and uproar among the people."

Washington is suspected in at least 17 missile strikes in Pakistan since August.

In September, a U.S. ground assault in a tribal region in Pakistan's northwest spurred particular outrage in Pakistan, whose pro-Western government must be mindful of widespread resentment of U.S. policy in the region. There have been no reports of additional ground assaults since.

Acting U.S. Embassy spokesman Wes Robertson declined to provide specifics on Petraeus' agenda for security reasons. However, he also is expected to meet with Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and President Asif Ali Zardari.

At the Defense Ministry, officials briefed Petraeus on Pakistani military operations against insurgents in its border regions. According to the statement, both sides "stressed the need for enhanced cooperation to eliminate the scourge of terrorism."

A military statement said Petraeus met with Kayani and the chairman of Pakistan's joint chiefs of staff, General Tariq Majid.

It gave no indication of what message Petraeus delivered.

Majid told the U.S. delegation that the two countries needed a "consensus strategy to deal with violent extremism" that "keeps in view the local perspective," the statement said.

It was unclear if Petraeus addressed vows from Pakistani and Afghan leaders to seek talks with elements of the Taliban.

Petraeus, previously the top U.S. commander in Baghdad, has indicated support for efforts to reach out to members of the Taliban considered moderate enough to cooperate with the Afghan government.

[bigron]

   
UPDATED ON:
Monday, November 03, 2008
17:48 Mecca time, 14:48 GMT   
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2008/11/200811314923909876.html

 
Pakistan warns Petraeus over raids 


Many Pakistanis oppose US air raids on their soil [AFP]

 
Asif Ali Zardari, the Pakistani president, has warned General David Petraeus, the US commander running the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, that missile strikes on Pakistani territory were "counterproductive" and  "detrimental to the war on terror".

Zardari's comments came as Petraeus made his first visit to Pakistan on Monday, since he took over as head of the US Central Command.

"Continuing drone attacks on our territory, which result in loss of precious lives and property, are counterproductive and difficult to explain by a democratically-elected government," the state-run Associated  Press of Pakistan quoted Zardari as telling Petraeus.

"It is creating a credibility gap."

Sovereignty 'violated'

However, Zardari told the 'Talk to Al Jazeera' television programme that some of the US drone attacks on his country's soil could be "excused" as the mountainous Afghan-Pakistani border was often difficult to discern.

"If a drone comes in and targets a particular place, even the map doesn't [always] know if it's in Afghanistan or Pakistan," he said.

US forces or intelligence agents are suspected of carrying out at least 17 missile attacks in Pakistan since August. Pakistan has condemned them as violations of the country's sovereignty, but the raids have continued.

Zardari also defended his country's co-operation with US forces operating in the region.

"There is a UN resolution on Afghanistan and, on any side of the border, there needs to be interaction so we interact with the Americans."

Petraeus's trip to Islamabad signals Pakistan's crucial role in Washington's so-called "war on terror", particularly in the escalating conflict in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Waziristan blast

In a sign of the challenge facing Pakistani and US forces along the border with Afghanistan, just hours before his arrival on Sunday, eight Pakistani paramilitary soldiers were killed in a blast in South Waziristan.

The suicide attack at a Frontier Corps checkpoint in Zalai came after two targets in Pakistan were hit by suspected US missiles on Friday.

At least 12 suspected fighters were killed by two missiles fired by a suspected US drone near Wana.

That raid followed an attack in neighbouring North Waziristan, where two missiles killed 20 suspected Arab fighters, including al-Qaeda's propaganda chief, security officials said.

Pakistan has deployed security forces throughout the northwest of the country in an attempt to combat fighters sympathetic to the Taliban and al-Qaeda, which Washington says are crossing the porous border to attack US and Nato-led troops in Afghanistan.

Petraeus is accompanied by Richard Boucher, the US assistant secretary of state, on the visit.

"They are here for previously scheduled meetings with government and military officials," Lou Fintor, US embassy spokesman, said.

Petraeus held talks with General Ashfaq Kayani, Pakistan's army chief, and Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhta, the defence minister, on Monday.

Petraeus, previously the senior US commander in Baghdad, has indicated support for efforts to reach out to members of the Taliban considered moderate enough to co-operate with the Afghan government.
 
 
 

[Biggs]

US division doesn't add up

By Syed Saleem Shahzad

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JK04Df01.html

KARACHI - General David Petraeus, who took over last Friday as the new head of United States Central Command (CENTCOM) with overall responsibility for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has arrived in Pakistan with Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Richard Boucher to push his plans in the South Asian theater of the "war on terror".

This involves the dual task of government-led reconciliation with Taliban insurgents in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the leveraging of diplomatic and economic initiatives with the countries influential in the war.

Petraeus' arrival on Sunday coincided with two events. One was a US Predator drone strike which killed 25 people, including

 

possibly an Arab commander, Abu Akash, in the North Waziristan tribal area in Pakistan. At the same time, militants and Pakistan, on Islamabad's initiative, agreed on a peace formula under which Pakistan has stopped military operations in the tribal areas and the militants have assured they will not unleash a "winter offensive" in Pakistan. (See A long, hot winter for Pakistan Asia Times Online, October 11, 2008.)

Pakistan has already slowed operations in Bajaur Agency and shelved plans for operations in North Waziristan. All the same, the militants welcomed the month of November with unprecedented attacks, which, according to the militants, are a part of a carrot-and-stick game.

On Friday, a suicide attack on a police office in Mardan, North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), killed four policemen. These were followed by three more suicide attacks at different locations and a rocket attack at Peshawar airport in NWFP that killed several security personnel.

Tackling al-Qaeda
Petraeus is credited with saving the United States from defeat in Iraq through his initiative to engage the indigenous tribal resistance especially the Sunnis, and getting them to turn against foreigners, that is al-Qaeda.

If the same is planned for South Asia, it is sure to fail as al-Qaeda's traditions in the region are different from those in Iraq: al-Qaeda was a new phenomenon in Iraq, while it has been in South Asia for several decades.

After September 11, 2001, and the invasion of Afghanistan that year, al-Qaeda became even closer to the local tribes who became a part of the Afghan resistance.

After the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, a large number of al-Qaeda and Arab groups (not all Arab groups were al-Qaeda) based in Afghanistan went to Iraq, leaving behind a small group of Arabs.

Most of them were trainers, like Iraqi Abu Akash, or ideologues like Abu Waleed Ansari, a Jordanian-Palestinian. Neither Ansari nor Abu Akash was directly linked with the hardcore of al-Qaeda. Ansari was more of cleric than a commander and he gave sermons to youths in North Waziristan to fight against foreign forces in Afghanistan. On the other hand, Abu Akash established a maaskar (training center) in North Waziristan at which he prepared youths for guerrilla battle.

Through this process, a new Arabic-speaking tribal Pashtun generation was raised. Now, at a time when numerically al-Qaeda and Arab warriors in South Asia are insignificant, this breed of tribal Pashtuns has become the vanguard of al-Qaeda's cause.

One could call them the neo-Taliban, and in most instances they have taken over the leadership of the Taliban. Veteran mujahideen leader Jalaluddin Haqqani was once close to the Pakistani establishment and he had a pure tribal mindset. But his sons Sirajuddin and Nasiruddin, who speak Arabic, lean towards Arabs and their cause.

Qari Ziaur Rahman is another case in point in eastern Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Arabic-speaking commander of Pashtun ethnicity is closer to Arabs and there is no chance of him siding with the establishment in either country.

There is no official word on whether Abu Akash has been killed, but even if he is dead he will have left a strong legacy.

Abu Akash (or Abu Akasha as his comrades call him) is not a veteran of the Afghan jihad against the Soviets in the 1980s as he is in his mid-30s. He is an expert in explosives and guns and after arriving in North Waziristan he tapped Uzbeks and Tajiks of Central Asian origin to act as trainers.

He also used his young trainees to control traffic in North Waziristan. This was a simple drill but some local tribes did not like it and in 2007 he was expelled to the Shawal region that spans the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. But he returned within a few months and blended even further into tribal society, so much so that he could speak the local dialects of Urdu and Pashtun and at one point Pakistani intelligence reported that they suspected Abu Akash was Punjabi, not Arab.

Abu Akash and his likes will make it very difficult for Petraeus to divide and defeat the resistance, as in Iraq.

Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
 
 
 

[Biggs]

18 Taliban killed in Bajaur strikes

* Khar jirga decides to proceed against those sheltering Taliban
* US drone seen over North Waziristan
* Elders warn of retaliation

http://dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008%5C11%5C04%5Cstory_4-11-2008_pg7_1

KHAR/MIRANSHAH: Eighteen Taliban were killed in the security forces’ operation in Bajaur Agency on Monday.

Four Taliban died in artillery shelling in different areas of Mamond tehsil on Monday morning, while 14 Taliban were killed in bombing by jet fighters in the afternoon, officials said.

Jirga: In Khar, the agency headquarters, a grand jirga of tribal elders decided to take strict action against those found involved in anti-state activities. They said the houses of those found sheltering the Taliban would be torhced and they would be expelled from the area.

The jirga decided to impose a fine of Rs 2 million on those who sheltered the Taliban in their areas.

The jirga members assured the government of their full co-operation, and said they would fight alongside the security forces for restoration of peace in the agency.

The jirga members expressed satisfaction over the restoration of the government’s writ in many areas of Salarzai tehsil. They asked the tribesmen to continue co-operation with the government to ensure lasting peace in the agency.

US drone: A suspected US drone was seen flying at low altitude over several areas of North Waziristan Agency, spreading panic among the people.

Locals said drones that fly low usually fire missiles. But, the white-coloured spy plane did not fire. Speaking at an emergency news conference following drone flights in the area, local elders asked the government to stop US attacks in the agency.

They said the violation of Pakistani airspace by US spy planes was a threat to the country’s security. The elders asked the government to take practical steps instead of lodging protests with the US.

Retaliation: The elders said if the attacks were not stopped, the tribesmen would join the Taliban to fight against US and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

They asked the government to ensure the joint resolution passed after an in-camera briefing to parliamentarians is implemented.

APP reported that the political administration of Orakzai Agency arrested at least 20 tribesmen accused of involvement in the abduction of six people on Saturday. The abducted included two Levies personnel. The arrested included men of the Rabia Khel and Asa Khel tribes. The political administration said it would continue action against the tribes until the recovery of the abducted people. hasbanullah/haji mujtaba/app

[Optimus]

Obama win: Bad news for Pakistan
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Obama_win_Bad_news_for_Pakistan/articleshow/3679186.cms
6 Nov 2008, 0311 hrs IST, Sachin Parashar, TNN

NEW DELHI: After its initial lack of enthusiasm for Barack Obama, India was pleasantly surprised when the Senator from Illinois, now the 
president-elect of US, slammed Pakistan for its nudge-nudge, wink-wink policy on terrorism.

In the first week of August, Obama had follow this up by declaring that, if elected, he would not shy away from striking inside Pakistan to take out Al-Qaida and Taliban terrorist camps. Tough words that would please New Delhi. But for Pakistan, this can only be bad news.

There is no doubt that the US under Obama is likely to crack the whip, much more sharply than what the Bush administration has done in the past few months, even as it dangles the carrot.

The carrot was, of course, non-military aid. Obama's veep nominee Joe Biden, as chairman of House Foreign Affairs Committee, had proposed non military aid worth $15 billion for Pakistan in the next 10 years. Indian analysts are sceptical whether this would actually ameliorate the depressing situation in Pakistan if the US targets Pakistan territory even on the basis of "actionable intelligence". In short, they are doubtful if the carrot-and-stick policy will work.

"Whatever the nature of financial help, it would be very difficult for a nationalist Pakistan government to accept such violations of its sovereignty. There are chances that people in the NWFP would go against the government and we will see more instability in Pakistan," says retired IFS officer Rajendra Rai who also served as India's consul-general in New York.

Possibly, for Obama democratization of Pakistan is linked inseparably with the war against terror, but many believe that this is meaningless because Obama's threats only mirror the Bush administration's current policy. And that hasn't helped.

Pakistan itself is rather nervous about the Democrats. While the government is positively inclined towards Biden, who has constantly advocated more aid for Pakistan, many in the country look upon Obama with suspicion because of his threats to strike inside Pakistan.

Obama's comments about militants, and not India, being Pakistan's main enemy is also evoking scepticism in Islamabad. While Biden is not bad news for Pakistan, the problem is that Obama is likely to be a hands-on President and the foreign policy will veer around his line of thought.

Besides, Biden's economic bailout will not come without a price. The US under Obama is likely to force Pakistan to go slow on the dispute in J&K, hitherto the country's main weapon against India. "While we may not see this happening out in the open, chances are that the US will, behind the scenes, force Pakistan not to foment more trouble in the state denying it what its military and ISI believe is the country's leverage against India," says a senior government official.

As for Afghanistan, Obama has announced that he will pull out troops from Iraq and deploy two more brigades in Afghanistan. While the decision to pull out troops from Iraq is seen as a positive sign, deploying more troops in Afghanistan can be read both ways.

The real war on terror is now taking place on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and more troops can be of help. However, as some experts argue, the US ought to have realized that there cannot be just a military solution in Afghanistan.

"Obama has also announced increasing non-military aid but it doesn't serve the purpose unless the local Pashtuns are engaged in a dialogue. They hold the key to any solution and the government of Hamid Karzai, himself a Pashtun, has lost all credibility," says a security analyst.

The Pashtuns are chary of the Karzai administration and Obama's decision to deploy more troops in the country can only stoke the fires there. It would, in all likelihood, give a greater sense of righteous purpose to the Taliban that has regrouped in Afghanistan.

[bigron]

Pakistan's Secret Cooperation with America

By David Ignatius
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=5&article_id=97383

November 05, 2008 "Daily Star" -- Pakistan is publicly complaining about US air strikes. But the country's new chief of intelligence, Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, visited Washington last week for talks with America's top military and spy chiefs, and everyone seemed to come away smiling.

They could pat themselves on the back, for starters, with the assassination of Khalid Habib, Al-Qaeda's deputy chief of operations. According to Pakistani officials, he was killed on October 16 by a Predator strike in the Pakistani tribal area of South Waziristan. Habib, reckoned by some to be the No. 4 leader in Al-Qaeda, was involved in recruiting operatives for future terror attacks against the United States.

The successful hit on Habib attests to the growing cooperation - in secret - between the US and Pakistan in the high-stakes war along the Afghanistan border, which US intelligence officials regard as the crucial front in the war on terrorism.

The CIA had been gunning for Habib for several years, including a January 2006 Predator attack that produced false reports he had been killed. The agency has needed better human intelligence on the ground, and improved liaison with Pakistan's Interservices Intelligence agency, or ISI, may help.

Behind the stepped-up Predator missions in recent weeks is a secret understanding between the United States and Pakistan about the use of these drones. Given Pakistani sensitivities about American meddling, this accord has been shielded in the deniable world of intelligence activities. Officially, the Pakistanis oppose any violation of their airspace, and the Pakistani defense minister issued a public protest Monday about the Predator raids. But that's not the whole story.

The secret accord was set after the September visit to Washington by Pakistan's new president, Asif Zardari. It provided new mechanics for coordination of Predator attacks and a jointly approved list of high-value targets. Behind the agreement was a recognition by the Zardari government, and by Pakistan's new military chief, General Ashfaq Kiyani, that the imminent threat to Pakistan's security comes from Islamic terrorists, rather than from arch-rival India.

The approved target list includes, in addition to Al-Qaeda operatives, some Afghan warlords who were once sheltered by ISI, including Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the Haqqani family network and Taliban leader Mohammad Omar. Also on the target list is Baitullah Mehsud, often described as the leader of the Pakistani Taliban.

The ground war in the tribal areas is the Pakistanis' responsibility, and they report some recent success. The most aggressive campaign has been in the district of Bajaur, just east from the Afghan province of Kunar. Starting in August, the Pakistani military began attacking Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters there. When troops were stymied by a network of tunnels, the Pakistanis called in devastating air attacks.

Tribal leaders in Bajaur, angered by the fighting, began turning against the militants, according to Pakistani officials. The Pakistanis claim similar success in mobilizing local tribes in the border districts of Dir and Kurram. Next, they say, they plan to take the ground war into North and South Waziristan, where Al-Qaeda has its most important refuges.

A confidential Pakistani military report on the recent fighting in Bajaur and neighboring provinces counted 1,140 insurgents killed or wounded and 197 captured. Civilian casualties totaled 848 killed or wounded, plus 400,000 refugees. The US is quietly helping by sending at least 25 Special Forces soldiers to train the Pakistani Frontier Corps. But the Americans, recognizing public sensitivity to foreign interference, are keeping a low profile.

What's different on the Pakistani side isn't just the secret cooperation with America. There was lots of that under the previous president, Pervez Musharraf. What's new is that Zardari and Kiyani are working openly to build popular support for their operations against the Muslim militants. An example was testimony on the terrorism threat last month to a secret session of the Pakistani Parliament by Pasha, the new ISI chief.

And Kiyani seems determined to stop Musharraf's practice of using the ISI to maintain contact with the Afghan warlords. He has cleaned house by appointing new heads for the service's four main directorates, in addition to the new chief.

US military and intelligence chiefs applaud the cooperation from Pakistan. But they're still nervous. The US-Pakistan relationship hangs by a slender thread; Pakistani pride sometimes prevents officials from taking full advantage of the relationship, and America's embrace has sometimes been politically fatal for pro-American leaders, such as Musharraf.

And it's an inherently unstable arrangement: Pakistan's leaders publicly decry US attacks, and the US, with a wink and a nudge to its ally, keeps on attacking.

Syndicated columnist David Ignatius is published regularly by THE DAILY STAR.