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

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Five killed in US missile attack in Pakistan

Military and Security    11/27/2008 6:11:00 PM
 
http://www.kuna.net.kw/NewsAgenciesPublicSite/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=1956606&Language=en

ISLAMABAD, Nov 27 (KUNA) -- At least five militants were killed in an explosion in Pakistani bordering tribal agency on Thursday, said sources.
There were conflicting reports regarding the nature of the explosion. Security sources told KUNA that a US unmanned drone fired at least two missiles at a suspected militants' vehicle near Wana headquarters in South Waziristan tribal agency, bordering Afghanistan.
However, some media reports said that the vehicle hit a remote-controlled explosive device.
Sources said the attack killed at least five militants including two foreigners. Sources added that one of the foreigners is said to be of Arab origin. The US drone attack came a day after Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said that his government is considering "a number of options" to counter attacks by US drones inside its territory.
Despite its limited resources, the Pakistan Air Force on Wednesday announced that it is capable of intercepting drones but it is for the government and the political leadership to decide whether to handle the matter diplomatically or militarily. (end) amn.gta KUNA 271811 Nov 08NNNN

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US missile drone attack kills 3 in NWFP

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2140088/posts

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 29 (UPI) -- A missile believed fired from a drone U.S. aircraft has killed three people in Pakistan's tribal areas, an official said Saturday.

The missile struck a village in the North Waziristan district of Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas, Muhammad Nasim, a local political official, told CNN. The FATA is the home base of Taliban Islamic militants operating on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

No other information on the missile strike was immediately available, the broadcaster said.

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'Pak may relocate 100,000 army personnel to border'

http://in.rediff.com/news/2008/nov/29mumterror-pakistan-relocating-army-to-border.htm

November 29, 2008 21:35 IST

Pakistan may relocate around 100,000 military personnel from its restive border area with Afghanistan if there is an escalation in tension with India,which has hinted at the involvement of Pakistani elements in the Mumbai carnage, a media report said today.

Private channel Geo News reported that Pakistan's military and intelligence sources told a select group of journalists today that NATO and American command had been told

that Islamabad [Images] would be forced to relocate its military from the borders with Afghanistan if there is escalation in tension with India, where nearly 200 people were killed in the multiple terror attacks on the Indian financial capital.

"These sources have said NATO and the US command have been told that Pakistan would not be able to concentrate on the war on terror and against militants around the Afghanistan border as defending its borders with India was far moreimportant," Geo News quoted senior Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir as saying.

He also said the sources had briefed the media that the decision not to send the ISI chief Lt Gen Shuja Pasha to India was taken after Indian foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee used a very aggressive tone with Pakistani officials on telephone after the Mumbai attacks.

"The decision to not send the ISI DG to India was taken because Mukherjee used strong words with Pakistani officials and warned of consequences," Mir quoted the military sources as saying.

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Indian air and missile forces on war footing, Pakistani armored units diverted from Afghan border

DEBKAfile Special Report

November 30, 2008, 1:03 PM (GMT+02:00)

http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=5746

DEBKAfile's military sources report that on Sunday, Nov. 30, Asia's two nuclear powers, India and Pakistan, took their first steps towards a conventional war. India, claiming evidence of Pakistan's involvement in the Islamist terrorist assault on Mumbai, placed its air and missile units on war preparedness, while Pakistan, disclaiming the charge, diverted its armed divisions from the Afghan border to its frontier with India.

Military experts fear a full-blown war could spill over into combat with tactical nuclear weapons.

For the Indian government, the last straw was the admission by Azam Amir Kasab, aged 21, the only terrorist known to have been captured by Indian forces, that Lashkar e-Taiba was behind the assault which claimed 174 lives, injured hundreds and devastated India's financial capital.

This Kashmiri group has links to both al Qaeda and the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

From its outset on Wednesday, Nov. 26, the scale, coordination and clockwork targeting of the assault clearly betrayed the hand of a major national intelligence agency. Evidence also mounted that the attackers had reached Mumbai by boat from Karachi.

Five months ago, Taliban suicide killers attacked the Indian embassy in Kabul, claiming 60 lives including that of the Indian military attaché. The New Delhi government then found leads to Pakistan's clandestine service as the prime mover behind the outrage. Washington came up with the same proofs.

The Manmohan Singh government sees the Mumbai assault as a second, escalated Pakistani act of war-by-terror and cannot afford to avoid a strong, immediate response - particularly with a general election around the corner. If Singh braves the media and public howls for Pakistani blood and shows the same restraint as he did after the Kabul attack, he will lose his seat.

Domestic opinion is goading the New Delhi to act tough after what is perceived as the poor, slow and unprofessional performance of the police and special forces in quelling the terrorists. Indian commandoes were brought in 10 hours after the terrorists took over and it took them 60 hours to finally gain control of the three hostage sites Saturday, Nov. 29. Sunday, home minister Shivraj Patil resigned in response to the clamor followed by national security advisor MK Narayanan.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars and barely avoided a fourth in 2001.

President George Bush and his successor Barack Obama cannot hope for much headway in defusing Indian-Pakistan tension. With only a few weeks left in the White House, Bush does not have much leverage and Obama even less for pulling the two adversaries apart. While campaigning, the president-elect pledged to work to mend the fences between India and Pakistan and broker their Kashmir conflict. In the present climate, neither is looking for a mediator.

[David Rothscum]

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24731282-601,00.html

Pakistan moves army from terror front to India border


PAKISTAN is withdrawing troops from the fight against al-Qa'ida and the Taliban to redeploy them to its border with India as tensions between the two nuclear-armed nations escalate over the terrorist massacre in Mumbai.

As the clean-up began after terrorists killed at least 195 people, including two Australians, the only gunman captured provided testimony of the operation's links to a Pakistan-based militant group, intelligence sources said yesterday.

Ajmal Amir Kamal, 21, whose clean-shaven face has become an enduring image of the attacks after he was caught on a CCTV camera wearing a Versace T-shirt, was interrogated in a safe house in Mumbai.

He identified all the attackers as Pakistani citizens and acknowledged that they were trained by Lashkar-e-Toiba, a militant group fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, reports said.

He confirmed the militants had come ashore in dinghies launched from a hijacked vessel whose crew had been killed, reports said.

Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari urged India not to "overreact" after Indian and US officials suggested the militants could have been from the Pakistan-based LET. The group was behind the deadly 2001 assault on the Indian parliament that pushed New Delhi and Islamabad to the brink of war.

"If something happens (amid the rising tensions with India), the war on terror cannot be our priority," a senior Pakistani official told a media briefing yesterday.

"We'll take everything from the western border (with Afghanistan - the main area of al-Qa'ida and Taliban activity). We won't leave anything there." Indian army sources said forces near Pakistan had been placed on a raised alert before a meeting that Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called with security chiefs in New Delhi today. Mr Zardari was meeting Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and his army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, amid fears that the Mumbai crisis had the potential for a replay of the 2001 standoff.

Dr Singh cancelled a meeting with Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi in New Delhi over the weekend.

At the same time, Pakistan's army forced the country's civilian Government into an embarrassing about-face after it had earlier agreed to bow to Indian pressure and send the head of the Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency to New Delhi to help in the Mumbai investigation.

Mr Zardari and Mr Qureshi denied the assault was launched by terrorists trained and based in Pakistan. Conceding that the confrontation between the two nuclear-armed neighbours was extremely serious, Mr Qureshi called on India to ease the tension. "It is in Pakistan's interests and in India's interests to defuse the situation. Lowering of tension is essential.

"Finger-pointing or coming to hasty conclusions will play into the hands of the common enemy, that is, the terrorists."

India's Home Minister, the Government's most senior security official, last night quit the cabinet, becoming the first major scalp following the intelligence failure that led to the massacre.

The resignation of Shivraj Patil was followed by that of National Security Adviser MK Narayanan. Sources said other heads were expected to roll as the crisis within the Government deepened over what was the worst terrorist attack in India, and one which is being referred to as "India's 9/11".

Mr Patil, a powerful figure because of his closeness to India's supreme political leader, Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, had for months been under fire because of the growing number of terrorist attacks across the country. But until last night he had managed to cling to his position.

Public outrage over the Government's failure to get to grips with the issue of terrorism had, however, become too much for him to withstand.

Political analysts said that while the departure of Mr Patil would be widely welcomed, it was likely to do little to save the Government from severe criticism over its failures on the terrorism front - failures that many believe have the potential to drive it from office at elections due before May.

US President George W. Bush pledged full support to India as it investigated the attacks, saying the killers "will not have the final word". "The killers who struck this week are brutal and violent," Mr Bush said.

"But terror will not have the final word. The people of India are resilient. The people of India are strong. They have built a vibrant, multi-ethnic democracy. They can withstand this trial."

Additional reporting: AFP

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India's 9/11. Who was Behind the Mumbai Attacks?
Washington is Fostering Political Divisions between India and Pakistan

by Michel Chossudovsky


Global Research, November 30, 2008
- 2008-11-29

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11217         



The Mumbai terror attacks were part of a carefully planned and coordinated operation involving several teams of experienced and trained gunmen. 

The operation has the fingerprints of a paramilitary-intelligence operation. According to a Russian counter terrorist expert, the Mumbai terrorists "used the same tactics that Chechen field militants employed in the Northern Caucasus attacks where entire towns were terrorized, with homes and hospitals seized". (Russia Today, November 27, 2008).

The Mumbai attacks are described as " India's 9/11".

The attacks were carried out simultaneously in several locations, within minutes of each other.

The first target  was in the main hall of Mumbai's Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus railway station (CST), where the gunmen fired indiscriminately into the crowd of passengers. The gunmen " then ran out of the station and into neighboring buildings, including Cama Hospital"

Attacks by separate groups of gunmen took place at two of Mumbai's luxury hotels - the Oberoi-Trident and the Taj Mahal Palace, located at the heart of the tourist area, within proximity of the Gateway of India.


Taj Mahal Hotel

The gunmen also opened fire at Café Leopold, a stylish restaurant in the tourist area. The third target was Nariman House, a business center which houses Chabad Lubavitch, Mumbai's Jewish Center. Six hostages including the Rabbi and his wife were killed.

The domestic airport at Santa Cruz; the Metro Adlabs multiplex and the Mazgaon Dockyard were also targeted.

"The attacks occurred at the busiest places. Besides hotels and hospitals, terrorists struck at railway stations, Crawford Market, Wadi Bunder and on the Western Express Highway near the airport. Seven places have been attacked with automatic weapons and grenades.(Times of India, 26 November 2008),


Indian troops surrounded the hotels. Indian Special  Forces commandos were sent into the two hotels to confront the terrorists. Witnesses at the hotels said that the gunmen were singling out people with US and British passports.


Members of the Indian security forces taking up firing positions between fire trucks and ambulances on the grounds of the Taj Hotel on Friday. (Ruth Fremson/ The New York Times )

Casualties, according to reports, are in excess of 150 killed. Most of those killed were Indian nationals, many of whom died in the attack on the Chhatrapati Shivaji railway Terminus. 

At least 22 foreigners were killed in the attacks. Fourteen police officers, including the chief of the anti-terror squad, were killed in the attacks.

Who was Behind the Attacks?

A virtually unknown group called "the Deccan Mujahideen", has according to reports, claimed responsibility for attacks. The Deccan Plateau refers to a region of central-Southern India largely centered in the State of Andhra Pradesh.  This unknown group has already been categorized, without supporting evidence, as belonging to the Al Qaeda network of terrorist organizations.

Police reports confirm that  nine "suspected attackers" have been arrested and three of the attackers have, according to unconfirmed police sources, confessed to belonging to Lashkar-e-Taiba [Lashkar-e-Tayyiba], a Pakistani Kasmiri separatist organization, covertly supported by Pakistani military intelligence (ISI). At least one of the arrested, according to the reports, is a British citizen of Pakistani descent.

In chorus, both the Western and Indian media are pointing fingers at Pakistan and its alleged support of Islamic terrorist organizations:

"Strategic gurus and security analysts in the US and from across the world are examining Pakistan's role in terrorism following yet another terror episode in India ending with fingers pointed at its widely-reviled neighbor.

While initial reports from India suggested the Mumbai carnage was a localized attack by militant malcontents in India because of the "Deccan Mujahideen" decoy that was used to claim responsibility, evidence cited by Indian army and security experts based on phone intercepts, nature of weaponry, mode of entry by sea etc., has quickly focused the attention on Pakistan." (Times of India, November 27, 2008)

The US media has centered its attention on the links between the Mumbai attacks and the "resurgent terrorist groups [which] enjoy havens in Pakistan's tribal areas as well as alleged protection or support from elements of Pakistani intelligence." (Washington Post, November 28, 2008).

"Clash of Civilizations"

In Europe and North America, the Mumbai attacks by Islamic fundamentalists are perceived as part of the "Clash of Civilizations". "Militant Islam is involved in a war against civilization".

The dramatic loss of lives resulting from the attacks has indelibly contributed to reinforcing anti-Muslim sentiment throughout the Western World. 

The outlines of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, are becoming clear. The terrorists targeted India, the U.S. and Britain, and the Jewish people. (Market Watch, November 28, 2008)

According to the media, the enemy is Al Qaeda, the illusory "outside enemy " which  has its operational bases in the tribal areas and North West Frontier Province of Pakistan. Washington's self-proclaimed holy mandate under the "Global War on Terrorism" is to take out bin Laden and extirpate Islamic fundamentalism.

America's right to intervene militarily inside Pakistan in violation of Pakistan's sovereignty is therefore upheld. Bombing villages in the tribal areas of North West Pakistan is part of a "humanitarian endeavor", in  response to the loss of life resulting from the Mumbai attacks:

"Before these awful raids, news from South Asia had been encouraging. The central problem remains pacifying Afghanistan, where U.S. and other NATO forces struggle to stamp out Taliban and al-Qaeda elements." (Washington Post, November 28, 2008)

"Washington, however, wants the Pakistani army's cooperation in fighting terrorism. In recent weeks, U.S. officers in Afghanistan reported better results, crediting the Pakistanis with taking the offensive against the Taliban on Pakistani territory."

Media Disinformation

US network TV has extensively covered the dramatic events in Mumbai. The attacks have served to trigger an atmosphere of fear and intimidation across America.

The Mumbai attacks are said to be intimately related to 9/11. Official US statements and media reports have described the Mumbai attacks as part of a broader process, including the possibility of an Al Qaeda sponsored terrorist attack on US soil.

Vice President Elect Joe Biden during the election campaign had warned America with foresight that "the people who... attacked us on 9/11, -- they've regrouped in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan and are plotting new attacks". (emphasis added)

These are the same people who were behind the terror attacks in Mumbai.

These are also the same people who are planning to attack America.

Immediately following the Mumbai attacks, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg put New York City's subway system "on high alert" based on "an unsubstantiated report of potential terrorism here in New York. This report led the New York Police Department to take precautionary steps to protect our transit system, and we will always do whatever is necessary to keep our city safe," Bloomberg said in a statement" (McClatchy-Tribune Business News, November 28, 2008, emphasis added).

It just so happens that one day before the Mumbai attacks, "the FBI  and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had warned that there is a 'possible but uncorroborated' Al -Qaeda threat against the New York transportation system." (Ibid)

"As the attacks in Mumbai were carried out, U.S. authorities issued a warning that Al-Qaeda might have recently discussed making attacks on the New York subway system. A vague warning, to be sure. 'We have no specific details to confirm that this plot has developed beyond aspirational planning, but we are issuing this warning out of concern that such an attack could possibly be conducted during the forthcoming holiday season,' the FBI and Department of Homeland Security said." (Chicago Tribune, November 29, 2008)

Pakistan's Military Intelligence is America's Trojan Horse

The media reports point, in chorus, to the involvement of Pakistan's Military Intelligence, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), without mentioning that the ISI invariably operates in close liaison with the CIA. 

The US media indelibly serves the interests of the US intelligence apparatus. The implications of these distorted reports are that:

1. The terrorists are linked to Al Qaeda. The Mumbai attacks are a "State sponsored" operation involving Pakistan's ISI 

2. The Mumbai gunmen have ties to terrorist groups in Pakistan's tribal areas and North West Frontier Province.

3. The continued bombing of the tribal areas by the US Air Force in violation of Pakistan's' sovereignty is consequently justified as part of the "Global War on Terrorism".

The ISI is America's Trojan Horse, a de facto proxy of the CIA. Pakistani Intelligence has, since the early 1980s, worked in close liaison with its US and British intelligence counterparts.

Were the ISI to have been involved in a major covert operation directed against India, the CIA would have prior knowledge regarding the precise nature and timing of the operation. The ISI does not act without the consent of its US intelligence counterpart.

Moreover, US intelligence is known to have supported Al Qaeda from the outset of the Soviet Afghan war and throughout the post-Cold War era. (For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, Al Qaeda and the War on Terrorism, Global Research, January 20, 2008)

CIA sponsored guerilla training camps were established in Pakistan to train the Mujahideen. Historically, US intelligence has supported Al Qaeda, using Pakistan's ISI as a go-between.

"With CIA backing and the funneling of massive amounts of U.S. military aid, the Pakistani ISI had developed into a "parallel structure wielding enormous power over all aspects of government". (Dipankar Banerjee, "Possible Connection of ISI With Drug Industry", India Abroad, 2 December 1994).

In the wake of 9/11, Pakistan's ISI  played a key role in the October 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, in close liaison with the US and NATO military high command. Ironically, in October 2001, both US and Indian press reports quoting FBI and intelligence sources, suggested that the ISI was providing support to the alleged 9/11 terrorists.(See Michel Chossudovsky, Cover-up or Complicity of the Bush Administration, The Role of Pakistan's Military Intelligence (ISI) in the September 11 Attacks, Global Research, November 2, 2001)

Pakistan's Chief Spy Appointed by the CIA

Historically, the CIA has played an unofficial role in the appointment of the director of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence  (ISI).

In September, Washington pressured Islamabad, using the "war on terrorism" as a pretext to fire the ISI chief Lieutenant General Nadeem Taj.

"Washington is understood to be exerting intense pressure on Pakistan to remove ISI boss Nadeem Taj and two of his deputies because of the key agency's alleged "double-dealing" with the militants.( Daily Times, September 30, 2008

President Asif Ali Zardari had meetings in New York in late September with CIA Director Michael Hayden. (The Australian, September 29, 2008), Barely a few days later, a new US approved ISI chief Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha was appointed by the Chief of the Army, General Kayani, on behalf of Washington.

In this regard, the pressures exerted by the Bush administration contributed to blocking a parliamentary initiative led by the PPP government to put the country's intelligence services (ISI) under civilian authority, namely under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Interior.


Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha (right) next to Gen. Ashfaq Kayani on the USS Abraham Lincoln talking with Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The U.S. Violates Pakistan's Territorial Sovereignty

The US is currently violating Pakistan territorial sovereignty through the routine bombing of villages in the tribal areas and the North West Frontier Province. These operations are carried out using the "war on terrorism" as a pretext.  While the Pakistani government has "officially" accused the US of waging aerial bombardments on its territory, Pakistan's military has "unofficially" endorsed the air strikes.

In this regard, the timely appointment of Lt. General Ahmed Shuja Pasha to the helm of the ISI was intended to ensure continuity in US "counter-terrorism" operations in Pakistan. Prior to his appointment as ISI chief, Lt. General Ahmed Shuja Pasha was responsible, in close consultation with the US and NATO, for carrying out targeted attacks allegedly against the Taliban and Al Qaeda by the Pakistani military in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP).
 



Upon his appointment, Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha implemented a major reshuffle within the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), replacing several of the ISI regional commanders. ( Daily Times, September 30, 2008). In late October, he was in Washington, at CIA headquarters at Langley and at the Pentagon, to meet his US military and intelligence counterparts:

"Pakistan is publicly complaining about U.S. air strikes. But the country's new chief of intelligence, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, visited Washington last week for talks with America's top military and spy chiefs, and everyone seemed to come away smiling." (David Ignatieff, A Quiet Deal With Pakistan, Washington Post, November 4, 2008, emphasis added).   

The Timing of the Mumbai Attacks

The US air strikes on the Tribal Areas resulting in countless civilians deaths have created a wave of anti-US sentiment throughout Pakistan. At the same token, they have also served, in the months preceding the Mumbai attacks, to promote an renewed atmosphere of cooperation between India and Pakistan.

While US-Pakistan relations are at an all time low, there were significant efforts, in recent months, by the Islamabad and Delhi governments to foster bilateral relations.

Barely a week prior to the attacks, Pakistan president Asif Ali Zardari "urged opening the Kashmir issue to public debate in India and Pakistan and letting the people decide the future of IHK."  He also called for "taking bilateral relations to a new level" as well as forging an economic union between the two countries.

Divide and Rule

What interests are served by these attacks?

Washington is intent on using the Mumbai attacks to:

1) Foster divisions between Pakistan and India and shunt the process of bilateral cooperation and trade between the two countries;

2) Promote internal social, ethnic and sectarian divisions respectively in India and Pakistan;

3) Justify US military actions inside Pakistan including the killing of civilians in violation of the country's territorial sovereignty; 

4) Provide a justification for extending the US led "war on terrorism" into the Indian sub-continent and South East Asia.

In 2006, the Pentagon had warned that "another [major 9/11 type terrorist] attack could create both a justification and an opportunity that is lacking today to retaliate against some known targets" (Statement by Pentagon official, leaked to the Washington Post, 23 April 2006). In the current context, the Mumbai attacks are considered "a justification" to go after "known targets" in the tribal areas of North Western Pakistan.

India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has stated that "external forces" forces carried the attacks, hinting to the possible role of Pakistan. The media reports also point in that direction, hinting that the Pakistani government is behind the attacks:

US officials and lawmakers refrained from naming Pakistan, but their condemnation of "Islamist terrorism" left little doubt where their anxieties lay.

....

What has added potency to the latest charges against Islamabad is the Bush administration's own assessment - leaked to the US media - that Pakistan's intelligence agency ISI was linked to the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul some weeks back that killed nearly 60 people including a much-admired Indian diplomat and a respected senior defense official. (Times of India, November 27, 2008)

The Attacks have Triggered Anti-Pakistani Sentiment in India

The attacks have served to foster anti-Pakistani sentiment within India as well as sectarian divisions between Hindus and Muslims. 

Time Magazine has pointed in no uncertain terms to the insidious role of "the powerful Inter Services Intelligence organization — often accused of orchestrating terror attacks on India", without acknowledging that the new head of the ISI was appointed at Washington's behest. (Time online).

The Time report suggests, without evidence, that the most likely architects of the attacks are several Pakistani sponsored Islamic groups including Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure), "which is part of the 'al-Qaeda compact'", Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Kashmiri separatist organization belonging to Al Qaeda which claimed responsibility in the December 2001 terrorist attacks on the Union parliament in Delhi and The Students Islamic Movement of India, (SIMI). (Ibid)

Both Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed are known to be supported by the ISI.

Islamabad-Delhi Shuttle Diplomacy

Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari indicated that his government would fully collaborate with the Indian authorities.

Pakistan's newly elected civilian government has been sidetracked by its own intelligence services, which remain under the jurisdiction of the military high command.   

The Pakistan's People's Party government under the helm of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani. has no control over the military and intelligence apparatus, which continues to maintain a close rapport with its US counterparts.

In this context, president Asif Ali Zardari seems to be playing on both sides: collusion with the Military-Intelligence apparatus, dialogue with Washington and lip service to prime minister Gilani and the National Assembly.

On November 28, two days following the Mumbai attacks, Islamabad announced that the recently appointed ISI chief Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha would be dispatched to Delhi for consultations with his Indian counterparts including National Security Advisor M K Narayanan and the heads of India's external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW)  and the Intelligence Bureau, responsible for internal intelligence. RAW and Pakistan's ISI are known to have been waging a covert war against one another for more than thirty years.1

On the following day (November 29), Islamabad cancelled the visit of ISI chief Lt Gen Shuja Pasha to India, following Indian foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee's  "very aggressive tone with Pakistani officials [in a]  telephone [conversation] after the Mumbai attacks". (Press Trust of India, November 29, 2008 quoting Geo News Pakistan).

Tense Situation. Deterioration of India-Pakistan Relations

The Mumbai attacks have already created an extremely tense situation, which largely serves US geopolitical interests in the region.

Islamabad is contemplating the relocation of some 100,000 military personnel from the Pakistani-Afghan border to the Indian border, "if there is an escalation in tension with India, which has hinted at the involvement of Pakistani elements in the Mumbai carnage." (Pakistan news source quoted by PTI, op cit).

"These sources have said NATO and the US command have been told that Pakistan would not be able to concentrate on the war on terror and against militants around the Afghanistan border as defending its borders with India was far more important," (Ibid, Geo News quoting senior Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir).

US Interference in the Conduct of the Indian Police Investigation

Also of significance is Washington's outright interference in the conduct of the Indian police investigation. The Times of India points to an "unprecedented intelligence cooperation involving investigating agencies and spy outfits of India, United States, United Kingdom and Israel."

Both the FBI and Britain's Secret Service MI6 have liaison offices in Delhi. The FBI has dispatched police, counter-terrorism officials and forensic scientists to Mumbai "to investigate attacks that now include American victims..."  Experts from the London's Metropolitan Police have also been dispatched to Mumbai:

"The U.S. government's "working assumption" that the Pakistani militant groups Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed are suspects in the attacks "has held up" as Indian authorities have begun their investigation, the official said. The two Kashmiri militant groups have ties to al Qaeda." (Wall Street Journal, November 28, 2008)

The role of the US-UK-Israeli counter terrorism and police officials, is essentially to manipulate the results of the Indian police investigation.

It is worth noting, however that the Delhi government turned down Israel's request to send a special forces military unit to assist the Indian commandos in freeing Jewish hostages held inside Mumbai's Chabad Jewish Center (PTI, November 28, 2008).

Bali 2002 versus Mumbai 2008

The Mumbai terrorist attacks bear certain similarities to the 2002 Bali attacks. In both cases, Western tourists were targets. The tourist resort of Kuta on the island of Bali, Indonesia,  was the object of two separate attacks, which targeted mainly Australian tourists. (Ibid)

The alleged terrorists in the Bali 2002 bombings were executed, following a lengthy trial period, barely a few weeks ago, on November 9, 2008. (Michel Chossudovsky, Miscarriage of Justice: Who was behind the October 2002 Bali bombings? Global Research, November 13, 2009). The political architects of the 2002 Bali attacks were never brought to trial.

A November 2002 report emanating from Indonesia’s top brass, pointed to the involvement of both the head of Indonesian intelligence General A. M. Hendropriyono as well as the CIA. The links of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) to the Indonesian intelligence agency (BIN) were never raised in the official Indonesian government investigation --which was guided behind the scenes by Australian intelligence and the CIA. Moreover, shortly after the bombing, Australian Prime Minister John Howard "admitted that Australian authorities were warned about possible attacks in Bali but chose not to issue a warning." (Christchurch Press, November 22, 2002).

With regard to the Bali 2002 bombings, the statements of two former presidents of Indonesia were casually dismissed in the trial procedures, both of which pointed to complicity of the Indonesian military and police. In 2002, president Megawati Sukarnoputri, accused the US of involvement in the attacks. In 2005, in an October 2005 interview with Australia's SBS TV,  former president Wahid Abdurrahman stated that the Indonesian military and police played a complicit role in the 2002 Bali bombing. (quoted in Miscarriage of Justice: Who was behind the October 2002 Bali bombings?, op cit)

Note

1. In recent months, the head of India's external intelligence (RAW), Ashok Chaturvedi has become a political target. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is intent upon firing him and replacing him with a more acceptable individual. It is unclear whether Chaturvedi will be involved in the intelligence and police investigation.

[Nailer]

http://in.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idINDEL18148220081130

INTERVIEW-"War level" security in India after Mumbai attacks
Sun Nov 30, 2008 12:35pm IST

By Bappa Majumdar

NEW DELHI, Nov 30 (Reuters) -India will increase security in the country and on its borders to a "war level" in the wake of the deadly attacks in Mumbai that killed nearly 200 people, a government minister said on Sunday.

"Our intelligence will be increased to a war level, we are asking the state governments to increase security to a war level," Sriprakash Jaiswal, India's minister for state for home affairs, told Reuters in an interview.

India said on Sunday it had proof of a Pakistani link to the Mumbai attacks, while officials in Islamabad said it would move troops to the Indian border if tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals spilled over.

"They can say what they want, but we have no doubt that the terrorists had come from Pakistan," Jaiswal said.

India has already boosted coastal security with the Indian Navy and the coast guard carrying out coordination patrols.

The Mumbai attackers are said to have come to the city by sea from the Pakistani port of Karachi, according to security officials.

They have said they were from the Lashkar-e-Taiba a Pakistan-based group that has been blamed for previous attacks in India.

"We have evidence of their nationalities. We will reveal everything soon," Jaiswal added. (Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Jerry Norton)




MOSCOW, March 27 (RIA Novosti) - Russian military intelligence services are reporting a flurry of activity by U.S. Armed Forces near Iran's borders, a high-ranking security source said Tuesday.

"The latest military intelligence data point to heightened U.S. military preparations for both an air and ground operation against Iran," the official said, adding that the Pentagon has probably not yet made a final decision as to when an attack will be launched.

He said the Pentagon is looking for a way to deliver a strike against Iran "that would enable the Americans to bring the country to its knees at minimal cost."

He also said the U.S. Naval presence in the Persian Gulf has for the first time in the past four years reached the level that existed shortly before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Col.-Gen. Leonid Ivashov, vice president of the Academy of Geopolitical Sciences, said last week that the Pentagon is planning to deliver a massive air strike on Iran's military infrastructure in the near future.

A new U.S. carrier battle group has been dispatched to the Gulf.

The USS John C. Stennis, with a crew of 3,200 and around 80 fixed-wing aircraft, including F/A-18 Hornet and Superhornet fighter-bombers, eight support ships and four nuclear submarines are heading for the Gulf, where a similar group led by the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower has been deployed since December 2006.

The U.S. is also sending Patriot anti-missile systems to the region.



Ominous.

[Nailer]

This is an escalation.

All it takes is a spark to set the thing off right now.

Let's remember what happened the last time:

Threat of nuclear war

As both India and Pakistan are armed with nuclear weapons, the possibility a conventional war could escalate into a nuclear one were raised several times during the standoff. Various statements on this subject were made by Indian and Pakistani officials during the conflict, mainly concerning a no first use policy. Indian Foreign Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh said on June 5 that India would not use nuclear weapons first,[16] while Musharraf said on June 5 he would not renounce Pakistan's right to use nuclear weapons first.[17] In December 2002, Musharraf said he warned India "not to expect a conventional war from Pakistan" if troops crossed the Line of Control in Kashmir. He later said he meant a guerrilla war. India's Defense Minister replied that India could "take a bomb or two or more but when we respond there will be no Pakistan."

A Defense Intelligence Agency report in May 2002 estimated that a nuclear war between India and Pakistan could, in a worst-case scenario, lead to 8-12 million deaths initially and millions more later from radiation poisoning.[18]

There was also concern that a June 6, 2002 asteroid explosion over Earth, known as the Eastern Mediterranean Event, could have caused a nuclear conflict had it exploded over India or Pakistan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001-2002_India-Pakistan_standoff

[Optimus]

Pakistan moves army from terror front to India border
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24731282-25837,00.html
Bruce Loudon, South Asia correspondent | December 01, 2008
Article from:  The Australian
 
PAKISTAN is withdrawing troops from the fight against al-Qa'ida and the Taliban to redeploy them to its border with India as tensions between the two nuclear-armed nations escalate over the terrorist massacre in Mumbai.

As the clean-up began after terrorists killed at least 195 people, including two Australians, the only gunman captured provided testimony of the operation's links to a Pakistan-based militant group, intelligence sources said yesterday.

Ajmal Amir Kamal, 21, whose clean-shaven face has become an enduring image of the attacks after he was caught on a CCTV camera wearing a Versace T-shirt, was interrogated in a safe house in Mumbai.

He identified all the attackers as Pakistani citizens and acknowledged that they were trained by Lashkar-e-Toiba, a militant group fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, reports said.

He confirmed the militants had come ashore in dinghies launched from a hijacked vessel whose crew had been killed, reports said.

Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari urged India not to "overreact" after Indian and US officials suggested the militants could have been from the Pakistan-based LET. The group was behind the deadly 2001 assault on the Indian parliament that pushed New Delhi and Islamabad to the brink of war.

"If something happens (amid the rising tensions with India), the war on terror cannot be our priority," a senior Pakistani official told a media briefing yesterday.

"We'll take everything from the western border (with Afghanistan - the main area of al-Qa'ida and Taliban activity). We won't leave anything there." Indian army sources said forces near Pakistan had been placed on a raised alert before a meeting that Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called with security chiefs in New Delhi today. Mr Zardari was meeting Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and his army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, amid fears that the Mumbai crisis had the potential for a replay of the 2001 standoff.

Dr Singh cancelled a meeting with Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi in New Delhi over the weekend.

At the same time, Pakistan's army forced the country's civilian Government into an embarrassing about-face after it had earlier agreed to bow to Indian pressure and send the head of the Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency to New Delhi to help in the Mumbai investigation.

Mr Zardari and Mr Qureshi denied the assault was launched by terrorists trained and based in Pakistan. Conceding that the confrontation between the two nuclear-armed neighbours was extremely serious, Mr Qureshi called on India to ease the tension. "It is in Pakistan's interests and in India's interests to defuse the situation. Lowering of tension is essential.

"Finger-pointing or coming to hasty conclusions will play into the hands of the common enemy, that is, the terrorists."

India's Home Minister, the Government's most senior security official, last night quit the cabinet, becoming the first major scalp following the intelligence failure that led to the massacre.

The resignation of Shivraj Patil was followed by that of National Security Adviser MK Narayanan. Sources said other heads were expected to roll as the crisis within the Government deepened over what was the worst terrorist attack in India, and one which is being referred to as "India's 9/11".

Mr Patil, a powerful figure because of his closeness to India's supreme political leader, Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, had for months been under fire because of the growing number of terrorist attacks across the country. But until last night he had managed to cling to his position.

Public outrage over the Government's failure to get to grips with the issue of terrorism had, however, become too much for him to withstand.

Political analysts said that while the departure of Mr Patil would be widely welcomed, it was likely to do little to save the Government from severe criticism over its failures on the terrorism front - failures that many believe have the potential to drive it from office at elections due before May.

US President George W. Bush pledged full support to India as it investigated the attacks, saying the killers "will not have the final word". "The killers who struck this week are brutal and violent," Mr Bush said.

"But terror will not have the final word. The people of India are resilient. The people of India are strong. They have built a vibrant, multi-ethnic democracy. They can withstand this trial."

[David Rothscum]

Plans to partition Pakistan 'on schedule', compliments of Mumbai incident: The cost of creating the map of the 'New Middle East'
http://www.chycho.com/?q=node/1913


How to Start a Civil War:

Last year we learned that the United States was planning to start a Civil War in Pakistan when new classified American military documents revealed that the United States government was intensifying efforts “to enlist tribal leaders in the frontier areas of Pakistan in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, as part of a broader effort to bolster Pakistani forces against an expanding militancy.”

    “If adopted, the proposal would join elements of a shift in strategy that would also be likely to expand the presence of American military trainers in Pakistan, directly finance a separate tribal paramilitary force that until now has proved largely ineffective and pay militias that agree to fight Al Qaeda and foreign extremists.”

Some of the elements of the campaign were approved in principle by the Americans and Pakistanis and awaited financing, “including $350 million over several years to help train and equip the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force” that at the time had about 85,000 members recruited from border tribes. This was at par to the four hundred million dollars that George Bush received to conduct covert operations in Iran to destabilize that country, which for all intents and purposes is an act of war.

It is extremely important to remember that arming one group in a country and pitting them against another is by all definitions funding and starting a civil war.

Pakistanis flee into Hell:

Just how bad is the situation in Pakistan?

In January of 2008, at the same time that the United States was revealing that they were about to ramp-up military operations in Pakistan, BBC was reporting that thousands of Pakistanis were fleeing into Afghanistan due to the security situation deteriorating in Pakistan.

This revelation was frightening on multiple levels: It proved that the NATO occupation in Afghanistan was a complete disaster and that the chaos it had created was spreading; it showed us how desperate the situation was/is in Pakistan if people were willing to escape into what is considered to be hell on earth; and it indicated that Pakistan was about to become another major war zone the likes of which had not even been seen in Afghanistan.

The implications of what the above BBC news report was revealing can not be over emphasized. Tens of thousands of human beings were being forced to leave a once peaceful homeland for what is considered to be one of the most brutal and violent places on earth, where life expectancy is only 46 years. Based on this report, we can only assume that all hell had broken loose in Pakistan (a nuclear country).

Just to make sure that this really sinks in; Pakistani refugees, in their search for a safe haven, were being forced to flee into a country that has been at war for over 30 years. This can only mean that every other escape root was either cut off, or that the surrounding regions were much worse off than Afghanistan. This is the frightening reality. This is what Western intervention has created in this region, complete chaos.

The Implications of the Mumbai incident:

United States military operations, both covert and overt, have destabilized all major powers in this region. The Mumbai attacks are related to this, may they be false flag operations, instigated by foreign powers, or conducted by domestic groups opposed to the government. The only question that we need to be asking ourselves is what the strategies of resistance ought to be?


As the attacks on 911 had severe global consequences, so will the Mumbai incident. All indications are that the Indian government is casting blame on the Pakistani government.

To divert attention away from the attacks in Mumbai being from domestic groups, the Indian government along with Western powers are involved in a public relations campaign to put the blame on Pakistan.

    “It is not clear the degree to which the Pakistani government can control the situation. But the Indians will have no choice but to be assertive, and the United States will move along the same line. Whether it is the current government in India that reacts, or one that succeeds doesn’t matter. Either way, India is under enormous pressure to respond. Therefore the events point to a serious crisis not simply between Pakistan and India, but within Pakistan as well, with the government caught between foreign powers and domestic realities. Given the circumstances, massive destabilization is possible.”

Why is all this happening and at what cost?

The only political explanation that I have been able to come up with is that the United States, with the help of some NATO countries, is in the beginning stages of implementing the World War III option, two of the goals for which are to create the New Map of the Middle East and to maintain the status quo of Western economic dominance over global financial markets.

What is happening right now is very likely related to US plans to create a New Middle East, the plans for which were revealed in 2006 by retired Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters. The map, with the redrawn borders of the Middle East, indicates that Turkey would lose a large portion of its territory while Iraq would be split into three autonomous regions. This map also shows plans to partition Pakistan and reduce Iran’s territory, along with numerous other imperial agendas.

Present Middle East


New Middle East



Unfortunately for the world however, such an endeavor as redrawing the borders of so many countries would be nothing less then World War III. A conservative estimate of how many people would die in this global war can be obtained by assuming that the same percentage of people that died in World War II would also die in World War III.

In the 1940’s the world population was approximately 2.3 billion. World War II resulted in 72 million deaths (42 million of which were civilian casualties). This means that approximately 3.1% of the worlds population was killed.

At present, the world population is approximately 6.7 billion. If we assume that the same percentage of people will die during this world war than the last, it would mean that over 200 million people will be dead in the next few years. This is a conservative estimate since nuclear weapons were introduced at the end of World War II, while they are being proposed at the beginning of World War III. The number of wounded will be well over 1 billion if we assume a kill to wounded ratio of 1 to 5.

A Solution:

One way to defuse the situation and dampen the hatred that locals must have towards the United States and its allies is, as Taliq Ali and Malalai Joya suggest, an immediate and complete withdrawal of all foreign forces from Afghanistan. This will at least reduce the number of people joining the fight to free their country from occupation and will actually be an incentive for people to disarm and go back to living a normal life with their families because they would no longer feel obligated to defend their country from foreign invasion and occupation.

Unfortunately, however, it appears as though the new US administration of Barack Obama will be continuing with the agenda of the expansion of war.


Further information on the ‘Bankruptcy Bill’ that Noam Chomsky mentions Joe Biden supporting at: “The first law that should be repealed in the United States is the 2005 Bankruptcy Bill: Will Obama eliminate debt slavery?”

[sociostudent]

Plans to partition Pakistan 'on schedule', compliments of Mumbai incident: The cost of creating the map of the 'New Middle East'
http://www.chycho.com/?q=node/1913


How to Start a Civil War:

Last year we learned that the United States was planning to start a Civil War in Pakistan when new classified American military documents revealed that the United States government was intensifying efforts “to enlist tribal leaders in the frontier areas of Pakistan in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, as part of a broader effort to bolster Pakistani forces against an expanding militancy.”

    “If adopted, the proposal would join elements of a shift in strategy that would also be likely to expand the presence of American military trainers in Pakistan, directly finance a separate tribal paramilitary force that until now has proved largely ineffective and pay militias that agree to fight Al Qaeda and foreign extremists.”

Some of the elements of the campaign were approved in principle by the Americans and Pakistanis and awaited financing, “including $350 million over several years to help train and equip the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force” that at the time had about 85,000 members recruited from border tribes. This was at par to the four hundred million dollars that George Bush received to conduct covert operations in Iran to destabilize that country, which for all intents and purposes is an act of war.

It is extremely important to remember that arming one group in a country and pitting them against another is by all definitions funding and starting a civil war.
(isn't this was england did to the U.S. during our civil war?)

Pakistanis flee into Hell:

Just how bad is the situation in Pakistan?

In January of 2008, at the same time that the United States was revealing that they were about to ramp-up military operations in Pakistan, BBC was reporting that thousands of Pakistanis were fleeing into Afghanistan due to the security situation deteriorating in Pakistan.

This revelation was frightening on multiple levels: It proved that the NATO occupation in Afghanistan was a complete disaster and that the chaos it had created was spreading; it showed us how desperate the situation was/is in Pakistan if people were willing to escape into what is considered to be hell on earth; and it indicated that Pakistan was about to become another major war zone the likes of which had not even been seen in Afghanistan.

The implications of what the above BBC news report was revealing can not be over emphasized. Tens of thousands of human beings were being forced to leave a once peaceful homeland for what is considered to be one of the most brutal and violent places on earth, where life expectancy is only 46 years. Based on this report, we can only assume that all hell had broken loose in Pakistan (a nuclear country).

Just to make sure that this really sinks in; Pakistani refugees, in their search for a safe haven, were being forced to flee into a country that has been at war for over 30 years. This can only mean that every other escape root was either cut off, or that the surrounding regions were much worse off than Afghanistan. This is the frightening reality. This is what Western intervention has created in this region, complete chaos.

The Implications of the Mumbai incident:

United States military operations, both covert and overt, have destabilized all major powers in this region. The Mumbai attacks are related to this, may they be false flag operations, instigated by foreign powers, or conducted by domestic groups opposed to the government. The only question that we need to be asking ourselves is what the strategies of resistance ought to be?


As the attacks on 911 had severe global consequences, so will the Mumbai incident. All indications are that the Indian government is casting blame on the Pakistani government.

To divert attention away from the attacks in Mumbai being from domestic groups, the Indian government along with Western powers are involved in a public relations campaign to put the blame on Pakistan.

    “It is not clear the degree to which the Pakistani government can control the situation. But the Indians will have no choice but to be assertive, and the United States will move along the same line. Whether it is the current government in India that reacts, or one that succeeds doesn’t matter. Either way, India is under enormous pressure to respond. Therefore the events point to a serious crisis not simply between Pakistan and India, but within Pakistan as well, with the government caught between foreign powers and domestic realities. Given the circumstances, massive destabilization is possible.”

Why is all this happening and at what cost?

The only political explanation that I have been able to come up with is that the United States, with the help of some NATO countries, is in the beginning stages of implementing the World War III option, two of the goals for which are to create the New Map of the Middle East and to maintain the status quo of Western economic dominance over global financial markets.
(So, could this be some kind of desperate attempt to stabilize the economy?)

What is happening right now is very likely related to US plans to create a New Middle East, the plans for which were revealed in 2006 by retired Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters. The map, with the redrawn borders of the Middle East, indicates that Turkey would lose a large portion of its territory while Iraq would be split into three autonomous regions. This map also shows plans to partition Pakistan and reduce Iran’s territory, along with numerous other imperial agendas.

Present Middle East


New Middle East



Unfortunately for the world however, such an endeavor as redrawing the borders of so many countries would be nothing less then World War III. A conservative estimate of how many people would die in this global war can be obtained by assuming that the same percentage of people that died in World War II would also die in World War III.

In the 1940’s the world population was approximately 2.3 billion. World War II resulted in 72 million deaths (42 million of which were civilian casualties). This means that approximately 3.1% of the worlds population was killed.

At present, the world population is approximately 6.7 billion. If we assume that the same percentage of people will die during this world war than the last, it would mean that over 200 million people will be dead in the next few years. This is a conservative estimate since nuclear weapons were introduced at the end of World War II, while they are being proposed at the beginning of World War III. The number of wounded will be well over 1 billion if we assume a kill to wounded ratio of 1 to 5.

A Solution:

One way to defuse the situation and dampen the hatred that locals must have towards the United States and its allies is, as Taliq Ali and Malalai Joya suggest, an immediate and complete withdrawal of all foreign forces from Afghanistan. This will at least reduce the number of people joining the fight to free their country from occupation and will actually be an incentive for people to disarm and go back to living a normal life with their families because they would no longer feel obligated to defend their country from foreign invasion and occupation.

Unfortunately, however, it appears as though the new US administration of Barack Obama will be continuing with the agenda of the expansion of war.


Further information on the ‘Bankruptcy Bill’ that Noam Chomsky mentions Joe Biden supporting at: “The first law that should be repealed in the United States is the 2005 Bankruptcy Bill: Will Obama eliminate debt slavery?”

 And what was Cheney's role in all of this? And Brzezinski's, if any? Do you think Obama would be forced to reconsider the Afghan expansion  if the entire country miraculously learned, over the next few weeks, the truth about the middle east, and the fact that so many people are going to die or be wounded, even be retaliated against by these countries if we keep up with the pakistan crap?

The only logical explanation for Obama proceeding with these events is that he (and his future cabinet) are actively attempting to destroy not only THIS country, but all countries, and to bring in this superstate of tyranny to rule over all of us.

[bigron]

Monday, December 01, 2008
13:20 Mecca time, 10:20 GMT   
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA
 http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2008/12/200812164740256637.html

 
Car bomb kills several in Pakistan 
 
 
 
A suicide car-bomber has killed at least eight people in an attack aimed at a military checkpost in northwest Pakistan's Swat Valley, officials have said.
   
Monday's attack follows a surge in violence in Pakistan's north west, where al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters are stepping up attacks on security forces.

"The attacker was riding in a car packed with explosives. He blew up the car a few hundreds metres before the checkpost," said one of the military officials in the valley, who declined to be identified.
   
Seven civilians who happened to be passing by at the time were killed, as well as one soldier, the official said. 

At least 49 people were injured in the attack, the AFP news agency reported.

Earlier on Monday, two drivers of lorries transporting supplies to Western forces in Afghanistan were killed in a grenade and gun attack near the Pakistani city of Peshawar, a transport company official said.

Raging fire

The lorries were parked at a terminal on the outskirts of Peshawar when the fighters fired rocket-propelled grenades at them, setting some of them on fire, police said.
   
"When the fire was raging, the attackers started firing and two drivers were killed," Mohammad Haroon, an official of Al-Faisal Cargo, a private company involved in taking supplies to Afghanistan, told the Reuters news agency.
   
Fighters in Pakistan have stepped up attacks on supplies going through northwest Pakistan's Khyber Pass, a vital supply link for foreign troops in landlocked Afghanistan.
   
The US military sends 75 per cent of supplies for the Afghan war through or over Pakistan, including 40 per cent of the fuel for its troops, the US defence department says.
   
There are only two major routes into Afghanistan from the Pakistani port of Karachi, one through the Khyber Pass and the other through the town of Chaman to the southwest, the gateway to the southern Afghan city of Kandahar.
   
Pakistani authorities halted movement of supplies through the Khyber Pass for a week in November after fighters hijacked 13 lorries carrying supplies for Western forces.
 
 Source: Agencies 
 
 
 
 
 

[bigron]

Pakistan militants target NATO supplies

Story Highlights :

Suicide car bomber kills nine civilians in northwest Pakistan Monday

Militants also attack trucks that carry supplies to NATO troops in Afghanistan

That attack leaves two people dead, two others wounded and 12 trucks ablaze


Pakistani security officials inspect the site of a suicide attack in Mingora last month.


ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- A suicide car bomber killed nine civilians in northwest Pakistan Monday, while militants elsewhere in the violence-plagued region attacked trucks that carry supplies to NATO troops in Afghanistan.

The suicide bombing took place in the town of Mingora in the Swat Valley. The motorist detonated explosives when police tried to stop him from crossing a security checkpoint, said police officer Dilawar Khan.

The blast also wounded 50 others, including 10 who were in critical condition, Khan said.

In the second attack, militants fired rockets at a supply terminal in Peshawar that sits along a route from Pakistan to Afghanistan. The attack left two people dead, two others wounded and 12 trucks ablaze, Peshawar police spokesman Mohammad Rasool said.

Because Afghanistan is landlocked, many supplies for NATO-led troops fighting Islamic militants there have to be trucked in from Pakistan -- and the swath of tribal areas in northwest Pakistan has become a haven for militants who mount regular attacks in both countries, U.S. officials have said.

Pakistan's central government has long exerted little control in the area, but it launched an intense military offensive in late July to flush out militants. As retaliation for the military presence, the Taliban has carried out a series of deadly bombings -- and said the attacks will continue until the troops pull out.

Convoys carrying food and military supplies to U.S. troops in Afghanistan have regularly come under attack.

Last month, Pakistani officials suspended travel through a key mountain pass -- the Khyber Pass -- citing security concerns. They reversed their decision a day later.

The Swat Valley, where the suicide bombing occurred, was once Pakistan's biggest tourist destination.

But in recent months, militants bent on imposing fundamentalist Islamic law have unleashed a wave of violence across the North West Frontier Province, where Swat is located, that has claimed hundreds of lives, many of them security personnel.

CNN's Samson Desta contributed to this report.

All AboutAnne Patterson • NATO • Islamabad • Afghanistan
 

 
 
 
Links referenced within this article

NATO
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/nato
Afghanistan
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/afghanistan
Anne Patterson
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/Anne_Patterson
NATO
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/NATO
Islamabad
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/Islamabad
Afghanistan
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/Afghanistan

 

 
Find this article at:
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/12/01/pakistan.bomb/index.html 
 

[Biggs]

this clearly fits the 'target pakistan' outcome that was desired, this will force pakistan to attack a variety of militant groups in NWFP and perhaps even elsewhere (kashmir, Punjab etc). The thing is that the Pakistani army can barely cope targeting neo Taliban groups and foreign groups, if they add Lashkar e Toiba to the list there is a real danger they will actually LOSE the fight. They have not targeted Lashkar and similar groups before, and Lashkar have MORE military power than the neo Taliban groups and the foreigners.

The outcomes from such a move by the Pakistani army could be very very serious and lead to the worst case scenario of a full scale civil war and colapse of the state in Pakistan.

=============

India Tells Pakistan to Match Its Words With ‘Action’ on Terror

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ai.4EDrceX4A&refer=home

By Bibhudatta Pradhan and Pratik Parija

Dec. 2 (Bloomberg) -- India blamed “elements” from Pakistan for last week’s deadly Mumbai terror attacks and told its neighbor to match its words of cooperation with “strong action” to build a “qualitative new relationship.”

The comments by India’s foreign ministry stopped short of accusing the Pakistani government of complicity, which may help ease tensions between the two long-time rivals.

“Indian and Pakistan political leaders are wiser after the experience of 2002,” when they went to the brink of war over the disputed region of Kashmir, said New Delhi-based C. Uday Bhaskar, a defense analyst and former director of the Institute for Defense Studies & Analyses. Yesterday’s statement and others by Indian officials are “carefully nuanced where attention is drawn to elements in Pakistan” without “casting aspersions on the Pakistani state.”

The Nov. 26-29 attacks had threatened to derail peace talks between the two nuclear-armed neighbors. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Nov. 27 said India will “go after” individuals and organizations behind the assault, while Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari said his government will act, provided there’s evidence.

“It was conveyed to the Pakistan High Commissioner that Pakistan’s actions needed to match the sentiments conveyed by its leadership,” Vishnu Prakash, India’s foreign ministry spokesman, told reporters yesterday in New Delhi.

India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars since 1947 over Kashmir, which is divided between them and claimed in full by both countries.

Pakistan Training Alleged

The assault on two luxury hotels, a cafe, a rail station and a Jewish center killed 195 people, including 22 foreigners, and was the deadliest in 15 years in Hindu-majority India.

The outlawed Lashkar-i-Taiba, a Kashmiri guerilla group alleged to have carried out the attacks, still operates training camps for militants inside Pakistan and has expanded its membership, the Washington Post reported, citing Michael Scheuer, a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst.

Ajmal Amir Kasab, the only suspected terrorist caught by the police, told interrogators that 24 people were trained in Pakistan over the course of a year, 10 of whom were picked for the Mumbai operation, the Times of India reported yesterday, citing unidentified people.

Kasab said the terrorists were trained by a former soldier in seven phases, including the use of weapons and ammunition and such physical activities as diving, running and swimming, the newspaper reported, citing the unidentified people.

Peace Talks

The two nations ended their fifth round of talks between home secretaries in New Delhi on Nov. 26, just before the attacks began that evening. They resolved to cooperate with each other to combat terrorism and take “severe action” against any elements.

India says the success of the peace talks that started in 2003 depends on Pakistan ending alleged support for cross-border terrorism in the part of Kashmir under Indian control and taking steps to combat militants.

Pakistan and India should work together in the wake of the terrorist attacks and not allow the incident to spur new antagonism between them, Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S., Husain Haqqani, told CNN this weekend. “Non-state actors” were forcing their agenda and Pakistan’s government “will cooperate with India in exposing and apprehending the culprits” behind the attacks, Zardari said on Nov. 28.

The U.S. doesn’t believe Pakistan’s government was involved in the attacks, and the Bush administration trusts Pakistan to investigate the issue, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters yesterday. “We have no reason not to” trust Pakistan “right now,” she said.

Rice Urges Cooperation

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who will visit India this week, urged the Indian and Pakistani governments to work together to find the perpetrators.

“I do think that it is extremely important that there be the highest levels of cooperation between Pakistan and India at this point,” Rice told reporters while en route to London on Nov. 30. “I’d just note that the lines of communication are open between them.”

Pakistan’s political leaders will meet today to discuss security policy. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani will head the meeting to assess the regional situation, according to Zahid Bashir, the Pakistani premier’s press secretary.

The biggest opposition group, the Pakistan Muslim League faction headed by former premier Nawaz Sharif, which split from the Pakistan Peoples Party-led coalition government in August, will attend the meeting, party spokesman Siddiq-ul-Farooq said.

‘Overworked, Understaffed’

Gilani canceled a trip to Hong Kong, where he was to attend the Clinton Global Initiative summit, to focus on addressing growing tensions with India, Bashir has said.

The 60-hour killing spree by less than a dozen terrorists underscores the failure of India’s police force to keep pace with better armed, equipped and trained militants, a former intelligence agent said.

“That system has collapsed,” said Vikram Sood, former director of India’s foreign intelligence agency, known as the Research and Analysis Wing. “Police are overworked, understaffed and undertrained.”

At least 20 officers, including the head of the Maharashtra state Anti-Terrorism Squad, were among those killed in the attacks.

[Biggs]

a taste of things to come as Punjabis and Pashtuns fight to the death on the streets of karachi

32 dead in Karachi riots
Mon, Dec 01, 2008
AFP

http://news.asiaone.com/News/Latest%2BNews/Asia/Story/A1Story20081201-104786.html


KARACHI, PAKISTAN - THIRTY-TWO people have been killed and dozens injured in two days of clashes blamed on activists from rival political parties in Pakistan's largest city Karachi, police said on Monday.

'We have confirmed reports of 32 people killed since Saturday in Karachi,' the city's police chief Waseem Ahmed told AFP, adding some of the 55 people injured in the violence had been shot.

Troops were authorised to use guns to quell the violence, which came as members of the ruling coalition party Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) clashed with the Pashtun nationalist Awami National Party (ANP).

<A HREF=" [link to ads.asia1.com.sg]
Officials from the MQM and ANP denied their members were involved in the rioting.

'We have deployed the maximum number of paramilitary troops in violence-ridden Orangi town, where the situation is now under control,' Major Mohammad Ali, spokesman of the paramilitary Rangers, told AFP.

'Our troops are patrolling and checking the affected localities and helping the police control the situation,' he said.

Despite the patrols by 800 paramilitary troops, sporadic gunfire continued in different parts of Karachi on Monday afternoon.

Over the weekend, rioters set shops and houses on fire, witnesses said, while residents in Orangi Town said they stayed at home for their safety.

Schools and most petrol stations were shut down across the port city, fearing further damage after mobs set fire to cars.

[Optimus]

Military chiefs urge raid inside Pakistan
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24743163-2703,00.html
Bruce Loudon, South Asia correspondent | December 03, 2008
Article from:  The Australian

PAKISTAN was bracing last night for a retaliatory airstrike by India against the sprawling headquarters of the al-Qa'ida-linked Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist organisation near Lahore.

As Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari warned the LET militants "had the power to precipitate war in the region", India demanded that Islamabad hand over a list of about 20 people, including India's most-wanted man Dawood Ibrahim.

India's military chiefs were exerting strong pressure on the country's political leaders to give permission to attack the headquarters, an 80ha site at Muridke, close to the Punjab capital of Lahore, just across the border from India.

The reports came as the Indian Government summoned the Pakistani high commissioner in New Delhi yesterday to demand "strong action" against the Pakistani militants who it says were responsible for last week's attacks on Mumbai.

New Delhi warned Shahid Malik that India expected Islamabad to take "swift action" to deal with the evidence of involvement by LET operating from bases inside Pakistan.

India demanded that Islamabad extradite Ibrahim, a fugitive Mumbai mafia don who it believes has links to LET, the terrorist group long allied to Pakistan's ISI spy agency.

India also asked for Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the LET founder, and Maulana Masood Azhar, the head of militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad, who was freed in exchange for passengers on a hijacked Indian Airlines flight in 1999.

Ibrahim, Mumbai's most notorious underworld don, is the head of D-Company, a feared crime syndicate, and one of the world's five most wanted men. He is widely believed to have worked closely with al-Qa'ida. He is also thought to have masterminded the 1993 Mumbai bombings, a series of 13 explosions that claimed 250 lives.

New Delhi issued its demands after US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged Pakistan to co-operate with India as she prepared to visit New Delhi to mediate between the nuclear-armed neighbours.

The heavily guarded LET complex near Lahore, known as the Markaz-e-Taiba (Holy Centre), includes mosques and madrassas with more than 3000 students. Theoretically it is the headquarters of the Jamaat-ul-Dawah Muslim welfare organisation that is closely identified with LET.

Saeed, the LET founder and spiritual leader, lives in the complex.

Reports yesterday said that if India attacked the complex -- possibly to kill Saeed -- an attempt would be made to justify the action by pointing to the way in which the US was launching pre-emptive strikes inside Pakistani territory using unmanned drones to kill al-Qa'ida and Taliban targets.

Indian sources have confirmed that investigators have established strong links between the group of terrorists who attacked Mumbai and the LET leadership inside Pakistan.

Intercepts of calls made on a satellite telephone used by the group before they disembarked from the "mother ship" that brought them from Karachi shows a series of calls made to Muridke.

Indian officials said that all the militants were from Pakistan and that the only one captured alive had admitted to being part of LET.

Yesterday, the surviving terrorist, Ajmal Amin Kamal, in a new interrogation by Indian investigators, again linked the Mumbai attack to LET, saying he had joined the organisation at the behest of his father to raise money for his family.

He named an LET commander who, he said, paid his father for his services.

Pakistan reluctantly announced a formal ban on LET in 2002 after coming under strong international pressure to clamp down on the organisation. This followed a spectacular attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001, launched by LET together with the Kashmir-based JEM.

Although still technically outlawed in Pakistan, LET has managed to expand its membership and activities and has also established itself in other countries.

To get around the formal ban on its activities, LET renamed itself Jamaat-ud-Dawah, which gained considerable influence across Pakistan as a result of the "welfare" work it did after the devastating 2005 earthquake in Kashmir. The US Government has also classified Jamaat-ud-Dawah as a terrorist organisation and said it is no more than an "alias" of LET.

Indian investigators are convinced there is no doubt of LET's involvement in the Mumbai outrage.

Mr Zardari insisted the militants who attacked Mumbai were "non-state actors" with no links to any government.

Reports yesterday said India received warnings in October from US intelligence of a possible terrorist attack "from the sea" on targets in Mumbai.

Unnamed American intelligence officials told US television news service ABC that they had warned their Indian counterparts in mid-October of a potential attack "from the sea against hotels and business centres in Mumbai".

One intelligence official even mentioned specific targets, including the Taj Mahal hotel, ABC said.

[bigron]

Tuesday, December 02, 2008
18:28 Mecca time, 15:28 GMT   
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2008/12/2008122133011598850.html

 
More deaths in Karachi violence 


 
Hundreds of military troops are patrolling the streets of Karachi to calm the situation [AFP]

 
At least four people have been killed in renewed clashes in Karachi between Urdu-speakers and Pashtuns from northwest Pakistan.

Waseem Ahmed, the city police chief, said the four were killed in different incidents in the early hours of Tuesday but the city had been mostly calm since then.

"There has been no major incident since the morning," Ahmed told Reuters news agency.

The clashes broke out on Saturday, leaving at least 40 people killed and dozens more injured, according to police and hospitals.

Rivals fought gun battles and burned shops and cars in several parts of the city over the weekend.

Security forces have been given permission to use gunfire to try to dispease the fighting.

Tit-for-tat

Nawaz Sharif, the former prime minister, has raised the possibility of Indian instigation of the violence in Karachi as a response to last week's assault in Mumbai, which New Delhi has linked to Islamabad, although the government has not suggested any link.

Sharif said he was surprised by the timing of the Karachi violence.

"The killings in Karachi erupted suddenly after the Mumbai incident," Sharif told reporters. "I'm surprised how it erupted all of a sudden ... I think this needs to be looked in to thoroughly, which forces are involved in it."

All schools and colleges in Karachi were shut for a second day on Tuesday and public transport was thin.

Karachi has a long history of political, ethnic and religious violence. The latest clashes between ethnic-based factions have raised fears of a return to the chronic bloodshed that plagued the city in the 1990s.

Authorities said on Monday that the battles were between Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) ruling coalition and the Pashtun Awami National Party (ANP), although both parties denied.
 
 Source: Agencies 
 
 
 
 
 

[Biggs]

not sure what Hindu Zionists are but clearly the guy talked about in this article has a point

Pak TV channel says 26/11 hatched by Hindu Zionists
2 Dec 2008, 2216 hrs IST, TNN
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Pak_TV_channel_says_2611_hatched_by_Hindu_Zionists/rssarticleshow/3785654.cms

NEW DELHI: Mumbai's 26/11 was actually a plan hatched by "Hindu Zionists" and

"Western Zionists", including the Mossad, said a self-styled
Pakistan security expert
on a Pakistan news television show, uploaded on www.hotklix.com.

" Inki shaklein Hinduonwali hain, jis zabaan mein guftagoo kar rahein hain, woh zabaan koi Pakistani istemaal nahin karta hai (They look like Hindus. No Pakistani speaks the language they chatted in)," said Zaid Hamid while referring to the terrorists on the show Mujhe Ikhtilaf Hai (I differ) on Pakistan's News One channel. The sensationalist channel was launched in November last year.

Hamid said that it was a "badly planned" operation that had gone horribly wrong. "9/11 jo Americans ne kiya tha usko bahut khoobsurat camouflage kiya tha. Unhone media mein perception management bahut acchha kiya . Indians ne wahi game repeat karne ki koshish ki, lekin akal to hai nahin . In ahmakon ne complete disaster kiya isko handle karne mein . (The Americans executed the 9/11 attack perfectly. They managed the media very well. The Indians tried to repeat the formula but goofed up. The idiots made a complete mess of it).

He said that the attackers wore saffron Hindu Zionist bands, which no Muslim would tie. Hamid also said that within the first 5 minutes of the attack, the three ATS policemen investigating the network of terror within India's security agencies and radical right were killed.

That ensured that those investigations reach a dead end. Anchor Qudsia Qadri added that with their killings, the investigations into the Samjhauta Express carnage would be halted. The killings also immediately shifted attention from India's domestic terrorists to Pakistan, said Hamid.

Marvi Memon, glamorous Pakistan Muslim League member, on the same programme, was appalled at the Pakistan government's expansion of the "India-appeasement package" by initially agreeing to send ISI chief to India. "I just don't get it," she exclaimed in exasperation.

She wondered how can you send the ISI chief to a " mulk jiske sath jang chal raha hai ...at a different level...," mentioning Kashmir and accusing India of blocking Pakistan's waters. Memon said, "They (Indians) are quite obsessed with anti-Pakistan speak and that unites them," she said. Memon also spoke about India's separatist movements and believed that India was only reaping the bitter harvest of the poisonous seeds it had sowed.

Blogger daily.pk writes in pakalert.wordpress.com, "India has been relapsing into religious extremism and numerous separatist movement have mushroomed due to official patronage ...I see the Mumbai bombings as the desperate move of separatists who want to blame everything on Muslims."

It's not only random voices railing against fingers pointing to Pakistan. Blogger and journalist Farrukh Khan Pitafi is miffed. "For years I have been advocating peace between India and Pakistan," he wrote. But he, too, says that India was out of its mind in naming Pakistan as the source of violence without identification of the perpetrators.

He wrote: "During such a long coverage of the mishap not a single outlet pointed out that Hemant Karkare... was the same man whose dismissal was Narendra Modi's biggest demand. Or that he was the man on the verge of uncovering the home-grown terror franchise of the Hindu extremists. No channel mentioned Colonel Purohit once during the live telecast, no not even CNN, BBC or CBS. It is sad."

[Biggs]

Pakistan convoy attack kills four

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7763244.stm
 

At least four people have been killed in a suicide attack on a military convoy in Pakistan's troubled North West Frontier Province.

The attacker rammed his vehicle into the convoy near a paramilitary camp in Charsadda district.

Three soldiers and a civilian were confirmed dead in the attack.

Pakistan's military has been conducting operations against Taleban militants and al-Qaeda fighters in several districts of the province.

The attack took place near the village of Subhankuh, close to the Shabqadar paramilitary camp about 30km (18 miles) north-west of the city of Peshawar.

Eyewitnesses told reporters that the attacker was riding on a motor-cycle.

The convoy was carrying reinforcements to the Mohman tribal region near the Afghan border.

North-western Pakistan has seen a wave of violence against security forces.

On Monday at least nine people were killed in a suicide car bomb attack on a security checkpoint in the town of Mingora in the Swat valley. At least 40 people were injured.

[Biggs]

Double Cover [4]: Beyond Ridiculous
Winter Patriot

www.uruknet.info?p=49294

Link: winterpatriot.blogspot.com/2008/12/double-cover-4-beyond-ridiculous.html

December 3, 2008

Despite the apparent confusion and the obvious media spin, the picture that emerged from the early reporting of the Mumbai attacks was a fairly comprehensible one: a picture of a false flag commando raid.

It was a commando raid, as opposed to a suicide bombing or other forms of terrorist attack; surely that much was clear to everybody. There were multiple commandos and multiple targets, and it was obvious that a great deal of knowledge and skill must have gone into the planning.

But it was also clearly a false flag attack, as the multiple simultaneous attempts to pin the blame (or take the responsibility) made no sense, singly or in combination. Even as the shooting was going on, the Indian government was saying the attackers (whoever they were) had come from outside the country. A "terrorist group" calling itself the "Deccan Mujahideen" had claimed responsibility, but no terror expert had ever heard of such a group.

In reality-based situations (of which this is not one!), the analysis of such a horrible crime would begin with the known facts, and it would proceed in a systematic fashion, from the knowns to the unknowns.

For instance, one might start with the observation that the Mumbai assault was a highly-coordinated commando raid, and then raise the questions: "Who does this sort of thing?" and "Among those who do this sort of thing, who had something to gain by doing this?"

These are questions we never saw asked, let alone answered, in the mainstream media. It seems quite clear to me, and one of the reasons for the title of this series, that they don't ask these questions because they're afraid of the answers. So instead of intelligent, penetrating, appropriate analysis, we got nonsense.

To begin with the official account, let's just say the official account of the attacks makes very little sense. Supposedly there were only ten attackers, and supposedly they attacked in 13 locations more or less simultaneously. Nobody in the mainstream seems prepared to ask how something like this could have happened without inside help. Some analysts pointed out that a high degree of local knowledge must have been required for such an attack, but they went on to conclude that therefore the attackers must have been foreigners. It was difficult to imagine a more counter-intuitive conclusion; but not for long.

Nobody asked: "Who could do this?" or "Who would do this?" Instead they asked: "How did al Qaeda do this?" and "Why did al Qaeda do this?" After a while it became more or less obvious that the Mumbai attacks didn't involve hijacked airplanes crashing into buildings (like al Qaeda in North America) or suicide bombers and car bombs (like al Qaeda in the Middle East). And connecting al Qaeda to these attacks directly became a bit of a problem. So then instead of asking "Who else could have done this?", they began to ask: "How are the perpetrators of this attack connected to al Qaeda?"

Still jubilant over the alleged death of Rashid Rauf, the alleged leader of the so-called Liquid Bombers, who was (or wasn't) killed in Pakistan just four days before the Mumbai attacks began, some terror warriors sought to connect the attacks to the death of the alleged terrorist mastermind and provide a motive at the same time. Thus we were privileged to read that the attacks may have been carried out in revenge for the killing of Rashid Rauf.

Perhaps we could forget -- if only for a moment -- that more than 400 people were killed or wounded in Mumbai, and not one of them had ever harmed Rashid Rauf. Perhaps we could imagine a bizarre terrorist mind in which somehow ordinary Indian citizens were held responsible for American drones dropping Hellfire missiles on alleged terrorists in Pakistan.

But we couldn't bring ourselves to believe that these brazen, coordinated attacks were carried out in revenge for something that had happened only four days earlier. So the terror warriors needed another, slightly plausible, al Qaeda connection.

It didn't take them long to find one. And now British terror warriors are going to India to investigate the possibility that Rashid Rauf may have planned the Mumbai attacks.

As Ben Goldby reported for the Birmingham Mercury News:
Sources have now revealed that [Rashid Rauf] was planning a major attack at the time of his death, and that the Mumbai murders show all the hallmarks of one of Rauf’s "terror spectacular" plots.
Except, of course, for Rashid Rauf's trademark hallmark -- the mission has to be impossible!
The Indian Mujahidin, which carried out a blast in Delhi in September and warned that they would strike next in Mumbai, is understood to have been behind this week’s terror outrage.
Not exactly. But the media are on that theme, and it works well for them, as we will see.
The group is made up of several different militant organisations, the most dangerous of which are the Pakistani-based Kashmiri "freedom" movements Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM).

Rauf was known to have strong links to both organisations.

He married a relative of JEM’s founder and worked with LET to train British jihadis who travelled to Pakistan. London 7/7 bombers Shehzad Tanweer and Mohammed Siddique Khan both studied at an LET madrassa near Lahore in 2004.
Here again, Goldby gets ahead of the facts. There has never been any public proof that the alleged London 7/7 bombers were anything but patsies. There has never been any public proof of any aspect of the London 7/7 story. But the alleged 7/7 bombers aren't even called "alleged" anymore; they're just "the 7/7 bombers". Of course, being dead, they can't do much about it.
Last night, a terror expert told the Sunday Mercury: "It is understood that this attack in Mumbai is the work of the Indian Mujahidin, based on plans and support from Kashmiri groups based in Pakistan.

"The planning seems to have been done by an Islamist militant group called Lashkar-e-Toiba and they have close links to other Kashmiri fighters including Jaish-e-Mohammed.

"In Rashid Rauf we have a man who dreamed up an alleged plot to blow up 10 transatlantic planes. We know he plotted spectacular attacks and we know that we was planning a terror operation when he was killed.

"This attack in Mumbai, with the synchronised terror strikes in multiple locations, is certainly consistent with his approach to militant tactics."
It's not consistent with anything we know about the so-called Liquid Bomb plot, but our anonymous sources aren't letting facts get in the way of a good story -- except in one important respect.

The source says Rashid Rauf dreamed up "an alleged plot", and the reason for this particular qualifier is clear -- because the alleged plotters have already been tried and the jury refused to convict them. The jury didn't believe that the alleged plotters were plotting to blow up 10 transatlantic planes. The jury didn't believe they were plotting to blow up even one transatlantic plane. In other words, the jury believed the allegations were false. But those allegations are still treated as if they were untested. How utterly unremarkable!

But it would be remarkable if Rashid Rauf had planned the assault on Mumbai. For the terror warriors, it would be remarkably fortunate, because then they could claim to have scored a major victory in the war on terror, and they could more confidently ignore their critics, who say that dropping Hellfire on anybody -- especially somebody who has never been convicted of a crime -- is more like terrorism than justice.

But it would be even more remarkable in another sense. Last week at this time we were reading about how Rashid Rauf was killed along with a couple of the other top-level al Qaeda masterminds, who drew attention to the mud bungalow in which they were meeting, by using a mobile phone.

So now we're supposed to forget that, too, and we're supposed to believe that a tightly coordinated commando raid, an assault on 13 targets in a foreign country, was planned by a mastermind who couldn't even use a cell phone without being monitored -- and murdered.

~~~

to be continued ...

[bigron]

Friday, December 05, 2008
19:19 Mecca time, 16:19 GMT   
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2008/12/200812515535698747.html

 
Bomb rips through Peshawar market
 

Rescuers worked in the dark after the bomb brought down the power cables

 
At least 20 people have been killed and dozens more injured by a bomb placed near a Shia mosque in Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province.

It was the second bomb attack in a Shia area in the northwest of the country on Friday.

Al Jazeera's correspondent Kamal Hyder said the Peshawar attack was in a shopping area crowded with people buying for the Eid holiday.

"The explosion was so powerful that it blew off power lines and plunged the entire area into darkness," he said.

He said the death toll was expected to rise as many of the injured were in a critical condition.

Doctor Sahib Gul at the city's main hospital put the number of injured at 35.

The blast left a deep crater and a brought down a nearby building.

Police said the bomb was placed in a car parked outside a Shia mosque located in the city's main Qisakhawani bazaar, but it was not clear if the mosque was the target.




Second explosion

Earlier on Friday, at least six people were killed and several others wounded in a bomb blast in the town of Kalaya in the tribal area of Orakzai.

The explosion was also in a market, with reports conflicting as to whether the blast was a suicide attack or not.

The Reuters news agency cited an unidentified intelligence official as saying that the blast was a suicide attack by a man targeting a local tribal council.

"The bomber tried to drive into a market in a Shia neighbourhood where the meeting was taking place but blew up his car when police tried to stop him at a checkpoint," the official said.

But the AFP news agency quoted an official saying the bomb was placed in a parked car and seemed to be detonated remotely.

Increasing violence

Pakistan's army and paramilitary forces do not have a presence in Orakzai, where security is managed by tribal police.

Sectarian violence has increased in northwest Pakistan over the past year.

Security analysts say al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters have stirred up sectarian divisions between Sunni and Shia Muslims as they expand their influence through the northwest.

Orakzai has been relatively peaceful over the past year compared with other tribal regions but in October, more than 50 people were killed in a suicide attack at a tribal council called to draw up a strategy to evict fighters from the area.

Shias account for about 20 per cent of Pakistan's population.
 
 Source: Agencies 
 
 
 
 
 

[Optimus]

Suspected US missile strike kills 3 in Pakistan
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iY68JOyNIHbng1p0gU3svyBH9g3gD94SMGO03
By BASHIRULLAH KHAN – 42 minutes ago

MIRAN SHAH, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistani intelligence officials say a suspected U.S. missile strike has killed three people in a militant stronghold near the Afghan border.

Three officials told The Associated Press that one missile hit a house in the North Waziristan region after dark on Friday and that another landed in a nearby field.

The identity of the victims was not immediately clear. A local resident said militants quickly cordoned off the scene.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak on the record to media.

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

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — A car bomb devastated a busy street in northwest Pakistan on Friday, killing at least 20 people, injuring scores more and unnerving a region already dangerously on edge after the attacks on India's commercial capital last week.

Escalating violence is destabilizing Pakistan's northwest just as the country faces accusations from archrival India that the gunmen behind the carnage in Mumbai were trained in Pakistan and steered by militants based there.

Neither the motive nor the culprits behind the Friday evening blast in Peshawar were clear. But provincial government chief Haider Khan Hoti said "external forces" could be to blame — a comment understood in Pakistan to mean India.

The bomb went off near Peshawar's famed Storytellers Bazaar early Friday evening, wrecking a Shiite Muslim mosque and a hotel and setting a string of vehicles and shops ablaze.

Mohammed Bilal, a 28-year-old goldsmith being treated at a city hospital for a gash on his face, said he saw a white van explode in the street as he was walking home.

"Something struck me in face, and I fell down. There was fire and smoke and the cries of the injured people," Bilal told an Associated Press reporter.

Television footage showed survivors frantically carrying bloodied victims through the rubble to private cars and ambulances as fire crews sought to douse the flames.

Khizer Hayat, a senior doctor at the city's main hospital, said 20 bodies as well as over 60 wounded people were brought there.

Police chief Malik Naveed Khan said the bomb seemed to contain chemicals designed to spread fire.

While police were guarding government and religious buildings, "it is not possible to prevent this kind of terrorism unless you have extremely credible information," he said.

Pakistani forces have stepped up operations against Taliban and al-Qaida strongholds in the northwest from where militants have been mounting attacks in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Insurgents have responded with a campaign of gun and bomb attacks that have raised concern that they could cut a key supply line for NATO and U.S. troops through the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan.

There has also been a rash of kidnappings and attacks on foreigners in the northwest, including the Nov. 12 shooting death of a U.S. aid worker in Peshawar.

Earlier Friday, a suicide car bomber killed six people at a checkpoint in the Orakzai tribal region, just south of Peshawar, after police and local tribesmen waved for him to stop.

In the nearby town of Bannu, police said militants armed with guns and rockets killed two officers manning another checkpoint.

Militants recently vowed to step up attacks on Pakistani forces in retaliation for cross-border U.S. missile strikes into the region, which is considered a likely hiding place for al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden.

The region is also bedeviled by sectarian tensions between extremists from the majority Sunni Muslim community and minority Shiites, and mosques have been repeatedly targeted in what officials say are tit-for-tat attacks.

The United States is seeking to calm tension between Pakistan and India, nuclear-armed neighbors who have fought three wars, in part to ensure that Islamabad remains focused on fighting militants in the northwest.

But Hoti, the provincial leader and a member of the party in the federal coalition government, pointed to "elements" in the lawless tribal belt who "act at the behest of external forces" when asked who carried out the attack in Peshawar.

"In today's tragic incident, the possibility of external involvement is very much there," he said.

[Biggs]

Militants torch Afghan supplies

CLICK LINK FOR VIDEO
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7769758.stm

Trucks and Humvees destroyed in the attack


More than 90 lorries supplying Western forces in Afghanistan have been set on fire in a suspected militant attack in north-west Pakistan, police say.

Police said at least one person was killed as more than 250 gunmen using rockets overpowered the guards at a terminal near the city of Peshawar.

Some of the lorries were laden with Humvee armoured vehicles.

There have been a series of attacks on convoys recently - although not on this scale, says the BBC's Martin Patience.

The road from Peshawar to Afghanistan is a major supply route for US and Western forces battling against the Taleban.

A US spokesman, Lt Col Rumi Nielsen-Green, said the incident was "militarily insignificant".

"So far there hasn't been a significant loss or impact to our mission," she said.

But, with 300 lorries crossing the border each day, military officials will be deeply concerned that their supply line can be disrupted in this manner, our correspondent in the Afghan capital, Kabul, says.

Overpowered guards

The attack occurred around 0230 on Sunday (2130 GMT, Saturday) as militants stormed the Port World Logistics terminal.
 


"There were dozens of them. They started firing, they used rockets, causing a lot of damage," the manager of the depot, Kifyatullah Khan, told the Associated Press news agency.

"In this incident 96 flat trucks and six containers were destroyed, including a 40-foot container. Also armoured jeeps, trucks and fire brigade vehicles."

"They were shouting Allahu Akbar (God is Great) and Down With America," a security guard told Reuters news agency.

"They broke into the terminals after snatching guns from us," Mohammad Rafiullah said.

Another report said 106 lorries had been set on fire - 62 laden with Humvees.

War closer

Security along the road leading to the border has deteriorated this year with soldiers recently carrying out an offensive in the Khyber region to drive militants away from the outskirts of Peshawar, the main city in the north-west.

Hauliers say that over 350 trucks carry an average of 7,000 tonnes of goods over the Khyber Pass to Kabul every day.

Almost 75% of all supplies for Nato forces in Afghanistan come through Pakistan, the majority through Peshawar.

Last month, militants looted 12 lorries carrying Humvees and food aid as they travelled through the Khyber Pass.

The Taleban filmed themselves triumphantly driving off with their booty of Nato vehicles.

The alliance's supplies heading for the border were suspended for a week while security was stepped up.
 
Militants posed for photos alongside the stolen Humvee armoured cars


Lorry drivers are also under increasing threat by the militants.

Haji Haghaley showed his bullet-riddlled vehicle to the BBC's Damian Grammaticas last month, days after it had come under Taleban fire.

Haji Haghaley said he had driven as fast as he could.

Another driver told the BBC what had happened to his cousin recently.

"He was carrying US army trucks, and the Taleban stopped him," the man said. "The Taleban burnt his truck. They took my cousin. They demanded 10 lakh rupees in ransom ($11,500), but then lowered it to 35,000 rupees ($400)."

Our correspondent says Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province, was also under militant threat.

The war is pushing the Taleban deeper into Pakistan, he says.

In recent weeks there have been a spate of attacks targeting foreigners there.

An American diplomat escaped an assassination attempt because her armoured car protected her, but a US aid worker was killed in a second attack.

The police have stepped up security in the city, there are new checkpoints, more armed patrols.

But Peshawar's police say they are outgunned and ill-equipped for the fight on their hands.

In the past, Western and Afghan officials have criticised the Pakistani government, saying it is not doing enough to tackle Islamic militancy in the tribal areas.

[Biggs]

30 militants killed in Mohmand Agency
'Pakistan Times' NWFP Bureau

http://pakistantimes.net/2008/12/04/top5.htm

PESHAWAR: The security forces backed by gunship helicopters Wednesday killed at least 30 militatns and injured several others in a successful air strikes at troubled Tehsil Lakaro in Mohmand Agency.

The spokesman of Frontier Corps NWFP said "In a highly successful air strikes carried out on miscreants positions in Lakaro and Ambar area of Mohmand Agency has left 30 miscreants dead." Several hideouts and bunkers of the militants were also destroyed in the offensive, he added.

And, a report from Bajaur Agency says; the security forces have taken control of strategically important Nawagai valley located some 30 kilometers north-west of agency headquarters Khar without facing resistance.

"Area up till Nawagai in restive Bajaur Agency has been secured," a security official of Frontier Corps said.

He said road from Torghundi to Nawagai is now under complete control of the paramilitary forces. The security forces have reinforced their position on the strategically important hilltops and mountains and established trenches.

The local dewellers, tribal elders garlanded the troops upon entering Nawagai and accorded warm welcome to them. The tribal people raised white flags as goodwill gesture.

The troops backed by gunship helicopters, artillery and tanks moved to Nawagai after taking control of another strategically Laisam town.

According to security officials, the troops entered the tehsil Nawagai without facing any resistance.

The official sources said that those families who had left their homes have been asked to return to their homes.

Meanwhile, a powerful bomb planted at Khar-Nawagai roadside has been defused by bomb disposal squad at Bilalabad.
   

[Biggs]

a must read article on the Mumbai attacks, looking into the wider strategic objective of the destabilisers of Pakistan -

Creating an "Arc of Crisis": The Destabilization of the Middle East and Central Asia
The Mumbai Attacks and the “Strategy of Tension”
http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=73828.0

[bigron]

Target Pakistan?

Mujeeb Khan Quetta, Frontier Post, Pakistan

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m49409&hd=&size=1&l=e

December 7, 2008

The battle for Afghanistan and Iraq may be heading for stalemate and a quagmire. The Americans are now targeting Pakistan on almost a daily basis as unmanned drones crisscross into Pakistani territory and strike targets deep inside sovereign Pakistani airspace. While the Government in Islamabad keeps mum amidst allegations that they have allowed the Americans to strike inside Pakistan but do not have the courage to tell their people for fear of a certain political death.

For over seven years American and NATO forces are on the brink of a major military defeat and have squandered hundreds of billions of dollars worth of bombs and missiles on Afghanistan, needless to say many of which have wreaked havoc amongst poor ordinary Afghan citizens across the length and breadth of that nation. A strong re-emergent Taliban in Afghanistan under the leadership of Mullah Omar has now a grip on vast stretches of the territory and have denied the Afghan Government its writ.

Faced with a dangerous situation the Americans are now intensifying their attacks inside Pakistan which tantamount to a declaration of war and which is also prompting the threat of reprisals. A fact that is already evident from the increase in attacks on supply convoys that pass through Pakistan to keep the American led campaign in the so-called war on terror.

With all that in mind one has to question why India is now beatings its drums of war after what was clearly a massive Indian Maritime and security failure to prevent a bunch of young men armed with AK 47 Assault rifles. New Delhi blamed Pakistan. The initial knee jerk response from the Indian media about Pakistani involvement has polluted the air and obscured the truth. Many here are convinced that the group has an internal Indian dimension to it and may even be staged by the Hindu right wing BJP party which has been spitting venom against the Muslims and is directly involved in the massacre of thousands of Muslims in Gujarat State, besides covering up the role of extremist Hindu groups who have now been able to penetrate the Indian intelligence and military setup.

Islamic fundamentalism may be one thing but extremist Indian groups like the RSS, Shive Sena and the larger BJP is for all to see and gauge. So what are we to make of it and why is India now bent upon demanding the handover of 20 people that India alleges are involved in destabilizing that country. A list that goes back to 1981 and includes even Sikh freedom fighters who were at the time struggling for the independence of their homeland Khalistan. But India is not the main worry. For the people of Pakistan it appears the worst may be yet to come and there are apprehensions even in concerned quarters that Americans and even the Israelis are shaping un alliance or what is now called a nexus to target Pakistan.





 

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Militants torch 50 more Afghan-bound trucks

Story Highlights :

Second time in two days supply vehicles attacked in Peshawar

Depot located just outside Pakistani city, close to Afghan border

Terminal in city used to move supplies to landlocked Afghanistan

Militants destroyed 145 vehicles, trailers and containers the day before



(CNN) -- Militants in northwest Pakistan have torched 50 trucks in the latest of a series of attacks on U.S. supply lines into Afghanistan.

Monday's attack was the second time in two days U.S-allied vehicles had been attacked in Peshawar, near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The city is a key staging post for deliveries by the United States and its allies of food, fuel and supplies to military forces in Afghanistan.

The trucks in both attacks belonged to contractors hired to deliver supplies.

Muhammad Iftikhar, deputy superintendent of Peshawar police, told CNN that Monday's attack targeted a truck terminal on the same road where militants destroyed scores of containers, trailers and vehicles on Sunday. The supplies were destined for the Afghan National Army, a spokesman for NATO in Kabul said.

The spokesman called the attack "regrettable" but said they would not affect NATO's ability to carry out operations in Afghanistan. He declined to comment on the contents of the vehicles that were destroyed.

There were no injuries or arrests reported in Monday's attack.

MIlitants destroyed 145 vehicles, trailers and containers in the attack on Sunday, including two armored personnel carriers and a fire truck, Fazal Muhammad of Peshawar police told CNN.

A security guard was killed and two other people were wounded in that incident, which was carried out with mortars and grenades.

The supplies were bound for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, a U.S. military spokesman and a NATO spokesman both said.

Peshawar Senior Police Superintendent Kashif Alam said some of the dozens of attackers were captured in the attack at the Faisalal terminal, just outside of the city.

Militants attacked another Peshawar terminal a week earlier, destroying several trucks.

Companies hired by NATO to drive fuel, food and other supplies to troops fighting the Taliban use the terminal to park containers waiting for convoys across the border into Afghanistan.

Trucks moving from Pakistan to Afghanistan have been attacked in recent months, including one incident in which dozens of trucks with fuel for NATO forces were burned while parked in the Khyber agency of tribal region last March.

The Pakistan government has long exerted little control in the area, but it launched an intense military offensive in late July to flush out militants.

As retaliation for the military presence, the Taliban has carried out a series of deadly bombings -- and said the attacks will continue until the troops pull out. Convoys carrying food and military supplies to U.S. troops in Afghanistan have regularly come under attack.

CNN's Reza Sayah and Samson Desta contributed to this report.

All AboutPakistan • Terrorism • Afghanistan
 

 
 
 
Links referenced within this article

Afghanistan
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/Afghanistan
Pakistan
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/Pakistan
Pakistan
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/Pakistan
Terrorism
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/Terrorism
Afghanistan
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/Afghanistan

 

 
Find this article at:
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/12/08/pakistan.violence.nato/index.html 

[Biggs]

an excellent article on CIA/ISI destabilisation tactics written pre-Mumbai

Polictical destabilisation in South and Central Asia - the role of the CIA/ISI Terror Network
by Andrew G Marshall
http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=73828.msg406367#msg406367

[Biggs]

Militants strike as Pakistan cracks down
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JL09Df01.html

KARACHI - Pakistan is taking action against the banned militant group Laskhar-e-Taiba (LET), which has been linked to the attacks in Mumbai in India last month in which nearly 200 people died.

Several people against whom evidence has been provided by the Indian authorities to Washington have been apprehended. The security forces on Sunday also arrested several militants in Muzzafarabad, the capital of Pakistani-administered Kashmir, where the militant group has traditionally been active.

However, the Jamaatut Dawa, which was formed separate from

 

the LET's military activities when the LET was banned in 2002, will continue to operate as a political and welfare group. Pakistan cannot afford to take direct action against Jamaatut Dawa, an organization which is loyal to the state of Pakistan.

The crackdown on the LET is the result of pressure from Washington following the Mumbai attacks that Islamabad abandon its support for militancy.

However, this does not mean the end of militancy - the move will simply pass the LET-Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) nexus to the al-Qaeda network in South Asia.

Asia Times Online has learned that the public faces of the Jamaatut Dawa, such as its chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, will be spared. But people such as Zakiur Rahman, the commander-in-chief of the LET, are marked men for interrogation by a joint US Federal Bureau of Investigation-ISI team for their alleged role in the Mumbai attack.

A senior member of the LET confirmed to Asia Times Online that there had been a raid on one of the Jamaatut Dawa's offices, and warned that if Zakiur Rahman was grilled, it would be tantamount to civil war in Pakistan.

"So far the province of Punjab [the largest Pakistani province] has been spared from all sorts of violence, but if such action is carried out, Punjab will also burn in violence," he said.

The latest move might go some way to appeasing the US, but militancy cannot be easily stamped out - it has a habit of re-inventing itself.

In 2004, Pakistan shut down all militant training camps under immense US pressure and grilled several jihadi leaders. As a result, the LET broke and several hundred militants, trained by the ISI's India cell, joined hands with al-Qaeda in the North Waziristan and South Waziristan tribal areas of Pakistan. The Harkat-e-Jihad-i-Islami was merged into al-Qaeda structures as well. The latest action against the LET, once again taken under American pressure, will simply shift the LET fighters in al-Qaeda's structures in South Asia.

This transition is happening at a time when Pakistan is weakening with the passing of every day. Al-Qaeda and the neo-Taliban - Pakistani militants who have accepted al-Qaeda's ideology - are waiting for the elimination of all political boundaries so they can operate at will.

So far, they have succeeded in doing so in large parts of the tribal areas, and now increasingly they are causing chaos in North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), where the state's control is limited to a few government offices and military camps.

There could also be fallout in India, where al-Qaeda could fill the vacuum left by the crackdown on the LET, even in Kashmir where, to date, indigenous Kashmiri groups have fought against India, keeping al-Qaeda at a distance.

Nevertheless, the Mumbai attack was the result of a LET-ISI nexus on the one side and al-Qaeda-linked groups in India on the other side in planning the operation. Al-Qaeda has enough resources to operate in India, even if it does not get help from the Pakistani side. The Bangladesh connection is still vibrant and al-Qaeda receives money, arms and human resources.

In the short term, India could be a more interesting place for al-Qaeda than Pakistan, due to the involvement of Israel. Israel is actively training Indian intelligence and Indian commandos after their poor performance during the Mumbai attack.

In addition, the US establishment hopes for victory for the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in upcoming elections as the US badly needs Indian assistance to win the war in South Asia. Unlike the ruling Congress-led government, a BJP government would not hesitate to provide all necessary support to US designs in the region.

Due to the current high security alert, stand-alone al-Qaeda-linked organizations in India (after the LET and the ISI are cut off from the scene), will not be able to carry out immediate strikes, but it is just a question of time.

Going for the jugular
On Sunday night, militants carried out a devastating attack on North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) supplies on their way to Afghanistan. The attack in the provincial capital of Peshawar destroyed 50 containers.

Earlier in the day, they destroyed about 200 containers in another terminal in the city, the biggest attack yet on NATO supplies. Between 200 and 300 armed men were involved in the incident. A similar attack last week also destroyed a number of containers.

For the first time since the Taliban started attacking NATO supplies this year, there are visible signs of some success in effectively depriving NATO of vital reinforcements.

Over 70% to 80% of NATO's supplies pass through NWFP on the way to Kabul in Afghanistan, with the remainder going through Pakistan's Balochistan province to Kanadahar across the border. A very small proportion of supplies goes by air to the land-locked country.

Dr Farrukh Saleem, the executive director of the Center for Research and Security Studies in Pakistan and a renowned strategic writer, told Asia Times Online, "The Soviets' defeat in the Afghan war [in the 1908s] was primarily due to the cutting off of its supply lines. The mujahideen focussed on choking the supply routes from Central Asia into northern Afghanistan. At present, there is one US combat US brigade in Afghanistan [about 5,000 men]. This December, another combat brigade will arrive, while two more combat brigades will arrive next year. Therefore, more supplies will be needed. If, at this juncture, the militants cut off the supply lines, it will be devastating for NATO forces in Afghanistan."

Iran has already refused to allow NATO supplies through its territory, and while there is a pact for non-military NATO supplies to pass through Russia, this route is very expensive and cannot be relied on for regular supplies.

A NATO spokesperson said on Sunday that that morning's attack would have little impact on NATO's battle against the Taliban-led insurgency. All the same, if the rate of attacks continues, it is inevitable there will be shortages.

In July, when NATO-Taliban battles were at a pitch, sporadic Taliban attacks on NATO's supply lines reduced NATO's storage capacity of food and other items from one month to just a week at important bases such as Ghazni and Helmand.

There are estimates within militant camps that if they succeed in severing NATO supplies from Pakistan this year, NATO will have to leave Afghanistan in 2009.

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

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Beyond boots and bombs 

10/12/2008 11:30:00 PM GMT
http://aljazeera.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=191395
 
 Obama should break from the Bush legacy of treating Pakistan as hired help rather than valued ally. Pakistan has paid a heavy price for being America’s frontline ally.


By Dr. Maleeha Lodhi


(AFP) Pakistani paramilitary troops undertake a search operation in Karachi on December 2


Cambridge, Massachusetts - The terrorist attacks in Mumbai have dramatised how the urgent will often take precedence over the important for the incoming Barack Obama administration.

The attacks have plunged relations between Pakistan and India into unpredictable territory just when a series of policy reviews in Washington are focussed on overhauling strategy in Afghanistan.

With Afghanistan in a “downward spiral” Washington is groping for a new strategy. It would do well to recall Lewis Carroll’s famous line in Alice in Wonderland: “When you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.”

The Obama administration will need to define both where it needs to go and the way out of the quagmire in Afghanistan.

Washington recognises that no country is more pivotal than Pakistan to its goals of defeating terrorism and stabilising Afghanistan. But this relationship is today held together only at the leadership level with the wider establishments and publics in both nations viewing the other with suspicion, even hostility.

The trust deficit must be addressed as this will determine the quality of cooperation that Washington and Islamabad can mobilise to avert the chaos that now threatens to engulf the region.

President-elect Obama should break from the Bush legacy of treating Pakistan as hired help rather than valued ally. Pakistan has paid a heavy price for being America’s frontline ally. Thousands of people, including 2,000 military personnel, have been killed in terrorist attacks since 2001. Economic losses are estimated at $34 billion.

(Watch video: Rice “satisfied” with Pakistan's anti-terror stance)

Three decades of strife in Afghanistan have taken a heavy toll on Pakistan. George W. Bush’s flawed Afghan strategy compounded by the fatal distraction of Iraq, widened the conflagration and pushed the war into Pakistan.

Obama has pledged a troop surge in Afghanistan. But without a fundamental change in strategy, this may increase the sense of occupation and mire the United States in a war without end. Moscow deployed more than 150,000 troops at the height of its occupation of Afghanistan and failed to avoid defeat.

A more realistic approach must start with redefining U.S. goals, and distinguish between what is vital and attainable (disruption of terrorist networks) and what is desirable but best left for Afghans to undertake (transforming society).

So far Washington has lacked clarity about objectives and sought to eliminate terrorists, defeat the Taliban, transform society and promote democracy.

This has fused Pashtun nationalism with radicalism, and fuelled the growing insurgency.

Over-reliance on military force led to high civilian casualties and become a potent factor behind support for the Taliban.

A new strategy must seek to de-couple Al Qaeda and the Taliban, engage the Taliban in a reconciliation process and hold out the offer for an eventual withdrawal of foreign forces in return for a cessation of attacks and support for the creation of a viable Afghan army. Bombing campaigns should be replaced by political accommodation and economic development.

A new Afghan grand assembly (or Loya Jirga) should be called to endorse this process. Washington should also help orchestrate a regional consensus to back this plan that should include Iran and Russia.

Washington should cease unilateral missile strikes into Pakistan’s territory. These attacks have inflamed public opinion, undercut Pakistan’s own counter-insurgency efforts and risk shattering ties with Islamabad.

Instead the United States should strengthen Pakistan’s own capacity to fight militancy.

A new U.S. approach should also recognise that Pakistan’s stability depends not just on containing militancy but also on strengthening the economy and on addressing its long adversarial relationship with India.

Economic help to Pakistan should be construed more in trade than in aid terms. The Obama administration should make a preferential trade deal for Pakistani textiles — the lifeblood of its economy — the centrepiece of economic assistance. Trade creates jobs and durable income that are more effective anti-terrorism tools than bombs and bullets.

Obama has already acknowledged the need to resolve the long-running Kashmir dispute to enable Pakistan to switch focus from India to counter-insurgency. Washington should launch a diplomatic initiative aimed at reaching an accommodation between Pakistan and India.

This may seem a daunting menu, but continuing with present policy promises to sink the region in a whirlpool of chaos.

-- Dr. Maleeha Lodhi is a Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School and a former Pakistani ambassador to the United Kingdom and the United States. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service and can be accessed at GCNews. It originally appeared in The Daily Times.





-- Middle East Online

 

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The US, Pakistan and the “terrorist” Hamid Gul

By Peter Symonds
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/dec2008/pers-d10.shtml

December 11, 2008 -- "WSWS" --- In the wake of the Mumbai terrorist attacks, the name of retired Lieutenant General Hamid Gul, former head of Pakistani military intelligence—the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI)—has appeared prominently in the international press. Various newspapers have reported that the Bush administration is seeking to have Gul, together with at least three other Pakistani citizens, blacklisted at the UN for their alleged support for various terrorist groups, including Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is accused of orchestrating the Mumbai atrocity.

While the US State Department is yet to confirm the step, the Pakistan-based News leaked details last weekend of a US charge sheet sent to the Pakistani government. Among other accusations, it alleged that Gul had "maintained extensive contacts over the years with Taliban and Al Qaeda," had in 2005 provided "overarching guidance" to the Taliban on "operational activities in Afghanistan," and had helped in recruiting and training anti-US insurgents.

While making no secret of his hostility to the US, Gul flatly rejected allegations that he supported terrorism as "fictitious". Speaking to the press on Monday, he declared that he would call on the UN to set up an international commission in Pakistan at which he would "present myself for inquisition". Referring to Washington's accusations, he declared: "I was quite a darling of theirs at one time. I don't know what this is about. It looks like they have a habit of betraying their friends."

Gul's comment highlights an inconvenient fact barely referred to in the commentary about the Mumbai attacks in particular and the "war on terrorism" in general. The nexus between the Pakistani establishment, the army and the ISI, and various Islamist organisations was forged in the CIA-backed jihad in the 1980s against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. It was not only Gul who was Washington's "darling" but the ISI as a whole as well as the Afghan "freedom fighters" that now form the backbone of the Taliban, Al Qaeda and various Islamist terrorist organisations around the world.

Throughout the Cold War, the US regarded Pakistan as a key "frontline" anti-Soviet state. The prominence of the military in Pakistani society is in no small part due to US support for a succession of juntas in Islamabad as a bulwark against the Soviet Union and its ally in South Asia, India. Washington supported the seizure of power by General Zia ul-Haq in 1977 and turned a blind eye to his execution of ousted Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1979, his transformation of Pakistan into an Islamic state and his repression of any domestic opposition.

General Zia was a crucial partner in American efforts to destabilise the Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan. In what marked a key turning point in the Cold War, the US, first under President Carter then President Reagan, jettisoned the previous policy of détente and actively sought to destabilise the Soviet Union by transforming Afghanistan into "Moscow's Vietnam". In its largest ever "covert" operation, the CIA worked hand-in-hand with the ISI and Saudi intelligence in recruiting, funding, arming and training a huge network of Afghan mujahedin backed by tens of thousands of Islamist fanatics from across the globe.

The consequences for both Afghanistan and Pakistan were devastating. With US backing, Zia actively promoted religious backwardness and right-wing Islamic parties as a battering ram against the working class, attacked the rights of women and inflamed sectarian divisions. The ISI-coordinated guerrilla war was funded in part by drug-running on a vast scale, which led to the development of a drugs and gun culture that continues to corrode Pakistani society today.

Gul was the quintessential product of this reactionary policy. Zia appointed him as ISI head in 1987 at the height of the war in Afghanistan. Following Zia's assassination in 1988, he continued in that post after Bhutto's daughter Benazir took over as prime minister. The withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan allowed the ISI to capitalise on a wave of anger and disaffection in 1989 in Indian-controlled Kashmir and forge links with the emerging Kashmiri insurgency. Gul was transferred from his ISI post in 1989 after he promoted the formation of a right-wing Islamist coalition in opposition to Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP).

Washington continued to rely on Pakistan as its key ally on the Indian subcontinent well into the 1990s. As Afghanistan descended into a chaos of conflicting militias following the Soviet withdrawal, the US tacitly supported the formation of the Taliban movement by Pakistan and the ISI in 1993. American oil interests were seeking a stable Afghanistan as a route for planned oil and gas pipelines out of Central Asia. It was only in the late 1990s in response to Al Qaeda attacks on US targets that Washington turned sharply against its former allies—attacking alleged Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan in 1998.

Subsequent US demands that Pakistan take action to pull the Taliban regime into line were bound up with a broader strategic shift toward India that was rapidly emerging as an important economic power. In 1999, President Clinton pressured Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to order the military to end its support for armed Kashmiri separatists who had seized the Kargil heights in Indian-controlled Kashmir. Sharif's backdown produced seething resentment inside the Pakistani army, leading to the seizure of power by General Pervez Musharraf just months later.

Having helped transform the Pakistani military into a bastion of Islamist reaction, the US demanded an abrupt about-face in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. As Musharraf later explained in his autobiography, the Bush administration made an offer that Pakistan could not refuse. US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage bluntly told Musharraf that the country would be bombed back to "the Stone Age" if he did not immediately end all support for the Taliban regime and assist the US invasion of Afghanistan.

The US invasion of Afghanistan has only compounded the crisis in that country and neighbouring Pakistan. The anger fuelled by seven years of US occupation is providing a steady stream of recruits to various Islamist militias operating inside Afghanistan and the neighbouring border areas of Pakistan. It is hardly surprising that a section of the Pakistani military and ISI remains resentful toward Washington and supportive of the Taliban as well as the Kashmiri militants. Gul, now retired, speaks for this layer.

The transformation of Gul from Washington's "darling" into candidate for the UN terrorist list is the product of shifting US policies. By making an example of him, the White House is seeking to discipline the Pakistani establishment as a whole as it recklessly pursues US economic and strategic interests throughout the region.

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More NATO Supplies Destroyed as Peshawar Attacks Continue
Pakistan Deploys Frontier Corps to Protect Supply Terminal

Posted December 12, 2008
 
http://news.antiwar.com/2008/12/12/more-nato-supplies-destroyed-as-peshawar-attacks-continue/

Militants in the Pakistani city of Peshawar continued tonight what has been already a week-long string of attacks on supply depots holding NATO trucks and containers throwing the reliability of NATO’s chief source of supplies to the military effort in Afghanistan into serious doubt.

In the latest attack, militants launched a rocket at Bilal Terminal in Peshawar at 3 AM local time Saturday morning, lobbing petrol bombs and destroying ten NATO supply trucks and 15 containers. The series of attacks, which began last weekend, has destroyed hundreds of supply trucks scheduled to cross the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan.

After another attack last night, which destroyed 25 trucks, Pakistan announced that they would deploy their paramilitary organization, the Frontier Corps (FC) to guard the terminals from attack. It was not immediately apparent whether or not FC forces were present at Bilal Terminal during the latest attack.

The Khyber Pass route is the source of roughly three-quarters of the supplies for international fores in Afghanistan. Though the US has insisted the Peshawar attacks are militarily insignificant, they have been seen increasingly relying on airdrops to circumvent dangerous overland routes. NATO is also reportedly close to a deal for a rail route through Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, raising the possibility that they may soon begin to rely on the less convenient, but considerably safer Northern Corridor route.

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Officials: Suspected U.S. strike kills 2 in Pakistan
By NAHAL TOOSI
Associated Press
Dec. 16, 2008, 12:18AM

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/6166622.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A suspected U.S. missile strike killed two people in Pakistan near the Afghan border, officials and a witness said today, as two prominent U.S. senators visited Islamabad amid flaring tensions over the Mumbai attacks in India.

The Monday night strike in Tabi Tolkhel village in the North Waziristan tribal region appeared to be the latest in a surge of alleged U.S. missile attacks on militant targets in Pakistan's northwest, a border region long bedeviled by al-Qaida and Taliban extremists.

It also was the latest example of how militancy and the fight against it is engulfing this nuclear-armed Muslim nation from all sides.

India blames a Pakistan-based militant group for the attacks in Mumbai that killed more 160 people, and the U.S. has joined in the international chorus demanding that Pakistan crack down on violent extremists in its territory. The missile strikes have long indicated U.S. impatience with Pakistani efforts.

U.S. Sen. John Kerry, the next Foreign Relations Committee chairman, was in Pakistan on Tuesday, the latest in a string of U.S. officials to visit India and Pakistan since the attacks in India's commercial capital last month.

Like Kerry, Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond also arrived in Islamabad on Monday for meetings with top Pakistanis, U.S. Embassy spokesman Lou Fintor said. He declined to give more details.

More than 30 alleged U.S. missile strikes have been reported since August in Pakistan's northwest. The latest suspected U.S. strike set a house on fire, said Ajab Khan, a village resident who went to the scene.

He said he saw two bodies brought out, and that three wounded people were taken away in a vehicle. Suspected Taliban militants surrounded the house afterward, Khan said — a common occurrence after such strikes.

Three local intelligence officials confirmed the account, citing informants. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media.

Pakistan routinely protests the strikes as violations of its sovereignty, saying they inflame anti-American sentiment. U.S. officials rarely acknowledge or comment on the individual missile strikes, many of which are said to originate from CIA-run unmanned drones.

However, American leaders have previously said the strikes have helped kill some important militant leaders who use Pakistani territory as safe havens from which to plot attacks on U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

India has blamed a Pakistan-based militant group called Lashkar-e-Taiba for last month's attacks in Mumbai. The U.S. has said Lashkar-e-Taiba, which has long been active in the Pakistani-Indian dispute over the Himalayan region of Kashmir, has forged links with al-Qaida.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said Monday that Pakistan will not let British investigators question suspects it detains in connection with the Mumbai attacks, turning down a request from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Gilani said in parliament that he also told Brown that "if there were any proofs, these persons will be prosecuted under the law of Pakistan," Gilani's office said.

Pakistan has pledged full cooperation with the investigation, arrested at least two key suspects and clamped down on an Islamic charity the U.N. branded a front for terrorism.

Brown said cooperation among investigators was vital to defeat transnational terrorism and said three-quarters of the most serious terrorist plots investigated in Britain had links to al-Qaida in Pakistan.

Brown also has asked India to let British police question the only gunman captured alive during the Mumbai attacks. India has made no public response.

———
Associated Press writer Zarar Khan contributed to this report from Islamabad.

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December 17, 2008

The Fallout From Mumbai

Pushing Pakistan Over the Edge

By PETER LEE
http://www.counterpunch.org/lee12172008.html



The "Made in Pakistan" label is by now pretty firmly affixed to the Mumbai outrage.

The most significant development in the story, however, has been the determined efforts by the United States, grudgingly supported by India and enthusiastically echoed by Pakistan, to divert any attention from the possibility that state actors e.g. the notorious Inter Services Intelligence directorate or ISI and its supporters in the government and inside Pakistan's elites, were implicated in the attack.

The United States has openly stated its fear that an understandable escalation in hostilities between India and Pakistan could provide Pakistan's army the excuse to abandon the unpopular anti-Taliban adventure in the west in exchange for a more traditional and much less destabilizing eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation with the Indian military to the east.

Therefore, the line has been drawn, clearly if somewhat arbitrarily, to limit international condemnation to "non-state actors" such as Lashkar-e-Taibi (which supplied the manpower for the Mumbai attacks), while not scrutinizing potential ISI involvement in an attack which was meticulously and expensively planned inside Pakistan and did nothing to try to advance LeT's stated goals in Kashmir.

In case India and the United States thought that the pro-U.S. Zardari administration could be employed as an effective tool to remove the pro-Taliban/pro-al Qaeda rot inside Pakistan's ruling elite, they were quickly disabused of the notion.

The fallout of the Mumbai siege inside Pakistan was not a wave of sympathy. Instead, there was a series of manufactured outrages blamed on India but apparently generated inside Pakistan that allowed Pakistan to play the victim card (at least in its own eyes) while India was still reeling from the bloody attacks.

Chief among these "incidents" was the apparently groundless rumor propagated by the Pakistani media and its sources that Hamid Gul, the retired head of the ISI who plays the Darth Vader role in the U.S.-Pakistan saga, had been targeted for arrests or sanctions at the behest of the American and/or Indian governments in the aftermath of the attacks.

The story found its way into the Washington Post before being denied in its various forms by Secretary Rice and Pakistan Prime Minister Gilani.

To me, the primary motive of the Gul story and other rumors appears to be a shot across the bow of the Zardari administration, which had made precipitously conciliatory statements and offers of cooperation with India at the behest of the American government.

Apparently any attempts to treat the Mumbai attacks as a watershed moment in the Pakistani-Indian relationship and Pakistan's role as an anti-terror democracy that might a) infringe Pakistani sovereignty and b) challenge the policy and prerogatives (and deniability) of the ISI would excite powerful popular and institutional opposition within Pakistan.

When I read the stories in the Pakistani media about Gul, accounts that morphed Indian requests into unacceptable "demands", the supposedly threatening phone call to President Zardari from Indian foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee, etc. etc., I recalled the Gary Larson cartoon, "How Nature Says, 'Do Not Touch'".

To the warning rattle of a rattlesnake, the distended display of a pufferfish, the hiss of an angry cat with its fur on end, and a guy on a street corner dressed in an overcoat, a horsehead swim tube, a shoe on his head, and a bazooka, add the enthusiastic and uncritical fulminations of the Pakistan media concerning affronts to national sovereignty, dignity, and security that haven't even occured.

The Zardari government played along with the anti-Indian agitation sweeping the media.

I expect it made its own calculation that it could not afford (or survive) a confrontation with its security apparatus on behalf of the Indian government and U.S. policy and, even if it did think about standing up to the ISI, the likely outcome would be a protracted and traumatic process that would, among other things, enmesh Pakistan in the web of U.N. and U.S. sanctions and blacklists reserved for terror states.

For now, at least, the scope of rhetoric and action has been carefully circumscribed to encompass Lashkar-e-Taiba and a Muslim charity. India has publicly applauded Pakistan's actions, while grumbling about President Zardari's weakness.

Before muttering about the Zardari administration's spinelessness and the inexplicable pro-terrorist sympathies of Pakistan's security apparatus, critics should remember that the U.S. security policy for Afghanistan has been a catastrophe for Pakistan, corrupting its government, foreclosing its most viable options for dealing with Pashtun unrest, exposing its citizens to terrorist attacks, and contributing to the collapse of its economy.

All this misery has been in the service of a single-track counter-insurgency strategy that hasn't worked in Afghanistan, and the U.S. government is on the brink of abandoning there -- but insists on escalating inside Pakistan.

Given this context, we should be saddened but not too surprised that there is a dearth of sympathy inside Pakistan for the United States' Global War on Terror, or for the victims of Mumbai.

Peter Lee is a business man who has spent thirty years observing, analyzing, and writing on Asian affairsLee can be reached at peterrlee-2000@yahoo.

 

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'US missile attack' kills eight in Pakistan
A suspected US missile strike on a tribal area in northwest Pakistan known as a hub of Taliban and al-Qaeda activity has killed at least eight militants.
 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/3899155/US-missile-attack-kills-eight-in-Pakistan.html

Last Updated: 8:12AM GMT 22 Dec 2008

Two missiles struck the villages of Karikot and Shin Warsak in South Waziristan on the border with Afghanistan.

It was not immediately clear if any senior Taliban or al-Qaeda operatives were killed in the strikes, which took place just minutes apart.

"Two vehicles fitted with guns were destroyed in two separate attacks that also damaged a house," an official said, adding that the eight people killed were all inside the vehicles.

The strikes caused huge fires in both villages, sending panicked residents running into the streets, he said.

A series of recent strikes against suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban hideouts in Pakistan's tribal areas bordering Afghanistan - all blamed on unmanned CIA drones - have raised tensions between Washington and Islamabad.

The strikes have continued despite a warning by Taliban militants based in tribal territory last month that any more would lead to reprisal attacks across Pakistan.

A missile attack late last month by a US jet killed Rashid Rauf, the alleged Al-Qaeda mastermind of a 2006 transatlantic airplane bombing plot, as well as an Egyptian Al-Qaeda operative, security officials have said.

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Militant violence leaves 15 dead in Pakistan (Roundup)
South Asia News

http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/southasia/news/article_1449631.php/Militant_violence_leaves_15_dead_in_Pakistan__Roundup__

Dec 21, 2008, 10:45 GMT



Islamabad - At least 15 people were killed in a rocket attack, executions carried out by suspected Taliban militants, and bombardment by warplanes in north-west Pakistan, officials and media reports said on Sunday.

Islamist insurgents fired four rockets on various locations in Bannu district of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) late Saturday.

'Two of these were aimed at city police station but they missed the target and hit a construction company office. Two of its employees were killed,' said a local police officer Zaheer Ahmad.

The other two landed close to a private hospital and in a football ground, causing no damage.

Bannu borders the troubled North Waziristan tribal district, a sanctuary of pro-Taliban militants and al-Qaeda fighters, who launch cross border attacks on NATO-led international forces as well as target Pakistani police and military targets.

The authorities in North Waziristan discovered on Sunday the bodies of two men shot dead by militants on suspicion of spying for US forces, a local security official said.

'Anyone spying for the Americans will meet the same fate,' read a note left with the dumped bodies.

Pakistani jet fighters pounded various hideouts of rebels in another Bajaur tribal district, leaving four Taliban and a civilian dead.

The shelling also injured eight people, the Urdu-language Geo news channel reported, citing official sources.

In the restive Swat district of NWFP, a former local councillor Faridoon and his son Karmullah were killed by unknown gunmen.

A local police official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the bodies of two men were dumped near their residence in Mingora, the main town in the scenic valley which was a popular tourist destination until last year when pro-Taliban cleric Maulana Fazlullah launched an armed rebellion against the security forces.

His followers have carried out dozens of executions of local politicians and those opposing their narrowly-defined form of Islam.

Four people from the same family, including a woman, died when a stray mortar shell hit a house in Swat, Geo TV reported.

[David Rothscum]

"Oh yeah by the way, the US is funding the terror group that has created a giant civil war in our country."

http://www.daily.pk/local/other-local/8718-if-indian-army-attacks-tehrik-e-taliban-will-fight-alongside-pakistan-army-baitullah-mahsud.html

Baitullah Mahsud, central head of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) backed and financed by u.s.a, Monday announced full support to the army against archrival India if it makes any aggression against the country. “Thousands of our well-armed Mujahideen are ready to fight alongside the army if any war is imposed on Pakistan,” Baitullah told this correspondent on telephone from an undisclosed location.

He said the time had come to wage a real jihad they had been waiting for. “We know very well that the visible and invisible enemies of the country have been planning to weaken this lone Islamic nuclear power. But the “mujahideen” will foil all such nefarious designs of our enemies,” said the top Mujahideen commander. Baitullah said, he wanted to assure the nation, government and army that they should not worry about Pakistan’s western borders with Afghanistan as, according to him, thousands of his armed Mujahideen had already been deployed to safeguard the strategically important frontier.

Besides thousands of armed Mujahideen, Baitullah Mahsud said, hundreds of would-be bombers were Monday given Martyrdom jackets and explosives-laden vehicles for protection of the border in case of any aggression by the Indian forces. “Our Mujahideen would be in the vanguard if fighting broke out. Our fighters will fall on the enemy like thunder,” he declared.

The Mujahideen commander maintained that many a people might say the Mujahideen had been fighting the army since long, how it would be possible for them now to fight alongside them. “Therefore, I want to make it clear that the army was acting otherwise. But now it would fight for the protection and survival of the country, which is why we will support them,” he said. Baitullah said that Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan were ready to fight under the Army command. But it would be better for the armed forces to give them a separate sector or specify special targets for us where they could fight the enemy in a fitting manner.

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Intelligence Officials: Pakistan Moving Troops Toward Indian Border

Friday, December 26, 2008

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,473068,00.html

Dec. 25: Indian Border Security Force soldiers keep vigil at the western sector of India-Pakistan international border at Ranjitpura village.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan —  Pakistan began moving thousands of troops to the Indian border Friday, intelligence officials said, sharply raising tensions triggered by the Mumbai terror attacks.

India is blaming Pakistani-based militants for last month's siege on its financial capital, which killed 164 people and has provoked an increasingly bitter war of words between nuclear-armed neighbors that have fought three wars in 60 years.

The troops headed to the Indian border were being diverted away from tribal areas near Afghanistan, officials said, and the move was expected to frustrate the United States which has been pushing Pakistan to step up its fight against al-Qaida and Taliban militants near the Afghan border.

Two intelligence officials said the army's 14th Division was being redeployed to the towns of Kasur and Sialkot, close to the Indian border. They said some 20,000 troops were on the move. Earlier Friday, a security official said that all troop leave had been canceled.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

A spokesman for India's Defense Ministry offered no immediate response.

Earlier, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met Friday with the chiefs of the army, navy and air force to discuss "the prevailing security situation," according to an official statement.

An Associated Press reporter in Dera Ismail Khan, a district that borders Pakistan's militant-infested South Waziristan tribal area, said he saw around 40 trucks loaded with soldiers heading away from the Afghan border.

A senior security official confirmed that soldiers were being moved out of the border area, but said it was "a limited number from areas where they were not engaged in any operation."

He decline further comment and asked his name not be used, citing the sensitivity of the situation.

Analysts said the redeployment was likely meant as a warning to India not to launch missile strikes against militant targets on its territory, a response that some have speculated is possible.

"It is a message to India that if you think you can get away with strikes, you are sadly mistaken," said Talat Masood, a retired general and military analyst based in Islamabad.

India has demanded Pakistan arrest the perpetrators behind the Mumbai attacks. It says they are members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a militant group widely believed created by Pakistani intelligence in the 1980s and used to fight Indian-rule in disputed Kashmir region.

Islamabad's recently elected civilian government has said it will cooperate in any probe, but has insisted it has seen no evidence backing up India's claims its citizens were involved.

Pakistan and India have fought three wars since their independence from Britain in 1947, two over Kashmir, a Muslim majority region in the Himalayas claimed by both countries.

They came close to a fourth after suspected Pakistani militants attacked India's parliament in 2001. Both countries massed hundreds of thousands of troops to the disputed Kashmir region, but tensions cooled after intensive international diplomacy.

News of the buildup comes as even Indian officials say militant activity in Indian Kashmir has fallen to its lowest levels since an anti-India militant movement began there in 1989.

The number of militant attacks fell 40 percent from 2007-2008, reaching 709 this year from roughly 1,100 last year, Kuldeep Khoda, a senior police official, said in a statement.

Police say there are 850 militants fighting in the region, including followers of Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Indian authorities say the decrease in attacks is the result of an experienced security apparatus that has struck at the heart of many militant groups -- Khoda said Indian forces have killed about 350 militants this year, including some top-ranking commanders. But they also say that the militants have scaled back their attacks as a large public protest movement gained momentum since last summer.

The neighbors have said they want to avoid military conflict this time around, but Pakistan has promised to respond aggressively if India uses force, an option the Indian government has not ruled out.

"We will not take any action on our own," Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani told reporters Friday. "There will be no aggression from our side."

Pakistan has deployed more than 100,000 soldiers in Waziristan and other northwestern regions to fight Islamic militants blamed for surging violence against Western troops in Afghanistan as well as suicide attacks in Pakistan.

Security officials have previously said the country would be forced to withdraw troops from the Afghan border if tensions with India -- whose army is twice as large -- escalated.

"This is a serious blow to the war on terror in the sense that the whole focus is now shifting toward the eastern border," said Masood. "It will give more leeway to the militants and increased space to operate."

The United States wants Pakistan to stay focused on the fight against militants in the border region, where Osama bin Laden and other top al-Qaida leaders are believed to be hiding.

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India threatens Pakistan with deadline for WAR            
Written by www.daily.pk   
Wednesday, 24 December 2008 01:11

http://www.daily.pk/local/other-local/8706-india-threatens-pakistan-with-deadline-for-war.html

New Delhi has told Islamabad that time is running out for Pakistan with the deadline of Dec 26th given by for a crackdown on so called terror groups which are charities for Hindu & Christians.
A leading publisher of geopolitical intelligence, Stratfor, has said that after the Nov 26th Mumbai attacks, India relayed a message to Pakistan via the US that they would be given thirty days to carry out significant actions in cracking down on Islamist militant proxies operating on Pakistani soil.

Islamabad has continued to deny that the terrorists who attacked Mumbai were from Pakistan.

The Stratfor report said: 'Pakistan's deadline, as far as we know, is Dec 26th, making Indian military action against Pakistan a very real and near possibility. The Indians have had a month to prepare their military operations against Pakistan, and Indian defence sources have revealed that these plans are ready to go into effect.'

Over the past month, the US has come down hard on Pakistan behind the scenes, making it clear that Islamabad will have to deliver on India's demands or else Washington will not be able to stand in New Delhi's way if and when India decides to act.

However, the report said that it is still unclear how far India will take this military campaign and to what extent the US operations in Afghanistan will be affected.

Discussions are taking place inside Indian defence circles over an escalatory military campaign, beginning with largely symbolic strikes in Pakistan's Kashmir against local offices.

Depending on Pakistan's ability to respond, Indian pressure could then be ratcheted up with precision air strikes in Pakistan's urban areas, including intelligence facilities and militant leadership hideouts.

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India alerts air force along Line of Control
Transports heavy guns, ammunition

Akhtar Jamal

http://pakobserver.net/200812/26/news/topstories03.asp

Islamabad—As India continued transporting heavy guns and war machines to strategic areas along Line of Control Indian Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor Thursday rushed to Siachen Glacier and forward areas of occupied Jammu and Kashmir “to check the operational preparedness of the troops.”

Intelligence reports confirmed Thursday extra-ordinary moves at India’s Western Air Command with headquarters in Delhi which is responsible for air operations from occupied Kashmir to Rajasthan including Punjab. Thursday a movement of Indian Air Force Operations Group dedicated for occupied Jammu & Kashmir including Ladakh was also detected by the defence observers in the region.

According to Indian media reports that Gen Kapoor left for Siachen Glacier “on Thursday and will interact with the unit commanders and senior officers, before returning to the Capital after taking stock of the situation.”

The report added that India too had deployed Quick Reaction Air Force and Army teams at Western border.

The media reports confirmed that India has deployed Quick Reaction Air Force and Army teams on the western border. “Air force units have also been deployed at Jaisalmer, Barmer and Bhuj”.

There are five operational air commands in India controlling 45 fixed-wing squadrons and 20 helicopter units.

India’s Mi 26 heavy lift helicopter fleet was also seen active Thursday transporting heavy gins and ammunition along the borders with Pakistan while Mi 17s and Mi 8s, were also seen moving along the LoC.