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

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The Ghazi Force: Vengeful New Militant Group Emerges In Pakistan


by KATHY GANNON | 07/ 1/10 06:48 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/01/the-ghazi-force-vengeful-_n_632013.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistani authorities now believe a dangerous new militant group, out to avenge a deadly army assault on a mosque in Islamabad three years ago, has carried out several major bombings in the capital previously blamed on the Taliban.

The emergence of the Ghazi Force was part of the outrage among many deeply religious Pakistani Muslims over the July 2007 attack by security forces against the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, a stronghold of Islamic militants.

The fierce attack, in which scores of young, heavily armed religious students died, inspired a new generation of militants. These Pakistanis have turned against a government they felt has betrayed them and, to their dismay, backed the U.S. role in neighboring Afghanistan.

The brief but bloody history of the Ghazi Force illustrates the unintended results of Pakistan's policy of promoting Islamic extremists to fight India in the disputed area of Kashmir. That policy – which Pakistan denies it pursues – now threatens regional stability as the U.S. and Pakistan's other Western partners pour billions of dollars into the country to stop the rise of Islamic militancy.

The new group is made up of relatives of students who died in the Red Mosque assault. It is named after the students' leader, Maulana Abdul Rashid Ghazi, who was also killed. The mosque's adjacent religious school, or madrassa, had been a sanctuary for militants opposed to Pakistan's support of the U.S.-run war in Afghanistan.

Private television stations broadcast vivid scenes of the assault – commandos in black fatigues rapelling down ropes, the crackle of gunfire, bodies of black-shrouded girls carried out through the smoldering gates. Those images stunned the nation, especially families of the students and Pakistanis with deep religious feelings.

Islamabad's inspector general of police, Kalim Imam, told The Associated Press that the Ghazi Force was behind most of the deadliest attacks in the capital during the last three years. The attacks targeted the military, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency or ISI – which had ties to a number of militants – and a five-star hotel frequented by foreigners and the Pakistani elite.

The Ghazi Force helped recruit a security official who blew himself up inside the office of the World Food Program last October, killing five people, according to Imam. The force also sent a suicide bomber in September 2007 into the mess hall of the commando unit that attacked the Red Mosque, killing 22 people, he said.

Ghazi Force members may also have been involved in the audacious June 9 attack north of the capital that killed seven people and destroyed 60 vehicles ferrying supplies to NATO and U.S. soldiers next door in Afghanistan, Imam said.

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Many of those attacks had been attributed to the Pakistani Taliban, which operates in the remote tribal areas of the northwest along the border with Afghanistan. There is evidence of close ties between the Ghazi Force and the Pakistani Taliban, which the government has vowed to crush.

The Ghazi Force is believed to be headquartered in the Orakzai region of the border area, where the leader of the Pakistan Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, held sway for years. The leader of the Ghazi Force is believed to be Maulana Niaz Raheem, a former student at the Red Mosque.

Anger over the bloodshed at the mosque was all the greater because many of the militants and their supporters felt betrayed by a government that had once supported them. Both Ghazi and his brother Maulana Abdul Aziz Ghazi, who was freed on bail this year after two years in jail, were widely believed to have been on the payrolls of both the government and the ISI intelligence service.

Their father, Maulana Mohammed Abdullah, enjoyed a close relationship with the late President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, and the mosque was a center for recruiting volunteers to fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

As opposition grew to Pakistan's support of the U.S. role in Afghanistan, the mosque became a center of religious agitation against the government, with armed students taking over the complex and police laying siege.

A former senior official in the Interior Ministry told The Associated Press that the police wanted to storm the mosque and end the siege at its outset, send the students home and shut down the religious school and a neighboring library until tempers cooled.

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf refused, the official said, even though police knew that members of al-Qaida's affiliate organization Jaish-e-Mohammed, which is banned in Pakistan, were bringing in weapons for the students.

Musharraf relented and ordered the assault after militants kidnapped several Chinese nationals running a massage parlor in Islamabad, accusing them of prostitution. The death toll remains in dispute. Red Mosque officials say hundreds died. The government says fewer than 100 were killed.

Although the assault turned many Islamic hard-liners against the government, Pakistan remains unwilling to break all ties to the militants, instead following a high-risk strategy of coddling "good militants" while fighting those deemed "bad militants," analysts say.

"The military and the ISI have given importance to these militants as assets. But those who have openly declared war, and there is no chance of them returning back to the state, the army is going after them," said Manzar Jameel, a terrorism expert and researcher on the growth of extremism in Pakistan. "Yet they still believe that some are still assets and that they can keep control of the assets. It's a failure of strategy."

Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas denies any assistance to militant groups, saying past ties have long since been severed. He says the Ghazi Force is among the groups the 120,000 Pakistani soldiers waging war in the tribal regions are fighting.

Yet Anatol Lieven, a terrorism expert with the Department of War Studies at London's King College, said it's clear that the ISI continues to protect some militant groups, even if it has broken with others.

In a June report, the Rand Corporation think tank also alleged that Pakistan's military and intelligence still support some militant groups "as a tool of its foreign and domestic policy."

"A key objective of U.S. policy must be to alter Pakistan's strategic calculus and end its support to militant groups," the report said.

Christine Fair, a co-author of that report and an assistant professor at Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Security Studies, said the battle against extremists in Pakistan is mired in layers of subterfuge by Pakistani intelligence and a "mystifying" acceptance by the CIA of Pakistan's "good-militant, bad-militant" policy.

She said U.S. intelligence knows Pakistan protects one group – Lashkar-e-Taiba, which India blames for the 2008 Mumbai assault and Afghanistan accuses of masterminding deadly attacks against the Indian Embassy in Kabul.

"Lashkar-e-Taiba remains intact. I have had conversations with ... officials in Washington. It is not their priority. Lashkar-e-Taiba is not an issue," she said in an interview. "Yet Lashkar-e-Taiba has been attacking us in Afghanistan since 2004."

(This version CORRECTS Abbas' title in paragraph 20 to major general)

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South Asia
Jul 3, 2010 
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LG03Df04.html 
 
Peace sacrificed in shrine attack  

By Syed Saleem Shahzad

ISLAMABAD - The twin suicide attacks on Thursday on the shrine of a Sufi saint in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore in which more than 40 people were killed and nearly 200 injured will most likely force the government to reluctantly take action against Punjabi militants while also derailing Washington's efforts to open dialogue with the Taliban through Pakistan.

The attacks in the capital of Punjab province - also known as the country's cultural capital - took place in the late evening, with the first bombing in the basement reserved for ablutions followed a few minutes later by one in the major prayer area. The shrine is dedicated to 11-century Persian Sufi saint Syed Ali Hajweri, also known as Data Gunj Baksh, who significantly contributed to the spread of Islam.

The attackers managed to penetrate a highly secured area to sow their destruction in the crowded shrine. Sufism, a mystical movement that relies on music, poetry and dancing to spread the word of Islam, includes Shi'ites and Sunnis. Radical groups consider it to be un-Islamic.

Asia Times Online earlier warned that in the wake of recent overtures between the Pakistani military establishment and Washington to initiate a dialogue process with the Taliban, al-Qaeda-led militants were desperate to attack Lahore, where recently police recovered a record 28,000 kilograms of explosives. (See Explosive mood in Pakistan June 30, 2010.)

Operation in Punjab looms
The attack on the very soul of Lahore leaves the military establishment and the government of Punjab, which have steadfastly refused to act, little option but to crack down on al-Qaeda-linked Punjabi militants

Their inaction, despite international pressure and calls from secular political parties, stems from fears of causing chaos in the country, which might create the grounds for foreign forces to intervene.

Now the masses are enraged against militants, and operations against their hideouts in southern Punjab along the Indian border can be expected. These militants are considered the most dangerous of all, with most of them having been trained by the Inter-Services Intelligence's India Cell to fight Indian forces in Indian-administered Kashmir.

After action in this disputed region was scaled back, the militants turned to al-Qaeda and now they are the main strength behind the Taliban-led resistance against foreign occupation forces in Afghanistan, where they have changed the dynamics of the war by adding a high level of sophistication.

Thursday's attack comes close on the heels of talks between former US commander in Afghanistan General Stanley McChrystal, Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani and Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

The main topic was to get some Taliban leaders taken off a US terror list so they could set the ball rolling for talks in Pakistan and Afghanistan on a reconciliation process. This initiative would be complemented with increased action against al-Qaeda and its affiliates.

If indeed strong action does now take place against Punjabi militants, the resultant crisis in the country would stall any serious dialogue process with the Afghan Taliban.

Foreign footprints
Asia Times Online has learned from high-level security contacts that private US defense contractors want to operate in Punjab to trace militant networks and then make recommendations for penetrating them.

Despite intense opposition from the military establishment, a few days before the shrine attack over 50 foreign nationals, including officials of a private American defense contracting firm, arrived in Pakistan - even though they did not have security clearance from Pakistani intelligence agencies.

According to the contacts, these nationals had earlier been denied visas by the Pakistani embassies they first approached, including in the US, Britain and India. However, they were apparently subsequently given visas by the embassy in Abu Dhabi and the consulate in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. This was done without the prerequisite clearance from the Pakistani Ministry of Interior, the Defense Ministry and the security agencies.

"These included over a dozen US nationals who had already been denied visas by our embassy in Washington on suspicion of them having links to Blackwater [Xe Services]," a source told Asia Times Online, adding that the visas had been issued for periods of six months to two years, although usually visas are only give for 90 days.

Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit could not be reached for comment despite repeated attempts.

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

 
 
 

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Afghans Find Their Welcome Running Out in Pakistan

by Ashfaq Yusufzai, July 06, 2010

http://original.antiwar.com/yusufzai/2010/07/05/afghans-find-their-welcome/

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – The number of Afghan refugees in Pakistan who will return to their homeland this year is expected to be double the 2009 figure, but it’s not only a longing for their native soil that is fueling the Afghans’ departure.

Many of the refugees say Pakistanis – officials and local folk alike – have made it clear that they are unwelcome, and have increasingly made life here difficult for them.

“Everything is being done by the government to harass the Afghan refugees,” says Dost Mohammad, an acknowledged leader of Afghans who used to live at the Shamshalo refugee camp here in Peshawar, near the Pakistani border with Afghanistan. “We are poor people, and the international community should not leave us in a lurch.”

Forty-four-year-old Jamila Bibi even says that she fears her children would starve to death and that she would soon be reduced to begging for a living. “I had been working as a home servant,” says Bibi. “But now the local communities are reluctant to offer jobs to Afghan women.”

The 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan had triggered a massive migration of Afghans to Pakistan, which found itself a reluctant host to more than 5 million Afghans at one point. Up until three years ago, there were 24 camps providing shelter to the refugees, but these were shut down by the Pakistani government after the withdrawal of support from the international community.

United Nations data reveal that since 2002, more than 3.5 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan have returned home. This year, 130,000 more are expected to head for Afghanistan under the United Nations-facilitated voluntary repatriation program, or twice the number last year.

It is no secret that Pakistan, which is not a signatory to the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees, is not keen on playing host to the refugees for too long. The country, however, has a tripartite agreement with Afghanistan and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to let registered Afghan refugees to stay in the country until December 2012.

Pakistan’s National Database and Registration Authority (NDRA), with financial and technical assistance from UNHCR, was able to register some two million Afghan refugees in 2007.

According to the United Nations, Pakistan still has about 1.3 million registered Afghan refugees. Most of them live in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which used to be called the North West Frontier Province, but there are also Afghan refugees in Pakistan’s urban centers.

A UNHCR spokesperson here in Peshawar says the refugees have already been informed of the extension of their legal stay in Pakistan so long as they possess registration cards.

Najamuddin Khan, a federal minister for the Frontier Regions, also told IPS: “We are not going to force them [to return home].”

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain meanwhile says that it is not true that Afghans are being maltreated. “We have been suffering due to the presence of Afghans,” he says, “but would not take any action against those having valid documents to stay here.”

By “suffering,” Hussain is apparently referring partly to the popular perception that the Afghan refugees have been taking far too many jobs away from the locals because the migrants ask for lower wages. Hussain, however, also says, “We would not allow the criminals to stay here.”

“We have statistics that [show] 45 percent of the crimes [as being] committed by Afghans,” says police officer Mohammed Rafiq. “They do crimes and run away to Afghanistan where they cannot be traced.”

Crimes allegedly committed by Afghan refugees in Pakistan range from robbery to murder.

Many refugees, though, feel like they are being punished even if they have not done any crime.

They say that since the refugee camps were closed down in 2007, the police have been constantly harassing them regarding their papers. Most refugees have also been forced to live in makeshift huts and to take just about any job they can find to be able to eat.

Rehmat Shat, for instance, says that the $55 he earns monthly as a night watchman for a local family is not enough to provide for his family. “My two children sell vegetables to complement my income,” he says.

Mirza Mohammad’s three daughters – Samia, 10, Rabia, eight, and Jaweria, six – tag along whenever she makes her rounds of the neighborhood at sunrise to collect trash.

“Some people give us cash and left-over bread and ice,” says barefoot Rabia. “But others don’t.”

Yet despite the difficulties of refugee life in Pakistan, many Afghans here say they would rather stay in this country for as long as they can. Says Shah: “We cannot go due to lawlessness, joblessness, poor education, and health facilities back home.”

Jalawan Khan, a 35-year-old taxi driver, even asserts, “The government should take pity on us.” He adds, “We [came] here to escape successive years of war, famine, and drought.”

Some members of Khan’s family, however, have gone back to Afghanistan. In fact, Khan says he sends part of his earnings to his mother, who is now living in their native Khost province in Afghanistan.

But he says it becoming harder and harder just to provide his wife and children with at least two meals a day. “My father ran a very good [carpet] business in Kacha Garhi camp,” says Khan. “But now the situation is extremely bad.”

Still, he says, “I am staying here anyway because I want to educate my son here in Peshawar.”

(Inter Press Service)

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South Asia
Jul 8, 2010 
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LG08Df02.html 
 
Al-Qaeda's new man eyes Pakistan

By Syed Saleem Shahzad

ISLAMABAD - One chapter in the Afghan war came to an end with the killing in May of al-Qaeda's number three and Afghan operations chief Mustafa Abu al-Yazid in a drone attack in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal area.

The appointment of a new commander, Egyptian Sheikh Fateh al-Misri, previously not an al-Qaeda member and in Afghanistan only as a battle-hardened Arab fighter, marks the beginning of a shift in al-Qaeda's strategy that aims for a more focused guerrilla war in Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda's Pakistan operations will be used to complement the battle against foreign forces across the border.

A previous al-Qaeda commander, Libyan Abu Laith al-Libi, also killed in a drone attack in Pakistan, in January 2008, had a similar background to Misri as he had not initially been a member of al-Qaeda and commanded his own Libyan groups that were active in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He was appointed operational commander in 2007 and in a short time proved himself in battle. He also developed close coordination with various other groups.

According to militant contacts who spoke to Asia Times Online, the militants believe that while Misri will focus on tweaking Afghan strategy, he realizes that the war there cannot be separated from Pakistan.

Last month, for instance, Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani and the director general of the Inter-Services Intelligence, Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, twice visited Kabul to offer their services in opening negotiations with the Taliban. The Pakistanis aim to connect with various Afghan groups and promote a battle against al-Qaeda and its affiliated Pakistani organizations.

Acutely aware of this, Misri unleashed the attacks in which at least 95 members of the Qadyani sect were killed and nearly 100 injured at their places of worship in Lahore. Apart from the immediate horror of the attacks, the militants aimed to monitor the response of the security and rescue forces. In the immediate aftermath of the incident, dozens of militants poured into Lahore. They included men from nearby areas, members of a militant cell in the southern port city of Karachi, as well as people from Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa, previously North-West Frontier Province.

Their main targets were to be "non-Muslims" in the eyes of the militants, such as the Qadyanis, and "polytheists" like the Shi'ites.

Pakistani intelligence agencies, however, became aware of possible attacks on places of worship and security was beefed up in Lahore, especially at places frequented by Qadyanis and Shi'ites. In a series of raids, 28,000 kilograms of explosives were seized, along with many weapons.

The militants became unnerved and last week, without consulting their top leadership in North Waziristan, there was a double suicide attack on the shrine of a Sufi saint in Lahore in which more than 40 people were killed and nearly 200 injured.

The attacks certainly drew attention to the militants, but al-Qaeda is aware that such incidents can cause blowback, such as happened in Iraq when it attacked the Samarra Shrine of Imam Hasan Askari in 2007, one of Shi'ite Islam’s holiest shrines. This sparked a round of bloody sectarian retaliation in which up to 60 Sunni mosques were attacked and scores of people were killed.

Therefore, much as with the Moon Market blast in Lahore in late 2009 (in which innocent civilians were killed), the Punjabi Taliban denied their involvement in the shrine attack.

"Why should we do this kind of operation?" questioned Punjabi militant spokesman Muhammad Umar, alias Usman Punjabi, in a telephone conversation with Asia Times Online. "There were hundreds of shrines in Afghanistan during Taliban rule [1996-2001] and they never touched them. So why should we do that?

"I say a commander would be most incompetent if he sent in suicide attackers because there was such a crowd in the shrine that an explosive-laden car parked near the shrine would have been sufficient for a massacre. So I assure you, the Taliban were not involved in these attacks," Umar said.

The attack on the Syed Ali Hajweri Shrine has caused a serious rift between Pakistan's two major schools of thought - Deobandi (to which the Taliban adhere) and Brelvi (who are anti-Taliban Sufis).

Several Sunni organizations called strikes, while Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, a custodian of a shrine in Multan, announced a national conference to decide on a unified strategy to combat terrorism.

However, the initiatives only polarized the country, and Deobandi scholars, while condemning the attack on the shrine, said that all measures were clearly aimed against them.

It should be recalled that all of the top Brelvi (Sufi) scholars in Pakistan have their roots in pre-partition (1947) India, and they don't have strong political traditions in Pakistan. Deobandi scholars on the other hand do, and they have the largest network of madrassas (seminaries) and mosques.

As a result, no right-wing political party can afford to annoy the Deobandis, no matter how close they are to the Taliban or al-Qaeda. Therefore, immediately after last week's attack on the shrine, Nawaz Sharif, a former premier and the leader of the country's largest right-wing party, the Pakistan Muslim League, held a press conference to stress the need for negotiations with the Taliban.

He said that a wrong foreign policy (one that supports the American war in Afghanistan ) was the root cause of terrorism in Pakistan. Sharif's statement was immediately condemned by the ruling Pakistan People's Party, which added that he drew his support from radical groups.

Militants have lost much of their support base and sympathy in Punjab - the largest province - as extremists previously did in Iraq. All the same, they are establishing a reign of terror that has led to deep political and sectarian polarization. This in turn has diluted Pakistan's enthusiasm to streamline a negotiation process between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

However, there is another aspect, as pointed out by a prominent Sufi - a parliamentarian from Khyber Agency and the federal minister for Zakat and Ushr (charity department), Pir Noorul Haq Qadri. He told Asia Times Online:
By 2007, the whole of Khyber Agency comprised adherents of the Brelvi school of thought [Sufis]. We are traders and therefore we want peace in the area. Then militants silently came into the area. They selected people who could resist them and assassinated them and in an organized campaign they blew up shrines and created so much chaos that by mid-2008 the people's will was completely broken and nobody was prepared to take a stand against them. From 2008 onwards, Khyber Agency has been a completely different place - it is in the hands of the militants.
The clamor is growing for action against militants in Punjab, but the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) operation haunts the establishment - it does not want Pakistan's fault lines once again exposed. In July 2007, security forces stormed the Taliban-supporting mosque that had become a haven for militants. The action energized militants across the country.

The authorities might decide to take action against particular seminaries in Punjab and against some banned organizations, after a national debate through conferences. This will take time, and when it happens it will cause sectarian strife. This preoccupation and engagement of the security apparatus will provide breathing space for al-Qaeda, which has already defeated the military in Orakzai Agency, where it controls large areas.

New commander Misri will be waiting to strike, both in Afghanistan and in Pakistan.

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

 
 
 

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Pakistan's Sharif regrets backing Taliban

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 18:18:46 GMT
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=133686&sectionid=351020401

   
Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif


Pakistan's top opposition leader Nawaz Sharif says he regrets his decision to back the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan in the mid 1990s.

In an interview with Pakistan's Dunya TV, Sharif described the pro-Taliban policy pursued by Islamabad during his premiership as a failure.

"Pakistan should abandon this thinking that Pakistan has to keep influence in Afghanistan," Sharif said.

"Our policy in the past has failed. Neither will such a policy work in future. We have a centuries-old relationship, and we can maintain this relationship only when we remain neutral and support the government elected there with the desire of the Afghan people," Sharif, who heads the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party said.

Sharif supported the Taliban in 1996 when the group gained control of neighboring Afghanistan. He was ousted in the bloodless 1999 coup led by former Pakistani military ruler General Pervez Musharraf.

The Taliban ruled Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001 and were overthrown following the 2001 US-led invasion of the country.

Sharif's party has been criticized in recent months for not going after militant groups in Punjab.

The ruling Pakistan People's Party says Sharif and his allies have a soft corner for the militants.

Sharif, in return, blames the federal government for taking directives from Washington on how to deal with domestic problems of the country.

JR/CS/MMN

[citizenx]

Al-CIAduh's new man eyes Pakistan

fixed

Bigron,

I appreciate all the great articles you find on this important matter, though.

Don't take it the wrong way.

[bigron]

TRUTH WITH HUMOUR IS HEALTHY........KEEP EM COMING

THANKS FOR YOUR KIND COMMENT citizenx

ALL THE BEST

RON

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US Demands North Waziristan Offensive

Consul General Lauds Swat Valley Invasion, Calls for More


by Jason Ditz, July 06, 2010
http://news.antiwar.com/2010/07/06/us-demands-north-waziristan-offensive/

Speaking today in Peshawar, America’s Consul General for Peshawar, Candace Putnam, called for the Pakistani government to launch a military offensive against North Waziristan, saying it was “vitally urgent” that it be done soon.

Ms. Putnam made the comments following a statement praising the Pakistani offensive against the Swat Valley, an offensive which drove millions of civilians from their homes, killed large numbers of people, but ultimately failed to yield the capture of any members of the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) leadership for the region.

The US has been pressing for a new offensive against North Waziristan for months, ostensibly to target the TTP’s leadership. Yet it is well documented that the TTP’s top leaders left North Waziristan in late May, making the pressing need for the attack questionable, at best.

At America’s behest, Pakistan has launched offensives against Swat Valley, Bajaur, South Waziristan, Orakzai, and Khyber. Those regions have all been torn virtually apart by the offensives, which netted large body counts, but no leaders of note. Pakistan has recently suggested it will launch another new offensive against South Waziristan, but has been mum on any impending attack on North Waziristan.

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CIA, Pakistan’s ISI Engage in Fierce but Quiet Battle

US Complains to Pakistan Over Apparent 'Double Agent' Attempt

by Jason Ditz, July 06, 2010
http://news.antiwar.com/2010/07/06/cia-pakistans-isi-engage-in-fierce-but-quiet-battle/

Though publicly both sides insist their relationship is solid and indispensable, ties between the CIA and Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Agency seem to be suffering in the face of what is being called an “aggressive spy battle.”

Reports from the Associated Press say that the CIA has issued private complaints to the Pakistani government about an apparent attempt by the ISI to plant a “double agent” in the American spy agency.

Reportedly, the CIA was approached by a Pakistani man claiming to have information about Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, and who came with spent fuel rods from the program. After probing, the CIA decided the man was sent by ISI specifically to infiltrate the CIA and provide data on American spying inside Pakistan. Pakistan promised to “look into” the matter but it appears nothing ever came of it.

The US relation toward the ISI is somewhat bizarre. While officials have endlessly claimed the ISI is providing “direct support” for the Taliban, the CIA is also direct funding the agency, providing upwards of a third of the ISI’s operating budget annually.

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Combat by Camera

War zone drone crashes add up

The unmanned craft were rushed into use in 2001 and some design and system problems were never fully addressed. Losses don't involve lives but are expensive.

By David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times

July 6, 2010
http://freedomsyndicate.com/fair0000/latimes00266.html

Reporting from Kandahar, Afghanistan

The U.S. military often portrays its drone aircraft as high-tech marvels that can be operated seamlessly from thousands of miles away. But Pentagon accident reports reveal that the pilotless aircraft suffer from frequent system failures, computer glitches and human error.

Design and system problems were never fully addressed in the haste to push the fragile plane into combat over Afghanistan shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks more than eight years ago. Air Force investigators continue to cite pilot mistakes, coordination snafus, software failures, outdated technology and inadequate flight manuals.

Thirty-eight Predator and Reaper drones have crashed during combat missions in Afghanistan and Iraq, and nine more during training on bases in the U.S. — with each crash costing between $3.7 million and $5 million. Altogether, the Air Force says there have been 79 drone accidents costing at least $1 million each.

Accident rates are dropping, but the raw numbers of mishaps are increasing as use of the aircraft skyrockets, according to Air Force safety experts.

But no lives are lost, and for some experts that's the most important point: For them, drones are the vanguard of a new type of remote warfare that minimizes the risk to U.S. personnel. The number of crashes, however, illustrates how quickly the unmanned aircraft have become an essential part of U.S. combat operations. At least 38 drones are in flight over Afghanistan and Iraq at any given time.

Flight hours over Afghanistan and Iraq more than tripled between 2006 and 2009. However, ground commanders in Afghanistan say only about a third of their requests for drone missions are met because of shortages of aircraft and pilots. The loss of aircraft to crashes and other accidents can hamper combat operations — and risk the lives of troops who depend on them for reconnaissance and air cover.

The Air Force acknowledges that armed drones were not ready when first deployed as the U.S. military geared up for the campaign to oust the Taliban and Al Qaeda from Afghanistan. Most weapons systems are tested and refined for years. Unarmed drones had been in use since the mid-1990s, but the first armed version went to war just nine months after it was retrofitted.

It was pushed into use after a Predator successfully launched Hellfire antitank missiles at the Naval Air Weapons testing range at China Lake in January 2001.

"It was never designed to go to war when it did," said Lt. Col. Travis Burdine, a manager for the Air Force Unmanned Aircraft Systems Task Force. "We didn't have the luxury of ironing out some of the problems."

Technicians bought off-the-shelf equipment at Radio Shack and Best Buy to build a system to allow ground forces to see the drones' video feeds. At least one drone crashed because it had no fuel gauge, and the aircraft ran out of fuel. In another crash, investigators cited a design flaw: The "kill engine" switch was located next to the switch to lower the landing gear, and a ground-based pilot confused the two.

Even now, the planes are not designed for the amount of use they're getting, their defenders say. The 27-foot Predators and 36-foot Reapers operate under conditions that put enormous stress on the light drones — and the humans who operate them.

"These airplanes are flying 20,000 hours a month, OK?" said retired Rear Adm. Thomas J. Cassidy Jr., president of the aircraft systems group at General Atomics Aeronautical Systems in San Diego, which makes Predators and Reapers.

"That's a lot of flying," Cassidy said. "Some get shot down. Some run into bad weather. Some, people do stupid things with them. Sometimes they just run them out of gas."

The drones flew 185,000 hours over Afghanistan and Iraq in 2009, more than triple the number of hours flown in 2006. The Air Force expects that number to grow to 300,000 hours this year.

"The Air Force needs as many as they can get," said Col. Jeff Kappenman, director of the Center of Excellence for UAS Research, Education and Training at the University of North Dakota. "There has been exponential growth in need and demand."

Air Force officials say design and training improvements have lowered the Predator's accident rate. They say lessons learned from that plane's problems have solved some issues for the larger and more potent Reaper, in use in combat since 2007. Accident rates per 100,000 hours dropped to 7.5 for the Predator and 16.4 for the Reaper last year, according to the Air Force. The Predator rate is comparable to that of the F-16 fighter at the same stage, Air Force officers say, and just under the 8.2 rate for small, single-engine private airplanes flown in the U.S.

The crash figures do not include drones flown over Pakistan by the CIA, which does not acknowledge the covert program. But independent experts said Predators flown over Pakistan probably experience problems similar to those flown by the Air Force in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Four Air Force Predators have crashed this year, three of them in Afghanistan — on Jan. 15 in southern Afghanistan, one on takeoff Feb. 9 in eastern Afghanistan, and a third March 14 in the southern part of the country. All were total losses, the Air Force said. Another Predator crashed in California during a training exercise April 20.

In the 12 months ended Sept. 30, the Air Force reported 16 Predator and Reaper accidents. Four involved crashes during a 15-day period in September. On Sept. 13, a pilot inside a ground station in Nevada lost video and data links to a Reaper over Afghanistan. As it was about to exit Afghan airspace and crash, an F-15 pilot was ordered to shoot it down and ground troops recovered the wreckage to keep top-secret technology out of insurgents' hands.

In another case, a drone crashed into a Sunni political headquarters in Mosul, Iraq. No injuries were reported.

In some cases, a cause is never determined and no wreckage is recovered. On May 13, 2009, a crew in Nevada lost contact with a Predator, and it was listed as "presumed crashed" somewhere in Afghanistan, according to an Air Force report.

Retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark, asked whether high drone mishap rates concerned him, replied: "Not really. They're expendable." Others disagree, saying every drone that goes down is one less available for troops in need.

"We can't treat these things like disposable diapers and just throw them out," retired Air Force Gen. Hal Hornburg, former chief of the Air Force Air Combat Command, warned officers at a conference on drones.

Kyle Snyder, who tracks military drones for the Assn. for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, a nonprofit research group, said he had never heard anyone in the Air Force call drones expendable.

A 2007 study by the Air Force Research Laboratory found that up to 80% of Predator crashes involved some degree of human error. Updated studies attribute more recent accidents to inadequate manuals, crew coordination mistakes and crews being asked to perform tasks for which they are not fully trained, according to an analysis by the Air Force and a private contractor.

After a Predator crashed during a landing at Kandahar air base in March 2007, investigators faulted the Predator system for a "lack of visual cues" to help pilots understand the position of a plane flying half a world away. The pilot in Nevada misjudged the drone's altitude, the investigative report said.

The Predator that ran out of fuel over Iraq had a leak, but there was no gauge to warn the pilot, an Air Force crash researcher said. And a pilot trainee at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada crashed a Predator by hitting the "kill engine" switch instead of the adjacent landing gear switch, according to an investigative report.

Some ground control stations, where pilots and camera operators sit, still have 1990s-era text-based computer systems. Pilots have to type function and control commands rather than clicking on icons.

"There's a control delay between typing something and having it actually happen on the airplane," said Gregg Montijo, a contractor who trains drone crews. "When the heat is on, sometimes guys will type something in, then type it again real quickly. They'll confuse the computer and get the wrong display and get into a vicious cycle."

Despite the mishaps, Burdine said, Predators and Reapers are doing great work. "It's a big payoff for the Air Force to make sure the next generation of systems learns from the first generation," he said. "And that's what we're doing."

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Pakistan Pays Price for Afghan War Cargo Amid Taliban Attacks

By Anwar Shakir and James Rupert - Jul 7, 2010
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-06/pakistan-pays-price-for-hauling-afghan-war-cargo-as-taliban-shuts-highway.html

Women in burquas pass in front of trucks carrying supplies to N.A.T.O. troops in Afghanistan on the Kohat-Peshawar road in Peshawar, Pakistan. Photographer: Asad Zaidi/Bloomberg

Pakistani truck drivers cover a military vehicle, destined for N.A.T.O. troops in Afghanistan. Photographer: Asad Zaidi/Bloomberg


Hundreds of trucks and buses leave the main highway in northwest Pakistan each evening at sunset to wait out the overnight closure of a strategic tunnel. Taliban attacks there are raising the cost of supplying U.S. troops in Afghanistan and hurting the local economy.

As darkness falls, the drivers smoke, chat or doze on the dusty earth of a roadside camp 70 kilometers (43 miles) from the border. Since 2002, militants in Pakistan have killed about 120 local drivers hauling war supplies from the country’s main seaport, Karachi, to bases in Afghanistan.

“I have seen my colleagues’ trucks burned,” said Bakhta Gul Jan as he drove his flatbed truck from the Kohat Tunnel toward the main border crossing at northwestern Pakistan’s Khyber Pass. “Six months ago I received a flyer printed by militants warning us to stop driving supplies for NATO because they are the enemy of Islam.”

Jan declined to name his hometown for fear of being identified by the Taliban, who have attacked the tunnel and blown up bridges on the 1,250-kilometer Indus Highway, the main artery linking southern and northwestern Pakistan.

The militants’ war on supply convoys for U.S.-led NATO forces has raised the military’s shipping costs, partly by forcing the use of alternate routes through Central Asia at what the U.S. military’s Transportation Command says is 2½ times the cost of shipping through Pakistan.

War and Power

The violence and road closures -- which also affect commercial shipments -- are the latest blow to a local economy wracked by war and a national power shortage.

Almost 80 percent of factories in the ethnic Pashtun northwest -- mostly stone processing plants and flour or textile mills -- have closed during the eight-year war, said Riaz Arshad, president of the Sarhad Chamber of Commerce in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunwha province.

While the U.S. government has committed $750 million in aid to boost development in the northwest and undermine the Taliban, “our industrial units are closing and moving,” Arshad said by phone. “Two-thirds of our population is less than 24 years old, which is normally a positive. But with no jobs here, it is as dangerous for us as a nuclear bomb.”

The two-lane highway, which for most of the Afghan war carried 75 percent of U.S. troops’ food, uniforms and vehicles, was designed in the 1980s to pull investment and trade into a region where isolation and poverty fuel extremist growth.

Rates Doubled

Drivers say rising violence and fuel costs since 2006 have forced them to double the rates they charge for the run to Afghanistan. That increase, plus the new Central Asian supply lines and other logistical challenges, bring the war’s cost to almost $1.2 million annually per soldier, 73 percent more than the $685,000 cost of a soldier in Iraq, according to a June 29 analysis by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

As the U.S. sends 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan this year, military supply shipments have increased by 13 percent over early 2009, according to figures e-mailed by Transportation Command spokeswoman Cynthia Bauer at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois.

Largely by using local Pashtun truckers, who dominate Pakistan’s transport industry and come from the same ethnic group as the Taliban, the U.S. military has kept its losses on Pakistani roads to less than 1 percent of cargo, Bauer said. Still, markets outside Peshawar offer U.S. Army uniforms, binoculars and cots. In 2008, Taliban hijacked a U.S. convoy that contained Army Humvees and paraded in the infantry vehicles for Pakistani television.

‘Lethal and Sensitive’

The Transportation Command flies 20 percent of war supplies, including “all lethal and sensitive cargo,” directly to Afghanistan, Bauer said. And it sends the equivalent of 28,000 standard shipping containers monthly, enough to fill two of the world’s largest container ships, by sea and land.

Half of all war supplies to Afghanistan pass through Pakistan, the Transportation Command says, at a rate of 580 truckloads per day, its figures show.

Truckers have raised their rates to $2,470 from $1,100 four years ago for the 1,750-kilometer drive to Bagram air base north of Kabul from Pakistan’s port of Karachi, said Himayat Shah, general secretary of the All-Pakistan Combined Trucks and Trailers Welfare Association.

Punjab Detour

Since the Pakistan supply route opened in 2002, militants have killed between 120 and 150 truckers for hauling U.S. military supplies, Shah said in an interview at his office in Karachi, the Arabian Sea port to which the Defense Department ships goods to be trucked to its Afghan bases.

“We have lost anywhere between 5,000 and 6,000 trucks and oil tankers,” he said.

To avoid attacks, many drivers now detour hundreds of kilometers around the Taliban-dominated Pashtun lands, driving northeast through Punjab province instead. Last month, the militants hit that route, too, killing eight people and destroying at least 50 trucks with U.S. military shipping containers that were stopped for the night at a depot outside Islamabad, the capital.

Despite such dangers, Jan, the truck driver, says northwest Pakistan’s unemployment keeps him hauling U.S. supplies.

“I have seven children, and this is the only good business I can get to make the money to take care of them,” he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Anwar Shakir in Peshawar, Pakistan at Ashakir1@bloomberg.net; James Rupert in New Delhi at jrupert3@bloomberg.net

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Sharif urges Pakistan neutrality on Afghanistan

Pakistan shouldn't try to influence Afghanistan's affairs, leader of opposition says

ASIF SHAHZAD
AP News
http://wire.antiwar.com/2010/07/06/sharif-urges-pakistan-neutrality-on-afghanistan/

Jul 06, 2010 08:36 EDT

Pakistan should stop trying to influence affairs in Afghanistan, the opposition leader said Tuesday, while admitting that the pro-Afghan Taliban policy he pursued when he was prime minister in the 1990s was a failure.

Nawaz Sharif's comments come as he tries to gain political traction and deflect criticism that his party is beholden to extremist elements. Just last week, he pushed the government to open talks with elements of the Pakistani Taliban, and the ruling party agreed to his proposal to hold a national conference on stopping terrorism.

The remarks also come as Pakistan tries to weigh in on reconciliation efforts between Afghanistan's government, the U.S. and the Afghan Taliban. Pakistan's historical interest in Afghanistan is largely a result of its desire to assert itself in the region and attain a strategic advantage over archrival India.

In an interview with Pakistan's Dunya TV that aired Monday and Tuesday, Sharif appeared to renounce a policy he pursued with vigor while twice prime minister in the 1990s. Back then, Pakistan openly supported the Afghan Taliban movement as it pushed out other armed factions such as the Northern Alliance and gained control of Kabul.

"Pakistan should abandon this thinking that Pakistan has to keep influence in Afghanistan," said Sharif, who heads the Pakistan Muslim League-N party. "Neither will they accept influence, nor should the pro-influence-minded people here insist on it."

"Our policy in the past has failed. Neither will such a policy work in future. We have a centuries-old relationship, and we can maintain this relationship only when we remain neutral and support the government elected there with the desire of the Afghan people."

It was unclear where Sharif would stand on the reconciliation efforts in Afghanistan. The role Pakistan would play will likely fall primarily to its military, which operates largely independent of the civilian government anyway and which could be instrumental in bringing some armed Afghan factions to the table.

Sharif's party, which controls the government of Punjab province but sits in opposition in the federal government, is considered more conservative and aligned with pro-Taliban parties than the national ruling Pakistan People's Party.

The PML-N has been criticized in recent months for not going after militant outfits in Punjab, a stance analysts say is driven by its reliance on banned militant groups to deliver key votes during elections. The frustration over the party's dawdling has grown more acute since a bombing at a popular Sufi shrine in Punjab's capital, Lahore, last week killed 47 people.

During Sharif's tenure as prime minister, he not only supported the Taliban regime in Afghanistan but also tried to vastly increase the powers of his office while pushing aside Pakistan's penal code in favor of an Islamic justice system. Many saw these ill-fated moves as an attempt to "Talibanize" Pakistan, and they eroded his popularity further.

Sharif was overthrown in a 1999 coup by then-Gen. Pervez Musharraf. As the leader of the opposition now, Sharif has tried to walk a careful line, making it hard to pin him down as being either pro- or anti-Taliban or pro- or anti-American.

While proposing Saturday for peace talks with militants in Pakistan, Sharif said Islamabad should take the initiative instead of waiting for directives from Washington. But he also said the negotiations should be with militants "who are ready to talk and ready to listen."

The government has brokered peace deals with Taliban fighters along the Afghan border in the past, but they have usually collapsed and have often given the militants time to regroup and consolidate their control.

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani announced later Saturday that he'd agreed to Sharif's proposal that an all-parties conference be held on ways to defeat militancy. No date has been announced, and the potential impact is unclear. At least one past such gathering has already been held.

Source: AP News

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Published on Wednesday, July 7, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

The War Drones On

by Robert C. Koehler

"Complaints about civilian casualties have also stirred concern among human rights advocates."

The problem is that a sentence like this - arguably a dead sentence, with a few quasi-facts entombed in an inert moral sensibility - parades as serious news. I mean, it's lifted straight from the New York Times: from a story about drones, the CIA hit list and our cool new PlayStation way of killing bad dudes (and everyone else in the vicinity). Someone with an active conscience could come upon a sentence like that, in the middle of a painfully ill-focused story on the endless war, and think she must be going insane.

As an archeological find, it's worth examining in closer detail, but first let me put it in context. The use of pilotless aircraft in Pakistan and Afghanistan to assassinate Taliban or al-Qaida leaders and other Islamic, America-hating insurgents - with missiles, no less - seems to have hit a snag of legal controversy lately because of the news that one of the people on the list of targets, Anwar al-Awlaki, was born in New Mexico. He's an American citizen.

This is where my moral consternation begins, and immediately radiates in several directions:

A) In the context of the nearly eight-year-old war on terror (with the Afghan war the longest-running in U.S. history), with uncounted thousands or hundreds of thousands of civilians slaughtered in the hostilities, millions more displaced, and the toxic leftovers of battle sending cancer and birth-defect rates soaring in Iraq and Afghanistan, how does the potential assassination of an American citizen deserve singling out as significant in a way that the killing of non-Americans simply isn't? Just asking. This isn't to minimize the issue, but I can't seem to turn off my outrage that the unstated implications of the controversy are that American lives matter in ways that other lives do not.

B) Why is al-Awlaki on the hit list? According to William Fisher of Inter Press Service [1], he's a former imam who "purportedly inspired Islamic terrorists. His sermons are said to have been attended by three of the 9/11 hijackers." There is nothing the least bit illegal about any of this; the fact that it merits a death sentence from a rogue intelligence agency, the corralling of which is on no one's agenda, bespeaks a post-9/11 value hemorrhage in our society that disturbs me to the core. Our government is infected with what I can only call the Nazi virus.

C) Murder by drone. The use of robot aircraft and target takeout by missile fire is modestly controversial in and of itself, perhaps, though the controversy seems to be counterweighted, at least in mainstream reportage, by the military's enthusiasm for drones. When a potential target is an American who isn't situated in either Iraq or Afghanistan, the controversy inches upward. I'm sorry, but I still haven't gotten around on the concept of robot war or the insanity of stalking enemy prey with missiles, even if there was the least bit of precision in the process.

The fact that we often rely on preposterously bad intelligence and wind up killing large numbers of civilians with our missiles strikes me, quaintly, as wrong. And by "wrong" I mean insane, stupid, counterproductive, criminal - a means of murder guaranteed to inflame hatred toward us, complicate our "mission" and prolong the war. But then again, this is a war against evil, so we already know that it's endless.

All of which brings me back to the New York Times and the helpful, informative sentence quoted above, which I unearthed in a recent Times Online [2] "topics" piece on drones. Mostly the story is from a military point of view and reports on what seems to be the adolescent glee of intelligence and military brass over how disruptive robot air strikes are to enemy operations.

Toward the end of the story, statistics about collateral damage are cited from two sources. The New America Foundation estimated that, since 2006, drones have killed 500 militants and 250 civilians; the ratio was a little better in the Long War Journal, which estimated 885 dead militants, 94 dead civilians. Not cited, for some reason, was a Brookings Institution study [3], which found that for every militant killed by drones, 10 civilians are taken out. This is a heart-stopping ratio of cruelty that should instantly decommission all future robot assassination missions.

The fact that it won't is due in no small part to the tepid, morally inert reportage of the mainstream media, as typified by that sentence, which entombs the humanity of all who read it: "Complaints about civilian casualties have also stirred concern among human rights advocates."

When we bomb children, we garner "complaints," same as we would if we trample on someone's flower bed. These complaints then "stir concern" - you know, like when the milk goes sour - not among people in general, but specifically among professional do-gooders, "human rights advocates," who monitor and fuss over dead civilians anyway.

Nothing in this language presses on the conscience or interrupts America's daily business. There is no hint of the value of the lives we destroy, no laying of those lives in our laps. There is only fog and numbness, and the war drones on.

© 2010 Tribun Media Services
Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. You can respond to this column at koehlercw@gmail.com [4] or visit his Web site at commonwonders.com [5].)


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

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/07/07-11

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South Asia
Jul 10, 2010 
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LG10Df01.html 
 
US pressure on Pakistan off-target  


By Syed Saleem Shahzad

ISLAMABAD - With United States General David Petraeus taking over command of the war in Afghanistan and refining strategy there, the US is also fine-tuning its approach across the border in Pakistan, where the government is being urged to crack down on extremist groups in an effort to isolate al-Qaeda.

United States State Department counter-terrorism coordinator Daniel Benjamin, who holds the rank of ambassador at large, headed a delegation of counter-terrorism and intelligence officials for another round of strategic dialogue in the capital Islamabad on Thursday.

The message he conveyed was that Pakistan needed to increase pressure on extremists groups flourishing on its soil with al-Qaeda's assistance to prevent terror attacks both within Pakistan and beyond.

In the years following Pakistan joining the US-led "war on terror" after September 11, 2001, the authorities have formally banned many jihadi groups, but these have continued to operate.

"The involvement of Lashkar-e-Taiba [LeT] in the Mumbai attacks shows the organization's global ambitions," said Benjamin at a briefing at the US Embassy. LeT is the banned Pakistani group that was implicated in the devastating attacks on the Indian city of Mumbai in November 2008 by 10 gunmen. More than 170 people were killed, including nine of the militants.

LeT "appears to have a very complex mix of indigenous and international targets," Benjamin said. "We are working with Pakistan's civilian authorities to investigate further into this organization, but definitely LeT maintains some level of connections with al-Qaeda." He added that certain German and Turkish nationals in the Pakistani tribal areas were a potential transnational threat.

With Pakistan dragging its feet on starting a military offensive against militants in the North Waziristan tribal area, Thursday's talks focused on joint anti-terrorism measures and intelligence-sharing against groups operating in Pakistan's urban centers.

The issue has taken on added urgency with the incidents involving David Headley, Najibullah Zazi, Zarein Ahmedzay and Faisal Shahzad and the arrest of suspected al-Qaeda-affiliated members in Norway this week. Oslo police arrested a Uighur from China, an Iraqi and an Uzbek in connection with a plot to bomb targets in Norway. The men were said to have ties to al-Qaeda.

Headley, a Chicago-based Pakistani, has pleaded guilty to conspiring with the LeT over the Mumbai attacks. Zazi and Ahmedzay have pleaded guilty to planning to conduct suicide bombings in New York using improvised explosive devices. Pakistan-born Faisal Shahzad has pleaded guilty to receiving funds and training from the Taliban in Pakistan to detonate a bomb in Times Square in New York in May.

The various Pakistani jihadi outfits that were banned after September 11 - most of them had been active in Indian-administered Kashmir - are the focus of the crackdown that the US wants. These include several thousand people belonging to the LeT, the Jaish-e-Mohammad and the Harkul Mujahideen in various Pakistani cities.

It is understandable that the US would want to block off at the source potential attackers on American or European cities, yet the real danger emanating from Pakistan comes not as much from the city-based jihadis as from al-Qaeda and its affiliates sitting in the Hindu Kush mountains, where, among other things, recruits are trained.

From 2008 onwards, successive campaigns were launched in Kunar and Nuristan provinces in Afghanistan and the Mohmand and Bajaur tribal areas across the border in Pakistan, yet militants still control key regions in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Similarly, while North Waziristan is recognized as the global headquarters of al-Qaeda, parts of South Waziristan, under the command of Haji Nazeer - who is referred to by Pakistan as "good Taliban" - are home to several Arab, al-Qaeda and non-al-Qaeda groups.

Speaking at a public forum last week, US National Counter-terrorism Center director Michael Leiter claimed that drone attacks and raids had devastated al-Qaeda. "Now the organization is down to only 50 to a 100 card-carrying members inside Afghanistan and roughly 300 operatives in Pakistan," Leiter said.

However, this ignores the fact that more than 1,000 Arabic speakers live in the tribal areas and al-Qaeda can make use of them as needed. The latest example is Egyptian Sheikh Fateh al-Misri, the new al-Qaeda number three and chief of operations in Afghanistan. He previously had no direct links to al-Qaeda.

These are the targets that the US would need to eliminate, yet it is putting pressure on Pakistan to go after jihadis in the cities. This also places Islamabad in an awkward position, as it has traditionally separated jihadi groups (most of which it nurtured) from anti-state forces like al-Qaeda, and even used them against al-Qaeda.

For example, the LeT now publicly calls al-Qaeda takfiri (declaring Muslims as heretic) and is an effective ideological arm for state forces to discredit al-Qaeda as a global Muslim resistance against the West.

If at this juncture Pakistan is forced to carry out action against formal jihadi structures, it would alienate them, further isolating the Pakistani establishment in its - and the US's - war against al-Qaeda.

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

 
 
 

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Pakistan blast kills 45, injures 100

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 05:23:11 GMT
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=134037&sectionid=351020401

 
Scene of a bomb attack in Pakistan, file photo

A large explosion has struck a village in Pakistan's northwestern Mohmand tribal region bordering Afghanistan, killing at least 45 and wounding more than 100 people.

Local administrator Maqsood Ahmed said the blast took place at a busy market where people were queuing for government wheelchairs in Yakaghund town in Mohmand tribal region on Friday, AFP reported.

"A function was held at the office to distribute wheelchairs. A lot of people had gathered outside the office," he added.

The blast damaged the administration office, shops, a local jail and other buildings.

"It caused damage to the office and also damaged the wall of a local jail. Several prisoners have managed to escape," Ahmed explained.

Mohmand, located in Pakistan's tribal region south of Bajaur agency and bordering Afghanistan, is one of the seven lawless tribal districts in the northwest.

The rise of militancy in recent weeks signals a deteriorating security situation in the area.

Pakistan has significantly stepped up operations against militants in its northwest and tribal belt, which Washington has branded an al-Qaeda headquarters.

A new wave of violence has undermined security in the country. Nearly 4,000 people have been killed in militant attacks throughout Pakistan since July 2007.

HJ/MVZ

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Pak MPs concerned about US policies

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 06:39:12 GMT
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=134043&sectionid=351020401

 
Pakistan's Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani (left) with General David Petraeus, the new commander of US-led forces in Afghanistan, file photo


Pakistani MPs have expressed concern over the changing approach of the US regarding its 'war on terror' saying such policies should be monitored.

Members of Pakistan's Parliamentary Committee on National Security said in a meeting on Thursday that US policies are changing with regard to terrorism with Washington moving toward dialogue with militants, a Press TV correspondent reported.

Chairman of the Parliament's Special Committee on National Security, Senator Mian Raza Rabbani, said Pakistan, being a sovereign country, would not pay heed to the US demand for a military operation in North Waziristan.

"Pakistan would itself decide when and where the military operation was imperative," he told reporters after chairing the meeting.

The Committee was also briefed by the country's Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) Chief Ahmed Shuja on the regional situation with a special focus on Afghanistan.

The ISI chief emphasized that policies against the war on terrorism would be aligned with Pakistan's national interests and that the country's security forces were committed to squeezing the terrorists from the country.

MVZ/JG/MVZ

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Friday, July 09, 2010
14:10 Mecca time, 11:10 GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/07/20107954021715355.html
   
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
 
Scores dead in Pakistan bomb blasts  


 
The attack in Mohmand follows fresh campaigns by security forces against Pakistani Taliban fighters

A suicide attack outside the office of a senior government official in Pakistan's northwest has killed up to 50 people and wounded at least 80 more, government and hospital officials say.

Rasool Khan, the region's assistant political agent, said two bombers struck on Friday after people had gathered around his office, in the Mohmand tribal area along the Afghanistan border.

The attack, which took place in a commercial neighbourhood, follows fresh campaigns by security forces against Pakistani Taliban fighters in recent weeks.

"There were two blasts. The first one was small but the second was a big one," Khan told the Reuters news agency.

An administration official, Mehraj Khan, had earlier described the incident as a suicide attack, but there were no details available on how the second blast happened.

Commercial area

There was no independent verification of the casualties as Taliban fighters often dispute and reject the official figures.

Hospital officials said nearly 80 people were being treated for multiple wounds, while government officials put the number of wounded at about 40.

Among the wounded were several internally displaced people, who were collecting relief goods near the blast site.

In Depth :

-  Riz Khan: Battling religious extremism
-  Riz Khan: Pakistan's violent frontier
-  Riz Khan: Pakistan's political landscape
-  Riz Khan: Pakistan - Heading to civil war?
-  Inside Story: Pakistan: A new wave of attacks?
-  People & Power: Breeding discontent
-  Focus: Caught in the crossfire
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/07/20107954021715355.html

 
Friday's blasts also damaged several cars and about 30 shops, witnesses said.

Al Jazeera's Imran Khan, reporting from Islamabad, said the Mohmand bombing was a "suicide attack" but that there was "confusion as to whether the attacker was on a motor bike or travelling in a car".

"Rescue efforts are still going on," he said.

"They've brought in heavy machinery to try and dig underneath the rubble. They say there're more bodies still trapped underneath that rubble.

"The dead and the injured are being taken to ... hospital in the nearest big city of Peshawar as a standard operating procedure.

"An emergency has been declared. But this goes to show that this situation in the tribal areas is still very fluid, still very dangerous."

Pakistan launched two major offensives in the northwest last year against homegrown Taliban fighters who have killed hundreds of people in retaliatory attacks across Pakistan, mostly in the northwest but also in major cities.

Two suicide bombers killed at least 42 people in an attack on Pakistan's most important Sufi shrine in the eastern city of Lahore last week.

Pushed out

The Pakistani Taliban, allies of the Afghan Taliban, has lost ground in army campaigns over the past year.

They were pushed out of the Swat valley, northwest of Islamabad, and in October the army began an offensive in the fighters' South Waziristan bastion on the Afghan border.

The offensive was extended to Orakzai in March as many of the fighters who fled the South Waziristan operation took refuge there and in Mohmand.

Hundreds of fighters have since been killed in air raids in the two regions.

Jet fighters killed about a dozen fighters in attacks in Orakzai on Friday, Pakistani security officials said.
 
 

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‘Pakistan to welcome NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan’

* FO spokesman Abdul Basit says Islamabad approaching July 15 foreign ministers’ meeting with positive mindset

Staff Report
   Friday, July 09, 2010
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010%5C07%5C09%5Cstory_9-7-2010_pg7_25


ISLAMABAD: Pakistan, as a neighbouring country, will welcome the NATO forces’ decision to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan because it has suffered a lot due to the ongoing conflict in the neighbouring country, the Foreign Office (FO) spokesman said on Thursday.

During the weekly briefing at the Foreign Office, Abdul Basit said, “It is for the US and other coalition troops to decide as to when they will leave Afghanistan.”

During the reconciliation process in Afghanistan, the Karzai-led government has also expressed a desire for the withdrawal of foreign forces from the country. “We are keenly looking forward to the Kabul Conference on July 20. We hope that the conference will take up and consider the proposals of the Peace Jirga which was held from June 2 to June 4 in Kabul,” the FO spokesman said.

Islamabad is of the view that the jirga’s proposals are doable, he said, adding that Pakistan hoped that the Kabul Conference would give due consideration to those proposals.

To a question, Basit expressed concern over the human rights violation in Indian-held Kashmir (IHK), saying several innocent civilians have been killed recently, including a nine-year-old boy. “We reiterate our solidarity with the people of Jammu and Kashmir and will continue extending full diplomatic and moral support to their legitimate cause and struggle for self-determination,” he said.

The spokesman said that Amnesty International, in a statement issued on July 5, also expressed concerns over the situation, urging India to avoid the use of force and to investigate the killings of civilians by its troops.

Approach: About the Pakistan-India bilateral relations, the FO spokesman said that Islamabad would approach the forthcoming foreign ministers’ meeting on July 15 with a positive mindset and expected to engage in sustained talks.

“We are looking forward to this meeting and all issues will be discussed as agreed by the two prime ministers,” he said.

Basit recalled that when Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh met at Thimphu, they agreed to resume the dialogue process.

To a question regarding India’s protest over the Pakistan-China nuclear deal, the spokesman said, “We are concerned. India has no locus standi in these matters. Accordingly, the Indian protest, if any, is uncalled for and irrelevant.”

“As far as I know, the World Bank has never been engaged in this project. It is the Asian Development Bank. Thus the question of the World Bank’s refusal to participate in the project does not arise,” he added.

Basit declared the statement of the Indian army chief, where he alleged that Pakistan was supporting terrorists, was baseless and self-serving.

To a question about the dossier handed over by the Indian government on the Mumbai attacks, he said, “this is an ongoing thing and we have been exchanging information regarding the Mumbai trial”.

“We will like that those who have committed the crime be brought to justice. As regards the question that how this would affect the dialogue process between Pakistan and India, I think there is a realisation on both sides that Pakistan and India need to move forward and neither country will gain by not talking to each other,” he said.

“We are hopeful that the July 15 meeting will help move the process forward allowing the two countries to resolve issues of mutual concern and to promote cooperation in South Asia on the whole,” Basit said.

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Fear belies Pakistan boasts of becalmed borderlands

By Chris Allbritton Chris Allbritton
Thu Jul 8, 7:06 pm ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100708/wl_nm/us_pakistan_militants
 
SADDA, Pakistan (Reuters) – The road from Parachinar to Thal in Pakistan's tribal borderlands, just a few kilometers from Afghanistan, used to be sliced by warring Sunni and Shi'ite militias and then blocked by various Taliban groups.

Today, the Pakistan army says, it is open and free. Pink flowers bloom on roadsides where homemade bombs were once planted. Field hands work the rich rice fields and the market -- surrounding a square once used by the Taliban for executions -- is bustling. All appears well in Kurram agency.

At least that's how the army wants journalists to see it.

On a media trip to Kurram sponsored by the Pakistani military, army commanders presented an area racked by sectarian violence and infiltrated by Afghan and Pakistani Taliban as pacified.

Commanders on the ground said that between 3,000 and 4,000 militants had been driven out and would never return.

"I am 200 percent sure we cleared the militants," said Col. Tausif Akhtar, commander of the troops in Kurram.

In a briefing, Akhtar said 96 militants had been killed and more than 100 captured. Eighteen Pakistani Army troops were killed and 46 wounded, he said.

"They have either been killed or left the area," he said.

But, he added, there are "small pockets" of militants remaining. "They are not that important."

He estimated the remaining militants number no more than two dozen.

Mansur Khan Mahsud, research coordinator for the FATA Research Center in Islamabad, said that was doubtful.

"They have not been driven out," he said, agreeing with the army's estimate of the number of militants in the region. "The military claims some areas, but the Taliban are still in control in many areas in central Kurram."

AERIAL BOMBARDMENT

The Pakistani military in October last year launched an assault on South Waziristan, then the stronghold of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan. Militants led by Hakimullah Mehsud -- who got his start as a militant commanding Kurram's Taliban -- scattered via Kurram to other areas.

At the same time, the Pakistani military stepped up its aerial and bombardment campaign against Kurram militants, moved to defuse Sunni-Shi'ite tensions and clear and hold areas that had been beyond control of even the British Raj. They even opened up the 84-km stretch of road between Parachinar in Upper Kurram and Thal in Hangu District in neighboring Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

But the signs of continuing insecurity are numerous, indicating that militancy in Kurram is more tenacious than expected, and militants are either returning or never left in the first place:

* A convoy of journalists was accompanied by three truckloads of heavily armed Pakistani soldiers to each location;

* Soldiers said it's not safe to linger for more than a few moments in the bustling market;

* Civilians at a food distribution center lining up for flour and medicine stared suspiciously at outsiders until an army commander led them in patriotic chants.

At least 25 militants have been killed in clashes with security forces since June 1. More recently at least 10 militants were killed in a clash between rival militant factions in central Kurram on July 1.

More ominously, Taliban militants executed a man, Liaq Khan, on July 2 on charges of being a spy for the Americans.

"If the agency has been cleared, how can they fight there, kidnap people and kill them on charges of spying for the Americans?" Mahsud said.

"THEY WILL NOT LET ME SAY ANYTHING"

Kurram civilians also complain.

"We cannot travel on the road without an escort from the Kurram Militia, because there are many dangers on the road," said Haji Kamal Hussain, president of the Parachinar Traders' Welfare Union.

The Kurram Militia is part of paramilitary Frontier Corps force and largely made up of local people.

All this makes the military watchful and even a bit jumpy.

Soldiers conspicuously eavesdropped on the comments of a local columnist as he chose each of his words carefully, an overt display of control usually more subtle in other parts of Pakistan.

"They will not let me say anything," said Azmat Ali Khan, a local journalist, referring to the nearby soldiers.

Kurram Agency is no stranger to strife.

This spit of Pakistani tribal territory that juts into Afghanistan was the initial haven for Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda fighters -- including, allegedly, Osama bin Laden. They were fleeing the 2001 battle of Tora Bora, itself just visible over the ridge of mountains at a military base in upper Kurram.

It has also been racked by sectarian violence between Sunni and Shi'ite tribes, the only part of Pakistan's border region that is majority Shi'ite. The Taliban and al Qaeda's virulent anti-Shi'ite ideology has meant years of bloody fighting, sometimes with the Pakistan army caught in the middle.

Today, its roads provide easy access to other tribal areas such as Orakzai, Khyber and North and South Waziristan, all of which have been havens and staging grounds for Taliban militants on both sides of the border.

Thanks to its rugged terrain and strategic location, it is a crossroads for militants moving between Pakistan's tribal badlands and Afghanistan's Pashtun heartland.

Khan, the journalist, said the Taliban still controlled large parts of Kurram.

"The Taliban were supported in the past yet right now, some people are still supporting them," he said. "Local people."

But the surest sign of a remaining militant presence was the look of fear on people's faces.

"There are many things to say, be we are unable to say because we are bound here," said Khan. "The local people are fighting for their survival."

(Additional reporting by Zeeshan Haider and Augustine Anthony in Islamabad, and Javed Hussain in Parachinar; Editing by Nick Macfie)

(For more coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan, see: http://www.reuters.com/places/afghanistan-pakistan)

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Pakistan explosion death toll hits 65

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 15:13:58 GMT
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=134083&sectionid=351020401

   
Pakistani villagers carry an injured person at the spot of bombing in tribal area of Mohmand on Friday.
 
The death toll from bomb explosions in Pakistan's Mohmand tribal agency has reached 65 after several seriously injured people died in hospital.

Medics said nearly two dozen people died at a hospital in the town of Yakaghund, while over 100 injured victims are still receiving treatment.

There is confusion among the officials about the nature of the Friday attack.

Some authorities say a small bomb went off outside the main gate of the office of the civil administrator in the town.

Others say a large blast followed after a man on a motorbike detonated explosives outside of the office building.

The blast destroyed scores of shops, several houses and parts of a local jail, allowing at least 35 prisoners to escape.

Rescue operations are underway to save those trapped under the rubble.

Authorities have imposed a curfew in the area and launched an investigation into the attack.

The Pakistani military has recently launched a series of operations in an effort to clear the troubled tribal zone of militants.

Militants have killed hundreds of people in Pakistan this year alone.

JR/MMN

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Pak blast death toll reaches to 104

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 07:32:46 GMT
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=134137&sectionid=351020401

 
More dead bodies were recovered from the site of Pakistan's twin bombings, increasing the death toll to 104.

The death toll of Friday's twin bombings in Pakistan's Mohmand agency has reached 104, making it the deadliest attack this year in the country.

A local official told Press TV that over 100 injured have been admitted to different hospitals and most are in critical condition.

The officials say more bodies have been recovered from the debris of collapsed buildings in the town of Yakaghund and some of the injured died overnight.

The bombs went off near a large crowd lining up at a government office for new national identity cards .

Police have launched an investigation into the bombings as there is confusion among the officials about the nature of the Friday attack.

Some authorities say a small bomb went off outside the main gate of the office of the town's civil administrator.

Others say a large blast occurred after a man on a motorbike detonated explosives outside the office building.

Tribal elders, including those involved in setting up militias to fight the Taliban, were in the building, but none was hurt, according to Mohmand chief administrator Amjad Ali Khan.

The Pakistani military has recently launched a series of operations in an effort to clear the troubled tribal zone of militants.

The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has claimed responsibility for the blast.

MVZ/TG/MVZ

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 - Associated Press
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/07/10/death-toll-twin-suicide-bombing-pakistan-jumps-wounded-1271124220/

 - July 10, 2010

Mourners search for answers as death toll from twin suicide bombings in Pakistan jumps to 102

YAKAGHUND, Pakistan




   YAKAGHUND, Pakistan (AP) — The men and women wailed, stood stunned or wearily sifted through the rubble Saturday for bodies, survivors and answers. Only one thing seemed certain: In the end, the two suicide bombers who killed 102 people in this village didn't bother to discriminate among their victims.

Though anti-Taliban tribal elders meeting officials in a government office may have been the target, it was dozens of ordinary civilians in the Mohmand tribal region who bore the brunt of the strike, Pakistan's deadliest this year. Many had come to the site to receive donated food and goods when the bombs went off Friday.

The attack showed that Islamist extremists remain a deadly force along Pakistan's northwest border with Afghanistan, even when barraged by army offensives or drone-fired U.S. missiles. But such analysis meant little to Adnan Khan, who still could hardly fathom why 10 of his relatives had to die.

"People came here yesterday to receive biscuits and edible oil," the college student said midday Saturday. "I don't know why terrorists killed them."

The attack also wounded 168 people in the village of Yakaghund, which has a population of about 4,000 and lies on the edge of Pakistan's tribal belt and the Khyber-Pakhtoonkwa province. The northwest regions have been dealing with Al-Qaida and Taliban violence for years.

It's a situation the U.S. has watched warily, nudging its allies in Islamabad to clamp down on militants who threaten Western troops across the border in Afghanistan and to destabilize nuclear-armed Pakistan itself.

The attackers Friday detonated their explosives near the office of Rasool Khan, a deputy Mohmand administrator who escaped unharmed. Pakistani Taliban spokesman Akramullah Mohmand called some local journalists late Friday and claimed responsibility, saying the elders were the target. None of those elders were hurt, officials said.

Some 70 to 80 shops were damaged or destroyed, while damage to a prison building allowed 28 inmates — ordinary criminals, not militants — to flee, Rasool Khan said.

People on Saturday kept up the search through the piles of brick and rubble left behind. At least 15 people were still believed to be trapped somewhere beneath, said Ibrahim Khan, a local security official who gave the latest casualty tolls.

Sher Afzal, 22, hopes his uncle and cousin are among those missing who may still be alive.

"My uncle came here to collect his national identity card (from a government office), and he is still missing with his son," Afzal said. "We have checked all the hospitals, but we could not trace them."

The Pakistani army has carried out operations in Mohmand, but it has been unable to extirpate the militants. Its efforts to rely on citizen militias to take on the militants have had limited success there, though elders who have been involved in such efforts have often been targeted by militants in Mohmand and elsewhere in the tribal belt.

The Friday attack was the third this year to kill more than 90 people, and it was the worst attack in the country since a car bombing killed 112 people at a crowded market in the main northwest city of Peshawar last October.

Nevertheless, army operations and U.S. missile strikes are believed to have disrupted militants' activities enough to where attacks in the country have decreased this year so far, especially in the northwest. In the last three months of 2009, for instance, more than 500 people were killed in a surge of attacks across the country.

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Pakistan's Suspicious Public

Caught between a vicious Islamist insurgency and CIA drone strikes, Pakistanis are growing increasingly disenchanted with the Taliban. But they still hate the United States, too.


BY AHMED HUMAYUN | JULY 9, 2010
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/07/09/pakistans_suspicious_public?page=full

A series of militant attacks over the last week have sparked widespread anger in Pakistan. Suicide bombers killed 62 people at government offices in the tribal agency of Mohmand today, and last Friday, over 40 worshippers died in an extremist attack on the shrine of Hazrat Data Ganj Baksh, the country's most important Sufi place of worship.  In Pakistan, however, much of this outrage has been directed at Washington and Islamabad rather than at the terrorists.

"America is killing Muslims in Afghanistan and in our tribal areas [using drone attacks]," argued one Pakistani interviewed in the aftermath of the attack, explaining why the United States is ultimately to blame for the bombing. "[M]ilitants are attacking Pakistan to express anger against the government for supporting America." Similar sentiments have circulated widely on Pakistan's hugely influential private TV networks.

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To understand this reaction, it is necessary to grasp the complexity of the domestic Pakistani debate about militancy. The good news is that, over the last 12 months, ordinary Pakistanis have decisively turned against the Taliban's religious agenda. The bad news is that Pakistanis have simultaneously become even more anti-American -- which in turn is distorting their perception of counterinsurgency.

Pakistani perceptions of the Taliban's religious program have shifted from tacit acceptance to revulsion. For a long time, the Taliban argued that they simply wanted to make the country more pious. Until 2009, most Pakistanis saw nothing wrong with that declared intention and largely opposed military operations against militant havens in northwestern Pakistan. Last year, 80 percent of Pakistanis approved of Islamabad's February 2009 truce with the Taliban, which ratified jihadi control over large areas of the North-West Frontier Province.

But after the brutality of the Taliban's "Islamic" rule became self-evident, Pakistani perceptions changed. Last October, Islamabad, acting with broad public support, launched a major offensive against Taliban bases in South Waziristan. It has since followed that up with other operations in the tribal areas -- for example, the Army is currently fighting in Orakzai.

Today, public approval of the Taliban has all but collapsed. According to polling conducted by Gallup last December, no more than 5 percent of the population in any of the country's four provinces believes that the Taliban has a positive influence on their lives, including a meager 1 percent in the North-West Frontier Province.

But these heartening developments have been accompanied by a contrary and troubling trend: the hardening of anti-American sentiment among ordinary Pakistanis. Of 28 countries polled by the Program on International Policy Attitudes for the BBC World Service in April, Pakistan was one of only two countries where a majority of the public held negative views of the United States. And in another Gallup survey, when asked to identify the biggest threat to their country, 59 percent of Pakistanis identified the United States, while only 11 percent named the Taliban.

Pakistani disenchantment with the United States has skewed public discourse about extremism. When Washington urges Islamabad to fight militancy, distrustful Pakistanis question whether counterinsurgency is really in their own national interests. When U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton toured Pakistan in a series of town-hall meetings last November, one of her talking points was that Washington and Islamabad were fighting a common terrorist enemy. But many Pakistanis rejected this contention. As one journalist told Clinton, "We are fighting a war that is imposed on us. It's not our war. It is your war."

At first glance, the stubbornness of anti-American sentiment in Pakistan can seem difficult to understand. After all, President Barack Obama's administration has made significant policy shifts in response to enduring Pakistani grievances with past U.S. administrations. For example, the United States is currently bolstering democracy by moving beyond an exclusive partnership with the Pakistani military and deepening relations with civilian political parties. Moreover, Washington has allocated unprecedented dollars for a wide array of development and infrastructure programs, including vital projects in the energy and water sectors.

But many of these laudable measures -- necessarily focused on long-term issues -- have yet to show tangible benefits. By contrast, Pakistanis are perpetually confronted by the coercive elements of U.S. power. Constant media reports on drone strikes, the presence of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the operation of private mercenary agencies and spy networks in Pakistan fortify a decades-long narrative of the United States as hostile and anti-Muslim. Much of the media's reflexive demagoguery is made worse by credible reports of the local presence of organizations such as the security firm formerly known as Blackwater -- reviled throughout the Muslim world.

Some might argue that rising anti-Americanism in Pakistan is insignificant as long as the United States maintains strong ties to officials in Islamabad and can convince them to expand military operations against militants. But Pakistani suspicion of the United States is the Taliban's last remaining trump card: If it is allowed to fester, the insurgency might regain the public's indulgence.

These opinions have broad currency in part because Pakistan's political leaders have yet to craft a compelling counterterrorism narrative. Even worse, some mainstream Pakistani politicians have internalized the assumptions of Taliban propaganda. Shahbaz Sharif, the chief minister of Punjab and one of the most powerful politicians in the country, declared in March that the Taliban should refrain from terrorism in Punjab because his political party, the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), had also "rejected dictation from abroad" -- implying the two groups shared a common purpose against the United States.

Instead of allowing extremists to frame the domestic debate, Pakistan's leaders should foster a vigorous discussion that honestly confronts the jihadi Frankenstein. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani's call to bring together all major political parties for a national conference on extremism in the aftermath of the Data Ganj Baksh attack is a long-overdue step in the right direction. For its part, the United States should consider whether some aspects of its counterterrorism campaign -- such as the use of companies like Blackwater -- have more costs than benefits in terms of public perception. And both Washington and Islamabad need to collectively generate a narrative in which the two countries are seen to work in concert rather than in opposition. Otherwise, anti-American sentiment in Pakistan will function as a protective shield for extremists for a long time to come.



 Ahmed Humayun is a senior analyst on the Emerging Threats Project at Georgetown University. He can be reached at humayun@isis.georgetown.edu.

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Pakistan tries new counterinsurgency strategy

Pakistan experiments with new ways to quell decades-old insurgency in Taliban's backyard

SEBASTIAN ABBOT
AP News
http://wire.antiwar.com/2010/07/09/pakistan-tries-new-counterinsurgency-strategy/

Jul 09, 2010 21:36 EDT

With every bag of coal Madad Khan dumps into trucks at this mine reopened with the army's help, Pakistan hopes it is moving closer to quelling a 60-year-old nationalist insurgency in this restive southwest province where Afghan Taliban leaders are rumored to hide.

Echoing U.S. counterinsurgency strategy in neighboring Afghanistan, the army has peppered Baluchistan with dozens of development projects to win hearts and minds, an effort officials say has accelerated in recent months alongside a push by the federal government to address local grievances.

Pakistan hopes to replicate this counterinsurgency strategy in other areas along the Afghan border where the army is battling a separate rebellion led by the Pakistani Taliban. But like the U.S. effort in Afghanistan, many observers are skeptical Pakistan's recent push in Baluchistan will succeed given the deep distrust of the state and security forces.

"They are unable to pacify the people because the political and economic alienation of the local population is huge," said Riffat Hussain, professor of defense studies at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad.

Baluchistan remains Pakistan's poorest province despite the presence of vast natural resources that residents complain are mainly exploited to fill the central government's coffers. They also chafe under what they view as effective military rule.

"The government has moved in the right direction, but the province is still virtually under the control of the paramilitary forces and particularly the army," said Hussain.

Baluchistan's geopolitical importance has grown in recent years with China's construction of a huge port on the coast connecting Asia and the Middle East and a planned gas pipeline linking Pakistan and Iran. Many also believe Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar is hiding in Baluchistan, benefiting from instability in the province, which borders southern Afghanistan.

Pakistan has launched at least five separate military operations in Baluchistan, the most recent under former President Pervez Musharraf that killed one of the province's top tribal leaders. The army pulled back to its barracks at the beginning of 2008, but federal paramilitary forces are still deployed throughout the province.

The provincial government has accused those forces and federal intelligence agencies of secretly snatching nearly a thousand people off the street and holding them for years without admitting it, a problem that residents and human rights groups say continues to occur.

"A history of neglect and betrayal over the decades coupled with systematic human rights abuses carried out with impunity has made a vast number of Baluch people desperate," said the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in a report late last year.

Insurgents have responded with a wave of assassinations against non-Baluch residents that have killed hundreds of people, many of them doctors and teachers from other parts of Pakistan.

The army has denied any involvement in the forced disappearance of people and has tried to improve its image in Baluchistan by spending more than $7 million in a development drive that first started in 2007 and has accelerated in recent months. Officials say they realize the conflict cannot be solved by force alone.

"We have learned from the past, and now there is a great realization that unless you go and touch the people's lives, it's not really going to be sustainable," said army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas during a recent visit to Baluchistan.

One of the army's first big development efforts was a deal brokered between two warring tribes to reopen the Chamalang coal mine, which had been shuttered for more than 30 years. The mine, which taps into one of Asia's largest coal fields, reopened in March 2007 and has produced more than $70 million worth of coal and employs about 70,000 people.

"The army has definitely improved its image with this mine," said Khan, the 25-year-old coal worker who earns five times more money at the mine than he did working as a farm laborer in the provincial capital, Quetta.

Proceeds from the mine, which are split between the federal and provincial governments, are used to fund an army-run program that has paid for the education of more than 4,000 Baluchi students.

The army has also built or reconstructed more than a hundred schools, health clinics and mosques, provided about 1,000 Baluchi men and women with vocational training, and stepped up local recruiting into both the army and police.

Once there is sufficient security, the army hopes to undertake similar efforts in the country's semiautonomous tribal region along the Afghan border where it has launched several offensives against Taliban militants. The rugged tribal areas are even less developed than Baluchistan and there is a similar distrust of the state.

The federal government also has stepped up efforts to improve the Baluchistan situation in recent months. It has raised Baluchistan's share of federal tax revenue, passed a constitutional amendment to increase provincial autonomy, and approved a package of reforms aimed at addressing local grievances, including the status of missing people and the share of natural resource wealth.

But Baluchi nationalists have dismissed the measures as mere political promises that have little chance of being honored.

"For me, the Baluchistan package is nothing but a political gimmick," said Tahir Bizenjo, the head of one of the province's largest nationalist parties. "As far as these army development projects are concerned, you also have Baluchistan suffering the greatest human rights violations."

Hussain, the defense studies professor, said the army's projects are too small in scale to have a significant impact on the population of more than 7 million and are located outside areas where grievances and related instability are the highest — a problem the U.S. has grappled with in Afghanistan.

He said if the Pakistani government really wants to resolve the Baluchistan issue, it needs to follow through on its reform promises and begin a political dialogue with the insurgents that addresses human rights violations by the security services.

"These are very serious allegations and unless you address them in a credible fashion and bring the perpetrators of these atrocities to justice, you will continue to have a credibility problem," said Hussain.

Source: AP News

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South Asia
Jul 13, 2010  
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LG13Df02.html  
 
Al-Qaeda aims to cash in on Kashmir


By Syed Saleem Shahzad

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan-sponsored proxy operations that were largely abandoned several years ago have been revived at both the political level and on the armed insurgency front in Indian-administered Kashmir.

For al-Qaeda, watching from Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal area, this provides an opportunity for which it has waited a long time - to hijack Pakistan's "bleed India" operations for its own cause, that is, to pull India into the region's war theater.

The struggle for the right of self-determination in Indian-administered Kashmir, which died down following Pakistan's crackdown on Kashmiri militant groups under American pressure from 2002 onwards, has flared again.

Over the past four weeks, more than 15 people have died in clashes between the local Muslim Kashmiri population and police and paramilitary soldiers, mostly in Srinagar, the summer capital of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. Last week, for the first time ever, the army was sent into Srinagar.

Sources who spoke to Asia Times Online say that two militant organizations - al-Badr led by Bakht Zameen Khan and the Lashkar-e-Taiba, whose resources were largely depleted up until 2008 - are involved in the unrest. They have sent people across the Line of Control that separates the Pakistan-administered and Indian-administered Kashmirs.

This marks the second Kashmiri intifada - the first began in 1989 and resulted in more than a decade of some of the worst violence South Asia has seen and on several occasions brought India and Pakistan to the point of war - fighting did break out briefly at Kargil in 1999.

Speaking to Asia Times Online, a senior Western diplomat commented, "A water dispute is the main bone of contention between the two countries. Although we have found that Pakistan's water problem is the result of internal mismanagement and has nothing to do with Indian intrigues as projected by Pakistan, jihadis are now exploiting the issue for recruitment and wrongfully projecting that if India is not controlled, the whole of Pakistan will be turned into a desert."

The dispute centers on the Neelum River that flows from Indian-administered Kashmir into Pakistan. Under pressure from the US to reduce tensions because their rivalry spills over into Afghanistan and complicates efforts to bring peace there, India and Pakistan are scheduled this week to discuss the appointment of a panel of neutral experts. They will consider India's plans to dam the river for a 330-megawatt hydro-electric power project.

Al-Qaeda watches on
By the standards of the long-running conflict in Kashmir, the latest flare-up is relatively low key, involving mostly street protests, in contrast to the bloody militant attacks of previous years.

For al-Qaeda, though, this is a big moment in terms of its Ghazwai-e-Hind, the Prophet Mohammad's promised end-of-time battle for the conquest of India.

Al-Qaeda decided to start its Ghazwa-e-Hind operations by claiming responsibility for an attack on February 13 this year in which a bomb exploded at the German Bakery in the city of Pune, Maharashtra state, killing 17 people and injuring at least 60.

However, at the 11th hour the decision was shelved and responsibility was claimed by a pseudo organization called Laskhar-e-Taiba al-Alami. Later, al-Qaeda leader Mustafa Abu al-Yazid (now killed) announced in a video message that the attack had been carried out by commander Ilyas Kashmiri's 313 Brigade, which is assigned for al-Qaeda's India operations. A few days after the Pune attack, Kashmiri sent an exclusive e-mail message to Asia Times Online warning that more attacks would be carried out in India. (See Al-Qaeda chief delivers a warning February 13, 2010.)

According to well-placed sources in al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda sees the unrest in Kashmir as a "god-gifted" opportunity to steal the Kashmiri insurgency from its Pakistani handlers and use it for its Ghazwa-e-Hind operations. These sources say the next operation will be in the Indian capital New Delhi in October during the Commonwealth Games.

"Al-Qaeda will take responsibility for these attacks and Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri [al-Qaeda's number two] will release a video message on the subject," one source said.

The networks of the Harkat-ul Jihad al-Islami (HuJI - Movement of Islamic Holy War) will provide logistical support. The al-Qaeda-linked HuJI's original mission was to set up Islamic rule in Bangladesh, but its ambitions and geographical spread now cover much of South Asia.

Inside India, according to the sources, the state of Uttar Pradesh will be al-Qaeda's rendezvous point. Here it will work with groups such as breakaway factions of the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). SIMI was formed in the state in the late 1970s for the "liberation of India" from Western materialistic cultural influence and to convert the Muslim society to live according to Muslim codes of conduct.

Asia Times Online understands that al-Qaeda's aim is to start a pattern of terror attacks that will initiate a low-intensity insurgency in India's heartlands, including the Kashmir struggle, rather than stand-alone terror attacks.

In the bigger picture, according to the sources, the goal is to sabotage all US efforts to create peace in the region (especially Afghanistan) and draw India and Pakistan into a crisis situation.

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

(Copyright 2010 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)  
 
 

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July 11, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/12/world/asia/12training.html?_r=1&hp

Distrust Slows U.S. Training of Pakistanis

By ERIC SCHMITT and JANE PERLEZ


Pakistani Army soldiers trained last month for counterinsurgency warfare at a facility southeast of Islamabad

WARSAK, Pakistan — The recent graduation ceremony here for Pakistani troops trained by Americans to fight the Taliban and Al Qaeda was intended as show of fresh cooperation between the Pakistani and American militaries. But it said as much about its limitations.

Nearly 250 Pakistani paramilitary troops in khaki uniforms and green berets snapped to attention, with top students accepting a certificate from an American Army colonel after completing the specialized training for snipers and platoon and company leaders.

But this new center, 20 miles from the Afghanistan border, was built to train as many as 2,000 soldiers at a time. The largest component of the American-financed instruction — a 10-week basic-training course — is months behind schedule, officials from both sides acknowledge, in part because Pakistani commanders say they cannot afford to send troops for new training as fighting intensifies in the border areas.

Pakistan also restricts the number of American trainers throughout the country to no more than about 120 Special Operations personnel, fearful of being identified too closely with the unpopular United States — even though the Americans reimburse Pakistan more than $1 billion a year for its military operations in the border areas. “We want to keep a low signature,” said a senior Pakistani officer.

The deep suspicion that underlies every American move here is a fact of life that American officers say they must work through as they try to reverse the effects of the many years when the United States had cut Pakistan off from military aid because of its nuclear weapons program.

That time of estrangement, which lasted through the 1990s, left the Pakistanis feeling scorned and abandoned by the United States, and its military distant and seeded with officers and soldiers sympathetic to conservative Islam — and even at times the very militants they are today charged with fighting.

Today the American-led war in Afghanistan and its continuing campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas have made the United States suspect at all levels of the military, and among the Pakistani population, as anti-Americanism has hit new heights. This training program is among the first steps to repair that relationship. “This is the most complex operating environment I’ve ever dealt with,” said Col. Kurt Sonntag, a West Point graduate who handed out the graduation certificates here.

Such are the limits on the Americans that dozens of Pakistani enlisted “master trainers,” taught by the Americans, do the bulk of the hands-on instruction here. Since January 2009, about 1,000 scouts from Pakistan’s Frontier Corps have completed the training, which is designed to help turn the 58,000-member paramilitary force that patrols the tribal areas from a largely passive border force into skilled and motivated fighters.

The personnel training is just one piece of what is now a multipronged relationship. With combating Al Qaeda and the Taliban now the overriding priority, the United States provides Pakistan with a wide array of weapons, shares intelligence about the militants, and has given it more than $10 billion toward the cost of deploying nearly 150,000 troops in and around the border areas since 2001 — with the promise of much more to come.

On June 27, the United States delivered to Pakistan the first of three new F-16 jet fighters equipped with precision targeting instruments for day and night use. A half dozen United States Air Force pilots traveled here to train and qualify Pakistani aviators on night operations.

Washington is stressing that these upgraded fighters will be used by Pakistan against the militants in the tribal areas, but they also augment the F-16 fleet that the United States has financed over the years as part of the country’s arsenal that is directed against India.

By urging Pakistan to embrace counterinsurgency training, the United States is trying to steer the Pakistani Army toward spending more resources against what Washington believes is Pakistan’s main enemy, the Taliban and Al Qaeda, rather than devoting almost the entire military effort against India, American officials said. Central to this approach is an array of training that the Americans tailor to what Pakistani says it needs for the Frontier Corps, its conventional army and its Special Operations forces.

About a dozen American trainers are assigned to yearlong duty at this training center, a cluster of classrooms and dormitories and adjacent training ranges on a large campus, which the United States spent $23 million to build, plus another $30 million for training and equipment requested by the Pakistani military.

The most gifted Frontier Corps marksmen are selected for sniper training, a skill in need against the Taliban who have been using Russian-made Dragonov sniper rifles to deadly effect against the Pakistani Army.

Five two-man sniper teams, trained to use American-made M24 rifles as well as how to work with a spotter, measure wind speeds and camouflage their positions, received awards from Colonel Sonntag. But five two-man teams were dropped during the training because their math skills were not good enough, another American trainer said.

Much of the training here is aimed at building the confidence of the Frontier Corps scouts, some of whom have relatives in the Taliban, and who speak the same language, Pashto, as many militants. Often the militants are better armed and more handsomely paid than the scouts.

Three basic skills were built into the course, one of the American trainers said: How to shoot straight, how to administer battlefield first aid, and how to provide covering fire for advancing troops.

Until a few years ago, the Frontier Corps was widely ridiculed as corrupt and incompetent. But under the leadership of Maj. Gen. Tariq Khan, salaries have quadrupled to about $200 a month, new equipment is flowing in, and the scouts are winning praise in combat. Still, General Khan acknowledged in an interview that the training here was still “settling down and maturing.”

The scouts face a battle-hardened enemy that has lived in the mountains around here for decades. “We’ve been here one-and-a-half years,” said Col. Ahsan Raza, the training center’s commandant. “They have been preparing for the last 20 years.”

The Pakistani Army also conducts training on its own without direct American aid. At the Pabbi Hills training center, halfway between Islamabad and Lahore, a visitor drives up a rutted dirt road, past clusters of troop tents pitched amid acacia trees, to a sprawling, 2,500-acre series of ranges and obstacle courses.

Every Pakistani Army unit assigned to the fight in the country’s tribal belt now receives at least four weeks of training in what the Pakistani Army calls “low-intensity conflict.”

Atop a 30-foot-high observation tower that doubles as a rappelling wall, Maj. Shaukat Hayat, second in command of the 55 Baloch Regiment, a 700-man infantry unit, oversees as his troops drill in how to clear a militant’s house. A billowing white smoke grenade offers advancing forces cover as they go room to room, exchanging gunfire with mock militants.

A Pakistani trainer stands on a walkway above the roofless rooms that allows him to observe and grade the troops’ performance. “When they’re done, they’ll go back and review what they did, and do it again,” said Major Hayat, 36.

The instructors are veterans of the campaigns in the tribal areas. Troops conduct live-fire drills on outdoor ranges with popup targets of militants. Similar drills at indoor ranges have paper targets with pictures of guerrillas and civilians, testing the troops’ split-second skills to judge friend or foe under fire.

But simulating the fight with the militants goes only so far, Pakistani officers say.

“It’s good textbook training, but the final training has to take place on the ground and must deal with the idea of a bullet coming at you,” said Lt. Gen. Asif Yasin Malik, who commands all Pakistani forces in the tribal areas. “After that first encounter, it’s done. They’re O.K.”

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US senator: Pakistan must take on Haqqani network

US Sen. Levin urges Pakistan to crack down on al-Qaida-linked Haqqani militant network

Staff
AP News
http://wire.antiwar.com/2010/07/11/us-senator-pakistan-must-take-on-haqqani-network/

Jul 11, 2010 12:20 EDT

The chairman of the U.S. Senate Arms Services Committee is urging Pakistan to crack down on the al-Qaida-linked Haqqani militant network, which operates on both sides of the country's border with Afghanistan.

Sen. Carl Levin, who was visiting Afghanistan, said Sunday that he does not think the Haqqani network will ever make peace and he vowed to push to include the group on the U.S. terrorist blacklist.

The Democratic senator from Michigan praised Pakistan for taking on other militant networks on its territory but said the country is "not following through" on its vow to fight all terrorist groups. The Haqqanis, which mainly focus on attacking targets in Afghanistan, are suspected of having ties to Pakistan's powerful military intelligence agency.

Source: AP News

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Carl Levin Wants To Expand Drone Strikes In Pakistan



First Posted: 07-13-10 10:10 AM   |   Updated: 07-13-10 10:10 AM

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/13/carl-levin-wants-to-expan_n_644212.html

The top Senate Democrat on defense issues said on Tuesday that he would like to see an expansion of the U.S. military's controversial drone-strike operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, told a group of reporters that he favors targeting the militant insurgent group, the Haqqani network, through drone strikes -- something that U.S. forces don't currently do.

"As a matter of fact, I think we have to include on the list other threats to the Afghan mission," Levin said, during a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. "We have to have, I believe, we should have on our list the headquarters of the Haqqani network. We know where they are. We know where that headquarters is... I don't think they should be off-limits to those strikes. They directly threaten the Afghan mission."

"I think we have got to have them on a list of targets, absolutely," he added, after the breakfast. "I don't see any reason why they are not on a target list and I won't be surprised if they are. So I'm not gonna go beyond that."

Levin also said that he supports adding the Haqqani network, which has links to Osama bin Laden, to the State Department's list of terrorist sponsoring organizations, hinting that he would pursue legislative action to do as much in the near future. The Michigan Democrat called the insurgent group, which is closely allied with the Taliban and based primarily in northwest Pakistan, the "greatest threat" to stability (and, subsequently, the U.S. mission) Afghanistan -- greater, he said, than Taliban fighters crossing the border into Afghanistan.

"Can more be done?" he asked, rhetorically. "It has to be done by Pakistan, unless it is going to be done with drone attacks on their headquarters. More needs to be done by Pakistan. They have not gone into that area in North Waziristan where the Haqqanis are. They have not gone in for reasons that, I'm afraid, are clear to me: The Haqqanis are not a threat to the Pakistanis. They are threats to Afghanis. But the Pakistanis have said they now realize more than ever that terrorism is a threat to them."

Levin's call for an expansion of drone strikes is a reflection, in many respects, of how reliant the U.S. mission in the AfPak region has become on less human-intensive military operations. According to military and political officials, drones have been effective, in many cases, in allowing U.S. forces to target and eliminate terrorist and insurgent headquarters without taking on the actual costs and difficulties of sending units into remote areas. But they haven't come without tragic side-effects. Most notably, drone attacks have resulted in a significant number of civilian deaths, inspiring an intense backlash by local Afghanistan and Pakistan communities against American forces.


There is, increasingly, an open debate as to whether drones are eliminating or creating more anti-American sentiment. All of which Levin acknowledged.

"There is always the challenge of hitting innocents in the neighborhood or in the area or in the facilities; so-called collateral damage," he said. "And there is also probably a political question as to whether or not the Pakistanis would look the other way on that one."

But the senator insisted that with respect to the Haqqani network, drones are necessary, in part because there have been no prospects for political reconciliation with the group.

"I don't think [Afghan President Hamid Karzai] is very optimistic about them being part of any peace settlement," said Levin. "They are simply irreconcilable and, frankly from everything we've heard, that is accurate."

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Pakistan downplays US sanctions

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 11:04:29 GMT
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=134733&sectionid=351020103

   
 
Islamabad has shrugged off the United States' unilateral punitive measures against Tehran, saying sanctions will have no bearing on the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project.

"The proposed project would be completed before 2014 as decided by the two countries in an agreement," a Press TV correspondent reported Pakistan's Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit as saying on Tuesday.

He added that the US bans will not affect the multi-billion-dollar contract on the import of natural gas from Iran.

The comments come a week after Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani chaired a high-level meeting to finalize a strategy under which the Pak-Iran gas pipeline is to be laid.

Gilani received a briefing from the petroleum and natural resources officials and asked relevant authorities to finalize the project in no time.

After facing opposition by its front line ally on the so-called global war on terror, Pakistan has made it clear to the US that the pipeline, which will connect Iran's South Pars gas field with Pakistan's Balochistan and Sindh provinces, is essential to meet its energy needs.

The US administration tried to block the deal to put more economic pressure on Tehran over its nuclear program.

On June 12, the energy-starved South Asian country penned a gas pipeline deal with neighboring Iran under which Tehran agreed to deliver 21.2 million cubic meters (750 million cubic feet) of natural gas per day to Pakistan from 2014.

Last month, US President Barack Obama's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke announced that Washington had sought to dissuade Islamabad from signing the deal, amid plans to intensify pressure on Iran.

Pakistan shrugged off the call, with Gilani saying Pakistan is "not bound to implement US decisions."

Iran, however, has completed the construction of more than a third of the 2,600-kilometer gas pipeline, which is estimated to cost $7 billion.

SF/NN

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South Asia
Jul 16, 2010 
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LG16Df04.htl 
 
Pakistan cracks the whip

By Syed Saleem Shahzad

ISLAMABAD - Despite repeated warnings by Pakistan's premier intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, under American pressure the government has begun a risky crackdown on extremist religious organizations as well as the essentially inactive remnants of banned jihadi organizations.

Over the past few days, more than 200 people in the northwestern city of Peshawar have been detained, while in the eastern province of Punjab about 100 members of banned militant organizations have been arrested. The banned extremist Sunni Muslim group Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan - now known as Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat - was among those groups targeted.

The crackdown is similar to the one in 2004-2005 following unsuccessful assassination attacks on then-president General Pervez Musharraf. Hundreds of jihadis were arrested, including heroes of the Pakistani establishment such as Ilyas Kashmiri and veteran jihadi Abdul Jabbar. The crackdown led to a split between the militants and the Pakistani military and made Pakistan very much a part of the Afghan war theater by 2007. Top guerrilla commander Ilyas Kashmiri's 313 Brigade is now an operational arm of al-Qaeda.

The latest crackdown sharpens the schism between the two largest Sunni sects and adds fuel to the fire of conflict between Shi'ites and Sunnis.

Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat is an anti-Shi'ite political party that wants to have Shi'ites declared non-Muslim through legislation in parliament. In the early 1970s, Ahmadis suffered this fate.

The group contested parliamentary elections in 2002, and its leader at that time, Maulana Azam Tariq (now assassinated), was elected. He supported the Musharraf-backed Pakistan Muslim League (Q). The party now supports the opposition Pakistan Muslim League of former premier Nawaz Sharif.

Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat does not believe in armed struggle, but its breakaway faction, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, is a banned underground militant outfit that is allied with al-Qaeda and known to have killed several leading Shi'ite figures.

Many of Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat's leaders have been killed by the banned Shi'ite militant organization Sipah-e-Mohammad, which is a breakaway faction of the banned political party Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Fiqah-e-Jaferi. The Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Fiqah-e-Jaferi now operates as the Tehrik-e-Islami and is a part of the six-party religious alliance Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, as a representative of Shi'ites.

Following the twin suicide attacks this month in Lahore on a Sufi shrine in which more than 40 people were killed and nearly 200 injured, the Punjabi Taliban were brought into the spotlight. They are considered responsible for changing the dynamics of the Afghan war theater as they have vast expertise acquired while fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s and Indian forces in disputed Kashmir in the 1990s.

International players in Afghanistan such as the United States and UK therefore have pressed Pakistan hard to take action against them. The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi was top on the wanted list for a crackdown in southern Punjab.

However, Pakistani intelligence agencies claimed there was no significant presence of the Punjabi Taliban in Punjab province, saying their sanctuaries were in the tribal areas and in Afghanistan and that they did not have strongholds in Pakistan's urban centers.

All the same, the recent wave of attacks in Punjab indicates that they must have some foothold in Punjab and intelligence agencies therefore warned against opening up another front in the province - the military is already heavily involved in fighting against militants in the tribal areas.

So the authorities went after the complex labyrinth of sectarian-based political parties that are deeply interwoven into Pakistan's social and political fiber, as well as jihadi organizations like the banned Jaish-e-Muhammad that also have complex relations with the military establishment. Madrassas (seminaries) are also likely to be targeted. Intelligence had also strongly warned against such action.

Anti-Taliban sections of the government have tried to elicit support from Sunni anti-Taliban organizations. In the southern port city of Karachi in Sindh province, organizations from the Brelvi (Sufi) school of thought have seized some mosques previously operated by the pro-Taliban Deobandis. This has provoked serious tension between the country's two largest Sunni sects.

"We warn against any intrigues or conspiracies against Deobandi madrassas or mosques. Otherwise, we reserve our rights to strongly react," said a representative of all Deobandi schools, mosques and religious parties.

The Brelvi school of thought is considered to have the largest following in the country. However, the Deobandis have the largest network of schools and mosques, in addition to the largest religious political parties. These include the Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (all factions) and Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat. Deobandi scholars have important ministries in the federal cabinet and most jihadi organizations hail from the Deobandi sect (the others come from the Salafis and the Jamaat-e-Islami, which are also close to the Deobandis).

The crackdown is likely to provide a justification for the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi to carry out more attacks inside Pakistan on Sunni and Shi'ite targets, which can only spark more sectarian unrest, as well as possible create a new wave of militants heading for the jihadi epicenter in the North Waziristan tribal area on the border with Afghanistan.

This is precisely what happened after the 2004-2005 crackdown and it proved a decisive factor in the Afghan Taliban's comeback in 2006.

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

 
 
 

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Suicide attack kills five in Pakistan's Swat valley


Published: Thursday July 15, 2010
http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Suicide_attack_kills_five_in_Pakist_07152010.html 
 

A suicide attack targeted a Pakistani military convoy on Thursday, killing five people in the northwestern Swat valley where the army put down a Taliban uprising last year.

It was the deadliest attack in the district since February and underscored lingering insecurity in a region that until a major military operation last year was largely outside government control and paralysed by Taliban militants.

The bombing came as the Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers in Islamabad held their first substantive talks since the 2008 Mumbai attacks -- which New Delhi blamed on Pakistani militants -- torpedoed their peace process.

Suicide and bomb attacks blamed on Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants have killed more than 3,500 people across nuclear-armed Pakistan since government troops besieged a radical mosque in Islamabad in July 2007.

"It was a suicide attack. Two legs of the suicide bomber were found," Swat police chief Qazi Ghulam Farooq told AFP.

Five people were killed, including a couple visiting from Pakistan's central province of Punjab, he said.

The powerful device ripped through a busy street outside a bus terminal in Mingora, littering the road with burnt out vehicles and sparking a frantic rescue effort to recover the casualties.

Television footage showed volunteers carrying at least one body away from the site, while others frantically pulled at the twisted doors to rescue two victims sitting in the front seats of one non-military vehicle.

"At least five people, including two women have been killed and more than 40 wounded in the blast," Qazi Jamil, police chief for the northwestern Malakand region that includes Swat, told AFP by telephone.

A military spokesman said the army had been the target and that two security force personnel were wounded in the blast, which happened just as a military convoy was driving past the bus terminal.

"The target were army vehicles," he told AFP by telephone.

Mingora is 125 kilometres (80 miles) northwest of the capital Islamabad and the main town in Swat, a mountain valley of enormous natural beauty that was once a popular tourist destination for Pakistanis and Westerners.

For two years the Taliban paralysed much of the Swat district by promoting a repressive brand of Islamic law, opposing secular girls' education and beheading opponents, until the government ordered in thousands of troops.

In April 2009, Pakistan launched a major offensive in the neighbouring districts of Buner and Lower Dir, then advanced through Swat.

After heavy fighting that displaced an estimated two million people, the military declared the region back under army control last summer and tentative efforts have begun to kickstart development and revive the economy.

Many of the displaced have now returned to their homes to rebuild their lives, but skirmishes, threats and tensions have remained.

On May 1, a suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance to a busy market in Mingora, killing three people and wounding 12 others. Similarly last February, a similar attack killed nine people.

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US embassy clarifies position on Blackwater   


http://www.app.com.pk/en_/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=109122&Itemid=2
     
ISLAMABAD, Jul 13 (APP): A spokesman of the United States (US)embassy denied an article published in a national daily newspaper onTuesday on its front-page alleging that the private contractor known as “Xe Services,” formerly “Blackwater,” is active in Islamabad and renting several houses to its missions in Pakistan on behalf of the US government.

The US embassy spokesman in a statement said, “the article further alleges that NGOs are facilitating the arrival of US ‘humanitarian workers’ in Pakistan implying that “Blackwater” contractors or US military personnel are posing as humanitarian workers.”

The spokesman said,” these accusations are entirely false.  Neither the US State Department nor the US Department of Defence has any contracts with “Xe Services” (or “Blackwater”) in Pakistan”.

“ Contrary to the article’s fictitious claims, no U.S. Embassy personnel or contractors are renting houses or facilities in Islamabad for any “notorious enterprise” or falsely posing as humanitarian workers”, he added.

He said US military personnel assigned to the U.S. Embassy’s Office of the Defence Representative to Pakistan (ODR-P) were here at the invitation of the Government of Pakistan to support security assistance programmes and deepen the cooperative relationship with Pakistan. 
 

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Petraeus wants Taliban in Pakistan on terror list

Petraeus, senator want Pakistan-based insurgents added to State Department's terrorism list

by PAULINE JELINEK
AP News
http://wire.antiwar.com/2010/07/14/petraeus-wants-taliban-in-pakistan-on-terror-list/
Jul 14, 2010 17:29 EDT

The new military commander in Afghanistan and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee are urging the State Department to add to its terrorist list some Afghan insurgent commanders who operate from hiding places in neighboring Pakistan.

Commander of NATO forces Gen. David Petraeus wants some leaders of the Haqqani network added to the list, a senior U.S. Defense official in Washington said Wednesday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in order to describe internal administration discussions.

On Tuesday, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., urged the State Department to take the same action. Levin is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Both asked for sanctions against the al-Qaida-linked group, led by Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son Siraj. The Haqqani network launches attacks against U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan from the Waziristan tribal region in Pakistan.

Formally designating leaders of the group as terrorists could anger Pakistani officials, because it would require that government to put pressure on any country harboring those leaders.

The listings also could hamper efforts by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to reconcile with insurgents in his effort to negotiate an end to the war.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the department has studied the question, but not reached a decision.

"The Haqqani network has been known to us for some time, this is not something that snuck up on us," he said Wednesday. "This is an ongoing process ... Developments change over time and it is something that we are actively looking at."

A group of lawmakers also has been urging the State Department to designate the Pakistani Taliban organization Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, as a foreign terrorist organization.

Officials said that review also is under way and was speeded up after the May 1 failed Times Square bombing. The man who has pleaded guilty in the New York incident, Pakistani-born American Faisal Shahzad, said he trained with the Pakistani Taliban to build bombs, then returned to the U.S. to launch an attack that would avenge attacks on Muslims by U.S. forces overseas.

___

Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Lolita Baldor contributed to this report.

Source: AP News

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NATO containers destroyed in Pakistan


Fri, 16 Jul 2010 04:25:53 GMT
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=134975&sectionid=351020401

 
The bulk of the equipment required by US-led troops based in Afghanistan is shipped through the troubled Khyber tribal region in northwest Pakistan and southwestern Baluchistan province.
 
Four NATO supply containers have been destroyed after they were set on fire by unidentified attackers in Pakistan's southwest province of Baluchistan.

Police officials told Press TV that unknown militants attacked the NATO supply containers in the town of Mach in the Bolan district near Baluchistan's capital city of Quetta on Thursday night.

More than 400 NATO trucks and containers have been torched or plundered over the last four months in various areas of the Khyber, Pakhtoonkhwa and Baluchistan provinces of Pakistan.

Pakistan's lawless tribal belt on the Afghan border remains a haven for militants who fled the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

Pakistani authorities have deployed heavy contingents of police and military forces on all major arteries in the area to curb militant attacks on supplies trucked to Afghanistan.

NATO and the US forces are dependent on Pakistan for supplies, as about 80 percent of such cargo passes through the country.

The rampant attacks have forced NATO to look for alternative routes, including through Central Asia.

According to Xinhua news agency, Thursday's attack on the NATO supply convoy is the third of its kind in 72 hours.

MVZ/JG/MVZ

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US Missiles Kill 10 People in Pakistan
 
 
16/07/2010 10:30:35 AM GMT   
 
http://aljazeera.com/news/articles/34/US-Missiles-Kill-10-People-in-Pakistan.html

 
US missiles destroyed a compound used by fighters in Pakistan's tribal belt on Thursday, killing at least 10 militants in the first such attack for two weeks.
   
A US drone fired at least two missiles into the compound in the village of Sheerani Mada Khel in the district of North Waziristan, a Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked stronghold heavily targeted in a covert US drone war this year.
   
"At least 10 militants were killed," a senior security official told AFP on condition of anonymity. Another security official said up to 14 militants were killed when three missiles slammed into the compound.
   
The area, 40 kilometers (25 miles) from Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan, is a stronghold of Pakistani warlord Hafiz Gul Bahadur. He is reputed to control up to 2,000 fighters in the region who stage attacks over the border against foreign forces stationed in Afghanistan.
   
It was not immediately clear whether there were any high-value targets among the dead. Neither officials could confirm their nationalities.
¬
Source: Al Manar
 

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Pakistan market bomb kills 10


Published: Friday July 16, 2010
http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Pakistan_market_bomb_kills_10_07162010.html



A bomb blast ripped through a busy second-hand car market in a Pakistan's infamous tribal district of Khyber on Friday, killing ten civilians including children, officials said.

The explosion rocked Kuki Khel town in Khyber, on the NATO supply route into Afghanistan and part of Pakistan's tribal belt that Washington considers an Al-Qaeda headquarters and the most dangerous region on Earth.

"Ten people have been killed, there were three children among the dead. 14 people were wounded in the blast," Shafeerullah Khan, the top administration official of Khyber tribal district told AFP.

The timed device was planted in a ditch in a crowded market where people buy and sell second-hand cars, he said.

Two intelligence officials also confirmed the death toll saying three shops and four cars were destroyed.

Officials described the area as a stronghold of Lashkar-e-Islam, a homegrown militant group that has carried out Islamist vigilante-style campaigns, kidnappings, shootings and attacks in Khyber.

The group has been the target of Pakistani military operations.

Bombs and attacks blamed on Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants have killed more than 3,600 people across nuclear-armed Pakistan since government troops besieged a radical mosque in Islamabad in July 2007.

Much of the violence has been concentrated in northwest Pakistan and the border areas with Afghanistan, where around 143,000 US and NATO troops are battling to turn around a nine-year war against Taliban insurgents.

On Thursday, a suicide bomber targeted a military convoy, killing five people in the Swat valley where the army put down a Taliban uprising last year.

It was the deadliest attack in the district since February and underscored that militants still pose a threat in the region despite a major military operation to re-capture a valley paralysed by the Taliban.

market selling second-hand cars in a Pakistan's infamous tribal district of Khyber on Friday, killing ten civilians including children, officials said.

The explosion rocked Kuki Khel town in Khyber, on the NATO supply route into Afghanistan and part of Pakistan's tribal belt that Washington considers an Al-Qaeda headquarters and the most dangerous region on Earth.

"Ten people have been killed, there were three children among the dead. 14 people were wounded in the blast," Shafeerullah Khan, the top administration official of Khyber tribal district told AFP.

The timed device was planted in a ditch in a crowded market where people buy and sell second-hand cars, he said.

Two intelligence officials also confirmed the death toll saying three shops and four cars were destroyed.

Officials described the area as a stronghold of Lashkar-e-Islam, a homegrown militant group that has carried out Islamist vigilante-style campaigns, kidnappings, shootings and attacks in Khyber.

The group has been the target of Pakistani military operations.

Bombs and attacks blamed on Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants have killed more than 3,600 people across nuclear-armed Pakistan since government troops besieged a radical mosque in Islamabad in July 2007.

Much of the violence has been concentrated in northwest Pakistan and the border areas with Afghanistan, where around 143,000 US and NATO troops are battling to turn around a nine-year war against Taliban insurgents.

On Thursday, a suicide bomber targeted a military convoy, killing five people in the Swat valley where the army put down a Taliban uprising last year.

It was the deadliest attack in the district since February and underscored that militants still pose a threat in the region despite a major military operation to re-capture a valley paralysed by the Taliban.

[bigron]

Four Nato tankers gutted near Mach


Friday, 16 Jul, 2010       
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/04-nato-tankers-gutted-qs-06

Gunmen attacked the trucks when the drivers stopped along a hotel on National Highway. — Photo by Reuters World

Pakistan’s role in reconciliation ambiguous: US Pakistan’s role in reconciliation ambiguous: US QUETTA: Unknown assailants opened fire on six oil tankers heading toward Afghanistan near the Mach locality of tehsil Bolan in Quetta city late on Thursday, setting them ablaze.

Four oil tankers were left completely gutted as a result of the attack.

The Afghanistan-bound containers were passing through Quetta, carrying oil and other logistical materials for Nato forces.

Gunmen attacked the trucks when the drivers stopped along a hotel on National Highway.

Fire tenders had been called in from Quetta and Sibbi, officials said.

[bigron]

Pakistani militants kill 18 civilians

Sat, 17 Jul 2010 08:37:25 GMT
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=135114&sectionid=351020401

 
 The attack took place near the Char Khel village in Kurram region near the Afghan border as the vehicles were en route to Peshawar.

Militants have attacked a civilian convoy of vehicles being escorted by security forces in a Pakistani tribal region on the Afghan border, killing at least 18 people.

Witnesses say militants attacked the last two vehicles in the convoy with automatic weapons near Char Khel village, Reuters reported.

The convoy was headed to the main northwestern city of Peshawar from Parachinar, the main town of the Pashtun-dominated Kurram region where the army has killed nearly 100 militants in operations in the past few months.

A tribal leader confirmed the toll, saying that two women were among the dead.

At least 11 people were killed in a similar attack last week when a passenger bus heading to Peshawar was attacked.

MVZ/MGH

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Sunday, July 18, 2010
11:52 Mecca time, 08:52 GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/07/201071842649336595.html
   
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
 
Clinton in Pakistan for talks 

 
Clinton will meet on Sunday evening with the Pakistani president and prime minister [AFP]
 
Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, has arrived in Islamabad for a two-day visit that will focus on economic aid and Pakistan's role in the war in Afghanistan.

Clinton will attend at least one public event in Islamabad on Sunday. She will meet on Sunday evening with Asif Ali Zardari, the Pakistani president, and Yousuf Raza Gilani, the prime minister.

Her talks on Monday will include several senior Pakistani officials, including Shah Mahmood Qureshi, the foreign minister.

The US delegation is expected to press Pakistan to escalate its war against armed groups in the country's northwest - particularly the so-called "Haqqani network" - supposedly the deadliest group operating in Afghanistan whose fighters often take sanctuary in Pakistan.

Clinton will also likely press Pakistan on its role in "reconciliation" talks between anti-government fighters and the Afghan government. Some US officials suspect that Pakistan will encourage fighters with links to al-Qaeda to join the government.

"For the United States, it is key that the Afghan government, and those Taliban elements who may join it, have no links to al-Qaeda, and that Afghanistan does not again become a base for al-Qaeda," Teresita Schaffer, an analyst at the US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said.

Kabul conference

The Pakistani government, meanwhile, will have several requests of its own. The US pledged billions of dollars in development aid for Pakistan last year, but the two governments are still arguing over how to disburse that aid.

Pakistan's army also hopes to secure additional military assistance from the United States.

Clinton will then travel to Kabul for an international donors' conference on Tuesday.

The Afghan government will present a long-term development strategy to dozens of prospective donors, most of whom are expected to pledge additional aid for Afghanistan. The government is also seeking more control over how international aid is spent.

This will be the ninth international conference on Afghanistan since the war began in 2001.

It will also be the largest international conference in Kabul since the 1970s. Security has already been raised across the Afghan capital, and Nato officials said on Saturday that they had foiled a plot to attack the conference.
 
 

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Killer drones: Where's the accountability?

by NAT HENTOFF

http://uruknet.info/?p=m68010&hd=&size=1&l=e

July 16, 2010

When the Obama administration officially declared that an American citizen -- Anwar al-Awlaki, a radically influential global preacher of murderous jihad -- is on a targeted list to be tracked and killed by CIA pilotless drones, New York Times reporter Scott Shane made a constitutional point that had no discernible impact on Congress or the citizenry at large:

"To eavesdrop on the terrorism suspect, intelligence agencies would have to get a court warrant. But designating him for death ... required no judicial review." (New York Times, May 13)

On June 24, the president's closest adviser on counterterrorism, John Brennan -- a former high-level CIA official who was deeply involved in techniques for interrogating terrorism suspects that ignored the U.S. Torture Act -- indicated that more American citizens could become targets of CIA pilotless drones.

In an interview with Washington Times reporter, Eli Lake (June 24), Brennan referred to "dozens of Americans (who) have joined terrorist groups and are posing a threat to the United States."

Said Brennan: "To me, terrorists should not be able to hide behind their passports and their citizenship, and that includes U.S. citizens, whether they are overseas or whether they are here in the United States. What we need to do is to apply the appropriate tool and the appropriate response."

Since these instantly decisive drones -- unhindered by rules of evidence and pesky defense lawyers -- are, as I've reported, Obama's favorite weapon against terrorism, it is very likely that Anwar al-Awlaki will not be the lone American citizen to be obliterated by a Predator or Reaper drone. How many Americans will object?

After all, how many candidates of either party will even mention the drones in the midterm election campaigns? Even the Tea Party legions in their admirable classes on the constitution -- while, at rallies and meetings, they hold the founding document in their pockets -- have hardly shown concern about the effects of these pilotless drones on our Declaration of Independence's mandate that we show "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind."

In those countries -- among them, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen -- where civilians with no ties to terrorism mourn family members and friends inadvertently killed in the corollary damage of drone attacks -- the United States is increasingly reviled and feared while terrorists feed on the natives' anger to recruit more of them.

Consider the testimony of a Pakistani journalist, Safdar Darwar (General Secretary of the Tribal Union of Journalists), on May 12, a day after a U.S. drone strike killed 24 people in North Waziristan. His story -- and that of a worker with the Waziristan Relief Agency that aids victims of drone attacks -- is in "Drone and Democracy" by Kathy Kelly and Josh Brollier (commondreams.org, May 18).

The social worker, who did not want his name used, described a drone hit in that area a year ago that killed three people: "Their bodies, carbonized, were fully burned. They could only be identified by their legs and hands. One body was still on fire when he reached there. Then he learned that the charred and mutilated corpses were relatives of his who lived in his village, two men and a boy aged seven or eight. They couldn't pick up the charred parts in one piece."

Fifteen minutes after that strike, the social worker continued, there was another, killing the brother of a man killed in the initial strike. He went on: "People will wait several hours after an attack just to be sure," before they come to help.

Then, the journalist, Safdar Darwar, asked some immediate questions -- while, as I shall show next week, more and more drones are being built, including for American skies -- challenging our journalists, and, in their sermons, our religious leaders as well as every candidate in the coming midterm elections:

"Who has given the license to kill and in what court? ... What kind of democracy is America where people do not ask these questions?"

One man, whom I've grown to respect enormously, has been persistently asking questions aimed at the very core of our rule of law -- questions ignored by our president, to whom the Constitution is an anachronism. He is Philip Alston, the United Nations special representative on extrajudicial executions.

In a news story on Alston's report to the U.N. Human Rights Council -- he is independent of that slippery group -- Charlie Savage of The New York Times was told by Alston that taking the lethal lead of the United States, dozens of countries (as robotic warfare becomes inviting) can carry out "competing drone attacks" on those they label as terrorists outside their borders.

Alston adds that while we the people here are passively complicit as our own country "asserts an ever-expanding entitlement for itself to target individuals across the globe -- an ill-defined license to kill without accountability -- (this) is not an entitlement which the United States or other states can have without doing grave damage to the rules designed to protect the right to life and prevent extrajudicial executions."

Starting early in Barack Obama's presidency, I wrote that he was becoming the most dangerous and destructive president in our history. I was focusing on his multiple suspensions of the Constitution and what became his health care law that rigorously establishes health care rationing, especially for those of us too costly to the government to warrant our continuing to live.

But as he exults in extending and perfecting extrajudicial drone killings, Obama is now a global menace.

Nat Hentoff is a nationally renowned authority on the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights. He is a member of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and the Cato Institute, where he is a senior fellow.