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

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Reports Tie Jailed US ‘Consulate Worker’ with Drone Strikes

No Air Strikes Since Davis' Arrest, Coincidence?


by Jason Ditz, February 18, 2011

Anonymous “technical advisor” for the US Consulate in Lahore Raymond Davis, two anonymous motorcyclists gunned down on the streets and a major diplomatic row over the intricacies of the Vienna Convention on diplomatic immunity.

This hardly made for a “simple” story in the first place, but rumors and preliminary reports from unnamed officials are putting a number of new spins on this incident which could potentially turn this into one of the seediest scandals imaginable.

That is because investigators reportedly found GPS targeting chips on Davis, the kind which were used in the US drone attacks in North Waziristan. Adding to the intrigue, Davis is said to have made several unauthorized visits to North Waziristan before his arrest.

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http://news.antiwar.com/2011/02/18/reports-tie-jailed-us-consulate-worker-with-drone-strikes/

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WORLD NEWS FEBRUARY 18, 2011

Spy Feud Hampers Antiterror Efforts
 
By ADAM ENTOUS, JULIAN E. BARNES and TOM WRIGHT

Tensions between U.S. and Pakistani spy agencies have risen to new highs recently over Pakistan's arrest of Raymond Davies, a U.S. government contractor. Pictured, a rally against Mr.Davis which took place in Lahore, Pakistan, on Thursday. Reuters

Ties between U.S. and Pakistani intelligence agencies have deteriorated sharply in recent months, compromising cooperation on a range of critical counter-terrorism efforts, including U.S. drone strikes targeting top militant leaders, current and former officials say.

Some U.S. officials describe relations between the two spy agencies as the worst since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. One senior official said the tensions have cost the U.S. the chance to strike at some senior terrorists in the region.

The state of relations, while never perfect, is now alarming counter-terrorism and military officials, who say close cooperation between the Central Intelligence Agency and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence is essential to the campaign against al Qaeda and the war against the Taliban and its allies in Afghanistan.

Behind the falling out is a series of controversial incidents starting late last year, which prompted tit-for-tat accusations that burst into the open with the December outing of the CIA's station chief in Islamabad.

More recently, tensions have risen to new highs over Pakistan's detention of former Special Forces soldier Raymond Davis, a U.S. government contractor in the city of Lahore, for killing two Pakistanis in disputed circumstances. A Pakistani court Thursday ruled to delay by three weeks a hearing on whether Mr. Davis is covered by diplomatic immunity.

Earlier this week, President Barack Obama urged Pakistan to honor a 1961 treaty on diplomatic immunity to which both Pakistan and the U.S are signatories. Pakistan's central government faces public pressure from Islamist and student groups not to release Mr. Davis, who shot dead the two men on Jan. 27 in the center of Lahore, Pakistan's second-largest city. Mr. Davis has said the men were trying to rob him at gunpoint.

Faced with pointed questions from lawmakers about strained ties with Pakistan, CIA Director Leon Panetta this week acknowledged relations between intelligence agencies were "one of the most complicated" he's ever seen. While the ISI continues to help the U.S. target al Qaeda leaders in the tribal areas, Mr. Panetta said its policies in other areas are in direct conflict with the U.S., stoking frequent tensions.

One U.S. official briefed on the matter, defending the agency's handling of the ties, acknowledged that relations were in a "trough at the moment," but rejected suggestions they were at their worst since 9/11. He said the disagreements stem not from a lack of cooperation "but because the Pakistanis are pulling stunts that just don't make any sense."

The CIA has long used intelligence from the ISI to help identify targets for drone strikes in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. Officials on both sides say the CIA now operates largely autonomously, especially since the U.S. has been concentrating its fire on the Haqqani militant network in the North Waziristan region.

U.S. officials say the ISI no longer provides the CIA with targeting information in most cases. A senior Pakistani official said of the CIA: "They don't ask us before they fire their missiles."

The ISI has long nurtured ties with the Haqqanis, which it sees as a strategic asset that can help Islamabad fend off Indian influences in neighboring Afghanistan, especially as U.S. forces begin pulling out in July. Washington, in contrast, sees the Haqqanis, who have been responsible for spectacular attacks in Kabul, as the biggest single threat to Western and Afghan forces, particularly in eastern Afghanistan. The group has emerged as one of the main targets of the drone strikes over the past year.

"The [ISI has] no intention of helping the United States degrade the Haqqani network," a U.S. official said.

The CIA hasn't conducted any drone strikes in the tribal areas of Pakistan since Jan. 23, one of the longest known periods without a strike since the beginning of the Obama administration. Drone strikes peaked in September with a record 22 attacks. They've been falling since then to a low of nine in January.

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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703561604576150700376521050.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

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Why Pakistan Cannot Release the Man Who Calls Himself Raymond Davis

By Shaukat Qadir

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27516.htm


February 19, 2011 "ThisCantBeHappening" -- Islamabad--By now journalists everywhere (except in the US) have come to the conclusion that there is far, far more to Raymond Davis than is being revealed by the US or by Pakistani officials. That he was engaged in anti-state activities in Pakistan and that the two young men he killed were intelligence agents tailing him is virtually an accepted fact.

The US, never famous for its diplomacy (The Ugly American, which made that point more than half a century ago, became a best seller and a very successful movie, starring Marlon Brando), seems to have discovered fresh depths to its strong-arm, coercive diplomacy. The mere fact that no less a personage than the US President has asked that this low-ranked person be granted absolute immunity, is indicative of the US desperation to get him him out of Pakistan and its court system.

One Western journalist has referred to this incident as the "biggest intelligence fiasco since the downing of a U-2 by the erstwhile USSR in 1962." Obviously, the apprehension is that were he to be tried and convicted in Pakistan and handed a lengthy prison, or even a death sentence, Davis might "spill the beans" and that, were he to do so, those Wikileaks cables could pale into insignificance!

That, in itself, is more than sufficient reason for Pakistan to refuse to hand him over; but there is far more to Pakistan’s problems regarding this issue than just that. However, before we get to those, some comically farcical blunders committed by the US Embassy in Pakistan merit narration, since I am fairly certain these are not being reported by the US media. They illustrate clearly the extent of the desperation American officials are feeling!

On January 25th 2011, just two days before Davis shot and killed the two young Pakistanis, the US Embassy submitted a list of its diplomatic and non-diplomatic staff in Pakistan to the Pakistani Foreign Office (FO), as all foreign nations are required to do annually. The list included 48 names. Raymond Davis was not on the list. The day after Davis shot and killed the two Pakistanis, the US Embassy suddenly submitted a “revised” list to the Foreign Office which added Davis’ name!

When Pakistani police took Davis into custody on January 27th, he had on his person an ordinary American passport with a valid ordinary Pakistan visa, issued by the Pakistan Embassy in Washington. On January 28th, a member of the US Consulate wanted the Pakistani police to exchange that passport in Davis’ possession with another one. The fresh passport being offered was a diplomatic passport with a valid diplomatic visa dated sometime in 2009. This visa was stamped in Islamabad by the FO!

It gets ridiculously funnier. The prosecutor representing the Punjab government has presented two letters from the US Embassy as evidence before the Lahore High Court, forwarded to the Punjab government through the FO. The first letter, dated January 27, reads: “Davis is an employee of the US Consulate General Lahore and holder of a diplomatic passport." The second, dated February 3rd, states that Davis is a member of the “administrative and technical staff of the US Embassy Islamabad!” Just how gullible do the Americans take Pakistanis to be!

Before moving on to the political implications for Pakistan, were Davis to be granted immunity, it is important to review some domestic impediments, without which, he would never have been taken into custody.

Asif Ali Zardari might be a politically empowered president domestically, but if the US asked him to jump, he would ask "how high?" If they asked him to bend over, he would ask, "how low?" Had Davis committed the murders in Islamabad, under federal jurisdiction, he would have been flown out of the country within hours of his crime before any furor could have time to develop. But he slaughtered his victims in Lahore, in the jurisdiction of the Punjab state government, manned by the PML(N), which is Zardari’s party’s main opposition.

Despite repeated and numerous requests from the US Embassy and the Federal government, the Punjab government has stood firm and has even denied Davis the comforts normally afforded a political prisoner. Instead, Davis has the same facilities that any common Pakistani criminal has, in the rather notorious Kot Lakpat jail in Lahore (though he is being separated from the general prison population for his own safety).

Then there is the superior judiciary; the Supreme Court (SC), which awaits Davis with sleeves rolled up, more than ready to ensure justice in defiance of Zardari’s wishes. Meanwhile, Davis has already been indicted before the Lahore High Court (LHC), which has extended his judicial remand in police custody to allow time for more interrogation. Therefore, even if the LHC could be intimidated, an appeal before the SC is inevitable.

Finally there is the Pakistani Pentagon, the General Headquarters, commonly known as GHQ. Now that it is a fairly accepted fact in Pakistan that Davis is guilty of anti-Pakistan activities and has killed two members of an intelligence agency, probably the well-known Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), GHQ will have a say in his disposal. Consequently, despite Zardari’s desire to please the US, he may find himself hamstrung.

Under Pakistani law, there is provision for "Blood Money," i.e. that the next of kin can accept monetary remuneration and then pardon the killer before the court. Despite pressure brought to bear on the families of Zeeshan and Faheem, the ill-fated pair that was murdered, both families have unanimously refused to accept Blood Money. In fact, tempers are running so high that local wealthy businessmen have publicly urged them to refuse, with the promise that they would match any sum offered to them by the US!

When rumors were floating that the US might cut a deal, offering Aafiya Siddique--the Pakistani scientist convicted in the US of attempting to murder two US interrogators and now serving a controversial 86-year sentence-- in exchange for Davis, Siddique’s own family refused to accept her back on these terms and spoke to local dailies urging the Punjab government not to release Davis for any reason.

Based on all of the above, I personally doubt that Davis’ immunity plea will be accepted. However, if despite everything, his claim were accepted, what would be the political repercussions?

That’s the million-dollar question!

The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), known in the US media as the Pakistan Taliban, has issued a warning to the government of dire consequences if Davis is released. That would mean suicide attacks, murder and mayhem would immediately follow his release. Targets might well include any judges involved in the decision
 
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27516.htm

 

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Published on Sunday, February 20, 2011 by Reuters

Pause in US Pakistan Strikes Seen Linked to US Prisoner


by Missy Ryan

PAKISTAN - The United States has halted drone attacks on militants along Pakistan's western border in a development analysts believe is linked to U.S. attempts to secure the release of a jailed U.S. consular employee.

Pakistanis holding a placard pleading to stop unsanctioned US drone attacks. (Press TV)

After months of frequent strikes from unmanned U.S. aircraft on militant hideouts in tribal areas on Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, where bloodshed has hit record levels, reports of covert strikes have gone quiet for over three weeks.

Many analysts believe Washington has stopped the attacks to avoid further inflaming anti-American fury in Pakistan just as it pressures a vulnerable Islamabad government to release Raymond Davis, a U.S. consulate employee imprisoned after shooting two Pakistanis last month during what he said was an attempted robbery.

"This in itself raises a number of questions regarding the U.S. Pakistan strategy as it struggles to balance counter terrorism ... with its public diplomacy," said Simbal Khan, an analyst with the Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad.

The decision to halt a campaign that is the centerpiece of U.S. efforts to root out militants launching attacks on its soldiers in Afghanistan also raises questions, Khan said, "about how chasing after terrorist and al Qaeda targets can be suspended to save the fate of a single U.S. national."

As tempers fray over Davis, who the United States insist is shielded by diplomatic immunity, the government of President Asif Ali Zardari is loathe to risk losing billions of dollars in U.S. aid or doing permanent damage to ties with a key Western ally.

MORE

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/02/20-2

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American who sparked diplomatic crisis over Lahore shooting was CIA spy


• Raymond Davis employed by CIA 'beyond shadow of doubt'

• Former soldier charged with murder over deaths of two men

• Davis accused of shooting one man twice in the back as he fled


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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/20/us-raymond-davis-lahore-cia?CMP=twt_gu

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US Caught in The Big Lie: ThisCantBeHappening!
was Correct in Exposing Raymond Davis as a Spy

Sun, 02/20/2011 - 20:55 — Anonymous
by:
Dave Lindorff
 

Talk about getting caught in a Big Lie. So desperate has been the US effort to get the killer Raymond Davis sprung from police custody in Lahore, Pakistan following his execution-style slaughter of two Pakistani intelligence operatives in broad daylight in a crowded commercial area, that the government trotted out President Obama to declare that Pakistan was violating the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations by holding "our diplomat," whom he insisted had only been defending himself, and should in any case be entitled to absolute immunity.

Now both the Guardian newspaper in the UK over the weekend, and the Associated Press today are reporting that sources in both the Pakistani and American governments are confirming that Davis works for the CIA. The AP is reporting that he is a "CIA security contractor," which is something less and a little more amorphous than a CIA employee, and still leaves open the question of who he actually is and who he actually works for, but more on that later.

The Guardian noted in its article that Davis's wife had provided information numbers for him to a local TV station and that those numbers turned out to be the CIA. Meanwhile, Agence France Press reported over the weekend that Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), a loose-tongued member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, also apparently inadvertently slipped up and disclosed on the Senate floor that Davis is an "agent", saying, "We can't throw this agent over."

America's and the President's reputations lie in tatters as a result of the handling of this bloody incident. Not only did the US dispatch to Islamabad members of Congress, including the oleaginous Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), as well as the reprehensible Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to press for Davis's release, threatening the withholding of aid to Pakistan (our ostensible ally in the Afghanistan War!). It provided a patently false document to the Pakistani foreign office claiming Davis to be an employee of the US Embassy in Islamabad (which would have meant he'd have immunity from arrest and detention), when he was actually working out of the Lahore Consulate, where he would not be entitled to any immunity for his actions). It also tried to exchange his regular passport for a diplomatic one a day after his arrest, again retroactively trying to get him immunity from prosecution for his murderous acts.

Furthermore, the US government, according to the Guardian, induced major US news organizations to hide what they knew about Davis's real role from the American public. The paper reported that several US news organizations had also learned on their own that Davis is a spy, but then voluntarily withhheld the information from the American public "at the request of the Obama administration," which preferred to stick to the fictional story line that Pakistan is holding an American "diplomat" in "violation of the Vienna Convention" on diplomatic immunity.

Readers of ThisCantBeHappening! will not be surprised however. We have, over the last two weeks, exposed the fact that the company that Davis claimed to work for in the US, Hyperion Protective Services, LLC, of Orlando Florida, was a fraud--the address on the business cards that Davis was carrying when arrested we traced to a vacant storefront in a run-down and nearly empty strip mall in Orlando. The store front had been vacant since 2009, according to the owner of the property.

I would suggest, however, that this story is not over yet. It may well be that while Davis is a contractor for the CIA, he could also be something else: a still active-duty member of US Special Forces. One of the items found on him by arresting police was an ID card identifying him as a DOD (Department of Defense) contractor. See below:

This Dept. of Defense Contractor ID found on Davis belies his "diplomat" claim, but also raises questions about a CIA link

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http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/473

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US fires 118 drone bombs at Pakistan, killing just two most-wanted terrorists

By Sahil Kapur
Monday, February 21st, 2011 -- 1:39 pm


WASHINGTON – Over one-hundred drone strikes in Pakistan last year ended up killing a total of 2 terrorists on the US most-wanted list, according to independent estimates.

In 2010, the CIA launched a total of 118 drone attacks in Pakistan, each costing more than $1 million, The Washington Post reported. It was a year in which the US dramatically expanded the scope and frequency of the strikes, which began under the Bush administration.

But just two of the militants killed were on the most-wanted list, according to the National Counterterrorism Center, which keeps track of terrorist leaders. They are Sheik Saeed al-Masri, a top Al-Qaeda operative, and Ahmed Mohammed Hamed Ali, who helped carry out the US embassy bombings of 1998

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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/21/us-fires-118-drone-bombs-at-pakistan-killing-just-two-most-wanted-terrorists/

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New US Drone Strikes Kill 15 in Waziristan

All Slain Termed 'Suspects' by Officials


by Jason Ditz

February 21, 2011

At least 15 people were killed today in a new flurry of US drone strikes against Pakistani tribal areas. The first strike killed seven people in South Waziristan, while a second strike killed another eight in North Waziristan

MORE

http://news.antiwar.com/2011/02/21/new-us-drone-strikes-kill-15-in-waziristan/


 

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South Asia
Mar 3, 2011 
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MC03Df02.html 
 

Pakistani minister gunned down



By Syed Saleem Shahzad

ISLAMABAD - Al-Qaeda-affiliated militants on Wednesday shot dead Pakistan's Federal Minister for Minorities Shahbaz Bhatti in broad daylight, then fled the scene in an automobile.

The four militants left pamphlets saying that the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (Pakistani Taliban - TTP) and the Fidayan-e-al-Qaeda had killed Bhatti, who was the only Christian in the cabinet, because of his opposition to a harsh blasphemy law that imposes the death penalty on those considered to have insulted Islam. 

TTP spokesperson Ehsanullah Ahsan called media organizations to claim responsibility for the assasination.

Bhatti was on his way to a cabinet meeting when the attackers struck in a residential area reserved mostly for top foreign and civil service bureaucrats. The attackers blocked his car before spraying it with bullets.

The killing follows the assassination on January 4 of Punjab provincial governor Salman Taseer, who was also a strong critic of the blasphemy law and who had sought presidential pardon for a Christian. Taseer's confessed killer - his security guard Malik Mumtaz Qadri - said he had killed Taseer because of his criticism of the law.

Bhatti, head of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance, was appointed in 2008, and at the time said he had accepted the post for the sake of the "oppressed, down-trodden and marginalized" of Pakistan and that he had dedicated his life to "struggle for human equality, social justice, religious freedom and to uplift and empower the religious minorities' communities".
 
MORE

http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MC03Df02.html

 

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Is Pakistan Next In Line?


By James Carroll

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27606.htm

March 03, 2011 "Boston Globe" - - February 28, 2011 - -THE REVOLUTIONS in the Arab streets, whatever their individual outcomes, have already overturned the dominant assumption of global geopolitics — that hundreds of millions of impoverished people will uncomplainingly accept their assignment to the antechamber of hell. The United States, meanwhile, has been faced with the radical obsolescence of its Cold War-rooted preference of strong-man “stability’’ over basic principles of justice. In 1979, with Iran’s popular overthrow of the shah, America was given a chance to re-examine its regional assumptions, but the Carter Doctrine militarized them by threatening war for the sake of oil. In 1989, when people power dismantled the Soviet empire, Washington declared its own empire, and replaced the Communist devil with an Islamic one. But what if the devil has a point?

The Obama administration’s initial ambivalence toward the popular Arab uprisings resulted less from uncertain political instincts than from the iron grip of a half-century old paradigm, the core principle of which, in the Mideast, is that oil matters more than human life. That paradigm is broken now, and Washington is chastened by the clear manifestation that its policies have been self-serving, callous, and even immoral. It is impossible to behold such developments without asking: What next? And to ask that question is to follow an automatic shift of the gaze toward Pakistan.

The United States has been preoccupied, as ever, more with the power elite of Pakistan than with the plight of its people, which makes it as wrong in its strategy toward that pivotal nation as toward the others. For the usual reasons of realpolitik, Washington has cozied up to one Pakistani dictator after another; ignored their corruptions; downplayed their mortal complicity in the most dangerous nuclear proliferation on the planet; turned a half-blind eye to the Pakistani military’s double game in Afghanistan. All the while, the same pressures that have blown the tops off half a dozen Arab states have been building there, too
 
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27606.htm

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Our Man in Pakistan


by Stephen Lendman


http://uruknet.info/?p=m75517&hd=&size=1&l=e

March 3, 2011

Raymond A. Davis, CIA agent, is one of many working covertly with assets infesting virtually all countries worldwide, especially ones vital to America's imperial agenda.

On February 21, New York Times writers Mark Mazzetti, Ashley Parket, Jane Perlez and Eric Schmitt headlined, "American Held in Pakistan Worked with CIA."

Correction - worked for the CIA, conducting intelligence covertly, spying on Pakistan for Washington, The Times saying:

On January 27, he was arrested and detained for shooting two men at a crowded Lahore traffic stop. Washington called it a botched robbery attempt. Pakistan charged him with murder and possession of a concealed, unlicensed gun. Davis said he acted in self-defense. Pakistani authorities knew otherwise when they learned he shot the men 10 times in the back, fled the scene, and was carrying a telescope, a GPS set, bolt cutters, a survival kit, and a long-range radio.

Moreover his gun was a powerful Glock semi-automatic pistol, able to fire 17 - 33 rounds, depending on what magazine is used. It's a weapon professionals prefer, Glock World saying, it's "designed to operate without compromise in extreme conditions."

Pakistani authorities discredited his botched robbery story. Other accounts say the dead men were ISI agents monitoring Davis.

Claiming diplomatic immunity, US officials demand him released. Pakistan wants him tried for murder or exchanged for Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani national bogusly incarcerated as a political prisoner.

On February 22, Times writer Charlie Savage headlined, "Pakistan Case Tests Laws on Diplomatic Immunity," asking:

"Can Pakistani officials lawfully prosecute him for murder?" Of course they can if Pakistan's law allows. Protesters, in fact, want him hanged. They're furious about CIA drone strikes, murdering Pakistanis with impunity, mostly civilians called terrorists, what's also ongoing in Afghanistan.

Without revealing his cover, Obama cited the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations saying, "If our diplomats are in another country, then they are not subject to that country's local prosecution." Davis, of course, is no diplomat. He's a spy working covertly against Pakistan, now charged with murder, a crime demanding prosecution.

At first, State Department officials called him a "consultant." Later they said he was posted to America's Islamabad Embassy, claiming he conducted surveillance of militant groups in Pakistan. False! He was covertly spying on Pakistan and much more.

All countries have laws against espionage; that is, covertly obtaining secret information without authorization, especially related to national defense or security. America's 18 U.S.C. § 793 : US Code - Section 793: Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information is relevant, accessed through the following link:
http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/18/I/37/793

Covering a detailed list of offenses, it says anyone found guilty under this title shall be fined and/or imprisoned for up to 10 years. Legal counsel for a foreign spy claiming diplomatic immunity would be laughed out of court, his or her client convicted if serious enough security breaches warranted. In 1987, Jonathan Pollard, a former civilian intelligence analyst, got life in prison for spying for Israel. Even the powerful Israeli Lobby couldn't save him. Imagine the fate of a Pakistani spy caught doing something similar.

Initially, The Times was complicit in coverup. On January 27, writer Jane Perlez headlined, "US Official Shoots Two Pakistanis to Death," saying:

Davis "was posted to the United States Consulate in Lahore," US officials "sa(ying he) was an employee, but did not specify his position." At the time, Perlez and other Times writers knew his identity but concealed it. In her February 21 article, she said:

"The New York Times had agreed to temporarily withhold information about Mr. Davis' (CIA) ties...at the request of the Obama administration, which argued that disclosure" would endanger his life. When forced to go public, she quoted CIA spokesman George Little saying:

"Our security personnel (read spies) around the world act in a support role providing security for American officials. They do not conduct foreign intelligence collection or covert operations."

A pathetic response by an agency caught red-handed, exposed lying multiple ways. The Times also misreported, saying "the United States is not at war in Pakistan, the American military is largely restricted from operating in the country. So the (CIA) has taken on an expanded role, operating drones" to conduct attacks.

In fact, US military forces and private contractors like Xe Services (formerly Blackwater USA) operate freely in Pakistan, conducting air and ground attacks, largely in North and South Waziristan. CIA agents infest the country, operating covertly. Davis' diplomatic passport describes him as "administrative and technical staff." His visa calls him a 'regional affairs officer," a common CIA cover well known to Pakistani authorities.

On February 20, London's Guardian broke the news, writer Declan Walsh headlining, "Pakistan defiant in face of US pressure to free CIA agent," saying:

Davis called himself a "consultant" at America's Lehore Consulate. "But the Guardian revealed (he's) a CIA agent, citing interviews in the US and Pakistan. A number of US media outlets are also aware of his status but" conspired with Washington to conceal it. Moreover, he's a former US Special Forces soldier and Xe Services mercenary, a hired gun, a trained killer.

Despite pressure from Hillary Clinton, Pakistan's Prime Minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani told parliament:

"We are firmly resolved to adopt a course that accords with the dictates of justice and the rule of law....My government will not compromise on Pakistan's sovereignty and dignity."

At least not until pressure gets too great or a proposed deal more than compensates for releasing a killer.

On March 2, Pakistan's Daily Times said:

An unnamed "US television (report) has claimed that the Pakistan government has asked (the) US administration to hand over Dr. Aafia Siddiqui in exchange for Raymond Davis, a private TV channel reported on Tuesday. According to the....report, the Pakistan government has asked the Obama administration that the (CIA agent) and (accused) double murder(er), Raymond Davis, could be released" if Siddiqui is freed. "But Washington has turned down Islamabad's (offer). The report quotes a US official as saying (Pakistan wants Siddiqui) to complete her remaining sentence in the country."

Pakistanis want her freed, knowing she's innocent of all charges and was spuriously convicted. She one of thousands of political prisoners, languishing unjustly in US prisons, at home and abroad.

Washington officials are so certain they can pressure Pakistan to release Davis that they won't agree to exchange Siddiqui for him. Imperial arrogance knows no bounds. America demands and expects obedience.

A Final Comment

On March 1, Dave Lindorff's article headlined, "Davis Arrest Throws US Undercover in Pakistan into Disarray," saying:

Fallout from his case "is apparently leading to a rollback of America's espionage and Special Operations activities in Pakistan." Its Interior Department "is reportedly conducting a careful review of the hundreds of private contractors" who infest the country on diplomatic passports, providing false covers.

Hundreds claiming diplomatic immunity are suspected of spying covertly. Lindorff earlier cited Pakistani and Indian news organizations saying intelligence sources explained that Davis' role included "orchestrating terrorist activity by both the Pakistani Taliban and the terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Jhangvi," linked to the killings of Benezir Bhutto and Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

Moreover, strained US-Pakistan relations pertain to Washington operating independently on its own, including with Pakistan's Taliban, now complicated by Davis' "brazen slaughter of the two Pakistanis, who reportedly were tailing him because of concerns about the nature of his activities...."

He's now is prison awaiting trial unless pressure or a deal gets him released. So far, Washington refuses one for Siddiqui. Pakistan wants her in exchange. Both sides are firm. Whether one blinks remains to be seen.

Meanwhile Aafia languishes isolated at FMC Carswell, a federal prison some call "CarsHELL." Her nightmarish ordeal continues, following her March 30, 2003 abduction, imprisonment, torture and witch-hunt prosecution, resulting in an 86-year sentence, despite no evidence whatever of guilt. In contrast, Davis is a covert spy, caught red-handed committing two cold-blooded murders. If he's freed but not Aafia, justice is more than ever blind. It's already corrupted.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.


http://uruknet.info/?p=m75517&hd=&size=1&l=e

 

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'Blood Money' Helps Free CIA Contractor Accused of Murder in Pakistan

Published March 16, 2011 | Associated Press

LAHORE, Pakistan -- An American CIA contractor detained on suspicion of murder was released on Wednesday after families of the two Pakistanis he killed were given "blood money" and the case was dropped, Pakistani officials said.

The killings and detention of Raymond Allen Davis had strained ties between Pakistan and the United States and added to anti-America sentiment.

Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah said Davis was charged with murder Wednesday but then immediately pardoned by the families of the victims in exchange for compensation or "blood money", as is permitted under Pakistani law. Davis was arrested on Jan. 27 after killing two Pakistanis in what he said was self-defense.

MORE

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/03/16/pakistani-court-reportedly-frees-jailed-cia-contractor/

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Clashes In Pakistan As U.S. Buys CIA Agents Freedom

By BABAR DOGAR

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27690.htm
 
Freed CIA Agent Flees Pakistan


March 16, 2011 (Reuters) - CIA contractor Raymond Davis was flown out of Pakistan on Wednesday after being acquitted of two murder charges and released by a Pakistani court, a U.S. official said.

"Davis was released from Pakistani custody and is out of the country. There was no quid pro quo," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. - AP's earlier story is below.

March 16, 2011 "Associated Press" -- LAHORE, Pakistan - Police fired tear gas against protesters burning tires outside a U.S. consulate in Pakistan after the release of a CIA contractor who killed two Pakistani men.

The clashes Wednesday in Lahore involved around 200 people. There were small protests in other main cities as well.

Police made several arrests in Lahore and struck other people with batons, according to witnesses.

Raymond Allen Davis was released earlier Wednesday after the United States paid $2.3 million in "blood money" to the victims' families, a lawyer for the families has said.

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

LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) — A CIA contractor who shot and killed two Pakistani men was freed from prison on Wednesday after the United States paid $2.34 million in "blood money" to the victims' families, Pakistani officials said, defusing a dispute that had strained ties between Washington and Islamabad.

In what appeared to be carefully choreographed end to the diplomatic crisis, the U.S. Embassy said the Justice Department had opened an investigation into the killings on Jan. 27 by Raymond Allen Davis. It thanked the families for "their generosity" in pardoning Davis, but did not mention any money changing hands.

The killings and detention of Davis triggered a fresh wave of anti-American sentiment in Pakistan and were testing an alliance seen as key to defeating al-Qaida and ending the war in Afghanistan.

The tensions were especially sharp between the CIA and Pakistan's powerful Inter Services Intelligence Agency, which says it did not know Davis was operating in the country. One ISI official said it had backed the "blood money" deal. There appeared to be little public backlash as night fell in Pakistan.

Davis claimed he acted in self-defense when he killed the two men on the street in the eastern city of Lahore.

The United States had insisted Davis was covered by diplomatic immunity, but the weak government here, facing intense pressure from Islamist parties, sections of the media and the general public, refused to acknowledge the protection.

The payment of "blood money", sanctioned under Pakistani law, had been suggested as the best way to end the dispute.

Given the high stakes for both nations, few imagined either side would allow it to derail the relationship. The main question was how long it would take to reach a deal.

Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah said Davis was charged with murder Wednesday in a court that was convened in a prison in Lahore, but was immediately pardoned by the families of the victims after the payment.

Reporters were not allowed to witness the proceedings.

"This all happened in court and everything was according to law," he said. "The court has acquitted Raymond Davis. Now he can go anywhere."

Raja Muhammad Irshad, a laywer for the families, said 19 male and female relatives appeared in court to accept the money.

He said each told the court "they were ready to accept the blood money deal without pressure and would have no objection if the court acquitted Raymond Davis."

Representatives of the families had previously said they would refuse any money.

Some media reports said the some of the families had been given permission to live in the United States.

Irshad said that was not discussed in court.

The case dominated headlines and television shows in Pakistan, with pundits using it to whip up hatred against the already unpopular United States. While the case played out in court, many analysts said that the dispute was essentially one between the CIA and the ISA, and that they would need to resolve their differences before Davis could be freed.

One ISI official said CIA director Leon Panetta and ISI chief Gen. Shuja Pasha talked in mid-February to smooth out the friction between the two spy agencies. A U.S. official confirmed that the phone call took place.

Pasha demanded the U.S. identify "all the Ray Davises working in Pakistan, behind our backs," the official said.

He said Panetta agreed "in principle" to declare such employees, the official said, but would not confirm if the agency had done so.

A second ISI official said as a result of that conversation the ISI — which along with the army is a major power center in the country — then backed an effort to help negotiate the "blood money." The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not allowed to give their names to the media.

___

Associated Press writers Kimberly Dozier in Kabul, Munir Ahmed and Zarar Khan in Islamabad and Adam Goldman in Washington contributed to this report.
 
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27690.htm

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Acquittal Of CIA Contractor Sparks Violent Protests In Pakistan


RTTNews

March 16, 2011

http://www.rttnews.com/Content/GeneralNews.aspx?Id=1577402&SM=1

(RTTNews) - Thousands of Pakistanis took to streets in most of the country's towns and cities on Wednesday to protest against the acquittal of U.S. national, Raymond Davis, accused of killing two Pakistanis, according to local news reports.

Violent protests against the acquittal were reported in the country's major cities of Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. While at least six protesters were reportedly injured in clashes with police near the US consulate in Lahore, protesters in Karachi and Islamabad blocked roads, burned tyres and disrupted traffic.

The developments came hours after a Pakistani court acquitted CIA contractor Raymond Davis of two counts of murder at a hearing held at a prison in Lahore. The court ruling came after the victims' families accepted compensation and pardoned the accused.

The relatives of the two men killed in the shooting incident reportedly told the court that they had accepted compensation from the accused. Under Pakistani law, relatives of a murder victim can pardon the killer after accepting compensation known as "blood money."

Davis, 36, was arrested in Lahore, capital of the eastern province of Punjab, on January 27 after he allegedly shot dead two motorcycle-borne young men in "self-defense" when they allegedly tried to hijack his vehicle at gunpoint.

Davis was released from detention immediately after the verdict was announced on Thursday and subsequently flown out of Pakistan in a chartered flight. He was identified only as a member of the "technical and administrative" staff of the US Embassy in Islamabad when he was arrested.

But unnamed U.S. officials have since been quoted as saying that Davis was working as a CIA contractor for the U.S. Consulate in Lahore when he got himself involved in the shooting incident.

In addition to the two people shot dead by Davis, a pedestrian was run over by a vehicle carrying Davis' colleagues from the consulate as they rushed to his aid. The three Americans involved in the hit-and-run incident have not been charged so far.

The Davis affair had earlier threatened to undermine ties between Washington and Islamabad. While the Americans insisted on his release citing diplomatic immunity, Pakistani officials had argued that he did not qualify for such privilege as he was not licensed to carry firearms.

The latest development comes as a relief to both the governments. But hard-line Islamist in Pakistan who had been demanding a harsh punishment to Davis over the killings have said that they will hold massive rallies across Pakistan on Thursday to protest against the American's release.

by RTT Staff Writer

http://www.rttnews.com/Content/GeneralNews.aspx?Id=1577402&SM=1

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Officials: Suspected drone strike kills up to 30 in Pakistan

From Nasir Habib and Nick Walsh, For CNN
March 17, 2011 -- Updated 1144 GMT (1944 HKT)
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/17/pakistan.drone.strike/index.html?hpt=T2

(VIDEO) Why US-Pakistani relations are strained


STORY HIGHLIGHTS

-The suspected strike is in North Waziristan

-Monday's suspected drone strike is the 18th of the year

-For 2010, suspected strikes total 111

 
Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) -- A suspected U.S. drone strike killed up to 30 people Thursday after targeting a meeting of local elders in Pakistan's remote tribal areas, intelligence officials told CNN.

Two intelligence officials said the drone fired two missiles on the jirga meeting in the area of Data Khel of North Waziristan, one of the seven districts of Pakistan's volatile tribal region bordering Afghanistan.

One official said 30 died in the strike, while a second official said that 24 had died. There was no explanation for the discrepancy.

An additional 14 people were reported injured, including some civilians, the sources said.

The unusually high number of dead from the drone attack could fuel already high anger in Pakistan over American involvement there.

ARTICLE & VIDEO HERE

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/17/pakistan.drone.strike/index.html?hpt=T2

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CIA Contractor Raymond Davis Sprung from Murder Rap
in Pakistan after US Pays 'Blood Money'

Created 03/17/2011 - 00:39
by: Dave Lindorff

 
Raymond Davis, the CIA contractor indicted for the murder of two young Pakistani motorcyclists, whom he gunned down in the back in broad daylight through his car windshield in a busy section of Lahore, Pakistan, has been freed, after the payment of $2.34 million in “blood money,” called diyya, to relatives of the two slain men.

The surprise “deal,” which Pakistani news reports are saying appears to have been forced on the relatives of the two men, who up to March 15 had insisted they wanted no blood money but only justice, was announced in a court session March 16 in Lahore, at which the prosecution’s case of murder was to have been presented.

There were angry protests in Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad on word of the pardon of Davis

Both the US Ambassador, who expressed regret for the killings and gratitude to the victims’ families for their “generosity” in asking for the pardon, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denied that they had paid any blood money for a deal, but that did not mean the CIA didn’t put up the cash. The New York Times (which withheld for two weeks at the behest of the White House information it had that Davis was a CIA contractor, even as it reported the official US lie that he was a "diplomat") is reporting that a "new" counsel" representing the families of Davis's victims, Raja Irshad, is saying the blood money was paid by the Pakistani government, but it, and the Wall Street Journal, are both also reporting that the US is reimbursing Pakistan. A more likely ultimate source of the funds is the CIA, which operates with a “black budget,” free of outside scrutiny.

The integrity of this “deal” is in question, though, with Pakistani media reporting that the two families suspiciously “went missing” several days before the hearing, with some having been seen taken away by unidentified men. They were delivered, also by unidentified men, to the court the day of the hearing, where each was asked by the judge if they pardoned Davis, and if they had received the blood money required under the country’s Sharia Law. Each reportedly applied affirmatively to both questions.

The 19 have subsequently vanished, leading to charges in Pakistan that they were compelled to accept a deal, and have subsequently left the country, fearing retaliation from groups that were demanding that Davis face trial for murder.

Lawyers for the families, who disclosed the size of the payment, say they too were held captive before the trial. “I and my associate were kept in forced detention for hours,” said the attorney for the family of one of the slain men, Faizan Haider.

A cousin of Haider, Aijaz Ahmed, was quoted in the Christian Science Monitor [1] as saying eight members of his immediate family had gone missing since news of the deal.

The Express Tribune, an English-language daily in Pakistan partly owned by the International Herald Tribune, reports [2] that lawyers for the two families claim both families’ members were “forcibly taken to Kot Lahkpat Jail by unidentified men and made to sign papers pardoning Davis.”

It appears that the “deal” with the families was brokered by the Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s intelligence service. The Associated Press reports that an unidentified ISI official says CIA Director Leon Panetta met in a long session with ISI Chief Gen. Schuja Pasha, and that Pasha told the Panetta the ISI would agree to a deal freeing Davis and would help broker a blood money payment if the Agency agreed to “identify all the Raymond Davises working in Pakistan behind our backs.” Panetta is said to have agreed to the deal “in principal,” though the New York Times on March 17 reports that “US officials insisted Wednesday the CIA made no pledges to scale back operations in Pakistan or to give the Pakistani intelligence agency a roster of US spies operating in the country -- assertions that Pakistani officials disputed.”

There had been tremendous pressure brought on President Asif Ali Zardari by the US, with visits by Senate Foreign Relations Chair John Kerry, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, all of whom threatened the struggling Pakistani government with a cut-off of US aid if Davis was not released and was tried for murder. At the same time, public sentiment across Pakistan in this case has been running high, with one poll suggesting 99 percent of the public wanted Davis tried for murder and if found guilty, executed.

Most US reports on Davis being sprung claimed he had been acquitted. This is incorrect. He was pardoned by the victims' families (blood money was also paid to the family of the18-year-old wife of one of the two men, who had later committed suicide, saying she did not believe her husband would ever receive justice), which led the Punjab district judge to lift the murder charges. But Davis was fined on a charge of carrying an illegal handgun, and sentenced to time served for that conviction.

There were angry protests in Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad following the court’s ruling lifting the indictment against Davis. Police clashed with demonstrators outside the US Consulate in Lahore.

Left unanswered is what “all the Raymond Davises” in Pakistan, and Raymond Davis himself, were actually doing. Davis reportedly left the country immediately.

What is not in doubt is that Raymond Davis was not “our diplomat” in Pakistan, as President Obama falsely proclaimed at a press conference on Feb. 15, when he demanded that Pakistan grant him immunity under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Immunity of 1961. Nor is there any doubt about what was found in his car at the time of the shooting incident: masks, makeup, night-vision equipment, several semi-automatic pistols with large-capacity clips, over a hundred killer bullets for both a Glock and Beretta pistol and also an M-16, multiple cell phones, a cell-phone locator, a special GPS with removable chips, wire cutters, batteries and a camera, on the memory card of which police investigators found photos of Pakistani military installations, as well as mosques, madrassas and even a Montessori School. Police say they found over 27 calls on his cell phones to key people in both the Pakistani Taliban and a terror organization called Laskhar-e-Taiba, which has been linked to both the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and to the kidnap/murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

Pakistani papers, including the Express Tribune, have suggested that Davis, a 10-year Army Special Forces veteran, and a former employee of Blackwater/Xe, appears to have been involved in orchestrating terrorism, not just monitoring it.

As I reported initially on Feb. 7 [3], Davis, when arrested, was found to be carrying a photo ID describing him as a Department of Defense contractor. He also had cards on him identifying him as an employee of a US company called Hyperion Protective Consultants LLC, which I discovered had as its address a vacant storefront in Orlando which had not been occupied for several years.

Without any trial, what the CIA has been up to in Pakistan, a country that has been suffering a rash of terror bombings in the last few years, can only be a subject for speculation. But one thing is clear--whatever it was, it is not going to be doing it going forward.

Press reports say that at least 30 “Raymond Davis”-type US contractors have fled the country since his arrest, and the arrest of a second contractor associated with a murky private mercenary service called Catalyst Services, LLC, an American named Aaron DeHaven (he was picked up and charged with overstaying a visa).



Source URL: http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/517

Links:
[1] http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2011/0316/CIA-contractor-Raymond-Davis-freed-from-Pakistan-jail-on-blood-money
[2] http://www.http://tribune.com.pk/story/133324/raymond-davis-indicted-in-double-murder-case
[3] http://http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/442

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US drones kill dozens in North Waziristan

by Pashtun Shinwari

March 17, 2011

http://www.pajhwok.com/en/2011/03/17/us-drones-kill-dozens-north-waziristan

ISLAMABAD (PAN): Dozens of people were killed and injured in a US drone attack in Pakistan’s North Waziristan on Thursday, officials said.

The attack occurred in the Datakhel area of North Waziristan in the morning, a government official, Bakhtiar, told Pajhwok Afghan News.

The drone fired four missiles at a house where a tribal gathering was underway, he said, adding, the house was destroyed and 25 dead bodies had been recovered so far.

According to Bakhtiar, the number of victims may increase because a large number of people are trapped under the rubble.

Saleh Shah, who lives in the area, said the vehicle of a suspected Taliban leader may have been the target.

Shah said 40 dead bodies had been pulled from the house and 15 injured people were taken to hospital.

An intelligence source reported the death of more than 30 people.

am/cas

 

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Published on Thursday, March 17, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

'Blood Money' Paid for Raymond Davis, Nothing Done for Shane Bauer

What does the United States' record on justice and human rights look like after it has paid to get its alleged CIA killer out of jail?

by Pratap Chatterjee

You are accused of shooting two Pakistani citizens. Pay $2.3m. Get out of jail free.

Raymond Davis (left), a former Blackwater contractor, who was employed by the CIA in Pakistan, was arrested for the killing of two Pakistani citizens in Lahore on 27 January 2011. On Wednesday, US officials paid the two victims families a reported $2.3m; and Davis was released less than seven weeks after he went to jail. Shane Bauer, a freelance journalist, was arrested on 31 July 2009 by Iranian border guards while hiking in Iraqi Kurdistan. Almost 20 months later, he is still a prisoner in Iran, where the US government has barely lifted a finger to help him.


If it sounds like a line from a chance card in a game of Monopoly, where the richest player wins, welcome to the world of life and death in Pakistan where the Obama administration has paid "blood money" to spring a CIA agent suspected of two killings from jail on Wednesday.

Raymond Davis, a former Blackwater contractor, who was employed by the CIA in Pakistan, was arrested for the killing of two Pakistani citizens in Lahore on 27 January 2011. One of the men was shot in the back as he was running away. The US government first claimed that Davis was protected by diplomatic immunity under the Vienna Conventions. On Friday, US officials paid the two victims families a reported $2.3m; and Davis was released less than seven weeks after he went to jail. (Compensation to families of civilian victims of US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan amounts to a few thousand dollars per person, if anything is paid at all.)

Consider the case of Shane Bauer, a freelance journalist, and a good friend of mine. We worked together to expose US funding of death squads in Iraq. On 31 July 2009, he was arrested by Iranian border guards while hiking in Iraqi Kurdistan, an area I too have hiked in. Almost 20 months later, he is still a prisoner in Iran, where the US government has barely lifted a finger to help him.

MORE

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/17-2

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South Asia
Mar 19, 2011 
 http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MC19Df03.html
 
High cost to a devil's bargain


By Syed Saleem Shahzad

ISLAMABAD - The deal hammered out between Pakistan and the United States that allowed American contractor Raymond Davis - facing charges of double murder - to be set free from jail in Lahore on Wednesday has brought to an end an unprecedented crisis between the two countries - and both sides are now counting the cost of the six-week saga.

Davis, 36, described by US officials as a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) contract bodyguard, was acquitted after a blood money settlement was agreed with the families of the victims. Davis shot and killed two men he said were trying to rob him in Lahore on January 27.

A senior Pakistani official said US$700,000 was paid by the CIA to each of the families. Pakistan's legal system allows the families of murder victims to forgive an accused in exchange for monetary compensation.

A deal is made

Davis' arrest following the shootings precipitated a serious fallout between Pakistan and the US. The crisis centered on Washington's claim that he was entitled to diplomatic immunity, while the Pakistanis insisted the matter would run its course through the judicial system.

With tensions getting higher by the day amid threats and counter-threats, and progress in the Afghan war stalled for almost one-and-a-half months, the highest-level military commanders of the two sides finally sat down at a secluded resort in Oman on February 22 following intervention by Saudi Arabia.

The US was represented by Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; General David Petraeus, commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan; Admiral Eric Olson, commander of US Special Operations Command; and US Marine Corps General James Mattis, commander of US Central Command, the US military newspaper Stars and Stripes reported.

The Pakistani delegation included General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani, chief of army staff, and Major General Javed Iqbal, director general of military operations.

Three key players helped make the Oman meeting possible:

- Lieutenant General Shuja Pasha, the director general of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), who had received a second one-year service extension only two days before Davis' release.

- Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington Husain Haqqani, a former professor at Boston University who is in a class of his own in terms of his wonderful rapport with US administrations. Haqqani had earlier convinced then-US president George W Bush to help replace military ruler Pervez Musharraf with current President Asif Ali Zardari.
 
- United States Senator John Kerry.

Haqqani sprang into action immediately the crisis broke and urged leaders on both sides to resolve the matter as soon as possible. He realized that sending threatening messages to Washington would be counter-productive. Already, the US had excluded Pakistan from strategic talks on Afghanistan, held in Washington on February 23-25. Haqqani was certain that any delay in reconciliation would further isolate Pakistan.

However, a segment of Pakistan's military read the situation from a different angle, arguing that at a critical juncture in Afghanistan and given the extremely volatile situation in the Middle East, Washington could not afford to make any lopsided decisions against Pakistan. They were also aware of the intense feelings the case had aroused on the street
 
MORE

http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MC19Df03.html

 

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Pakistan army chief condemns US drone strike that killed 40 people


By BNO News

http://wireupdate.com/wires/15943/pakistan-army-chief-condemns-us-drone-strike-that-killed-40-people/

March 17, 2011

RAWALPINDI, PAKISTAN (BNO NEWS) -- Pakistan's army chief on Thursday condemned the latest strikes by U.S. unmanned drones that killed at least 40 people and wounded 15 others in North Waziristan, the Associated Press of Pakistan reported.

"Pakistan Army has already launched a protest in the strongest possible terms. It has been highlighted clearly that such aggression against people of Pakistan is unjustified and intolerable under any circumstances," Chief of Army Staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, said.

Initial reports indicated that the U.S. unmanned aircraft launched six missile strikes targeting Taliban fighters in the Datta Khel area of the region, around 40 kilometers (24.8 miles) west of Miranshah and near the Afghan border. Later, media reports, including those from NBC News, said a residential area was hit where local elders were meeting.

The army chief said in a press release that it is highly regrettable that a jirga, or open-air meeting, of peaceful citizens including elders of the area was carelessly and callously targeted with complete disregard to human life, according to the Associated Press of Pakistan.

MORE

http://wireupdate.com/wires/15943/pakistan-army-chief-condemns-us-drone-strike-that-killed-40-people/


 

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The Peacenik's Payback:
Obama Slaughters Pakistani Civilians to Revenge CIA Embarrassment

BY Chris Floyd

Empire burlesque, March 17, 2011

http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/2104-the-peaceniks-payback-obama-slaughters-pakistani-civilians-to-revenge-cia-embarrassment.html

Another day, another two dozen human beings blown to bits in a marketplace by the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. What was the occasion for this new bonanza of carnage? It was a release of pent-up fury at Pakistan for embarrassing the Potomac Poobah by actually arresting one of his hired guns for shooting people in the back in the street in broad daylight.

For weeks, Washington wiggled around in twisted knickers as the Pakistanis put CIA goon-squader Raymond Davis through the horrible, evil process of ... er ... Western jurisprudence, which Pakistan inherited from colonial times. They arrested Davis, charged him with a crime, allowed him to procure defense counsel and then instigated a series of open court proceedings leading to a trial. This was simply unbearable, insupportable, to the Universal Defenders of Human Rights and the Rule of Law who hold such benevolent sway in the American capital.

They demanded Davis be released. They declared that this secret agent had "diplomatic immunity," which meant that he was free to gun down Pakistanis, in Pakistan, without let or hindrance or consequences. All he need do was say he felt "threatened" -- and anything he did in response to this perceived or alleged or imagined or fabricated threat was justified.

And why not? This is the same logic that governs America's bipartisan foreign policy writ large; why should it not apply to its individual Glock-packing minions prowling foreign streets in search of prey? George Bush and Dick Cheney said they felt "threatened" by Iraq -- and they set loose a hellstorm that has now left more than a million innocent people dead. And they have certainly never been subjected to the processes of Western jurisprudence for that. Thus you can see why the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Barack Obama -- who has praised George W. Bush for his great service to the country, and who called Bush's "surge" in Iraq (that ferocious orgy of ethnic cleansing and death squad berserkery) an "extraordinary accomplishment" -- would find the Pakistani's treatment of Davis so objectionable.

But the process was the usual farce on all sides. The Pakistani system is notoriously corrupt - not quite as corrupt as the American system, of course, although the Pakistanis have not yet managed to lacquer over the murderous venality of its elites with the same degree of sophistication and 'legality' that our American lords have honed over the centuries -- and the backroom channels were busy trying to hammer out a deal with the Potomac paymasters. At last a couple of million dollars were skimmed from a slush fund somewhere and given as "blood money" to the families of Davis' targets, which allowed the court to free Davis. In an ironic twist, it was only the application of Islamic law -- the ancient practice of paying compensation for unlawful killing (which long predates Islam, of course; you can find it in the Bible as well) -- that brought about this face-saving deal for Washington.

But as soon as Davis was safely out of the country, the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate unleashed one of the most violent drone barrages against Pakistan in many months. The Peacely one sent his courageous unmanned robot missiles -- fired by courageous warriors sitting in padded seats thousands of miles away -- to attack ... what else? ... a peace conference in northwest Pakistan.

Local tribal elders were meeting to settle a dispute over a mine in the area. The meeting was attended by members of the local Pakistani Taliban -- a group now at peace with the Pakistani government. Pakistan's military chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, issued what the NY Times called "an unusual and unusually strong condemnation" of the slaughter. The Guardian provided this quote:

"It is highly regrettable that a jirga of peaceful citizens including elders of the area was carelessly and callously targeted with complete disregard to human life," said Kayani. "In complete violation of human rights, such acts of violence take us away from our objective of elimination of terrorism."

The meeting was being held in an open marketplace. The attack killed 26 people, according to the latest count; more than half of them were elders and tribesmen who had no connection to the local Taliban.

But what of that? The fact that the meeting represented local people, from various conflicting factions, coming together to try to work out their differences peacefully among themselves was probably one of the most compelling reasons to our imperial overlords for launching the attack in the first place. For in the end, what they really object to, what they really despise, and fear, is not religious extremism or terrorism or "Islamofascism" -- all of which our bipartisan American elites have supported, in various guises in various places, for decades. No, what really sticks in their craw is the idea that anybody -- in any area that our witless leaders consider "strategic" for one reason or another -- should try to work out their own destiny, on their own terms, outside of the dictation and dominion of the militarist oligarchy that rules the United States.

So the jirga itself was objectionable, and had to be slapped down; just as Pakistan as a nation had to be slapped around for tweaking the Emperor's nose over the street-shooter Raymond Davis. The result was the same as always: the blood, bones and viscera of innocent people splattered across their home streets by death-technologies wielded by the utter, craven, quaking cowards who strut in the pomps of power back in Washington.

2.
Meanwhile, across the border from the ongoing slaughter of hundreds and hundreds of innocent people in a patently illegal "secret" war inside the sovereign territory of an American ally, the "good war" in Afghanistan continues its harvest of children chewed up by the Peace Laureate.

This week, two more youngsters were shredded into clumps of lifeless flesh by the occupation forces -- in the same province where the forces of the Peace Laureate killed nine children just weeks ago. Reuters reports:

An air strike by NATO-led forces killed two children as they were watering fields in Afghanistan's eastern Kunar province late on Monday, an Afghan official and lawmaker said. ...

Abdul Marjan, district chief of Chawki in Kunar where the two brothers, aged 10 and 15, where killed on Monday, said the boys had been working on irrigation channels before they were hit. ...

Shahzada Shahid, a lawmaker from Kunar, said the pair were students who had gone out to help work their father's fields. Irrigation agreements between villagers in the area mean the family's land gets access to river water only in the evening.

These boys were killed for the crime of going to get water for their families, on their own land, in their own country.

They were killed for this "crime" 10 years after an attack in the United States that the American government itself has declared was carried out by a gang based in Pakistan, Germany and the United States, without a single Afghan among them. There is not a single shred of legal or moral justification for this decade-long frenzy of murder and war-profiteering. It is just as illegal as the drone campaign in Pakistan, just as illegal as the invasion of Iraq.

But the Peace Laureate says that we must keep on killing unarmed, defenseless, unsuspecting 10-year-old boys on their own land in their own country. This, we are told, will keep us safe. This, we are told, will keep us great. This is what the glory and grandeur of the bipartisan American imperium rests upon: the murder of children in illegal wars.


http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/2104-the-peaceniks-payback-obama-slaughters-pakistani-civilians-to-revenge-cia-embarrassment.html


 

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Report: Saudi Arabia Paid Raymond Davis’ ‘Blood Money’

Other Reports Suggested Pakistani Officials Paid the Money

by Jason Ditz, March 17, 2011

The Wednesday release of CIA contractor Raymond Davis came after the payment of $2.34 million in Diyat (blood money) to the legal heirs of the two people he killed on the streets of Lahore. The real mystery, however, is where that money came from, as US officials denied paying it.

MORE

http://news.antiwar.com/2011/03/17/report-saudi-arabia-paid-raymond-davis-blood-money/

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How to Keep Pakistan from Descending into Chaos

If not for the sprawling and blundering U.S. brand of war, might Pakistanis have revolted against their regime and its Taliban creation in a Tunisia-like moment?

By M. Junaid Levesque-Alam, Foreign Policy in Focus
Posted on March 17, 2011, Printed on March 18, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/150275/

The eruption of democratic defiance among Arabs has discredited neoconservatives and al-Qaeda alike, shattering their shared assumption that Muslims need violent prodding to reclaim their dignity. In 10 weeks of protests, Tunisians and Egyptians achieved for themselves what 10 years of bloodshed could not purchase for Pax Americana or its archenemy in Iraq or Afghanistan: a spirit of solidarity among millions -- secularists, mainstream Islamists, young men, old women -- eager to rebuild their countries.

U.S. policymakers should learn from these events that the Muslim impulse for modernity and freedom is hindered, not helped, by Western military intervention. And they should learn soon. The U.S. “Af-Pak” war is accelerating the self-destruction of the world’s second largest, and only nuclear, Muslim country.

Murder and Blasphemy

Pakistan’s lurch toward the abyss is exemplified by the recent murders of two politicians: Salman Taseer, a secularist killed in January, and Shahbaz Bhatti, a Christian killed in early March. Opposition to the ruling party’s proposed changes of the blasphemy law underlay the attacks. The law, created in the 1980s by Pakistan’s military dictator Zia-ul-Haq and later criticized by the United States, was aimed at fostering Wahhabism amid the U.S.-backed “jihad” in Afghanistan.

Consistent with Wahhabi dogma, the blasphemy law reflects the opposite of what the Prophet Muhammad preached. Whereas Muhammad spared the lives of people who tried to poison, starve, and even kill him, the blasphemy law prescribes death for anyone who makes “derogatory” remarks about the Prophet. And whereas the Qur’an explicitly acknowledges the validity of other faiths and decrees that acceptance of Islam is a choice, Pakistan’s extremists target Muslim “heretics” and non-Muslims for destruction.

More troubling than the murders is the soft support for -- if not outright approval of -- the law among the Pakistani public. Lawyers, once hailed by Western media as heroes of Pakistani liberalism, raucously supported the alleged murderer of Taseer. The killer had been inspired by one of the many religious leaders who had railed against changes to the law in protests that drew tens of thousands.

Amid the backlash, Pakistan’s fragile prime minister abandoned the proposed amendments. That did not appease extremists, who then killed Bhatti, the only Christian cabinet member, also for opposing the blasphemy law.

Fearing Psychosis or the Taliban

Following that attack, a columnist in Pakistan's largest English daily opined that extremists had little to fear: “Because who are they afraid of? Not the state, not the government, not the law. All three have simply capitulated in front of the psychosis that is ever so often being presented to us through TV talk shows, mosques and cyber space as the ‘true faith.’”

But why has this “psychosis” taken root in a country home to Sufism, Islam’s mystical branch? Pro-Taliban political parties fared poorly in 2008 national and provincial elections. Even in the tribal north, they received little support. And in a late 2009 poll, national support for the Taliban registered at a dismal four percent after the group launched attacks against civilians.

The answer lies not in any one feature of Pakistani society, but rather in frustration with a war that has stretched the weak strands of that society to a breaking point.

One of those strands is the Pakistani military’s support for the Taliban. Its justification -- creating “strategic depth” against India -- seems absurd, as it is the radicals who have achieved strategic depth inside Pakistan. But this policy, crafted by Zia’s military regime, went unchallenged because of another national weakness: Pakistan’s democracy.

Benazir Bhutto, the former two-term prime minister killed by extremists in 2008, confided to writer Tariq Ali during her first term in 1988 that she was “powerless” against the military. Her own father, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was hung by Zia in 1979.

MORE

 http://www.alternet.org/story/150275/how_to_keep_pakistan_from_descending_into_chaos?akid=6680.127567.Ttpc01&rd=1&t=5

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80 people reportedly killed in U.S. drone strike in Pakistan

Xinhua

Pakistani tribesmen chant slogans during a protest rally in Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan district.

March 18, 2011

http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90777/90851/7323900.html

At least 80 people were killed in U.S. drone strikes launched Thursday morning in different parts of Pakistan's northwest tribal area of North Waziristan, reported local state-run Urdu TV channel PTV, but the report failed to give details other than saying 12 missiles were fired at different targets in the afore-said area.

Late Thursday morning, there came in the news that U.S. drones launched a strike in the Datta Khel area of North Waziristan. Initial reports by most of the local media said that two missiles were fired at a house in which militants were said to be holding a meeting inside, killing 4 people and injuring several others.

But the death toll has kept rising as more information came in from the remote area with inadequate communication facilities. Some local media reports said the target of the U.S. drones is a house at a village in the Datta Khel area in which a meeting was being held by local Taliban militants while others reported that the target was actually a tribal "jirga" or council of elders to resolve dispute over the ownership of minerals in the mountains in North Waziristan tribal region.

According to a tribal elder who asked to remain anonymous in a telephone interview from Miranshah, center of North Waziristan, the tribesmen from Madda Khel tribe were holding a meeting at Nawai Adda area, some 25 kilometers from Miranshah, when two U.S. drones fired four missiles at the participants of the tribal council at 11:30 am (local time)

The elder said that the strike killed 41 people including six tribal elders and some children.

The injured were later transferred to the hospital in Miranshah and some of them were in critical condition, said hospital sources.

The tribal elder rejected the reports that the target was a meeting held by militants. He said that all were local tribesmen. He said that the Madda Khel tribe had sold a chromite mine on 8.8 million rupees (slightly over 100,000 US dollars) to a man and both parties later disagreed over the payment method and the jirga was called to settle the dispute.

Member of National Assembly from the region, Kamran Khan, condemned the drone strike and said that mostly innocent people were killed and injured in the Thursday's strike.

Residents said that they had seen four drones hovering over the area before and after the attack. They said two aircraft fired missiles.

Thursday's strike is the 23rd of its kind in Pakistan since 2011 and also one of the most deadly strikes in the country over the last few years. To date, at least 187 people have reportedly been killed in such strikes since this year.


http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90777/90851/7323900.html





 

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CIA Rambo Escapes Pakistan
 
By Eric Margolis

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27732.htm


March 20, 2011 "Information Clearing House" ---- The US government just decided Islamic shariah law is not so bad after all – at least not in the case of jailed CIA agent Raymond Davis.

The burly Davis, an ex-US Special Forces soldier, former Blackwater gunman, and now CIA “contractor” (jargon for mercenary) was jailed in Pakistan after shooting dead two Pakistanis, who were either robbers or government security agents. A third Pakistani was killed by a car driven by a CIA rescuer racing up a one-way street the wrong way.
 
Pakistanis were outraged, but their weak government, which subsists on $3 billion of annual US aid, caved in to its American patrons. After weeks of intense negotiations over US claims that Davis had diplomatic cover, some $2.3 million or more “diyaa,” or blood money, was paid to the grieving families of Davis’ victims. Case closed.
 
The CIA’s man in Islamabad was quickly rushed out of Pakistan to a US base in Afghanistan. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has become as adept at bending the truth as her hubby Bill, stoutly denied Washington had paid any money to get Davis released.
 
She was technically right. The Zardari regime in Islamabad paid off the families after strong-arming them to accept the sleazy deal. Washington will pay Islamabad back.
 
According to sources here in Washington, the “diyaa” ploy was the brainchild of Pakistan’s ambassador to the US, Husain Haqqani, which my old friend denies. He is widely known as the smartest ambassador in Washington.
 
Very diplomatic, very clever. The Davis crisis is over – at least in Washington.  But not in Pakistan, where public fury over Islamabad’s crass sellout is boiling.
 
The Davis case will confirm the growing belief among most Pakistanis that their nation has been de facto occupied by the United States as part of its war in Afghanistan. What else could they conclude when American Rambos and spies run amok in Pakistan and US Predator drones pound its northwest frontier? Or as they watch Pakistan’s once proud soldiers, now turned sepoys of the new Raj, stand at attention to receive Pentagon orders.   
 
On Thursday, at least 41 Pakistani civilians were killed by US air strikes along the northwest frontier – just as the Obama Administration was threatening war against Libya for doing the same thing.
 
Even the unloved former president, Pervez Musharraf, claims right after 9/11, Washington “put a gun to our head” and told him to either accept US semi-occupation of Pakistan or be bombed back to the Stone Age.   This meant US use of Pakistan’s major ports, depots, key airfields, radar sites, intelligence service ISI, security police, and 120,000 troops.   
 
Senior military and intelligence officers deemed insufficiently pro-American or Islamist were purged, among them many of the army’s ablest officers.
 
A decade later, polls show most Pakistanis believe the US is continuing to take over Pakistan, and aims to get control of their nation’s dispersed nuclear arsenal
 
MORE

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27732.htm

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March 22, 2011
http://counterpunch.com/qadir03222011.html

A CounterPunch Exclusive

Admiral Mullen's Secret Deal

How the Pentagon Supervised Raymond Davis' Release and How the CIA Took Its Revenge


By SHAUKAT QADIR


On February 23, at a beach resort, Gen Ashfaq Kiyani, Pakistan army’s chief assisted by a two star officer met with Admiral Mike Mullen, US Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, assisted by Gen. David Petraeus, and three other high ranking officials, to find a military-diplomatic solution to untangle this web that CIA operatives had spun around both governments. This has been a fairly consistent tradition. On every occasion when relations between Pakistan and the United States have soured (a not infrequent occurrence) the militaries have remained in contact and, invariably, have found a way forward.

The day after this meeting, a military officer posted at the US Embassy in Islamabad travelled to Lahore and met Davis in Kot Lakpat jail. Within 48 hours of this meeting, almost 50 individuals associated with the Tehreek-eTaliban Pakistan (TTP), including Pashtuns, Punjabis, and some foreigners (nationalities unknown, though one of them is said to be an Aryan) who had been in contact with Davis were arrested. Presumably, Davis ‘sang’, though probably to only a limited degree, on instructions.

Within the same period, a large number of Americans, estimated at between 30 to 45, who had been residing in rented accommodations (like Davis and his associates who had killed a motorcyclist while unsuccessfully attempting to rescue Davis) outside the Embassy/Consulate premises in Islamabad, Peshawar, Lahore, Karachi, and Quetta left for the US. It is safe to conclude that these were either CIA, Black ops, or associated personnel from security agencies like Xe.

The intelligence business is broadly divided into two categories: human intelligence, known as HUMINT and electronic intelligence, known as ELINT. The latter has numerous subdivisions: SIGINT (Signals intelligence, also known as COMINT; communication intelligence), Imagery intelligence etc. It appears, therefore, that the deal struck between the military leadership included a shut down of CIA’s HUMINT operations in Pakistan, retaining only ELINT, Davis would ‘sing’, within limits, of course, and only then could Blood Money be negotiated for his release. And the US would be bled in that final deal also so as to ensure the safety and the future of the immediate families of both Davis’s victims.

At the height of the debate on the question of Raymond Davis’ immunity from trial for murder, this writer emphasized that  Pakistan could not release him without a trial. A  trial took duly place and, in accordance with  prevalent law in Pakistan, the next of kin of the deceased young men, pardoned Davis in return for ‘Blood Money’. However outlandish this law might seem to those peoples whose countries have their  based on Anglo-Saxon principles, such is the law in Pakistan and so there was nothing underhand in what transpired.

Amongst analysts and journalists there were basically two opposing responses to his release, though there was (and is) an occasional sane voice to be heard, throughout the saga. One category of people had been arguing since Davis’ arrest that he should be granted immunity since Pakistan, given its precarious economy, weak government, and the prevalent security situation, could not afford to fall afoul of the US. For this factionhis release through the judicial system was the next best outcome of the disastrous mistake that had been committed in arresting him!

The opposing view was that it is time and more, that Pakistan asserts its sovereignty and national pride to ensure that Davis is awarded no less than his due: the death penalty. It is ironic that the bulk of those who held this view are all supporters of the imposition of Islamic laws including those on blasphemy, Blood Money (the law that ensured Davis’ pardon), and a host of other issues and, even after Davis’ release under these laws, any attempt to get rid of such laws would be opposed by them, tooth and nail.

While the accusations leveled by the prosecution that the families of Faizan and Faheem, the two men killed by Davis, were coerced into accepting the deal offered to them in exchange for their pardoning Davis, is a pack of nonsense, since the entire family was under the active protection of the Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, there is absolutely no doubt that the ISI (and, therefore, GHQ) assisted in brokering the deal. In fact, I would be very surprised if both families had not been continuously advised by fairly senior-level representatives of the ISI as to what and how much they should ask for.

Accusations leveled against the provincial government for being complicit in brokering this deal are, in my view, unfair, since both, the central and provincial governments were helpless bystanders. Both governments might, however, have heaved a sigh of relief, at the final outcome, since the official stand that both governments took was that the case was to be decided by the courts and, to that extent, they stand vindicated. It was the court that released Davis.

What is more, if the dirt poor next of kin to both deceased decide to take a pragmatic view and accept, what would be for them, a fortune, in exchange for two loved ones; but dead loved ones, who is anybody to tell them nay? While details of the settlement vary in estimate, I am reliably informed that about $ 1.5 million per family has been paid, with US citizenship (the Promised Land; however unpromising it might be in real life!) for a dozen or more members of each family, with job guarantees for those of age and education opportunities guaranteed for children --  more than they could ever dream of and sufficiently tempting for them to pardon the killer. 

But how did all this happen so suddenly? After all, it seemed that not only had the CIA and ISI fallen out, but US-Pak relations were endangered by the arrest of such a low ranking individual. Even Obama had to lie about his diplomatic status, seeking immunity from trial for Davis!

Let me state quite categorically that no one outside those who negotiated this deal are privy to what actually transpired and they aren’t talking. What is more, neither side (American or Pakistani) would know the discussions that took place within each side. Having said that; there are some things that some of us do know.

It is my considered opinion that, after Musharaf opened all doors permitting CIA and its contract agents unlimited access to Pakistan, Pakistan’s GHQ/ISI could not have struck a better deal! This was a priceless opportunity to get rid of the CIA; it was also a success that could hardly have pleased Langley, on which subject, more below.

With Davis milked, even if not for everything he knew, all that Pakistan could gain from letting the trial run its course would be to humiliate the US further. On the other hand, though the ISI would have compensated the families of its operatives killed by Davis; it could not have dreamt of providing them with a tithe of what they have received. To add icing to that cake, CIA HUMINT operatives have, more or less left (it is a virtual certainty that there are plenty left, but they are confined to the Embassy/Consulate compounds); and to put cream on the icing, all aid is resumed, withheld payments are being made and mutual relations are close to normal.

There was however one strong jolt to the spirit of renewed amity, administered by the CIA.

When the US began drone strikes in Pakistan in 2006, drone attacks were notoriously inaccurate. Their kill ratio was approximately 2 militants to 8-10 ‘collateral damage’. This was in the Musharaf era. In 2007, after Kiyani took over as the army chief, a US drone was threatened and it pulled back, another was fired upon. Pakistan’s central government, however, reined Kiyani in and the drone attacks recommenced. However, from about March/April 2008, they became increasingly accurate, probably due to more accurate HUMINT. In recent times, the kill ratio swung dramatically; 8-10 militants to 2 in collateral damage.

While public protests against drone strikes continued, privately there was considerable support for them. In fact, it would surprise readers in the US to know that, off the record, even tribesmen were also reconciled, so long as the strikes had this degree of precise success.

Following Davis’ arrest, there was a lull in drone strikes before they resumed, with the same deadly accuracy.

Three days prior to his court appearance on March 16, the strikes again stopped and on March 17, the day after Davis was whisked away, another drone attack occurred in North Waziristan, but this time it did not target a single militant. It killed 41 people, including women and children; all ‘collateral damage’. The drone was initially chasing a vehicle crossing the Durand Line to approach a village, where a local Jirga (council of elders) was gathered to settle some disputes. Having hit it, the drone deliberately turned its missiles towards the gathering in the village and let loose a barrage. Eyewitnesses cannot agree whether these were four or six, but not less than four missiles; sufficient to cause the carnage. Nor was there any evidence found to support the possibility that the four passengers in the vehicle the drone was chasing were militants. Locals are usually well-informed on such matters.

About a month ago, some helicopter-borne snipers killed nine children in Afghanistan who were out gathering firewood. An ex-marine turned journalist accused the snipers of deliberate murder. He argued that, with the technology available, it was impossible not to be able to differentiate between children aged nine to thirteen, carrying sticks, and armed militants.

It is my judgment that the drone attack on March 17 was deliberate, not only because of the technology available, but also because the CIA was furious  over the deal negotiated between the two militaries to oust them from Pakistan. Given their record of pretty consistent accuracy for over two years, during which, never more than a total of twenty people have been killed, the majority being militants, and the manner of the attack, no other credible conclusion comes to mind.

My contention is lent credence by  Pakistan’s reaction. Pakistan’s Ambassador in Washington DC, Husain Haqqani, delivered the most strongly worded protest that he could muster. The US Ambassador in Islamabad was summoned to the Foreign Office and was told in no uncertain terms that Pakistan will ‘have to reconsider its relations with the US’. So forcefully was he told that, while leaving the FO, he was overheard cursing! But most of all, for the first time since he took office, three and a half years ago, Gen Kiyani personally condemned this attack and, since March 17 , the Pakistan air force is on alert and again patrolling the Durand Line. 

This drone attack killed forty one; though unlikely, it might also cause some temporary problems between the Pakistan army and the Wazir tribe. However, if this is deliberate provocation, what the CIA does not appreciate is that it has cut off its own nose (or, to be more accurate, the nose of US forces in Afghanistan) to spite itself. Members from forty one families will swell the numbers of the Wazirs engaged in fighting US forces in Afghanistan; and, in this part of the world, the term ‘family’ is a very extended one and their memories are very long.

Shaukat Qadir is a retired brigadier and a former president of the Islamabad Policy Research Institute. He can be reached at shaukatq@gmail.com


http://counterpunch.com/qadir03222011.html

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Pakistan's secret dirty war

BY Declan Walsh

In Balochistan, mutilated corpses bearing the signs of torture keep turning up, among them lawyers, students and farm workers. Why is no one investigating and what have they got to do with the bloody battle for Pakistan's largest province?


March 30, 2011

http://uruknet.com/?p=m76398&hd=&size=1&l=e



The bodies surface quietly, like corks bobbing up in the dark. They come in twos and threes, a few times a week, dumped on desolate mountains or empty city roads, bearing the scars of great cruelty. Arms and legs are snapped; faces are bruised and swollen. Flesh is sliced with knives or punctured with drills; genitals are singed with electric prods. In some cases the bodies are unrecognisable, sprinkled with lime or chewed by wild animals. All have a gunshot wound in the head.

This gruesome parade of corpses has been surfacing in Balochistan, Pakistan's largest province, since last July. Several human rights groups, including Amnesty International, have accounted for more than 100 bodies – lawyers, students, taxi drivers, farm workers. Most have been tortured. The last three were discovered on Sunday.

If you have not heard of this epic killing spree, though, don't worry: neither have most Pakistanis. Newspaper reports from Balochistan are buried quietly on the inside pages, cloaked in euphemisms or, quite often, not published at all.

The forces of law and order also seem to be curiously indifferent to the plight of the dead men. Not a single person has been arrested or prosecuted; in fact, police investigators openly admit they are not even looking for anyone. The stunning lack of interest in Pakistan's greatest murder mystery in decades becomes more understandable, however, when it emerges that the prime suspect is not some shady gang of sadistic serial killers, but the country's powerful military and its unaccountable intelligence men.

This is Pakistan's dirty little war. While foreign attention is focused on the Taliban, a deadly secondary conflict is bubbling in Balochistan, a sprawling, mineral-rich province along the western borders with Afghanistan and Iran. On one side is a scrappy coalition of guerrillas fighting for independence from Pakistan; on the other is a powerful army that seeks to quash their insurgency with maximum prejudice. The revolt, which has been rumbling for more than six years, is spiced by foreign interests and intrigues – US spy bases, Chinese business, vast underground reserves of copper, oil and gold.

And in recent months it has grown dramatically worse. At the airport in Quetta, the provincial capital, a brusque man in a cheap suit marches up to my taxi with a rattle of questions. "Who is this? What's he doing here? Where is he staying?" he asks the driver, jerking a thumb towards me. Scribbling the answers, he waves us on. "Intelligence," says the driver.

The city itself is tense, ringed by jagged, snow-dusted hills and crowded with military checkposts manned by the Frontier Corps (FC), a paramilitary force in charge of security. Schools have recently raised their walls; sand-filled Hesco barricades, like the ones used in Kabul and Baghdad, surround the FC headquarters. In a restaurant the waiter apologises: tandoori meat is off the menu because the nationalists blew up the city's gas pipeline a day earlier. The gas company had plugged the hole that morning, he explains, but then the rebels blew it up again.

The home secretary, Akbar Hussain Durrani, a neatly suited, well-spoken man, sits in a dark and chilly office. Pens, staplers and telephones are neatly laid on the wide desk before him, but his computer is blank. The rebels have blown up a main pylon, he explains, so the power is off. Still, he insists, things are fine. "The government agencies are operating in concert, everyone is acting in the best public interest," he says. "This is just a . . . political problem." As we speak, a smiling young man walks in and starts to take my photo; I later learn he works for the military's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency.

We cut across the city, twisting through the backstreets, my guide glancing nervously out the rear window. The car halts before a tall gate that snaps shut behind us. Inside, a 55-year-old woman named Lal Bibi is waiting, wrapped in a shawl that betrays only her eyes, trembling as she holds forth a picture of her dead son Najibullah. The 20-year-old, who ran a shop selling motorbike parts, went missing last April after being arrested at an FC checkpost, she says. His body turned up three months later, dumped in a public park on the edge of Quetta, badly tortured. "He had just two teeth in his mouth," she says in a voice crackling with pain. She turns to her father, a turbaned old man sitting beside her, and leans into his shoulder. He grimaces.

Suspected members of the Baloch Liberation Army are paraded by Pakistani police. Photograph: Banaras Khan/AFP/Getty Images

MORE

http://uruknet.com/?p=m76398&hd=&size=1&l=e

 

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.Published on Tuesday, April 12, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

US-Pakistan Relations Facing Biggest Crisis Since 9/11, Officials Say

Drone attacks, CIA activities and lack of progress in Afghanistan are
fuelling a rift between the US and Pakistan

by Simon Tisdall in Islamabad

Bitter disputes over covert CIA activities and drone attacks inside Pakistan, lack of progress over peace talks in Afghanistan, and rising Islamist-led opposition to the presence of foreign forces in the region are fuelling the biggest crisis in US-Pakistan relations since the 9/11 attacks, Pakistani politicians, army sources and intelligence officers say.

An activist of the Jamaat-i-Islami party holds a burning effigy of Raymond Davis during a protest in Peshawar. A senior security official official warned that the new US military offensive in Afghanistan masterminded by General David Petraeus, and the accompanying rise in casualties, were making it more difficult to achieve a peace settlement. "The whole idea that a big military surge would induce the other side to ask for reconciliation is flawed. It goes against the whole history of Afghanistan."(Photo: AFP/GETTY)

Pakistan is seen by Washington and London as a vital ally in the "war on terror", while the Pakistani government and army say they remain committed partners 10 years after the Afghan conflict began.

But harsh US criticism of Islamabad's counter-terrorism campaigns in Pakistan's western tribal areas, repeated in a White House report last week, and "blowback" from the US military surge in Afghanistan are testing the relationship to breaking point, officials warn.

"We will not accept the stigmatising of Pakistan," said Salman Bashir, Pakistan's foreign secretary. "We need to re-examine the fundamentals of our relationship with the United States to get greater clarity. There has been a pause. Now we must start again."

MORE

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/04/12-9

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Not Licensed to Kill: America's Imperious Attitude in Pakistan is Wearing Thin

by Dave Lindorff


Not Licensed to Kill: America's Imperious Attitude in Pakistan is Wearing Thin,

April 12, 2011
http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/556

There was a truly bizarre and telling paragraph at the end of a Wall Street Journal news report today on Pakistan’s demand that the US bring home hundreds of CIA and Special Forces personnel operating undercover in that country, and that it halt the drone strikes in the border regions abutting Afghanistan, which have been killing countless civilian men, women and children.

Reporters Adam Entous and Matthew Rosenberg, with no sense of irony, wrote:

The US hasn’t committed to adjusting the drone program in response to Pakistan’s request. The CIA operates covertly, meaning the program doesn’t require Islamabad’s support, under US law. Some officials say the CIA operates with relative autonomy in the tribal areas. They played down the level of support they now receive from Pakistan.

Let’s parse this astonishing clip a bit. Earlier in the story, in fact in the lead, the article states that Pakistan has "privately demanded" that the CIA halt the drone strikes and pull out most of the CIA and Special Forces personnel operating in the country. But by the end of the article, we learn that the country is "requesting" a halt to attacks by the US on its own territory and people. But more odd is this notion that because the CIA is a covert agency, its operations don’t need Pakistan’s support under US law.

Excuse me for asking, but what exactly does US law have to do with whether or not the CIA needs another government’s support for it to operate in that country legally?

http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/sites/default/files/images/missilefiringdrone.jpeg

Missile-firing US drones have killed hundreds of innocent civilians in Pakistan

Let’s turn this Wall Street Journal paragraph around for a minute, in Chomskian fashion. Suppose we had a small army of Canadian intelligence operatives, heavily armed, in our country, conducting a secret war along our border with Mexico, and that they were also directing a campaign of drone attacks against Mexican drug traffickers in the "tribal regions" of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and southern California--a campaign which was leading to the deaths of hundreds of American civilians. Let’s say further that the US government was demanding, or requesting, that Canada stop its drone attacks and bring home its agents and undercover Mounties.

Now read this sentence:

Canada hasn’t committed to adjusting the drone program in response to the US request. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) operates covertly, meaning the program doesn’t require Washington’s support, under Canadian law. Some [Canadian] officials say the CSIS operates with relative autonomy in the US border areas. They played down the level of support they receive from Washington.

Any thoughts on how the Tea Party, the Republican Party, or you yourself would react upon reading such a report in Canada’s Toronto Star or or Globe & Mail?

Somehow we’re at a point where even journalists and editors in the US accept without question the notion that the US is somehow free to run military operations anywhere it wants, to kill civilians with impunity, and to ignore the demands not just of foreign governments but of the people of entire nations, at will, and that the issue is not whether CIA and Special Forces activity in a foreign country is legal in that country, but whether it is legal "under US law."

This is the definition of imperialism.

It’s what I remember reading about how the Roman Legions behaved in the lands they occupied.

This whole sordid tale in Pakistan came to light because of the outrageous actions of one CIA operative, Raymond Davis, who was arrested and charged with two murders after he slaughtered two young men, apparently operatives of Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence agency, on a busy Lahore boulevard. Davis, whom the US government desperately tried to pretend was merely an embassy employee who had been threatened with robbery when he pulled out one of his two automatic pistols and expertly blasted the two men through his car windshield (later exiting his car to execute one dying man and shoot the other in the back as he tried to flee), was eventually freed from prison and spirited out of Pakistan after the US paid a court-approved $2.3-million "death payment" to the families of his victims. (Ironies abound in this story. For all the US hyperventilating against Sharia law in Muslim countries, it was by applying Pakistan’s Sharia Law on the use of death payments to victims’ families that the US got Davis sprung.) But he was not freed before virtually everyone in Pakistan had begun calling for his trial and execution, and not before it became clear that he, and the rest of the US spy army in Pakistan, was actually involved in subverting civil authority in that country.

There will eventually come a day of reckoning for this kind of imperial over-reaching.

Already, the US is losing its war in Afghanistan, largely because its imperial legions treat the whole Afghan population either as the enemy, or as obstacles in the way of its killing machine. Already the US is finally being pushed out of Iraq (another war lost). And things aren’t looking that great even for America’s latest imperial adventure in the little country (pop.: 6 million!) of Libya.

In fact, as our vast and unprecedentedly expensive military bankrupts the nation, we may someday even find our own country being overrun by the armed agents of other lands, with their robotic aircraft bombing our helpless citizenry. When it does finally come to pass, we will have only our own imperial hubris to blame.



 

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US drones killed 957 Pakistani civilians in 2010

Irish Sun

April 14, 2011
http://story.irishsun.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/2411cd3571b4f088/id/769208/cs/1/

A total of 957 Pakistani civilians were killed in American drone attacks in the country 2010, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said in its annual report Thursday.

The report that focused on human rights violations in the country also laid an emphasis on terror attacks in 2010, according to Xinhua.

It said terrorist attacks in Pakistan left 2,542 people dead and 5,062 others injured in 2010.

'Target killings' in the country's port city of Karachi saw the death of 237 political activists while in the southwestern province of Balochistan, at least 118 people were killed, the report said.

At least 1,159 people, including 1,041 civilians, lost their lives in 67 suicide bomb attacks in the country.

During 2010, at least 12,580 people were killed in different incidents, including 791 honour killings. A total of 581 people were kidnapped for ransom.

The report, whose statistics were derived largely from media and other undisclosed sources, criticised the government for failing to protect the citizens, especially religious minorities.

It said the biggest terrorist incident took place in Lahore at a place of worship place of a religious minority. The attack left 99 members of the Ahmadi sect dead.

The commission officials, in the report, urged political parties to work together to improve the human rights situation in the country
 
http://story.irishsun.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/2411cd3571b4f088/id/769208/cs/1/

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Panetta Spurns Pakistan’s Calls to End CIA Drone Strikes

Insists Strikes Part of His 'Fundamental Responsibility'

by Jason Ditz, April 15, 2011

According to officials familiar with the conversation, CIA Director Leon Panetta rejected demands from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence head Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha to end drone strikes against his nation and scale back operations beyond those coordinated with the ISI itself.

MORE

http://news.antiwar.com/2011/04/15/panetta-spurns-pakistans-calls-to-end-cia-drone-strikes/

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US 'will continue' Pakistan drone attacks

AlJazeera.net

April 20, 2011
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2011/04/201142016503942929.html


The US will maintain its drone programme in Pakistan but the way forward will be determined by both sides, an unnamed US military official has said.

The issue has been a bone of contention between the two nations, with some Pakistani officials calling for sharp cuts in drone attacks.

"The [programme] is something that we have said we go ahead on. The question is how," the official said on condition of anonymity.

"And that process is going to be something that's going to be one of the main tasks that our intel and our military guys have."

The matter was raised last week in Washington in talks between Leon Panetta, the CIA director, and Lieutenant-General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the chief of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.

"I'll pause from my normal optimism and say this is a tough one. This is a real tough one," the unidentified US official said.

"Because that has been so inflamed in the public that the ability of our intelligence and our military guys to get together and say 'what's our common ground here?' is limited."

Under pressure

The long-running issue of the US drone strikes on targets in Pakistan's tribal areas has kept tensions high between the two countries regarding the US' role in the region.

The covert drone-launched missile strikes that target fighters in Pakistan's lawless border areas have stoked anti-American sentiment among the populace, even though it is widely believed that the strikes occur with the tacit consent of Islamabad.

Publicly, Pakistan's leaders have insisted that the drone strikes stop and that the US share the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) technology with Pakistan so that it can take operational control of them, but US officials say operations will continue in order to achieve US security objectives.

US officials have privately said in the past that Washington would not consider demands by some Pakistani officials for sharp cuts in drone attacks.

Al Jazeera's Kamal Hyder, reporting from Islamabad, said the remarks about continued US drone attacks came as a surprise especially when the strikes are widely unpopular in Pakistan.

"Right now the issue is being taken up even at the International Court of Justice because the government officials and some major leaders of religious parties are saying that the Americans have no mandate to cross into Pakistani sovereign territory," he said.

"There is a lot of top talking to do and a lot of protests expected over the continued US policy on drone strikes."
 
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http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2011/04/201142016503942929.html

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US drone strike kills 25 in Pakistan

Fri Apr 22, 2011 2:9AM



At least 25 people have been killed in yet another unauthorized US drone attack on the tribal village of Miranshah in northwestern Pakistan.


Officials reported that the non-UN-sanctioned attack by a US drone took place at 4:30 a.m. (2030 GMT) Friday, a Press TV correspondent reported.

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http://www.presstv.ir/detail/176076.html

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South Asia
Apr 29, 2011 
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MD29Df02.html 
 

Pakistan stares at Bush's pledges

By MK Bhadrakumar

It overshadowed a shake-up of Barack Obama's top security team and the mowing down of nine American servicemen at Kabul airport by an irate Afghan. The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Pakistan Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani had counseled Afghan President Hamid Karzai to throw off the American yoke and enter a new sphere of geopolitics in which Afghanistan, Pakistan and China would live happily ever after.

In "Karzai to dump US", the WSJ reported that Karzai was in two minds over which road to take. Perhaps he is probing as to whether the Pakistani overture could be used to extract better terms of patronage from Washington.

The WSJ story had three important points:

- The Afghans without exception are a bunch of bazaaris who at the end of the day are moonlighting for profitable deals from whichever patron without any scruples or honor.

- Pakistan is in a confrontational mood with the US and a "point of no return" has been reached.
 
- China is straining at the leash to move into Afghanistan's blood-soaked civil war and to pick up the stirrups from where the Americans might leave them if and when they are finally booted out by Karzai or by the force of circumstance.


Karzai knows his way around

All three contentions are highly tendentious. Consider the following. Of all three protagonists in the WSJ story, it is Karzai who is most fed up with the Americans. He knows the Americans have been trying their damndest for the past two years to remove him from the Afghan chessboard. He remains in the presidential palace only because the Barack Obama administration is stuck with him for want of an alternative.

Karzai is fully aware that Washington has been openly patronizing - with possible funding and political support - implacable adversaries like his former Afghan intelligence chief Mohammed Saleh and his former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah.

Karzai is equally aware that Washington has been covertly encouraging non-Pashtun elements of the erstwhile Northern Alliance to challenge and erode Karzai's agenda of reconciliation with the Taliban. Washington has carried matters to such an extent that it has spread calumnies about Karzai and his family - even to the point of insinuating that the Afghan president is a drug addict and a mental case.

Such below-the-belt attacks on a proud Pashtun tribal chieftain leave indelible marks on his psyche; they are deeply wounding; they demean him in front of his tribe and his people; they are antithetical to the culture of the people who inhabit the Hindu Kush.

Most important, Washington is completely exasperated with Karzai's seeming incapacity or lack of will to wrap up a status of forces agreement (SFA) that would ensure a continued American troop presence in Afghanistan. The US has spent hundreds of millions of dollars bringing the Soviet-era military bases in Afghanistan to a par with American standards, and constructing new military bases. Now it is a case of "all-dressed-up-with-nowhere-to-go".

The entire Pentagon strategy in Afghanistan pivots on the conclusion of a SFA. The US objective is to build up reconciliation with the Taliban on the foundations of an SFA. This hope is that while American troops will no longer have to fight and die in a futile war, the US can perpetuate a military presence on the strategic Afghan chessboard and stay neatly tucked in between four nuclear powers (five, if one includes Iran).

However, the US knows that none of the regional powers - including India - would reconcile with the prospect of an open-ended American military presence in the region. Most important, Washington knows the Afghan people would oppose tooth and nail any such foreign occupation of their country and, therefore, Karzai wouldn't easily play ball, either.

The US has been plainly ignoring Karzai's sensitivities regarding Washington bypassing his government in vital matters such as aid or excessive security operations. Karzai isn't a fool and knows that even a recent controversy regarding Kabul Bank has an extra political dimension. He does not have to be reminded that the Americans have been inciting the Afghan parliament to be a counterpoint to his presidential authority and to constantly create roadblocks for him.

In sum, Washington's equations with Karzai are in a bottomless pit already and the latter doesn't need Gilani to enlighten him about the highhandedness, stupidity or arrogance - depending on one's point of view - of American policy in the AfPak region. Worse still, Obama keeps him at arm's length.

China won't take risks

The biggest surprise in the WSJ story is regarding China. Anyone who has a remote knowledge of Chinese policy in Afghanistan or any of the planet's "hotspots" - be it the Thai-Cambodian border region, Syria, Bahrain, Yemen or Myanmar - knows that Beijing treads extremely warily when it comes to spending its resources and political capital. On the contrary, husbanding resources and remaining highly focused on core concerns, vital interests and its economic development has been an unfailing feature of China's neighborhood policies all over Central Asia.

This is why despite constant US urgings for the past three years to come into the Hindu Kush and to play the role of a "stakeholder", Beijing hasn't shown the least bit of interest. A minimal aid program; a commercially sensible investment program; excellent government-to-governmental ties; a watchful eye on the progress of the US strategy - these are the firm cornerstones of China's Afghan policy.

Beijing is clear-headed about the range of security threats that arise or can possibly arise out of Afghanistan. And it has made the appropriate diplomatic and political moves both bilaterally with Kabul and Islamabad as well as regionally within the ambit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to ensure that China's national security interests are safeguarded.

Finally, China is keeping its options open in the highly fluid Afghan situation. In the ultimate analysis, China will deal with any regime that emerges out of the current civil war. As far as China is concerned, it is a matter of the wishes of the Afghan people and China's focus will be on strengthening the ties with the established government in Kabul that enjoys international legitimacy.

In sum, Gilani would have been out of his mind to prescribe to Karzai a "Chinese option". Grant it to the Pakistanis to know that much about their "all-weather friend", China.

Therefore, the WSJ article raises disturbing questions. As Vladimir Lenin would have asked: "Who stands to gain?" The question is not really a hard one to answer. The article is calculated to raise hopes in Karzai's mind that Uncle Sam may consider paying a better price if he collaborates on the SFA. Curiously, the WSJ article appeared even as the US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Marc Grossman (who is the point person negotiating the SFA from the American side) arrived in New Delhi.

The specter of a potential Sino-Pakistan axis in Afghanistan is calculated to raise hackles in the Indian mind and goad it into making precipitate counter-moves in the Hindu Kush. But the Indians would need to be downright naive to bite the American bullet.

Anyway, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is visiting Kabul next week and can hear the tale straight from the horse's mouth. New Delhi is confident that it enjoys transparency in its discourses with Karzai and can ask a few pertinent questions rather than go with Grossman's version or the WSJ account.

US double-crosses Pakistan

What the WSJ report really does is illustrate the state of play in US-Pakistan relations. The fact is that as much as Washington will claim that tensions emanate from Pakistan's clandestine links with the Haqqani network, it is crystal clear that the issue is actually about the bottom line of the impending Afghan peace talks.

Plainly put, Islamabad is increasingly apprehensive about US strategy in Afghanistan. It gets an ugly feeling that the US is working on an agenda that would have profound meaning for Pakistan's future and Islamabad is being kept in the dark.

It is simplistic to call this a mere "trust deficit". Through the six-week-long, gruelling interrogation of Raymond Davis, when the US Central Intelligence Agency contractor was being held in Lahore, the Pakistani military has garnered all that it was afraid to ask the Pentagon and the CIA, and all that it needed to know about the American gameplan.

The Pakistani military and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) have a fair idea today about the extensive American intelligence infiltration of the Taliban and the various Pakistani militant groups. The US is increasingly effective in its drone attacks due to the real-time intelligence it is directly gathering.

Suffice to say, the US is getting quite close to dispensing with the help of the Pakistani military and the ISI - altogether if a need arises or at least whittling it down - that was needed to sustain its dealings with the Taliban and other militant groups.

But what truly unnerves the Pakistani military is that incrementally, the US might be able to use insurgent groups or elements within them - if it is not doing already, as Iran has alleged - as instruments of its regional policies in Afghanistan and in the surrounding regions.

Thus, the Pakistanis are demanding that the US work with Pakistan on the drone attacks and observe the so-called "Reagan Rules" with regard to dealings with the insurgent groups has a broader context. The "Reagan Rules" describe the CIA-ISI relationship of the 1980s, when the agency provided ISI with money and arms to aid the mujahideen.

This is an non-negotiable demand for the Pakistani military as it concerns Pakistan's sovereignty, territorial integrity and the safety of its nuclear stockpiles from American reach. Not the least, it concerns Pakistan's entire Afghan strategy, which has been based on the exclusivity of its ties with the friendly elements of the Afghan insurgency fostered through the past three decades at enormous cost and sacrifice and at considerable risk.

However, it will be virtually impossible for the US to meet the Pakistani expectations and to settle for an operational blueprint that strictly confines to the four walls of the "Reagan Rules". The current war is vastly different from the Afghan jihad of the 1980s.

Thirty years ago, Washington was settling scores with the Soviet Union for the humiliation in Vietnam and it was expedient not to be seen at the barricades. Today, America's "homeland security" is in the firing line and it is suicidal not to lead the fight right from out there in the barricades. Today's war cannot be reduced to a "proxy war" fought through the ISI and strictly within the parameters of a US-Pakistan network of mil-to-mil and intelligence level collaboration.

The strategic divergence in the respective strategies and objectives of the US and Pakistan has finally welled up to the surface and is visible to the naked eye. Quite conceivably, Gilani solicited Karzai's cooperation in moving into a Pakistan-Afghanistan condominium to steer the peace process in a rapid sequential way so as to present the US with a fait accompli.

But this is a sideshow, and it is patently intended to display to the Obama administration the imperative need to recognize Pakistan's legitimate interests and not to go back on the word given by the previous George W Bush administration: that in any Afghan settlement, Pakistan would play a key role and in any eventual peace settlement, Pakistan's legitimate interests would be duly accommodated.

The big question is whether Obama or the administration he heads considers itself to be the inheritor of all the pledges that Bush or Colin Powell or Donald Rumsfeld made to the Pakistani military headed by Pervez Musharraf in the heat of the night after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

In any case, the Pakistani military should have known - even if Musharraf chose to overlook it - that in the American scheme of things, the winner invariably takes all.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MD29Df02.html







 
 
 

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Pakistan denies reports of efforts to split U.S., Afghanistan

By Chris Allbritton Chris Allbritton
Wed Apr 27, 7:13 am ET

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110427/wl_nm/us_pakistan_afghanistan
 
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Pakistan denied media reports on Wednesday that it was lobbying Afghanistan to drop its alliance with Washington and look to Islamabad and Beijing to forge a peace deal with the Taliban and rebuild its economy.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani "bluntly" told Afghan President Hamid Karzai to "forget about allowing a long-term U.S. military presence in his country," according to Afghans present at an April 16 meeting between the two men.

"Reports claiming Gilani-Karzai discussion about Pakistan advising alignment away fm US are inaccurate," Pakistan's ambassador in Washington, Hussain Haqqani, wrote on his Twitter feed.

Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tehmina Janjua told Reuters: "It is the most ridiculous report we have come across."

The Journal reported that Pakistan's apparent bid to separate Afghanistan from the United States is a clear sign that tensions between Washington and Islamabad could threaten attempts to end the war in Afghanistan on favorable terms for the West.

The United States plans to start removing combat troops in July, with the bulk of them scheduled to be home by the end of 2014. Pakistan hopes to fill any power vacuum the Americans leave behind, considering Afghanistan to be within its traditional sphere of influence and a bulwark against its arch-rival India.

Pakistan's military has had long-running ties to the Afghan Taliban and has repeatedly said that the road to a settlement of the 10-year conflict in Afghanistan runs through Islamabad.

Its prior support for the Afghan Taliban movement in the 1990s gives it an outsized influence among Afghanistan's Pashtuns, who makes up about 42 percent of the total population and who maintain close ties with their Pakistani fellow tribesmen.

Pakistan maintains that influence, the United States believes, by having its top intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), keep ties with al Qaeda-allied militants operating on both sides of the border.

MORE

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110427/wl_nm/us_pakistan_afghanistan

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Pakistan Army Controls All Strings: Peace Or Terror – Analysis

Written by: SAAG

April 27, 2011

http://www.eurasiareview.com/pakistan-army-controls-all-strings-peace-or-terror-analysis-27042011/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+eurasiareview%2FVsnE+%28Eurasia+Review%29


By Rajeev Sharma

It is a grave misfortune for two billion and more people of South Asia that peace and stability of their home remains hostage to the dangerously short-sighted and reckless Pakistan Army and its top leadership. The army is today led by General Ashfaq Kayani and his cabal of confidants led by ISI chief Shuja Pasha whose hatred for India and deep suspicion about the US surpasses even that of their proxies like terrorist leader Hafiz Saeed. Unfortunately, the American leadership, which is acutely aware of this compulsive disorder among the top leadership in Pakistan Army, remains firm in their grossly mistaken belief that Kayani and Pasha alone could save them from ruin in Afghanistan.

A wake up call has become essential in this context. Study the actions of the Pakistan Army on ground. Ever since October 2001, when the Americans wanted Pakistan to be its ` strategic ally` in the War on Terror, Pakistan Army has been leading Washington by its nose. The first major operation on Durand Line, Operation Hammer and Anvil, failed to arrest the wave of Taliban and al Qaida escapees into Pakistan. Neither the army nor its intelligence arm, ISI, was determined to make the operation success; in fact, they did everything possible to fail it. The chief of Pakistan Army at that time was none other than Washington’s `best bet` Pervez Musharraf and his ISI chief was Kayani who, now, has taken over the mantle of `best bet`. Musharraf and his commanders were quite clear that if Taliban and al Qaida leaders were either killed or arrested and handed over to the US, they will have no leverage over the Western nation to shell out the much required dollars to shore up their country’s empty coffers and of course keep a hefty commission for themselves.


Pakistan

How come Musharraf was able to buy an extraordinarily expensive flat in London’s most exclusive locality? No one really has bothered to find out how many billions, like his fellow Generals in other parts of the world like Hosni Mubarak, Musharraf had stashed away in anonymous Swiss bank accounts. As for Kayani, no one even dare talk about such a possibility in Pakistan or in the US. But isn’t it strange that Kayani and his army, who have been projecting themselves as upholders of all virtue in Pakistan, have been quite reticent in pursuing President Zardari’s ill-gotten millions (or is it billions?)? Is there a secret understanding between the two? Or, does Zardari know such black secrets about the Generals which he is conveniently using as a shield? In today’s Pakistan, nothing can be considered pre-posterous?

But more than the deeply entrenched corruption in the army and ISI, it is the absolute hatred among its top leadership towards India and western nations that makes them embrace terrorist leaders like Hafiz Saeed and makes them, in the process, blind towards their self-destructive attitudes and actions.

The Army’s anti-India and pro-terrorist leanings and actions generate not only a deep sense of anxiety among the billions who populate this region but also encourages terrorist groups and leaders like Hafiz Saeed to brandish their extremely radical religious ideology to a billion-plus Muslims who cohabit with others in this part of the world. Kayani’s attitude towards terrorist groups, to regard thes as `strategic assets` and `patriots` has encouraged terrorist groups like LeT to regroup and regain capability in carrying out their terrorist mission. Without doubt, the threat of terror attacks in India and Afghanistan has only grown manifold since the Mumbai attacks.

The possibility of terrorist attacks carried out by Pakistan-based or trained terrorists in other parts of the world has become even stronger since November 2008. Today, Pakistan-based terrorist groups, with strong support from the Army and ISI, offer training courses to radical elements from different parts of the world. The New York failed bomber, Faizal Shahzad, for instance, had first trained with LeT in its PoK campus and then with the Taliban in Waziristan. Hundreds of others, from different parts of the world, have trained in many of the terrorist training camps run by LeT and other groups in PoK, Waziristan and Khyber Pakhtunwa. Pakistan has become a mega-campus of terror today with alumni from a broad spectrum of terror groups.

What such a situation does to Pakistan itself has been kept at bay by the Army which projects itself as the country’s `sole guardian`. Thanks to Kayani’s policies, Pakistan is today teetering on the brink of a collapse. Kayani is behaving more like the Roman emperor Nero who watched, with perverse pleasure, Rome being consumed by flames. The flames lapping up at the doorstep of Pakistan is visible to all but Pakistan Army and its top leadership. The reason for this blindness is the simple fact that the one institution responsible, more than the others, for Pakistan’s fast forward into collapse, is Pakistan Army. The Army managed to usurp the driver’s seat in the political arena since the 50s when General Ayub Khan took over power from the civilians. Thereafter, to hold on to the power and spoils of power, the Army systematically subverted the nascent political process in the country, putting the Generals in positions of influence even if they were not in power. The political process, over the years, with forced compromises and assassinations, became subservient to the Army Headquarters diktat. The invisible King Maker in all elections in Pakistan has been the Army. Without the Army Chief’s nod, no political party could take charge in Islamabad. And even if it did, it could not continue for long if the party fell foul with the army’s plans. So, over the six decades of independence, Pakistan has become a slave to a British legacy to the sub-continent, Pakistan Army.

Such enormous political clout gave the Army a free hand in fuelling a venomous cocktail of hatred and violence among the often willing masses who saw India as a looming enemy. The Army’s hate campaign, four wars and the two-decade long proxy war over Kashmir, kept the people somnambulant, completely blind to the pathetic living standards they have been forced to accept in the name of keeping the religious above all considerations. Logic and liberty have no place in today’s Pakistan. The Army wanted a nation for itself and it did everything possible to keep that nation blind and deaf to reason. So when the army began promoting jihad as a panacea for all the country’s ills, millions took the bait and turned themselves into cannon fodder in the name of religion. The army then created proxy groups to recruit, train and manage this parallel militia of civilians. Their target was everything and everyone Un-Islamic.

Almost everyone in Pakistan believes that terrorist groups like LeT are not dangerous because they kill only the Indians and not Pakistanis. How dangerously flawed this opinion is. Terrorist groups not only carry out attacks but also, as part of their agenda, turn ` civil` society into a murderous mob. These groups brainwash the young, arm the jobless youth and turn women into suicide bombers. They take over the civil society in more ways than one, marginalising the few liberal elements already on the fringe of the society. The terrorist groups become legitimate owners of the civil society, leaving hardly anyone to challenge their power and influence.

This transformation of terror groups into `civil society` organisations could not have been possible without Pakistan Army which saw it as an instrument to legitimise its monopoly over everything that matters in Pakistan. They became the `strategic assets` in more ways than one; they could be, and were, used to cause mayhem and violence in India and Afghanistan or any other part of the world. These groups could also be, and were, used to silence critics, rebels and dissidents. Shias, for instance, are being silenced by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Sipah-e-Sahaba, two groups created by the Army in the early 80s after Zia was forced to capitulate on Sharia by the Shia community. Balochs are being silenced in a similar fashion for daring to challenge the army’s supremacy. The Pashtuns are the new targets for carrying revenge attacks on the army and ISI after the army killed over 300 Pashtun students, boys and girls, in a military operation in Lal Masjid in Islamabad in July 2007. Similar groups, in the past, were used to quell the Bengali Muslims who wanted, first, recognition for their language, and then a separate nation for themselves.

The wheel of terror has, however, turned a full circle. The same set of `strategic assets` are now turning against their masters because of clash of objectives. Not all the terrorist proxies the army created in the past are within their grip; some have gone `rogue`, carrying out independent criminal, extremist and terrorist operations, freely aligning with groups which are today threatening Pakistan more than anyone else. The Army, however, remains convinced that it can stem this tide of terror against their country but it would need more than a military operation or two. It would require the army to give up terror as a strategic option and crackdown on all terrorist groups with equal determination. Such an eventuality seems to be part of wishful thinking. Kayani and Pasha are not interested in reigning in even those who are in their control, leaving Pakistan at the mercy of a cocktail of terror that it once unleashed on other countries with careless abundance.

(The writer is a New Delhi-based journalist-author and a strategic analyst. He can be reached at bhootnath004@yahoo.com)

http://www.eurasiareview.com/pakistan-army-controls-all-strings-peace-or-terror-analysis-27042011/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+eurasiareview%2FVsnE+%28Eurasia+Review%29

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South Asia
May 3, 2011 
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/ME03Df01.html 
 
Osama's al-Qaeda ready for a fight

 
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

ISLAMABAD - Command of al-Qaeda will be taken over by a select handful of leaders who had been chosen in advance of the death of Osama bin Laden, who was killed on Monday morning in a strike by Pakistani and American special forces on a compound in Abbottabad, about 65 kilometers north of the Pakistani capital Islamabad.

The death of the 54-year-old Bin Laden, who had a US$50 million reward on his head, is also likely to mark the beginning of a shift of the war theater from Afghanistan to Pakistan, al-Qaeda insiders tell Asia Times Online.

Asia Times Online contacts in the North Waziristan tribal area - a militant hotbed - confirmed that several meetings had already been convened in the town of Mir Ali to formulate strategies. They all confirmed an immediate and fierce retaliation against Pakistan and the breaking up of all ceasefire agreements with the Pakistan military.

The US had been on Bin Laden's trail ever since he fled Afghanistan when American forces invaded the country in 2001 to oust the Taliban in retaliation for the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington; Bin Laden and al-Qaeda planned the attacks while guests of the Taliban.

"I can report to the American people and to the world, that the US has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden," President Barack Obama, also the US commander-in-chief, said from the White House. "After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body," Obama said. "The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation's efforts to defeat al-Qaeda."

It his believed one of his sons, two of his wives and many aides were killed in the raid, which included helicopter gunships.

Bin Laden's death was confirmed by Pakistani intelligence. Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, the director general of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), said the ISI had been aware of the operation and was part of the whole process.

The US has put all its embassies on alert, warning Americans of al-Qaeda reprisal attacks. This corresponds with information obtained by Asia Times Online that Bin Laden's death is likely to revive international terror operations against Western capitals that had been frozen following the great Arab 2011 revolt.

Late last month, Bin Laden warned that al-Qaeda would unleash a "nuclear hellstorm" if he were captured, according to classified diplomatic documents released by WikiLeaks.

Obama said that the Central Intelligence Agency had been closer on Bin Laden's trail since October 2010 and that he had been visible on intelligence radars early this year, something that was exclusively reported by Asia Times Online:
After a prolonged lull, the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has launched a series of covert operations in the rugged Hindu Kush mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan following strong tip-offs that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has been criss-crossing the area in the past few weeks for high-profile meetings in militant redoubts. ( Bin Laden sets alarm bells ringing March 25.)
The next steps
Following the upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa, Bin Laden had been spurred into action to create unity within the Islamist cadre of Pakistan and Afghanistan in the Afghan battle against the Americans. For this reason, he recently traveled to Pakistan to meet with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the legendary Afghan mujahid and founder and leader of the Hezb-e-Islami Afghanistan political party and paramilitary group, and many other top jihadi leaders. He is believed to have shifted to Abbottabad about 10 days ago and was about to move again, sources told Asia Times Online.

They said that al-Qaeda's leadership shura (council), would run the organization and a new chief would be decided later. A new generation of commanders includes Sirajuddin Haqqani, Qari Ziaur Rahman, Nazir Ahmad and Ilyas Kashmiri, who have joined forces with al-Qaeda.

Over the past few years, Bin Laden had become more of a popular iconic figure than a nuts and bolts leader - most organizational policies were run by his deputy, Egyptian Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, and other ideologues. Therefore, operational mechanisms can be expected to remain the same.

On the basis of interaction with top al-Qaeda leaders, this correspondent has no doubt in predicting that Operation Osama Bin Laden marks the beginning of a shift of the main war theater from Afghanistan to Pakistan and that all previous efforts for reconciliation between Pakistani militants and Pakistan will be sabotaged and all guns will turn towards the Pakistani military establishment.

Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief and author of upcoming book Inside al-Qaeda and the Taliban, beyond 9/11 published by Pluto Press, UK. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
 
 http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/ME03Df01.html

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South Asia
 May 4, 2011 
  http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/ME04Df03.html
 
THE LIFE AND DEATH OF OSAMA BIN LADEN


Pakistan has a price to pay


By Syed Saleem Shahzad


ISLAMABAD - United States officials modified their narrative on Osama bin Laden's killing on Monday in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad to protect Pakistan's broader interests against threats from militants, saying that the Pakistanis had little involvement.

However, well-placed security sources maintain that the operation in Abbottabad - just a two-hour drive north of the capital Islamabad - was without a doubt a joint Pakistan-US effort and that all logistics were arranged inside Pakistan.

All the same, while Pakistan's military command was aware that the operation targeted a high-value suspect, it was completely unaware that it was in fact Bin Laden until this was announced by the Americans after the al-Qaeda leader had been shot dead by US Special Forces.

The operation to get Bin Laden was similar to the one that netted Indonesian al-Qaeda operative Umar Patek - the mastermind of the Bali bombings in Indonesia in 2002 that killed more than 200 people - from Abbottabad in late January.

So when Pakistani intelligence gave the approval for American gunship helicopters to fly from Tarbella Ghazi, 20 kilometers from Islamabad and the brigade headquarters of the Pakistan army's elite commando unit, to capture a high-value target in Abbottabad, the Pakistanis assumed it was for the seizure of Umar Patek's companions.

Once permission had been granted to the helicopters, Pakistani security forces were put on high alert in Abbottabad to provide necessary assistance to the American operation, which was led by American Navy Seals.

Limited bases were granted to the Americans in Tarbella Ghazi in 2008 under an agreement for high-profile operations. Asia Times Online broke that story of that development. (See A long, hot winter for Pakistan October 11, 2008 and The gloves are off in Pakistan September 23, 2008.)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JJ11Df01.html
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JI23Df01.html

After a 40-minute operation, the Americans had the body of Bin Laden - later buried in the Arabian Sea - and Pakistani authorities were informed. Their forces then entered the compound where Bin Laden had been found and took control.

News of Bin Laden's death broke like a bombshell among military bigwigs as well as on the political leadership. On the international diplomatic front, Pakistan has already lost its argument against allegations that it perpetuates terror. Now, militant groups are expected to turn their guns on the Pakistan state for its complicity in Bin Laden's death.

Before Bin Laden's killing, hardly 10% of pro-Taliban militants were fighting against Pakistan. That is, 90% disagreed with Pakistan's policy of aligning with the US in the "war on terror", but they chose to keep their focus on fighting foreign forces in Afghanistan. Bin Laden's death has invited the wrath of all groups.

For example, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP - Pakistan Taliban), immediately announced it would avenge his death and declared Pakistan the number one enemy and the US as number two. On Monday evening, a suicide attack was carried out against police in Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa province, in which Abbottabad is located. The TTP claimed responsibility.

While all information was coming out of Washington, Pakistan - where the entire operation was conducted - behaved like an extremely terrified child and did not utter a single word. Only by noon did the Pakistani Foreign Office issue a statement that declared that the operation was exclusively conducted by American forces.

American forces claimed to have buried Bin Laden at sea so that people could not eulogize his grave and that he would not continue to be an icon of anti-Americanism. However, al-Qaeda is a completely different beast.

The world without Osama

Bin Laden, a rich Saudi prince-like figure, was in many ways the brainchild of Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri and his Egyptian camp (See Al-Qaeda's unfinished work Asia Times Online, May 2005) to bolster a movement that in the 1990s had mostly failed and was rapidly losing popularity in the Muslim world.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GA05Ak03.html

When Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the September 11 mastermind, who was not an al-Qaeda member, approached Zawahiri with a plan to strike the US mainland with hijacked aircraft, Zawahiri saw a huge chance to orchestrate broader friction between the Muslim and non-Muslim world, and in the process organize anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world under a single banner. He approved the plan despite intense opposition from several top al-Qaeda commanders who thought the American reaction would not be sustainable for the Taliban in Afghanistan or for al-Qaeda.

However, Zawahiri was planning a different world after 9/11. Therefore, following the 9/11 attack and the subsequent US invasion and defeat of the Taliban, al-Qaeda migrated to Pakistan's South Waziristan tribal area where it succeeded in regrouping by 2003.

That was a turning point at which time it was decided to preserve the iconic figure of Bin Laden as a jewel while Zawahiri worked on a different strategy - to engineer a new leadership of al-Qaeda.

A careful use of material and human resources and the maximum exploitation of circumstances by 2004 brought forward leaders like commander Nek Mohammad and Haji Umar and as each one of these was killed off, another would be ready to step into the position. These included Abdullah Mehsud, Baitullah Mehsud and Hakeemullah Mehsud, and now the highly effective Sirajuddin Haqqani and commander Ilyas Kashmiri.

Al-Qaeda's regrouping helped the Taliban make a comeback by 2006, at which time Bin Laden went very quiet - like a precious stone that was buried deep inside the Earth with safety and care. He didn't have much of a role in decision-making, but his name and stature often brought in money for al-Qaeda.

By 2010, the Americans came up with a formula for their withdrawal from Afghanistan and al-Qaeda began to place more emphasis on people like Haqqani and Kashmiri to replace the older generation of al-Qaeda in the action in the mountains of the tribal areas. These older men would return to the Middle East to take over the command of Arab revolts.

Under the same arrangement, Central Asian fighters in the tribal areas were asked to make preparations to set up fronts in Central Asia (see Soft Sufi, hard-rock militant Asia Times Online, January 22, 2011.)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MA22Df01.html

In essence, by 2011 al-Qaeda had turned into a kind of hornet's nest capable of opening war fronts in different places at the same time, or focusing its energies on a single front. Bin Laden's killing has frozen all previous plans and according to sources in North Waziristan, schemes have morphed into two parts: immediate reaction against Pakistan and a long-term scheme against the West and India.

Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief and author of forthcoming book Inside al-Qaeda and the Taliban, beyond 9/11 to be published by Pluto Press, UK. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
 
 
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/ME04Df03.html

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Bin Laden’s Killing Could Alter Af-Pak Policies


by Jim Lobe, May 03, 2011

http://original.antiwar.com/lobe/2011/05/02/bin-ladens-killing-could/



Sunday’s killing of al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden by a small helicopter-borne team of U.S. Navy Seals could result in significant impacts on U.S. relations and strategy both in Pakistan, where the raid was carried out, and neighboring Afghanistan, where it was launched, according to policy experts.

Analysts agreed that the operation, which targeted a compound in a wealthy suburb of Islamabad without prior consultation with Pakistani officials, will likely worsen already-fraught ties with that country.

They also agreed that the operation’s success offers President Barack Obama a chance to more fully embrace a counterterrorist (CT) strategy in Afghanistan, as opposed to the more ambitious counterinsurgency (COIN) and nation-building strategy pursued by the outgoing commander there, Army Gen. David Petraeus. If so, the 100,000 troops currently deployed there could be drawn down more quickly than has been anticipated.

Broadly hailed as a major victory for Washington in its nearly decade-long pursuit of al-Qaeda’s leadership, most analysts also agreed that bin Laden’s death could hasten the demise of al-Qaeda itself, even as threats posed by its affiliates in the Islamic world are likely to persist for some time.

“With his demise … it will take a long time for anyone to reclaim bin Laden’s influence in the Salafi terrorist circles, regardless of who and how quickly someone nominally replaces him at the head of al- Qaeda,” according to Vanda Felbab-Brown, a South Asia specialist at the Brookings Institution, who described his status and prestige among violent Islamists as “almost mythical.”

“Bin Laden was the only al-Qaeda figure able to command the attention of a mainstream Arab audience,” wrote Marc Lynch, an Arab-public-opinion expert at George Washington University, on his ForeignPolicy.com blog Monday.

“He remained uniquely charismatic and able to frame al-Qaeda’s narrative in ways which resonated with a broader Arab and Muslim audience,” according to Lynch, who predicted that his death will only briefly distract the Arab media’s attention from the popular uprisings that have both dominated the region over the past several months and further marginalized al-Qaeda’s appeal for violent resistance against the U.S. and the West.

Indeed, bin Laden’s killing could actually give renewed momentum to the so-called “Arab Spring,” according to Christopher Davidson, a Gulf expert at Britain’s Durham University.

While bin Laden himself had become “little more than a figurehead” in recent years, “the impact of his death on authoritarian regimes in Middle Eastern and other Islamic countries will be significant, as he served an important and valuable role as a ‘bogeyman’ that could be wheeled out to justify … why brutal crackdowns and limits on political expression were often needed,” he said.

For now, however, the biggest foreign policy implications of bin Laden’s killing—and the completely unilateral manner in which it was carried out—appear to lie with Pakistan.

That bin Laden had been living for some time—possibly as many as five years—in an unusually large and heavily fortified compound in Abbottabad, a community 50 kms from Islamabad whose residents include a disproportionate number of retired senior military officers, confirmed to most analysts that at least some sectors of Pakistan’s government provided effective safe haven for Washington’s “Public Enemy Number One.”

“We are very concerned that he was inside of Pakistan,” one senior administration official told reporters in a telephone conference call Sunday night immediately after Obama announced bin Laden’s death.

Public charges by senior U.S. government and military officials that Islamabad was not cooperating fully with Washington’s counterterrorism efforts had already become increasingly bold in the weeks leading up to Sunday’s raid. And despite assurances by both sides Monday that they remain close allies, the action seems certain to worsen relations, according to virtually all analysts.

“It strains credulity to say that Pakistani officials did not know what was going on in the suburbs of Islamabad,” said Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), in a teleconference with reporters Monday.

“It suggests to me that this long-fraught and difficult relationship will be entering yet another difficult phase moving forward,” he said, suggesting that Washington will find it hard to justify continued substantial aid to Islamabad—currently appropriated at $1.5 billion and over $1 billion a year in non-military and military aid, respectively—unless confidence can be restored.

“Pakistan essentially has a choice. It either partners with the United States much more completely, or it has to be prepared for the United States to act independently,” according to Haass, who held senior policy positions in both the George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush administrations.

“This will definitely worsen our relations with Pakistan,” said Col. Pat Lang (retired), who served as the top Mideast and South Asia officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). “But I don’t see that we can do anything about it; it’s the Pakistanis that are moving away from us and toward China, and that process will continue.”

Lang also noted that the success of the cross-border strike against bin Laden may also provide an opportunity for Obama to reduce his commitment to a “nation-building” COIN strategy in Afghanistan in favor of a CT strategy that would require far fewer troops on the ground.

That assessment was echoed by Haass, who has been critical of the COIN strategy and its costs in blood and treasure in Afghanistan since Obama agreed with Petraeus in November 2009 to increase U.S. troop strength to 100,000 by late 2010.

“This will very much play into a growing debate as we move toward July 1 about the proper trajectory of U.S. policy in Afghanistan in general and more specifically the rate of drawdown of U.S. forces,” he said.

Obama pledged in November 2009 to begin withdrawing U.S. forces from Afghanistan as of July 1, 2011, but Petraeus has reportedly argued for only a nominal reduction.

“I am hopeful that this provides closure to the American public for 9/11, and that closure provides some form of political backbone for members of Congress to become more engaged in the debate on the war,” said Matthew Hoh, director of the Afghanistan Study Group, who was deployed to Afghanistan as a marine captain and then as a State Department official.

“I’m also hopeful it will provide political space to President Obama to allow him to pursue a serious de-escalation of the war,” he added.

Patrick Cronin, a national security expert at the Center for a New American Security, was even more emphatic in terms of the potential strategic importance of the moment.

“The United States needs to further pivot from counterinsurgency, which feeds the perception of occupation, to counterterrorism, which requires a sharper discrimination between al-Qaeda and the Taliban,” he said.

But COIN advocates warned against such a move. Max Boot, a neoconservative who has often given public voice to Petraeus’s private views, worried Monday that “many Americans may decide that the threat from al-Qaeda is [now] gone and that we can afford to draw down in Afghanistan.”

Noting the continued existence in the region of a number of “Islamist terrorist groups,” he argued on the CFR Web site that a “comprehensive counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan is still vital to prevent that country from falling to Osama bin Laden’s fellow travelers.”

Brookings’ Felbab-Brown, meanwhile, argued that bin Laden’s death could enhance chances for a negotiated settlement with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

“Despite their separate structures and al-Qaeda’s limited influence over the Taliban’s decision-making, bin Laden likely was a significant force against the Taliban engaging in strategic negotiations—not the least because the Taliban’s disavowal of al- Qaeda has been a critical precondition and/or the essential desired outcome of such negotiations,” she wrote on the Brookings Web site.

“Bin Laden’s demise may create a more permissive environment for Taliban Central to make such a commitment, saying that whatever new leadership emerges after bin Laden’s death is not the same old al-Qaeda, with which the Taliban has not been willing to break for over 15 years.”


(Inter Press Service)


http://original.antiwar.com/lobe/2011/05/02/bin-ladens-killing-could/

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South Asia
May 6, 2011 
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/ME06Df02.html 
   
Kicking around in South Waziristan


By Syed Saleem Shahzad


This is the conclusion of a two-part report.
Part 1: Taliban and al-Qaeda: Friends in arms
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/ME05Df02.html

WANA, South Waziristan - This Pakistan tribal area on the border with Afghanistan is a stronghold for insurgents fighting Western coalition forces stationed in Afghanistan, but unlike other tribal areas it is peaceful, humane and without the Taliban's distinctive "pro-Taliban siege mentality".

The kingpin here is commander Nazir Ahmed (see Part 1), leader of the dominant Wazir tribe, viewed by North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces as their "worst enemy". He is behind all the devastating attacks on NATO forces in Afghanistan's Paktika province and is the most successful recruiter of footsoldiers for the Taliban in Zabul and Helmand provinces.

Asia Times Online spent a week in South Waziristan, from the main city Wana to the border town of Angorada, to get an overview of how Pakistan created a divide between al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and how al-Qaeda eventually outmaneuvered the state.

Al-Qaeda's first home in the tribal region
 
After the Taliban regime in Afghanistan was driven out by United States forces in late 2001, al-Qaeda needed to find a new home from where it could regroup as well as bolster the Taliban's efforts to return to power.

Al-Qaeda homed in on South Waziristan, and by mid-2002 senior members had set up a process that by 2006 had helped the Taliban become a force to be reckoned with in Afghanistan.

The main component of al-Qaeda's strategy to acquire control of the area was developing a pro-Taliban siege mentality. It invested in the Ahmedzai Wazir tribes in the border regions of Afghanistan and raised them as an unchallenged force in the region (see the Asia Times Online series Waziristan, July 2004.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/others/waziristan.html

Within a few years, with the support of their al-Qaeda and Uzbek mentors, these Taliban youths had become so powerful that Pakistan didn't have the capacity to take them on militarily. So a political solution - divide and rule - was sought.

While the Pakistan army opposed all foreign forces and their backers in the area, Mullah Nazir was given tacit support. The experiment was successful as Nazir led a massacre of 250 al-Qaeda-affiliated anti-Pakistan militants of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan in 2007 and forced hundreds of others to flee from Wana.

In 2009, Nazir's Taliban allowed space for the Pakistan army to carry out operations against the anti-Pakistan army Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (Pakistan Taliban -TTP).

From 2007 to 2011, large swathes of South Waziristan were effectively sublet to the Taliban led by Nazir, whom Islamabad believed would guarantee any future deals for peace and reconciliation with the Taliban and force out al-Qaeda.

State within a state

After passing through at least a dozen army checkpoints to enter South Waziristan, I arrived at Wana bazaar, where there was a feeling of peace, unlike neighboring North Waziristan where any stranger feels danger all around. The checkpoints do not generally allow in non-Wazirs, including Mehsud tribesmen as they are considered supporters of the TTP.

"Nobody can jeopardize the peace of the area. The Taliban have imposed a 5,000 rupee [US$60] fine if anybody even slaps someone else in Wana Bazaar," Sher Mohammad, a shopkeeper, told me when I mentioned the peace in Wana.

However, this peace does not compromise support for the Afghan resistance against the foreign occupation forces in Afghanistan.

Wana is the main transit point for those going to fight in Afghanistan. Punjabi fighters with long hair and tall, white-faced Turk youths can be seen waiting in Wana bazaar for vehicles that will take them to the border regions for launching into Afghanistan. Yet their presence does not seem to affect everyday life as the Taliban have cleverly compartmentalized war fever.

The Taliban are behind all aspects of life in South Waziristan, from sports events to hospitals.

Musa Qala, with the same name as a district in Afghanistan's Helmand province, is a Taliban stronghold in Wana. It recently staged a soccer (football) match between local teams which turned out in short-sleeved shirts and shorts - something that would not have happened in Afghanistan during Taliban rule.

Commander Nazir had announced a 40,000 rupee prize for the winning team, and this event was followed by games across the tribal region. They drew large crowds.

Qamar Abbas runs the only blood bank (Hafiz Blood Bank) in Wana. "Seventy-four patients with thalassemia [a blood disorder] have been reported in South Waziristan, beside one patient with HIV," Abbas said.

"Hafiz Blood Bank provides blood transfusion services. People wonder how we manage that all. The army commander called me one day and asked about my financial resources. I told him that I meet my expenses through charity. Similarly, Ameer Saheb [Nazir] summoned me and asked whether I collected funds from any foreign NGO [non-governmental organization]. I told him my situation, after which he promised to finance my project," Abbas said.

From the busy market place one can see the high minarets of Darul Uloom Waziristan - an Islamic seminary. A first impression emerges of a bastion of militancy, but a visit reinforces the idea that under shrewd management, a formula between the state and the Taliban has been worked out that allows even for a model education system.

"We place special emphasis on women's education," said Dr Taj Muhammad Haqqani, a PhD who wrote his thesis on the customs and traditions of the Wazir tribes and their comparison with Islamic law.

"We have 1,800 girl students of whom 800 are from far-flung villages in South Waziristan. They live in hostels. We provide them with Islamic education as well as mainstream [secular] education. This year, 231 girls appeared for the Matriculation Board of Education examination," said Haqqani.

"Not only am I supportive of women's education, I want each one of my students to open up schools in their villages," said Haqqani, who showed me around his seminary, computer laboratory and a modern library. The doctor, in his late 40s, seems ready to take more progressive steps, but because of social taboos he will not take any radical measures - only small steps to guarantee success.

Haqqani is the son of a former Pakistani parliamentarian and cleric, Maulana Noor Muhammad, who was killed by al-Qaeda in a suicide attack last year as he was considered a supportive force of the status quo, that is, the military establishment.

"My father was a symbol of stability in South Waziristan. In his presence, nobody could easily disturb the peace of the area. Therefore, he was assassinated," Haqqani said with sadness.

Muhammad's killing was a major turning point in South Waziristan and within a matter of a few months the whole "crisis management" arrangement between the Taliban and the Pakistan army was challenged and al-Qaeda is once again gaining strength. It's aim is to break this region's stability and transform moderate Taliban into high-grade radical global jihadis. It has already made much progress.

(Note: This report was written before the death of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden on May 2.)


Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief and author of upcoming book Inside al-Qaeda and the Taliban: Beyond Bin Laden and 9/11 published by Pluto Press, UK. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com

http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/ME06Df02.html