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

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Bomb hits Pakistan tribal elders
 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7712936.stm



A bomb has killed at least nine people and wounded about 40 at a gathering of tribal elders in the Pakistani tribal area of Bajaur, hospital staff say.

The bomb went off when the tribal elders were gathering to draw up a plan to drive militants out of their area as part of a government anti-Taleban plan.

Bajaur is a crucial hub for insurgents, with access routes to Afghanistan and the rest of Pakistan.

Hospital staff say they expect the number of casualties to increase.

Officials say that the bomb - detonated by remote control - targeted members of the Salarzai tribe as they were discussing ways to evict the Taleban from their area. They say that a senior tribal elder, Sazlal Karim, was among the dead.

Targeting elders

In a separate incident on Thursday, officials said that at least four suspected militants were killed in aerial bombing by Pakistani jets in Bajaur.
 
Taleban militants have been in complete control in parts of Bajaur


They say that the jets targeted the residence of a local militant commander, but it is not known if he is also among the dead.

Government forces have been conducting operations against militants in Bajaur since August.

The BBC's M Ilyas Khan in Pakistan says that there have been some recent claims of success, but forces continue to face stiff resistance in various areas, especially near the Afghan border.

The army is also encouraging local tribes in Bajaur and elsewhere in north-west Pakistan to stand up to militants linked to the Taleban and al-Qaeda.

In response, the Taleban have been targeting elders who oppose them.

Last month nearly 30 people were killed in a suicide car bomb attack in the Orakzai region aimed at a meeting of hundreds of local people who had met to discuss how to fight the Taleban.

The Taleban have grown in strength in the lawless tribal areas along the Afghan border, where until recently they were safe from American attack.

But in recent months, the US and Pakistani military have been attacking their bases, while local tribal leaders have been increasingly encouraged to take up arms against the Taleban and al-Qaeda.

At the end of October officials said that Islamist militants in part of Bajaur had vowed to lay down their arms and renounce violence.

The vow was taken before a jirga or tribal meeting in the Mamund area of Bajaur, a Taleban stronghold.

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'US raid' hits Pakistan tribal area 

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2008/11/20081177545317318.html


 
Remote areas in Pakistan's northwest have come under attack from both Taliban and the US [AFP]

 
A suspected US drone has launched a missile strike into northwest Pakistan, reportedly killing at least 10 people.

The attack on Friday hit the North Waziristan area, a tribal region on the Afghan border, security officials said.

"It happened close to the border," a Pakistani military officer said.

"We have reports of 10 dead but it will take time to get more information."

The North Waziristan region is a reputed stronghold of the Taliban and al-Qaeda linked fighters.

Al Jazeera's Kamal Hyder, speaking from the Pakistani capital Islamabad, said: "At the moment we are being told by sources in the area that the attack took place in the Razmak village [of North Waziristan].

"We are told that up to 17 people were also wounded in this attack.

"Just a few days ago we were in this region. And we were able to observe that even at nighttime the drones have been flying over this area.

"It has also causing considerable anger in that region because the Pakistani military forces have been deployed in very large numbers along this border and every time there is a strike deep into Pakistan it creates more public resentment. Not just against the Americans but also the local forces which are not able to stop these attacks.

"In spite of opposition by the Pakistani government, the Americans have been buzzing the Pakistani tribal territories ... and they have been picking out targets with impunity."

At least 18 such attacks by unmanned US aircraft have occured since September.

However, this is the first since General David Petraeus, the US Central Command chief, took charge of the war in Afghanistan.

Pakistan has objected to the attacks as a violation of its sovereignty.
 
 Source: Al Jazeera and agencies 
 
 
 
 

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U.S. Missile Kills 10 in Pakistan
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/08/world/asia/08pstan.html?hp
By PIR ZUBAIR SHAH
Published: November 7, 2008

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Missiles fired from a remotely-piloted United States aircraft slammed into a village in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan along the Afghan border on Friday and killed between 10 and 13 people, according to a local intelligence official, a Pakistani reporter and two Pakistani television channels.

State television put the death toll at 10 and other news reports said the dead included eight local people and five foreigners. . The deaths were the latest fatalities in a series of American missile attacks that have drawn increasingly irate protests from Pakistan to senior American officials, including the head of the United States Central Command, Gen. David H. Petraeus, and the American ambassador here, Anne Patterson.

The Pakistani president, Asif Ali Zardari, and the prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, both condemned Friday’s attack.

Since an American commando raid on Pakistani soil in early September, there have been reports of more than 15 American strikes directed at militants hiding out in the tribally-ruled Waziristan region.

The authorities accuse militants of using Waziristan as a base for attacks both in Pakistan and against the American-led coalition fighting an intensifying war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. But Pakistan maintains that the American strikes undermine its own efforts to curb the violence.

Pakistani state television said the latest attack hit the village of Kumshaam in the Razmak area of North Waziristan at 10.30 a.m. Friday. Four missiles struck a compound and adjoining guest rooms belonging to a local man identified as Alif Khan.

A Pakistani television station said remotely-guided aircraft were seen flying over several parts of North Waziristan. The strike was close to the border of North and South Waziristan, the intelligence and television channels said.

While the missile strikes have caused many casualties, there have been no reports of fatalities among the most senior Qaeda and Taliban figures. The strikes on Friday were the first since President-elect Barack Obama’s victory in the American elections on Nov. 4.

Pakistan is a close ally of the United States in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, but Washington has paid little evident heed to Pakistani leaders’ demands for the missile strikes to halt.

Pakistan has complained that the American attacks represent a violation of its sovereignty.

In late October, the Pakistani government lodged a formal protest over the American missile attacks and told the American ambassador the strikes should be “stopped immediately,” the Pakistan Foreign Ministry said at the time.

The protest came after a missile strike by a drone in South Waziristan killed 20 people, including several local Taliban commanders.

Earlier this week, General Petraeus met top Pakistani officials who told him the airstrikes were unhelpful.

Apart from the campaign against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Waziristan, Pakistani forces say they have been conducting a separate offensive against militants in the Bajaur region of northwest Pakistan, which also borders Afghanistan.

The militants have responded with bomb attacks, the most recent on Thursday when suicide bombers killed at least 19 people in two attacks on pro-government tribesmen and security forces, The Associated Press reported. One was directed at a gathering of local people meeting to plan ways of driving militants out of the area they lived in.

 

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U.S. steps up raids inside Pakistan
http://www.workers.org/2008/world/pakistan_1113/
By Sara Flounders
Published Nov 8, 2008 7:02 AM

The Pakistani government warned Gen. David Petraeus, now head of the U.S. Central Command running the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that frequent missile strikes on its territory risk inflaming anti-American sentiment. (AP, Nov. 3)

There is no evidence Washington will listen. On Oct. 26, the same day U.S. Special Forces attacked Syria, the Pentagon bombed a village in Pakistan from an aircraft drone. The attack killed 20 civilians.

In a further insult to Pakistan’s sovereignty on Nov. 2, the U.S. military staged two more attacks, killing 29 civilians in two Pakistani villages in the province of Waziristan, close to the Afghan border. The same day Petraeus arrived in Pakistan for talks with government and military officials.

This was the 17th U.S. bombing attack on Pakistan in the last three months. National outrage at the increased frequency of the strikes has badly strained the U.S. alliance with the corrupt Pakistani regime.

Pakistan’s economy is hit hard by the global capitalist crisis. The government has been forced to accept onerous International Monetary Fund conditions that will cut essential subsidies and services in order to pay for past foreign loans that enriched only a small ruling clique and the top generals. The government is wracked by division and instability and faces growing ferment from below.

The justification of pursuing “terrorists” was used for the attacks in Pakistan. However, the government has not strongly protested this obvious assault on Pakistani national sovereignty, a sign of its collaboration.

But U.S. imperialist forces have no right to be on either side of the Afghan-Pakistan border. In both countries, U.S. intervention has brought only underdevelopment and growing poverty.

Now the U.S. is frantically trying to blame neighboring countries for the storm of mass opposition that the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan have unleashed.

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Civil war and bankruptcy stare Pakistan
http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/56625
by Waseem Shehzad
(Sunday, November 9, 2008)

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

"It is this disconnect between the rulers and the ruled that has led to Pakistan’s precipitous fall. If Pakistan’s enemies had planned its destruction, they would not have succeeded as well as the rulers have through their ill-conceived policies."


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Pakistan is faced with the most serious threat to its existence comparable to what it faced in 1971 when it resulted in the breakup of the country. It is on the verge of bankruptcy; the skyrocketing food and fuel prices have led to extreme uncertainty among the masses who are unsure where their next meal would come from. This is compounded by intense US pressure to attack militants in the tribal area. The US is pushing the government into launching a civil a war that the present crop of Pakistani rulers are unable to resist. Ironically, some tribal militants are on the US payroll and are also working to advance the US agenda.

Over the last few months, Pakistan has recruited tribesmen to become part of the Lashkar (tribal militia) to fight the militants. They have been armed and financed by the military; this is essentially an American enterprise executed through Pakistan. On a surprise visit to Islamabad on October 18-- American officials have made a habit of making “surprise” visits to Pakistan--Richard Boucher of the State Department was all praise for Pakistani military operations in Bajaur and Swat that have killed thousands of people. The anti-US militants have reacted strongly to such developments, especially the creation of a tribal lashkar. They sent a powerful message by attacking a tribal jirga in the Orakzai agency early last month when it was discussing plans to confront the militants. The decision to create a lashkar to fight the militants is fraught with grave dangers: it will create animosity between tribes that will continue long after Uncle Sam has been driven out of the region by the increasingly effective resistance in Afghanistan.

Pakistan has deployed 180,000 troops along its border with Afghanistan but in the weeklong briefing by the new ISI chief, lieutenant general Ahmed Shuja Pasha, to a joint session of parliament that ended on October 17, he admitted to that the army had lost 1500 soldiers over the last seven years. There is fear that such deployment could lead to all-out war along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. If the highly trained Pakistan army cannot defeat battle-hardened militants who are giving a bloody nose to American and Nato forces in Afghanistan, what chance does the ill-equipped tribal militia have?

This, however, is not Pakistan's war despite loud pronouncements by President Asif Ali Zardari and his equally subservient Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gailani, that it is. Such statements are made to secure American largesse for the bankrupt country but Zardari's trip to New York in late September and his meetings with US officials including US President George Bush did not yield any results. His fantastic announcement that Pakistan needed $100 billion to survive was greeted with howls of laughter. A bankrupt America is not in a position to hand out even $10 billion, much less a $100 billion. It is not clear why Zardari thought he would be successful in securing such a large package from the Americans.

His attempts to secure financial handouts from the Chinese and the Saudis were similarly rebuffed. Neither is willing to hand out cash to a government headed by a person universally recognized as a thief. Some people in Pakistan have asked, if Zardari is such a patriot, why does he not return a portion of the billions he and his equally thieving wife, now dead, looted from the country? The Chinese and the Saudis essentially told Zardari to put his money where his mouth was. Besides, the Chinese had handed out cash once before and were burnt. They were not going to make the same mistake twice. As for the Saudis, their man in Pakistan is Nawaz Sharif, a political rival of Zardari. The Saudis signaled that they would not betray their friend.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF), considered the lender of last resort by many Pakistani officials, was approached on October 22 for a $4-$5 billion bailout package otherwise the country would default on its debt obligations. At a meeting in Dubai, the IMF agreed to provide the money but it came with stringent conditions, including the removal of subsidies on many essential items such as food and fuel. This will push prices even higher making life much more difficult for ordinary people who are already reeling under backbreaking prices. Some of the conditions may not be met, such as increasing taxes or enlarging the tax base. Pakistanis are reluctant to give taxes because successive governments have been extremely dishonest. The present set of rulers is even more removed from the masses that view the rulers as waging war against them on behalf of the US.

Under such conditions, the government should have launched a plan for reconciliation and bring all segments of the population together. Instead, it has launched wars of aggression against its own people creating further divisions in society. The more the people express hatred for America’s anti-human policies, the more the government emphasizes its loyalty to Washington. It is this disconnect between the rulers and the ruled that has led to Pakistan’s precipitous fall. If Pakistan’s enemies had planned its destruction, they would not have succeeded as well as the rulers have through their ill-conceived policies.

One wonders whatever happened to the billions of dollars Pakistan was supposed to have had as foreign exchange reserves only a few months ago?

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Pakistan violence leaves 54 dead
(DPA)

9 November 2008

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/international/2008/November/international_November598.xml&section=international&col=

ISLAMABAD - At least 54 people, including three soldiers, were killed in a suspected US airstrike and clashes between Islamist militants and government forces in north-west Pakistan, officials and media reports said on Sunday.


Jets from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) bombed hills in Pakistan's Khyber tribal district, killing at least five people.

The attack took place in Morga area in the remote Tirah valley, located close to the volatile Afghan border on Sunday.

"The airstrike killed at least five people from the Qambar Khel tribe, while four or five more were wounded," an official in the area told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa on condition of anonymity.

Pakistan's north-western tribal region is considered a sanctuary for al-Qaeda and Taliban militants who fled Afghanistan after the US-led invasion following terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001.

International forces fighting the Taliban say fighters hiding in Pakistan's tribal districts routinely launch cross-border attacks on their troops, and ask Islamabad to "do more" to stop these infiltrations.

Pakistan has deployed around 120,000 troops along the treacherous frontier and regularly takes action against the Islamist insurgents.

Security forces killed at least 45 militants and lost three soldiers in overnight clashes and airstrikes in the conflict-ridden north-western districts.

Up to a dozen insurgents were killed on Sunday when Pakistani aircraft pounded militant hideouts in the restive Bajaur tribal district, which is located along Afghan border.

"Jets targeted the positions in Khar and Mamoond areas, killing at least 14 militants and leaving many more injured," a security official said on condition of anonymity.

Successive explosions were reported from the bombed locations, suggesting ammunition caches were also hit, the official added.

The raids came a day after security forces killed 16 militants in attacks carried out by warplanes from the air force and helicopter gunships of the army.

Several compounds in the use of the rebels were also destroyed with artillery fire on Saturday, English-language daily The News reported. Clouds of smoke could be seen billowing from the bombed villages, a local resident told the newspaper.

Government forces launched a major offensive in Bajaur in early August to clear the area of Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters.

According to official data, more than 1,500 militants and 74 troops have so far been killed in the operation, which also caused numerous civilian casualties and displaced around 250,000 people.

Separately, Taliban fighters fired on the security forces in the Shangwatai area of Swat district in the North Western Frontier Province (NWFP) on Saturday, triggering heavy fighting, The News cited a military spokesman as saying.

Ten attackers disguised as government troops were killed in the crossfire and a score of more injured, while three soldiers from the paramilitary Frontier Corps lost their lives.

Five more Taliban died in the clashes that continued in several other parts of Swat, where the military is fighting the followers of radical cleric Maulana Fazlullah, who is trying to enforce Taliban rule in the region.

A journalist was killed early Sunday when troops opened fire on him during curfew in Mingora, the main town of Swat, the Urdu-language Jang newspaper said in its internet edition.

Swat used to be a tourist haven until early 2007, drawing crowds of holidaymakers to the Buddhist archaeological sites and Pakistan's only ski resort, which has now been destroyed by the Islamic insurgents. The mountain valley is also known for its trout streams.

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Pakistan militants seize Humvees

The militants posed for cameras after hijacking the trucks on Monday

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7721310.stm

Militants in Pakistan have looted 12 trucks carrying supplies for Western forces in Afghanistan, officials say.

The trucks were carrying two Humvee armoured vehicles and food supplies. They were hijacked on Monday as they travelled through the Khyber Pass.

Later, the trucks were found abandoned in a valley. There is no word yet on the 26 people who were taken captive.

The road is a major supply route for US and Western forces battling against the Taleban in neighbouring Afghanistan.

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

'Most recent'

"The containers have been released. They were abandoned in a mountainous area. They are empty," a local official in the Khyber Agency tribal area told the BBC.

Officials say they have tightened security in the area and increased the number of check posts following the hijacking.
   

Baitullah Mehsud profile


The BBC's Syed Shoaib Hasan in Islamabad says there has been an increasing number of hijackings in Khyber, primarily of trucks and cargo bound for Afghanistan.

The trucks were seized on Monday at four places along a 20-mile (35km) stretch of the road, officials said.

They said about 60 masked gunmen took away the trucks with their drivers.

Pakistani officials blamed the hijacking on militants loyal to the Taleban commander Baitullah Mehsud.

'Inadequate security'

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


Traders in the main town before the pass, Landikotal, complained that the government was not providing adequate security on the road.

About 24 trucks and oil-tankers have been attacked in the past month, transport operators said.

Last year, Sawab Khan, a member of the truckers' association, told the BBC that goods transported include supplies for Western forces fighting the Taleban, as well as supplies for non-governmental organisations, the government and Afghan traders.

Mr Khan said that in addition to the threat caused by militants, every truck pays about 400,000 Pakistani rupees (about $5,000) annually in taxes and bribes.

Truckers who refuse to pay bribes are often made to park along the road and wait, sometimes for more than 24 hours, before they are allowed to move on, he said.

Some truckers also complain of extortion on the Afghan side of the border.

Supplies to the southern Afghan provinces of Kandahar and Herat pass through Quetta and across the Chaman border in the Balochistan province of Pakistan.

The truckers operating on this route say they confront fewer problems.

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Pakistan sovereignty to be safeguarded at all costs: PM
http://www.khabrein.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=18477&Itemid=57

ISLAMABAD, Nov 11 (KUNA) -- Pakistani Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Razza Gilani Tuesday expressing concerns over the US and NATO attacks on its western borders said that the issue has been raised at every forum.

Pakistani soil will not be allowed to be used for ground or aerial attacks on any other country and the country's sovereignty and integrity will be safeguarded at all costs, said the Prime Minister while speaking in the National Assembly.

He said he met with the US ambassador and their intelligence officials and conveyed to them Pakistan's concern at these attacks.

President Asif Ali Zardari will also have a chance to take up the issue with US administration where he has proceeded to attend a conference on interfaith harmony, he added.

The US government, he said further, after the election of Barack Obama was in a transition phase. He added that talks will be held with the new government in this regard.

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Powerful blast kills four in Pakistan
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=75040&sectionid=351020401
Tue, 11 Nov 2008 15:01:33 GMT
 

The blast also destroyed many vehicles.

At least four people are killed and several others injured after a bomber detonated a bomb at a sports stadium in northwestern Pakistan.

The incident happened on Late Tuesday at the closing ceremony of a sports event attended by senior government officials in the city of Peshawar, Press TV's Pakistan correspondent reported.

The blast occurred at the main gate of Qayum Stadium at a time when senior provincial minister, Bashir Ahmed Bilour was leaving the venue.

Some of the injured are report to be in serious condition and the toll may further rise.

Peshawar is the capital of North West Frontier Province which borders Afghanistan. The province has been the scene of some of the worst fighting between Pakistani forces and pro-Taliban militants in recent months.

Pakistan's tribal areas are seen as a safe haven for pro-Taliban militants, after a US-led invasion toppled the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001 

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7 killed as NATO planes bomb Pakistani border area: TV
http://mathaba.net/news/?x=611226
Posted: 2008/11/11
From: MNN
 
NATO planes dropped bombs in mountainous area in Pakistan`s northwest on Sunday, killing at least seven people, a Pakistani television reported.

Geo television quoted witnesses as saying that the NATO fighter planes bombed at Tirah valley in the tribal Khyber agency.

There was no official confirmation of the report.

A group of 40 people were going in the area when they were targeted, according to the report.

A local religious group "Amar Bil Maroof-wa-Nahi Anil Munkar" (Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice) said that those killed in the air strike were its members, Geo television reported.

Dead bodies of those killed were brought to Bara, a major town in Khyber agency, it said.

US drones regularly fire missiles in the Pakistani regions of Waziristan to hit hideouts of the suspected Taliban but NATO attack is rare. --IRNA

[bigron]

Pakistan supply line attacks show US vulnerability

By CHRIS BRUMMITT, Associated Press Writer
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/11/13/international/i115515S44.DTL
Thursday, November 13, 2008

(11-13) 12:59 PST ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) --

The Humvee sped along the dry riverbed, kicking up clouds of dust. But al-Qaida-linked militants — not American soldiers — were behind the wheel.

The scene was captured by AP Television News shortly after about 60 insurgents in northwestern Pakistan hijacked a convoy of trucks carrying vehicles for U.S. troops in Afghanistan as well as wheat for hungry Afghans.

The bold, well-planned attack Monday demonstrated the growing power of Muslim extremists in the lawless border region, where top al-Qaida leaders — including Osama bin Laden — are believed to be hiding.

It also highlighted the vulnerability of the supply line U.S. and NATO troops rely on for up to 75 percent of their fuel, food and other logistical goods in the landlocked country.

NATO is close to reaching deals with Central Asian countries north of Afghanistan that would allow the alliance to truck in "non-lethal" supplies from there, a spokesman said.

It has already reached a similar agreement with Russia that remains in force despite tensions triggered by the Georgia conflict earlier this year.

But for now, the only major land routes to the country are two mountainous roads through Pakistan — a U.S. ally, but one that some argue does not want to see the war in Afghanistan succeed because of competing strategic interests.

"It's not too much of a stretch to ask why the Pakistan military is failing to defend these convoys," said Shaun Gregory, from the Pakistan Security Research Unit at the University of Bradford in Britain. "These attacks allow Pakistan to keep its finger on NATO's jugular."

Truck drivers say ambushes, looting and hijackings appeared to have spiked recently, but a NATO spokesman in Afghanistan said the attacks were having "no impact" on its operations there.

In Washington, two U.S. officials said neither equipment nor ammunition were running short.

"Where you have a big concern is when commanders start asking 'Is this affecting me?'" said one of the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media. "'Am I having trouble flying as many helicopters because of those engines? Did I have to pull back on an offensive operation because of that ammunition?' And right now, the answer is no."

The supplies arrive at the port of Karachi on Pakistan's Arabian Sea coast in anonymous, sealed shipping containers and are loaded onto trucks for the journey either to the border town of Chaman or the primary route, through the famed Khyber Pass.

Monday's ambush took place at the entrance to the pass, a winding, roughly 30-mile stretch of switch-backs used by Moghul armies to invade the Indian subcontinent and by British colonial forces on doomed missions to subdue Afghanistan.

Police said around 60 masked militants forced the convoy to stop on a slow stretch of the road, briefly trading fire with nearby security officers who were outnumbered.

U.S. officials say the attackers seized two Humvees and a water truck. Eleven other trucks in the convoy carrying wheat for the World Food Program were also hijacked, said spokesman Amjad Jamal.

"Whatever they see going along the road, they loot and burn," said Jamal, who said 650 metric tons of WFP wheat had been stolen on the road in the last four weeks. "They assume everything is going to the U.S. forces."

The video shot after the hijacking showed militants riding one of the Humvees and carrying a flag proclaiming allegiance to Pakistan's most prominent Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, who is accused in the assassination of pro-U.S. politician Benazir Bhutto last year.

Some of the trucks have been found abandoned, but their contents were still missing Thursday, police said. There was no trace of the distinctive Humvees.

Many — perhaps most — of the attackers are bandits rather than militants. In markets in Khyber, which abuts the main northwestern Pakistan city of Peshawar, U.S. and NATO supplies such as boots, camouflage uniforms and rucksacks are openly sold.

The hijacking comes amid tensions between Islamabad and Washington, which faced with rising violence in Afghanistan has unleashed a surge of missile attacks on suspected militant bases in Pakistan.

Hard-line Muslim leaders and many ordinary Pakistanis want their government to sever its alliance with the United States, which gives Islamabad millions of dollars each year in exchange for its support.

The government says it had no plans to deny permission for U.S. and NATO to truck the goods through its territory as some here demand — a move that could cripple the war.

In Karachi, truck drivers recount tales of threats and regular attacks during the four-day trip to Afghanistan. "I am terrified each time I get past Peshawar, danger looms large," said Khan Zeb, who was preparing to make another trip — one of around 300 each day from the city's port. "I don't have any other option if I want to feed my family."

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Suspected US missile strike kills 10 in Pakistan: officials
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gO0hhOwsC28hiY06xl_1l5nHIfSw
7 hours ago

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (AFP) — A suspected US missile strike killed at least 10 Islamist militants in a Pakistani tribal region known as a hub of Al-Qaeda and Taliban rebels, security officials said on Friday.

The strike comes amid repeated warnings from Pakistan that such attacks are in violation of international law and could deepen resentment of the United States in the world's second-largest Islamic nation.

Washington has stepped up its strikes on the region since March, when a civilian government took over from General Pervez Musharraf, who turned Pakistan into a close US ally in the "war on terror."

In the latest attack, officials said, two missiles apparently fired from a drone aircraft demolished a house in North Waziristan, part of Pakistan's lawless tribal regions along the border with Afghanistan.

"Nine foreigners were among ten killed," a top security official told AFP. Pakistan officials normally use the term "foreigners" to describe Al-Qaeda militants.

Another security official said Taliban militants surrounded the area soon after the missile strike late Thursday night and refused ordinary tribesmen access to the site.

Up to 14 militants were killed last Friday in a US missile strike which destroyed an Al-Qaeda training camp in Kumsham village in North Waziristan.

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

President Asif Ali Zardari warned the new US commander for Iraq and Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, last week that the attacks were "counterproductive" and could harm the battle for hearts and minds here.

Pakistan's army chief General Ashfaq Kayani is scheduled to make a three-day visit to Brussels from Tuesday for talks with senior NATO officials about US missile strikes on Pakistani soil near the Afghan border.

Also Friday, an Afghan and a Japanese journalist were shot and wounded in the northwestern Pakistan city of Peshawar.

Police said gunmen shot at a correspondent for Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper and an Afghan reporter in Peshawar, which borders the restive Khyber tribal district.

Both were taken to hospital, but police said their lives were not in danger.

US and NATO officials say that the rugged tribal regions have become safe havens for militants linked to Taliban and Al-Qaeda who fled the US action against the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan in late 2001.

Pakistan rejects accusations that it is not doing enough to tackle the extremist threat within its own borders.

The latest strike came as the head of the main US spy agency described the tribal areas of Pakistan as an Al-Qaeda "safe haven" that is linked to every major terrorist threat against the United States.

"Let me be very clear: Today, virtually every major terrorist threat that my agency is aware of has threads back to the tribal areas," Central Intelligence Agency Director General Michael Hayden said in a speech Thursday.

In an annual threat assessment released in February, US intelligence reported it had detected an influx of new western recruits to Al-Qaeda safe havens in Pakistan's federally administered tribal areas since 2006.

"Al-Qaeda is improving the last key aspect of its ability to attack the US -- the identification, training, and positioning of operatives for an attack in the homeland," the report said.

[Biggs]

Taleban bring new fear to Peshawar

By M Ilyas Khan
BBC News, Islamabad

Peshawar has seen many bombings and suicide attacks since last year

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7727560.stm

The city of Peshawar in north-west Pakistan faces a heightened threat from Islamist militants barely five months after a military operation cleared them from its outskirts.

Back in July, suspected militants based in the tribal region surrounding the city started bombing music stores and warning barbers against shaving their clients' beards in several areas of the city's outskirts.

They also picked up some prostitutes from the city to punish them for their "sins", and kidnapped more than a dozen members of the minority Christian community.

The perpetrators were widely believed to be criminal gangs connected to the tribal underworlds operating out of Darra Adamkhel and Khyber tribal regions - both lying just outside the administrative boundaries of Peshawar.

Different threat

The authorities at that time tried to explain the activities of these groups as an attempt to take advantage of an increasingly demoralised police force.
 


A month-long operation by the security forces followed, pushing the militants deep inside the tribal region and dismantling their headquarters there.

The nature of threat has since changed.

Since Tuesday, the militants have struck in the city three times.

First, a suicide bomber narrowly missed the governor and some ministers of North West Frontier Province (NWFP) as they were leaving a stadium in Peshawar after the closing ceremony of national games.

At least three people were killed in the attack.

On Wednesday, unidentified gunmen shot dead a US national who was working for a USAid-run project for the development of the Taleban-occupied tribal areas.

They have now kidnapped a Peshawar-based Iranian diplomat after killing his bodyguard.

Attacks on American, Afghan and Chinese nationals have taken place before, but this is the first time that suspected militants have kidnapped the diplomat of a country which, like them, is professedly anti-American.

'Guerrilla tactics'

Many point out, however, that the puritanical Sunni Taleban are ideologically opposed to Shia Muslims, and consider them a legitimate target.

Iran is a Shia Muslim state.
 
The centre of Peshawar was hit by a suicide bombing on Tuesday


This sequence of events has sent a shockwave through the city, with many people fearing that the security system of the government is collapsing.

But the NWFP Information Minister, Mian Iftikhar Hussain, has another explanation.

"The militants are resorting to guerrilla tactics and it doesn't mean that our security is lax," he told the media after the kidnapping of the Iranian diplomat.

"We expect these incidents to increase in coming days, because the militants are responding to the military operations we are conducting against them in some of their strongholds," he warned.

The Pakistani military says it has killed dozens of militants in Bajaur and Swat regions where security operations have gone on for several months now.

A number of foreign nationals have been killed or kidnapped in north-western Pakistan in the past four years.

In 2004, a militant group in South Waziristan region kidnapped several Chinese engineers working on a dam project in the area. They were freed in a subsequent army operation.

There have also been several attacks on high-profile individuals in the north-west since August, when gunmen in Peshawar tried to kill a top US diplomat, Lynne Tracy.

She was saved because she was travelling in a bullet-proof vehicle.

Since September, at least three Afghan officials are believed to have been kidnapped by suspected Taleban members, including Abdul Khaliq Farahi, the Afghan consul-general in Peshawar.

None of them has been recovered so far.

An Afghan foreign ministry official, Ahmad Baheen, told Pakistani journalists in Peshawar in October that while the Pakistani government was taking an interest in the recovery of Mr Farahi, "it is important that certain other Pakistani institutions also extend help in this regard".

Afghan officials have long blamed the Pakistani intelligence agency, the ISI, for helping and funding the Taleban to destabilise Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, militants based in Darra Adamkhel claim they are holding a Polish engineer who went missing from the Attock area of Punjab province some months ago.

One of two Chinese engineers kidnapped from Dir district in late August also remains missing. The other escaped from his captors in October. He was one of the lucky ones.

[Biggs]

Pakistan incurred $34.5 bn losses in war against terror: FM

http://www.pakistanlink.com/Headlines/Nov08/13/05.htm

NEW YORK: Pakistan suffered huge losses, amounting to US $34.5 billion, since 2001 for its role in the war against terror and wants regional ownership of the crisis in a bid to bring peace and stability to the troubled region, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said Wednesday. "Pakistan paid a huge price; both in economic and human terms, to protect itself and the world," he told a news briefing. The foreign minister met reporters after President Asif Ali Zardari's participation in the trilateral summit, involving Saudi Arabian King Abdullah and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, he said it was part of the "several regional initiatives" being taken to stabilize the strife-torn area. Qureshi said he had accepted an invitation from French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner in this regard and that France was one of the several players directly or indirectly involved in the process to accomplish the objective of a peaceful Afghanistan. Responding to questions, the foreign minister was cautious in giving out details of the hour-long summit meeting because, he said several initiatives were ongoing and results would take time. "It's a long haul ... progress has been made," he said. But he added, "It was not a mere get together, it was a meeting between three very serious players, with an agenda to attain peace and stability in the region." Qureshi said the situation in the region was not merely an issue between Pakistan and Afghanistan and there was a need of taking regional ownership of the issue. About inclusion of Taliban in the talks, the foreign minister said the Afghan government was not averse to their inclusion, provided they recognised the country's constitution and vowed not to resort to non-violent means. He said there has been a "visible change" in the relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan since President Zardari assumed his office, putting an end to the blame game of the past. He also pointed at the successful conclusion of the mini peace jirga in Islamabad recently. The foreign minister said the president in his interaction with the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on the margins of the interfaith dialogue discussed the broad-based relationship between the two countries, the third round of the strategic dialogue. Asked whether Pakistan had lodged a protest with the US over the strikes inside Pakistan's territory, the foreign minister said Pakistan had protested several times as it not only causes collatoral damage, but that such actions were counterproductive and led to alienation. He said Pakistan was in touch with other members of the coalition forces in Afghanistan and pointed that they have a better understanding of Pakistan's point of view. Qureshi denied reports of any meeting between President Zardari and the CIA chief Michael Hayden, or the Israeli President Shimon Peres, during his stay in New York, saying such contacts were not on the cards. About Dr Aafia Siddiqui, the Foreign Minister said Pakistan was trying for her repatriation to Pakistan through diplomatic means. Every effort was being made to protect her rights. The Foreign Minister said the high level meeting interfaith dialogue was aimed at removing misunderstandings between Islam and the West and pointed that there was an urgent need to address the critical issue of "Islamophobia". About any meeting with the US President elect, the foreign minister said Barack Obama already had a telephonic talk with President Zardari as Pakistan was one of the six main allies of the United States. He said there was a bi-partisan consensus emerging between the Republicans and the Democrats as they were agreed on building a long-term engagement with Pakistan.

[Biggs]

China provides USD 500 million assistance to Pakistan

Economics    11/13/2008 8:41:00 PM
 
http://www.kuna.net.kw/NewsAgenciesPublicSite/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=1952771&Language=en

ISLAMABAD, Nov 13 (KUNA) -- Amid looming economic crisis forcing the country to look towards tough IMF bailout package, Chinese government has agreed to extend USD 500 million financial assistance to Pakistan.
A brief statement by the Pakistani Finance Ministry here on Thursday said that following President Asif Ali Zardari's visit to China, the Chinese government had agreed to extend the assistance.
This gesture by China bears testimony to the brotherly relations between the two countries, it said.
The statement said that the financial assistance was in addition to the deposit of USD 500 million already placed by Chinese government with the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) in June, 2008.
Meanwhile, the meeting of Friends of Pakistan (FOP) is set to be held on November 17th in Abu Dhabi, said foreign office spokesman Muhammad Sadiq while talking to reporters here.
He said the meeting will decide the modalities and agenda for the Foreign Ministers meeting of the group being held later on.
He underlined that the FOP group was not a donor group. It is essentially a support group of friendly countries to a democratic Pakistan, the spokesman noted.
The group would support Pakistan in the international arena, promote foreign investment and help in increasing its export, he said, adding that there were no plans of cash assistance.
FOP groups Britain, France, Germany, the United States, China, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, Turkey, Australia and Italy plus the United Nations and the European Union.
The foreign ministers of the group met in September on the sideline of a UN session and pledged development aid as a means of stabilizing Pakistan.
Islamabad has formally sought politically-unpopular USD nine billion emergency assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). (end) amn.hb KUNA 132041 Nov 08NNNN

[David Rothscum]

How obvious does it have to get?
Let's look at what we've seen before:
2001: Afghanistan - They're terrorists! The vast majority of all Americans bought into it, a majority of people abroad as well.
2003: Iraq - They're terrorists! A majority of all Americans bought into it again, a minority of people outside of the US bought into it as well.
2004/5 until today: Iran - They're terrorists! A minority of all Americans bought into it again, a few really crazy people outside of the US bought into it as well.
2008: Pakistan - They're terrorists! Until Obama repeats the claim, nobody except for Troy from WV will ever believe it.
Every major terror threat involves Pakistan: CIA
http://www.dawn.com/2008/11/15/top5.htm


By Anwar Iqbal


WASHINGTON, Nov 14: CIA director Michael Hayden has warned that every major terrorist threat confronting the world has ties to Pakistan.

In a speech to the Atlantic Council on Thursday, Mr Hayden also claimed that Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was hiding in Fata.

“Let me be very clear. Today, virtually every major terrorist threat that my agency is aware of has threads back to the tribal areas,” Mr Hayden told the Washington-based think-tank.

The CIA director, however, acknowledged that Bin Laden was isolated from the day-to-day operations of Al Qaeda, although the organisation was still the greatest threat to the US.

“If there is a major strike on this country (the US), it will bear the fingerprints of

Al Qaeda,” he warned.

Gen Hayden, however, depicted Al Qaeda chief as an extremely frustrated man who spent all his time trying to survive and had no time for guiding his militants.

“[Bin Laden] is putting a lot of energy into his own survival, a lot of energy into his own security,” the CIA chief said. “He appears to be largely isolated from the day-to-day operations of the organisation he nominally heads.”

Capturing Bin Laden, however, remained the US government’s top priority, he added.

“His death or capture clearly would have a significant impact on the confidence of his followers - both core Al Qaeda and unaffiliated extremists throughout the world,” he said.

After depicting Pakistan as the hub of all major terrorist activities in the world, the CIA chief also conceded that Pakistan faced a complex situation.

“While the problem looks easy from thousands of miles away, it’s extremely difficult up close because of the tribal issues,” he said.

The CIA chief said he believed the Pakistani government had been “extraordinarily helpful” in responding to this challenge. Their plan, which they started to implement in 2006, to slowly expand their reach over the Fata would have been wise and far-reaching were it not for the extreme urgency of the threat, he added.

“We’ve killed and captured more top Al Qaeda operatives with the support of the Pakistani security forces than anywhere else in the world. What remains unclear is what the end game is,” he added.

According to him, Al Qaeda was chased out of Yemen in the 1990s only to reconstitute in Afghanistan. It was run out of Afghanistan in 2001, only to disperse, setting up a rump headquarters in Pakistan and declare Iraq the “central front” of its effort.

“Where, then, does it stop? Or is this simply a case of perpetual penalty kicks?” he asked.

Mr Hayden warned that despite the losses the terrorist group had to incur after 9/11, Al Qaeda was still spreading in Africa and the Mid-East.

The CIA believes progress has been made in curbing Al Qaeda’s activities in the Philippines, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Other areas, however, are showing an increase in activity, including East Africa, the Maghreb, Yemen and Pakistan.

Mr Hayden claimed that in Pakistan Al Qaeda had established safe haven and was training a “bench of skilled operatives.”

Gen Hayden was appointed CIA director in May 2006 by President George Bush but it’s not clear whether he will retain his job when President-elect Barack Obama takes office in January.
Hey CIA, here's an idea:
If you're so worried about terrorism from Pakistan, perhaps you should stop funding Jundullah.

[Optimus]

Predator strikes undermining efforts to win hearts and minds; Zardari
http://www.pakistantimes.net/2008/11/17/top2.htm   
'Pakistan Times' Special Correspondent
 
 
NEW YORK (US): President Asif Ali Zardari has said the US predator attacks inside Pakistan’s territory were undermining the efforts to win hearts and minds of the people.

“It’s undermining my sovereignty and it’s not helping win the war on the hearts and minds of people,” President Zardari told the CBS News in an exclusive interview.

Responding to the increase in the number of U.S. predator strikes on Pakistani soil, the President said “obviously the people who are using the strikes are confident that they’re doing something. Otherwise they wouldn’t be at it.”

He said the predator strikes and the ground raids by the US forces inside the Pakistani territory were unwelcome.

“Anybody who needs to come to Pakistan needs to have a passport and a visa. So whether it’s ground forces or air forces they need a visa and if they don’t have a visa they’re not allowed,” he said.

President Zardari however said that Pakistan was not being provided any information about the attacks.

“They do not happen with our knowledge,” he said and added that any prior information would be a welcome step.

The President said the new US adminstration needs to let Pakistan take appropriate measures against extremist or terrorist elements on its own.

“The challenge for this new administration, will be to allow us to have the capability of doing more. We want to do more. It’s our war.

“ The President when asked whether a big terrorist attack was likely to be planned in the tribal areas, said “Well I can assure the American people that nothing like that is going to happen in my watch.”

The President categorically stated that Pakistan would not allow use of its tribal areas to stage any terrorist attack against the United States of America.

He however said “there’s always a danger of them (terrorists). I didn’t know that they’d be successful in getting my wife.

We thought we’d protect her but we couldn’t. But to say we’d allow it to happen. No.”
 

[Biggs]

Pakistan torn over its tribal areas

By Syed Saleem Shahzad

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JK15Df01.html

KARACHI - With the winter snows fast approaching, Pakistan's security forces face a race against time over whether or not to pull out of the Swat Valley in North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), where for the past one-and-a-half years they have been fighting a losing battle against militants.

The militants occupy about 80% of the strategically vital area near the border with Afghanistan and have managed to choke most supply lines. General Headquarters in Rawalpindi realizes that should the more than 10,000 troops there not be pulled out, they will face a dire war of attrition, but if they leave, the militants will gain strength.

Kabal and Kanju are the only war theatres left in the valley with battles raging and with the military in partial control, but come

 

winter, its supply lines will be compromised. The militants are able to sustain themselves, partially as a result of having captured numerous army supply trucks and containers.

The dilemma for the army is that if it does retreat under the guise of a peace treaty, it will allow the Taliban to strengthen its bases even further in preparation for the next offensive in Afghanistan in the spring. The anticipation is that the Taliban will receive an unprecedented boost in recruits.

As in the Bajaur Agency, the army has failed in the Swat Valley as the troops are mostly ethnic Pashtun, as are the people against whom they are fighting. As a result, there has been an over-reliance on air power, which only serves to drive the militants temporarily into the mountains or into Afghanistan.

Once the militants retreat, the army does not try to take command of the ground as it rightly fears guerrilla attacks and the militants come back. This hide and seek game has given the militants the upper hand in NWFP and significantly fueled the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan.

After its failure to make headway in Bajaur, the army went into Mohmand Agency, in Federally Administered Tribal Areas from where fresh fighters and supplies were aiding the Taliban in Bajaur.

This opening of a new front against powerful commander Abdul Wali had a cascading effect. Much of the population moved to the capital of NWFP, Peshawar, and other places, allowing the Taliban to open up fronts in the towns of Sabqadar and Michini, situated on the northern edges of Peshawar.

In the past few days the Taliban have infiltrated into Peshawar, where they have killed a worker of USAID, the American government's development arm, and abducted an Iranian diplomat.
In Khyber Agency, unmanned US Predator drones have targeted the Tera Valley, but have failed to hit any targets of significance. However, in the process, pro-government, anti-al-Qaeda militants belonging to the Vice and Virtue organization of slain Haji Namdar have agreed to join hands with the local Taliban to fight against foreign troops in Afghanistan.

The drone attacks were carried out last week, and since then North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) supply convoys have been looted frequently. Pakistani newspapers have published pictures of militants moving around in NATO armored personnel carriers.

This new alliance will strengthen militant attacks in Afghanistan's Nangarhar province, which has been quiet for the past several months. On Thursday, the Taliban attacked a NATO convoy in Nangarhar near the city of Jalalabad. NATO said that several Afghan soldiers were killed while the Taliban claimed the killing of five NATO soldiers.

It's going to be a very long winter for the Pakistani army, whether it stays in the tribal areas or whether it retreats, while next spring could be the hottest ever in Afghanistan.

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

[bigron]

Pakistan The Next US Target



Pakistan Daily

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m48819&hd=&size=1&l=e


Monday, 17 November 2008 01:51

Bill Kristol, a Fox Television commentator and arch American neoconservative revealed recently what many had long suspected was US thinking about the current international situation.

Kristol recounts that in a 90-minute, mostly off-the-record meeting with a small group of journalists in early July, President Bush "conveyed the following impression, that he thought the next president's biggest challenge would not be Iraq, which he thinks he'll leave in pretty good shape, and would not be Afghanistan, which is manageable by itself… It’s Pakistan." We have "a sort of friendly government that sort of cooperates and sort of doesn’t. It's really a complicated and difficult situation." Right on cue, presidential candidate Barack Obama took the baton from Bush in his speech on July 15, in which he argued that more focus and resource were required on both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Kristol revelation on the surface is staggering yet not a surprise to those who have long suspected that the US presence in Afghanistan constitutes a Trojan horse for a more insidious plan the US has for Pakistan. Some may find it surprising that the US now believes Pakistan to be more challenging than Iraq where the US has 150,000 troops, spent almost a trillion dollars and has incurred over 4,000 fatalities. The neocon vision was that the capture of Iraq, a state that lies at the heart of the Middle East, would allow it to control not just the resources of the region but more importantly its geopolitics. Of course, the post invasion challenge was severely underestimated and despite some reduction in violence (albeit from a high benchmark), Iraq remains a quagmire. The US would like Iraq to be 'stable’ but not too stable, 'independent’ but not too independent, have an 'effective’ military but not too effective. John McCain compares the US role in Iraq with that of Korea and Germany and believes the US could be there for a hundred years. To justify a continued presence the US needs to keep Iraq weak and divided. No one can seriously dispute the growth in sectarianism that has been seen since US occupation. With a self governed Kurdish north, a Shia dominated central government and now US support for the Sunni tribes, General Petraeus has presided over a de facto partitioned state.

So, with Iraq closer to de facto partition, America can now turn its attention to Pakistan. This change of focus has been sign posted now for at least twelve months. In June 2007 the US published its National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) with some startling new revelations. Despite citing its numerous successes against Al-Qa’idah since September 2001 including these statements in a declassified document titled "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States" dated April 2006 stated the following "United States - led counterterrorism efforts have seriously damaged the leadership of Al-Qa’idah and disrupted its operations… We assess the global jihadist movement is decentralised, lacks a coherent global strategy, and is becoming more diffuse."

Yet the collective US intelligence community made a volte-face fourteen months later when it said the following: "We assess the group (Al-Qa’idah) has protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability, including: a safe haven in the Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), operational lieutenants, and its top leadership."

So, in effect what the US intelligence community was saying was that its six year war against Al-Qa’idah had been a failure and that to win the war effectively required action within Pakistan. The pretext for war within Pakistan was therefore created; any attack on any US target from now on that was traced to the FATA would give the US casus belli to undergo a massive retaliatory attack within Pakistan. Indeed Frances Townsend Homeland Security adviser to Bush said shortly after the NIE was published that the United States would be willing to send troops into Pakistan to root out Al-Qa’idah, noting specifically that "no option is off the table if that is what is required"

The US has been itching to get into Pakistan for some time.

Firstly, using remote controlled Predator aircraft to attack targets within Pakistan almost on a daily basis.

Secondly, the US has spent $10 billion on Pakistan’s military since 2001 and more specifically in trying to make Pakistan’s Frontier Corps into a fighting unit for the US military. To ensure Washington gets better value for money, Senator Joe Biden, Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, is seeking to enact legislation in Congress to tie future security aid to performance.

Thirdly, by promoting General Petraeus from heading up the Iraq campaign to become Central Command (CENTCOM’s) new head clearly indicates that Iraq has become subservient to Pakistan in Washington’s thinking.

Fourthly, the continued barrage of criticism within Capitol Hill, by Afghan officials and western think tanks of Pakistan’s failure to stem cross border insurgency prepares the ground for an eventual attack in Pakistan. Indeed eliminating the Pakistan sanctuary bases is one of the RAND Corporation’s key recommendations in a recent report, funded by the IS DOD, entitled "Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan." The report does not confine criticism to the FATA but states that the insurgency also finds refuge in the North Western Frontier Province (NWFP) as well as the province of Balochistan so extending the area substantially for future retaliation.

Lastly, according to a New York Times report in June, top Bush administration officials drafted a secret plan in 2007 to make it easier for US Special Operations forces to operate inside Pakistan’s tribal areas but that turf battles and the diversion of resources to Iraq held up the effort. However, now that forces are being reduced in Iraq, it is inevitable that such programs will be stepped up.

So, why is Pakistan so important?

Mitchell Shivers Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for Asian & Pacific Security Affairs gave the following reasons in his testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on 25 June 2008:

Firstly, Pakistan is the second most populous Muslim state, the sixth most populous country in the world, and is located at the geopolitical crossroads of South and Central Asia.

Second, Pakistan possesses nuclear weapons and has already fought three conventional wars with another nuclear nation next door, India.

Third Pakistan has a large, growing moderate middle class striving for democracy.

Fourth, elements of extremism and terrorism are at work within Pakistan sponsored by the usa and India.

Fifth, the whole-hearted assistance of the Pakistani people and their government will help the United States achieve its national security objectives in Afghanistan.

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in an article in the Washington Post in March defined US objectives in Pakistan as "control of nuclear weapons, counter-terrorism cooperation and resistance to Islamic radicalism" and believes Pakistan could turn "into the wildcard of international diplomacy." This was echoed by Turkey’s military chief General Yaşar Büyükanıt who speaking in March at an international conference in Ankara warned that Pakistan’s political troubles could open the way for the Taliban to seize the country and its nuclear weapons.

The US fears Pakistan, as it contains the key mix of Islam, nuclear weapons and people who are impatient for change and who do not trust the Americans. Consistent surveys indicates that the US’s approval ratings are less than 20% in Pakistan and that the people of Pakistan desire for Islamic rule does not equate to a desire for violent extremism. The desire for Islamic governance allied with the above ingredients clearly illustrate why Pakistan has risen to the top of Washington’s radar screen and why Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen has now made four visits to Pakistan since February.

What about the war in Afghanistan, how does this fit into the plan for Pakistan?

Of course, Afghanistan has some value to the US but the campaign as Kristol admits will be allowed to continue on the back burner. The US objective for Afghanistan was never to defeat the Taliban or to extend its remit over the whole country. Indeed if it was the objective, the US would have sent more troops. The Soviet Union in comparison had 300,000 troops in the 1980’s and while occupying the cities, could never pacify the countryside. The US and NATO presence at about 65,000 is almost laughable when facing a population of 31 million. The US campaign in Afghanistan is more a forward base combining Special Forces and CIA operatives backed up with airpower and a modest number of US ground forces. The mission in 2001 was to coordinate the fight with allies within the Northern Alliance and amongst other minorities and disgruntled anti-Taliban elements. Geo-strategically, Afghanistan has limited value for the US, other than to ensure no one else should control it. This explains why the priority given to Afghanistan will always be less than Iraq and certainly lower than Pakistan. It also explains why Afghanistan is in the shambles it is.

According to the Afghanistan Human Development Report 2007, Afghanistan remains far behind neighbouring countries with a rank of 174 out of 178 on the global HDI (a composite indicator that measures education, longevity, and economic performance). 6.6 million Afghans do not meet their minimum food requirements. 2006 witnessed a significant rise in attacks and a 59% spike in the area under poppy cultivation, making the country a world leader in the production of illegal opium (90% of global production). Low literacy and a lack of access to safe drinking water, food, and sanitation contribute to the still relatively high child mortality rate. With the maternal mortality ratio estimated at 1600 deaths per 100,000 live births, Afghanistan maintains one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world.

How should Muslims in the region respond? They need to do at least three things:

A. Pakistan should realise what the US is trying to do. It doesn’t require an international relations genius to conclude that the US is seeking to do to Pakistan what it has done to Iraq, namely decimating its military capability and fracturing the country into separate entities. The army who effectively control Pakistan are not stupid; they understand the political dynamic at place. Four Star General Tariq Majeed, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee recently said at an international conference in Singapore that cross-border missile strikes into Pakistan's tribal belt are killing civilians and contributing to the popular perception that U.S. military operations in the region are "anti-Islam." They understand that when the US talks about reforming the Frontier Corps, this is about ensuring that they fight more effectively for the US, not Pakistan. They also understand that while the US has a tactical relationship with Pakistan, it seeks a strategic relationship with India even to the extent of offering it unprecedented civil nuclear assistance. The $10 billion that the US has given Pakistan since 2001 means nothing, if Pakistan eventually fragments into multiple pieces. With NWFP, Balochistan and Karachi all teetering at the edge, the US has a once in a generation opportunity to turn Pakistan into a balkanised hell hole.

B. The only supply lines into Afghanistan for the US are either through the mountains of Central Asia or through the port of Karachi. Without Pakistan, logistics, the flow of supplies, fuel and other military hardware would soon stop the campaign in Afghanistan. There is no strategic interest for Pakistan to continue to support America’s war in Afghanistan.

Firstly, it allows 65,000 NATO and US troops to permanently occupy a Muslim country creating an anti Pakistani government in Kabul.

Secondly instead of having a secure western border, Pakistan has to have 100,000 troops permanently supporting the US effort thus taking valuable resources from it’s more vulnerable eastern border with India.
Thirdly, Pakistan has to face the blowback, of fighting not just its own citizens in NWFP and FATA, but fellow Muslims across the border.

Lastly, the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan have to realise that neither brutal dictatorship nor secular democracy can succeed in the Muslim world. As has been witnessed since February, Pakistan’s political class have no solutions with respect to high fuel costs, high food prices and the deterioration in the financial environment. The Afghan President has also presided over a country where after nearly 7 years, hunger, corruption, electricity shortages and killing civilians are the watchwords of today’s Afghanistan.

Only the tried and trusted Islamic system of the Khilafah (Caliphate) can succeed in the Muslim world. A coherent effort at re-establishing the Khilafah is now the urgent requirement and is gaining momentum. According to an opinion poll carried out by the University of Maryland, 74% of Pakistanis support the establishment of a unified Khilafah in the Muslim world, the establishment of such an entity is therefore not a question of if, but when.

Indeed the major problems in Afghanistan and Pakistan are not one of economic resources but of political will. Afghanistan and Pakistan are not 'failing states.’ Unfortunately, for the people of Afghanistan they’ve been invaded twice by external powers in the last 25 years and this remains the hub of their problem. For the Pakistani people they have seen over 60 years of political failure with so called "independence" a mere charade.

Yet the world is entering a new paradigm in international relations. No longer will the Fed in Washington be calling the shots. No longer will the Dollar reign supreme. No longer is the US military invincible. What started with self evident truths in Philadelphia over two centuries ago has now morphed into implosion on Wall Street and an economic tsunami across the globe.

Many cite the Khilafah as a utopian dream, yet those in the know are not so sure. A US government intelligence study by the National Intelligence Council in 2004 called "Mapping the Global Future" presented as one future scenario the rise of a new pan-national Caliphate. Thomas Ricks the Washington Post’s senior Pentagon correspondent in his book "Fiasco" says there is precedent for the emergence of a unifying figure in the Muslim world a modern day Saladin someone who can revive the region through combining popular support with huge oil revenues. A real "nightmare scenario" for the western world as Richard Nixon once described it in his book 1999.

So Muslims face a strategic choice either support the US led coalition or politically unify under the banner of Islam. Whereas the former guarantees national oblivion and further balkanisation, the latter should allow the Muslim world to flourish and meet head on the challenges of the 21st century.





 

[bigron]

Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell


Pakistan and U.S. Have Tacit Deal On Airstrikes

By Karen DeYoung and Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writers
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/15/AR2008111502656_pf.html


November 16, 2008 "Washington Post" -- -The United States and Pakistan reached tacit agreement in September on a don't-ask-don't-tell policy that allows unmanned Predator aircraft to attack suspected terrorist targets in rugged western Pakistan, according to senior officials in both countries. In recent months, the U.S. drones have fired missiles at Pakistani soil at an average rate of once every four or five days.

The officials described the deal as one in which the U.S. government refuses to publicly acknowledge the attacks while Pakistan's government continues to complain noisily about the politically sensitive strikes.

The arrangement coincided with a suspension of ground assaults into Pakistan by helicopter-borne U.S. commandos. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said in an interview last week that he was aware of no ground attacks since one on Sept. 3 that his government vigorously protested.

Officials described the attacks, using new technology and improved intelligence, as a significant improvement in the fight against Pakistan-based al-Qaeda and Taliban forces. Officials confirmed the deaths of at least three senior al-Qaeda figures in strikes last month.

Zardari said that he receives "no prior notice" of the airstrikes and that he disapproves of them. But he said he gives the Americans "the benefit of the doubt" that their intention is to target the Afghan side of the ill-defined, mountainous border of Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), even if that is not where the missiles land.

Civilian deaths remain a problem, Zardari said. "If the damage is women and children, then the sensitivity of its effect increases," he said. The U.S. "point of view," he said, is that the attacks are "good for everybody. Our point of view is that it is not good for our position of winning the hearts and minds of people."

A senior Pakistani official said that although the attacks contribute to widespread public anger in Pakistan, anti-Americanism there is closely associated with President Bush. Citing a potentially more favorable popular view of President-elect Barack Obama, he said that "maybe with a new administration, public opinion will be more pro-American and we can start acknowledging" more cooperation.

The official, one of several who discussed the sensitive military and intelligence relationship only on the condition of anonymity, said the U.S-Pakistani understanding over the airstrikes is "the smart middle way for the moment." Contrasting Zardari with his predecessor, retired Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the official said Musharraf "gave lip service but not effective support" to the Americans. "This government is delivering but not taking the credit."

From December to August, when Musharraf stepped down, there were six U.S. Predator attacks in Pakistan. Since then, there have been at least 19. The most recent occurred early Friday, when local officials and witnesses said at least 11 people, including six foreign fighters, were killed. The attack, in North Waziristan, one of the seven FATA regions, demolished a compound owned by Amir Gul, a Taliban commander said to have ties to al-Qaeda.

Pakistan's self-praise is not entirely echoed by U.S. officials, who remain suspicious of ties between Pakistan's intelligence service and FATA-based extremists. But the Bush administration has muted its criticism of Pakistan. In a speech to the Atlantic Council last week, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden effusively praised Pakistan's recent military operations, including "tough fighting against hardened militants" in the northern FATA region of Bajaur.

"Throughout the FATA," Hayden said, "al-Qaeda and its allies are feeling less secure today than they did two, three or six months ago. It has become difficult for them to ignore significant losses in their ranks." Hayden acknowledged, however, that al-Qaeda remains a "determined, adaptive enemy," operating from a "safe haven" in the tribal areas.

Along with the stepped-up Predator attacks, Bush administration strategy includes showering Pakistan's new leaders with close, personal attention. Zardari met with Bush during the U.N. General Assembly in September, and senior military and intelligence officials have exchanged near-constant visits over the past few months.

Pakistan's new intelligence chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, traveled to Washington in late October, and Gen. David H. Petraeus, installed on Oct. 31 as head of the U.S. Central Command, visited Islamabad on his third day in office. On Wednesday, Hayden flew to New York for a secret visit with Zardari, who was attending a U.N. conference.

Zardari spoke over the telephone with Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), a conversation Pakistani officials said they considered an initial contact with the incoming Obama administration. Although Kerry has been mentioned as a possible secretary of state, the officials said he indicated that he expects to continue in the Senate, where he is in line to take over Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s position as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.

Despite improved relations with the Bush administration, Zardari said, "we think we need a new dialogue, and we're hoping that the new government will . . . understand that Pakistan has done more than they recognize" and is a victim of the same insurgency the United States is fighting. Pakistan hopes that a $7.6 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund, announced yesterday, will spark new international investment and aid.

Pakistan, whose military has received more than $10 billion in direct U.S. payments since 2001, also wants the United States to provide sophisticated weapons to its armed forces, Zardari said. Rather than using U.S. Predator-fired missiles against Pakistani territory, he asked, why not give Pakistan its own Predators? "Give them to us. . . . we are your allies," he said.

Last month, officials confirmed, Predator strikes in the FATA killed Khalid Habib, described as al-Qaeda's No. 4 official, and senior operatives Abu Jihad al-Masri and Abu Hassan al-Rimi. Three other senior al-Qaeda figures -- explosives expert Abu Khabab al-Masri, Abu Sulayman al-Jazairi and senior commander Abu Laith al-Libi --were killed during the first nine months of the year.

Current and former U.S. counterterrorism officials said improved intelligence has been an important factor in the increased tempo and precision of the Predator strikes. Over the past year, they said, the United States has been able to improve its network of informants in the border region while also fielding new hardware that allows close tracking of the movements of suspected militants.

The missiles are fired from unmanned aircraft by the CIA. But the drones are only part of a diverse network of machines and software used by the agency to spot terrorism suspects and follow their movements, the officials said. The equipment, much of which remains highly classified, includes an array of powerful sensors mounted on satellites, airplanes, blimps and drones of every size and shape.

Before 2002, the CIA had no experience in using the Predator as a weapon. But in recent years -- and especially in the past 12 months -- spy agencies have honed their skills at tracking and killing single individuals using aerial vehicles operated by technicians hundreds or thousands of miles away. James R. Clapper Jr., the Pentagon's chief intelligence officer, said the new brand of warfare has "gotten very laserlike and very precise."

"It's having the ability, once you know who you're after, to study and watch very steadily and consistently -- persistently," Clapper told a recent gathering of intelligence professionals and contractors in Nashville. "And then, at the appropriate juncture, with due regard for reducing collateral casualties or damage, going after that individual."

Two former senior intelligence officials familiar with the use of the Predator in Pakistan said the rift between Islamabad and Washington over the unilateral attacks was always less than it seemed.

"By killing al-Qaeda, you're helping Pakistan's military and you're disrupting attacks that could be carried out in Karachi and elsewhere," said one official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. Pakistan's new acquiescence coincided with the new government there and a sharp increase in domestic terrorist attacks, including the September bombing of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad.

"The attacks inside Pakistan have changed minds," the official said. "These guys are worried, as they should be."

Staff writer Colum Lynch at the United Nations contributed to this report.

© 2008 The Washington Post Company

[Optimus]

Expose America’s Undeclared War on Pakistan
http://www.daily.pk/local/other-local/8160.html?task=view
Written by www.daily.pk     
Monday, 17 November 2008 01:48
 
On 7 November, American military aircraft once again violated Pakistani airspace to launch another missile attack on civilian targets in northern Pakistan. This was the 20th attack since August in which many civilians have been made shaheed.

Furthermore in September, American Special forces launched a raid on Angoor Adda killing 20 civilians in Pakistan after secret orders were given to them by President Bush to launch land attacks. Since the fighting in FATA over 700,000 people have been displaced from their homes and are now facing the harsh winter in the northern areas.

America’s undeclared war on Pakistan
While America, fearful of fighting a country with the world’s sixth largest army, has not formally declared war on Pakistan, it is carrying out regular military incursions on Pakistani soil. President Bush has given orders for 13,000 additional troops to be sent to the Afghan border and Barack Obama during his campaign speeches pledged he will “move two battalions” to the border. Furthermore, he went to state “we must get off the wrong battlefield in Iraq and get on the right one in Afghanistan and Pakistan”. He has openly declared that if Pakistan is not prepared to kill the so-called militants operating in the northern regions, then America will unilaterally attack targets in Pakistan. It is now a daily occurrence that the American military is violating Pakistan’s sovereignty. Are these not the statements and policies of war?

The war on terror
The state of affairs in Afghanistan today is not due to terrorism; rather it is the result of the American invasion. The people of Afghanistan have retaliated by fighting these occupiers using “hit and run” tactics. Have we not seen how the American’s created a similar situation in Iraq? Did we not witness how they took what was one of the most developed Arab nations at the time, imposed on it harsh sanctions before dividing it into three weak states which they control through a puppet government in Baghdad. Now the American’s have turned their attention to the most powerful Muslim country, Pakistan.

Pakistan – the next Iraq
By accusing it of harbouring terrorists and the military of being terrorist sympathisers the Americans are following the same path as in Iraq. The famous 45 minute lie was used to create panic in the West so that there would be justification for attacks. Today, the media is reporting that Pakistan, with its nuclear weapons, is a failed state and out of control in order to justify its attack. By forcing the Pakistani army to attack the people in FATA, the American’s have created civil conflict in Pakistan and are using the same tactics to suggest that Pakistan is out of control. Some of the American policy think-tanks are openly suggesting that Pakistan should be divided into smaller states and have part of the land annexed to Afghanistan and Iran. The Indian government and the Mayor of Kabul, the American agent Karzai, have been the most vocal in supporting the American propaganda.

Pakistan’s puppet democracy is the problem
Today’s ‘democratically’ elected farcical and corrupt government has continued the same policy by helping the American’s in their attacks. Despite the half hearted protests against the attacks the Zardari-Gilani government continues to allow supplies for American forces to be sent through Karachi. They have given open support to the American attacks and supported the American media lies to suggest that Pakistan is facing an internal insurgency. They have betrayed the people of Kashmir by moving troops from Kashmir to the FATA to support American troops, which has also assisted the Americans to strengthen the hand of their new allies, the Indian occupiers, in Kashmir.

Pakistan’s economic crisis
Decades of Western economic solutions and adherence to the IMF have brought Pakistan to the brink of disaster. Despite Pakistan having abundant agricultural and mineral resources and even being able to manufacture its own heavy weapons the economy was built on the imitation of weak western solutions by corrupt democratic and dictatorial governments alike. Now the IMF is being used as a political tool to further weaken the country by demanding cuts in defence spending before the Zardari government will be permitted to line their pockets. The people of Pakistan already facing great hardship and are now faced with up to 10 hours of load shedding and huge price hikes for basic foodstuff.

Only Khilafah can address the needs of Pakistan
Only the Khilafah will establish a sovereign government that is not a puppet to Western colonialist nations where democracy and dictatorship have established subservience. It will be obliged to establish unity and defend the blood and honour of the people against foreign aggression. It will establish a stable economy with gold backed currency and utilise the resources to provide for people, not privatise to provide profits for foreign companies and corrupt parliamentarians.

[bigron]

PR: Pakistan Ambassador Accounted on Zardari government policy towards Undeclared US War on Pakistan
     
Sunday, 16 November 2008
 http://www.hizb.org.uk/hizb/press-centre/press-release/pr-pakistan-ambassador-accounted-on-zardari-government-policy-towards-us-undeclared-war-on-pakistan.html


Hizb ut-Tahrir calls Pakistan Ambassador to account for Zadari government's policy towards undeclared US war on Pakistan

London, UK, November 16 – A high level delegation from Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain met with Pakistan's Ambassador to the UK Wajid Shamsul Hasan delivering a letter from Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain outlining the current crisis in Pakistan. It asked why the Pakistan government had shown inaction over the blatant incursions into Pakistan by US forces and un-manned drones, and stated that an attack on FATA or any other part of Pakistan was an attack on all of Pakistan.
Ambassador Hassan did not present any answers but asked what solutions Hizb ut-Tahrir proposed.
  The delegation then stated 4 clear courses of action that illustrated that Pakistan was not as impotent as the regime chooses to portray it.
 
1.    The response to the American aggression needed to be a graduated and nuanced in order to be effective.
2.    Stop support to the American’s by halting the transportation of all American military supplies through Karachi port and provide NATO and America no logistical support in Afghanistan.
3.    Stop government support for the Americans through denying them use of Pakistani air space and to stop providing the Americans with military and intelligence bases in Pakistan
4.    To not allow the American’s to leave the Kashmir struggle in the hands of their new allies, the Indians.
 
The letter called upon him to denounce the actions of the Pakistani government in its collusion with the US in its undeclared war on Pakistan. The letter called for the need for a change in Pakistan based on Islam. In the letter Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain talked about Pakistan's ability to withstand US aggression saying: “It is an utter violation of the sovereignty of the country and nothing less than a declaration of war by the US on Pakistan. However, the US has neither the courage, nor indeed the ability, to make an official declaration of war against a country of 160 million Muslims, with one of the world’s strongest armies.”

[Ends]

CONTACT

Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain
Email: press@hizb.org.ukThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
Web: www.hizb.org.uk
Phone: +44(0)7074-192400


The following letter was presented to the Ambassador. The pdf can be downloaded here

Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain
The Liberation Party


Dear Mr Ambassador

Assalamu Alaikum Wa Rahmatullah    14/11/08

I am writing to you regarding the current crisis facing Pakistan in the border regions. You are well aware over the last year the US has regularly been sending predator drone aircraft into Pakistani airspace and attacking targets on Pakistani soil in the FATA and NWFP leading to the death of many innocent people and displacement of thousands.

It is an utter violation of the sovereignty of the country and nothing less than a declaration of war by the US on Pakistan. However, the U.S. has neither the courage, nor indeed the ability, to make an official declaration of war against a country of 160 million Muslims, with one of the world’s strongest armies.

Although the US has claimed that she strikes within Pakistan to defeat the Taliban, we are under no illusion that these actions are directed at Pakistan. Various statements of politicians and advisors, most notably those of President-Elect Obama indicate that their real design is upon Pakistan: to weaken and potentially divide the country, as they have done in Iraq.

When faced with an attack from a foreign power every nation expects their leaders to stand up and defend the country against such aggression. Yet Mr. Zardari, like his predecessors, has done nothing except facilitate the US designs on Pakistan. The country now faces an unprecedented crisis in leadership. War, economic meltdown and sectarian divisions are crippling Pakistan.

Now, more than ever, Pakistan needs a new leadership that will defend the country, implement sound economic policies and unify the country. Just as we have seen the failure of dictatorships, we now see the people feeling the pain of so-called democracy in Pakistan, which has delivered a criminal to power!

It is our view that the only way forward for Pakistan now is to return to the very reason for which Pakistan was established. Only an Islamic leadership, a Khilafah, will enjoy mass support of the people and bring a strong sense of unity and strength amongst the people.

Hizb ut-Tahrir is working with the masses, as a non-violent political movement, in Pakistan to bring such a change. Hizb ut-Tahrir does not believe in creating a primitive backward state in Pakistan, but an Islamic state which is well developed technolgically. Furthermore Hizb ut-Tahrir has a detailed strategy to address the various political, economic and foreign policy challenges facing the country and will, inshallah, put the country on a path of development and progress never seen in its 60-year history.

Over the next few weeks and months Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain will be holding public meetings, seminars and petitions to raise the influential voice of the Pakistani community in the UK against this undeclared war on Pakistan.

We know your long standing loyalities to the ruling party in Pakistan. Nonetheless, we call on you to sever your support to the corrupt regime in Islamabad whose hands are stained with the blood of its own citizens and stand on the side of the community in her call to end this war and demand the establishment of a sincere Islamic government in Pakistan.

Wa Salamu Alaikum Wa Rahmatullah

 

[bigron]

Major change in store for U.S. policy on Pakistan
  SAEED SHAH

From Monday's Globe and Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081116.wpakistan1117/BNStory/International/home?cid=al_gam_mostemail#

November 16, 2008 at 10:04 PM EST

ISLAMABAD — A radical change in U.S. policy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan may be in store, given Barack Obama's inclination to mediate in Pakistan's bitter dispute with India over Kashmir and pressure on him to reassess support for Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

“Clearly the only solution to Afghanistan now is a regional solution,” said Ahmed Rashid, author of Descent into Chaos, a recent book on U.S. failures in Afghanistan and Pakistan, who has been consulted by Mr. Obama's team. “The key to peace in Afghanistan is Pakistan. The Afghan Taliban leadership is living in Pakistan. The reasons for that happening is related to [the Pakistani] military's views on India.”

Mr. Obama has made clear his desire to capture or kill al-Qaeda's top leadership, and that means securing Afghanistan so that it cannot become a base for them again, and eliminating the terror group's hideouts in Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri are thought to be in hiding.

“Pakistan is the most dangerous country in today's world,” according to Mr. Obama's chief adviser on South Asia, former CIA officer Bruce Riedel.

In a far-reaching departure from George W. Bush and several preceding American presidents, Mr. Obama has indicated that he will seek to put U.S. muscle behind mediating Pakistan's disputes with its giant neighbour India, which have corrupted Islamabad's role in global anti-terrorism efforts.

Taliban and al-Qaeda extremists have found sanctuary in parts of western Pakistan, but Islamabad is not willing to take on some of these Islamic militant groups, which have been useful in fighting proxy wars with India in the disputed region of Kashmir and in Afghanistan, where the government of Mr. Karzai is perceived to be close to Delhi. If Pakistan no longer feels it needs to keep some extremist groups in reserve to counter Indian influence, it's hoped the U.S. will secure meaningful co-operation from Pakistan in anti-terror efforts.

“Convincing Pakistan will be the key, not brow-beating them, or pushing them. I think that will be the big change between the Bush-Cheney approach and the Obama-Biden approach,” said Shuja Nawaz, an independent expert on the Pakistani military based in Washington.

In interviews just before the U.S. election, Mr. Obama indicated his administration would “try to resolve the Kashmir crisis so that they [Pakistan] can stay focused not on India, but on the situation with those militants.”

Mr. Obama has also signalled support for massive non-military aid to Pakistan, in contrast to the $11-billion (U.S.) that the Bush administration has so far funnelled mostly to the Pakistani army. Joe Biden, the vice-president-elect, is co-sponsoring a bill that seeks to provide $7.5-billion (U.S.) over five years in social and economic aid to Pakistan. Unveiling the legislation earlier this year, Mr. Biden said that “our policy towards Pakistan has been in desperate need of a serious overhaul” to counter the military orientated relationship seen under the Bush administration.

More controversially, the burning issue that will immediately confront Mr. Obama is the crisis of governance in Kabul, as Mr. Karzai suffers a loss of support among Afghans for failing to deliver on promises of increased security with Afghan presidential elections due next year.

“The only way out at this point is for Karzai to step out. All the indicators are that he's lost his legitimacy,” said Marvin Weinbaum, a scholar at Washington's Middle East Institute, who has interacted with Mr. Obama's team. “All this military buildup is going to be for naught, unless something happens on the political side.”

Without the personal relationships that existed between the Bush White House and Mr. Karzai, it would be easier for Mr. Obama to ditch the Afghan President. But the short time available to the next American president to make this choice – it may need to be decided even before Mr. Obama's inauguration on Jan. 20 – will work in Mr. Karzai's favour.

“There's no question that the Obama camp is divided on this issue [of Karzai] … It may be high risk to go with him, but it may be even riskier to go with someone new right now,” Mr. Rashid said.

Special to The Globe and Mail

[bigron]

November 18, 2008

Obama-Tied Think-Tank Calls for Pakistan Shift


by Jim Lobe


A think-tank closely tied to U.S. President-elect Barack Obama is calling for a "dramatic strategic shift" in Washington's policy toward Pakistan, one designed to both strengthen civilian institutions and promote an effective counter-insurgency against al-Qaeda and indigenous Islamist extremists in the tribal areas along the Afghan border who increasingly threaten the country's stability.

In a report [.pdf] released Monday, the Center for American Progress (CAP) is also urging Washington to pursue its goals in Pakistan as part of a broader multilateral effort and a regional strategy designed to address Islamabad's security concerns with Afghanistan and India.

"The United States needs to make a shift from a reactive, transactional, short-term approach that is narrowly focused on bilateral efforts," according to the 71-page report, "Partnership for Progress."

"Instead, a more proactive, long-term strategy should seek to advance stability and prosperity inside Pakistan through a multilateral, regional approach," it argued, adding that Pakistan "will pose one of the greatest foreign policy challenges for the incoming Obama administration."

The report, the product of a year-long study that included consultations with a U.S.-Pakistan Working Group consisting of 33 of Washington's top Pakistan specialists, is likely to be regarded as a bellwether for where the Obama administration will take U.S. policy.

John Podesta, White House chief of staff for former President Bill Clinton and CAP's president and CEO since its founding in 2001, has headed Obama's presidential transition team since long before the election, and at least two of the report's four co-authors – CAP's Brian Katulis, a Middle East and South Asia specialist, and Lawrence Korb, a senior Pentagon official under Ronald Reagan – are likely to get senior posts in the new administration.

And while the report itself represented only the views of its co-authors, a large number of Working Group members, such as Vice President-elect Joseph Biden's top South Asia staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jonah Blank, and former Clinton National Security Council aide Bruce Riedel, have been among the Obama campaign's key advisers on the region.

The report comes amid palpably growing concern about the situation in both Afghanistan and Pakistan where what the report calls a "strengthening, multi-headed adaptive network of extremists comprised of the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and affiliated indigenous militant groups" has made unprecedented gains seven years after they were evicted from Afghanistan by U.S. air power and the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance.

Since then, Washington has spent more than $11 billion on aid to Islamabad, almost all of which went to the Pakistani army, in hopes that the military-led government of former President Pervez Musharraf would fully cooperate with U.S. efforts to prevent the Taliban and other radical groups from returning to Afghanistan.

But not only have the Taliban and its allies made a strong comeback in Afghanistan over the past two years – in part due to the safe havens they have enjoyed in the tribal regions on the Pakistani side of the border – but their brand of radicalism has spread outward from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), where al-Qaeda's leadership is believed to be based, into the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) and beyond even into Punjab and other parts of Pakistan's heartland.

Adding to concerns over the nuclear-armed country's stability is the state of its economy. Even before the financial crisis that hit world credit markets in mid-September, Pakistan's economy was suffering serious inflation that put food and fuel prices beyond the reach of many Pakistanis, provoking street protests and riots in some cities.

With rapidly depleting foreign reserves, the government headed by President Asif Ali Zardari was forced just last weekend to agree to a two-year, $7.6 billion loan by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Conditions for the loan are likely to include reductions in government subsidies on basic commodities that could, in turn, provoke greater unrest and an even greater boost for radical forces.

As bad as the current situation looks, however, the CAP report noted a series of favorable developments that could help redress the situation, beginning with the fact that, unlike the Musharraf regime, the new government – the product of democratic elections last February – is seen as legitimate by most Pakistanis and thus has "a greater potential for representing and mobilizing Pakistan's population toward fighting militancy and strengthening its governmental institutions."

Similarly, the advent of a new U.S. administration headed by Obama could reduce some of the strains created by the administration of President George W. Bush whose strong backing for Musharraf made him deeply unpopular in Pakistan, according to polls taken over the past two years.

In addition, other countries appear more inclined to help Pakistan deal with its economic problems, according to the report. The Friends of Pakistan Group, which consists of the European Union (EU), the United Nations, China, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Canada, Turkey, Australia, the U.S., and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – which hosted the Group's meeting in Abu Dhabi Monday – appears poised to offer additional assistance.

That willingness extends even to the U.S. Congress, which is likely to take up a bipartisan proposal introduced earlier this year by Biden and co-sponsored by Obama to provide $7.5 billion in economic and development aid to Pakistan over the next five years.

"This legislation lays the groundwork for a new strategy in which the United States seeks a partnership with the people of Pakistan and not just a military expected to cooperate with American security aims," the report argues.

In addition to providing much more non-military aid, the report calls for Washington to recognize the limitations of its influence in Pakistan and move toward a multilateral approach, a direction which the Bush administration has already begun to take through the Friends Group and other initiatives.

"At this point in time, Pakistan's perceptions of the United States are so dismal that efforts to pursue change in Pakistan with the United States in the lead may automatically discredit the effort," according to the report.

Military aid should also continue but be channeled through civilian institutions, according to the report, which stressed that Washington should be as transparent as possible about the aid it provides.

Washington will also have to strike a balance between short-term measures such as its increasingly frequent air strikes against al-Qaeda and Taliban targets on Pakistani soil and its long-term goal of enhancing the credibility and effectiveness of Pakistan's civilian leadership and institutions.

The Washington Post reported Sunday that the U.S. and Islamabad reached a "tacit agreement in September on a don't-ask-don't-tell policy that allows unmanned Predator aircraft to attack suspected terrorist targets" in the border area. Under that understanding, the U.S. government would not comment on such attacks while Islamabad will be expected to complain about them. The agreement followed a cross-border attack by U.S. Special Forces that drew especially harsh criticism from the Pakistani government and army.

(Inter Press Service)
 

Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=13782 

[bigron]

‘Peshawar becoming off-limits to foreign journalists’

* Senior government official says journalists should take extra care while reporting in Tribal Areas

By Iqbal Khattak
http://dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008\11\18\story_18-11-2008_pg7_15


PESHAWAR: Afghan journalist Sami Yousafzai spent most of his time in dangerous areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks in the US to look for interesting stories for his news organisation. During this period he has never come as close to death as he was on Friday.

“I think divine intervention saved me. The gunman was less than a metre away from me,” an injured Sami told Daily Times at his hospital bed, recovering from bullet wounds in his chest, left arm and right hand.

Sami, accompanied by a Japanese journalist, was going by car to a meeting in the upscale Hayatabad locality when four armed men intercepted their car, apparently to kidnap them for ransom.

Had the attempt been successful, it would have been the first kidnapping of a foreign journalist in Peshawar. Such kidnappings are frequent in Afghanistan where western reporters are abducted and released after payment of ransom.

The incident on Friday, the journalist community believes, is an attempt to scare foreign journalists away from Peshawar, making the provincial capital off-limit to western media.

“It seems Peshawar is becoming a no-go area for foreign journalists,” Rahimullah Yousafzai, a Peshawar-based journalist, told Daily Times. “Threats to journalists have increased with the increase in military operations in the Tribal Areas,” he added.

Concerns for the safety of foreigners in Peshawar have never been higher with the recent kidnappings of an Afghan envoy and an Iranian diplomat and the killing of a US aid worker in the city.

Journalists covering conflicts in the Tribal Areas and Balochistan are caught between the devil and the deep sea, as pressure from either the Taliban or the security forces is making their job difficult.

Seven journalists have been killed until November 8 this year. Qari Muhammad Shoaib was killed by security forces’ firing in Swat while Abdul Aziz was killed in an airstrike after Taliban kidnapped him in August.

Five journalists have been killed in North and South Waziristan and Bajaur since February 7, 2005.

“The situation will deteriorate in the coming days for journalists,” Yousafzai forecast, arguing both sides - the Taliban and the government forces - would want “the truth is not discovered” by journalists.

Extra care: A senior government official told Daily Times on condition of anonymity that journalists should take extra care while reporting in the Tribal Areas.

“Peshawar will become off-limits to foreign journalists, as the enemy is unknown and you don’t know who wants to kill you. In such a situation, it is difficult for journalists to work,” Faizullah Jan, a lecturer in journalism at the Peshawar University, said.

The Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) also expressed concern at the deteriorating security situation in Peshawar for local and foreign journalists. “The situation is getting worse and things look bleak for foreign journalists. They can be an easy target,” PFUJ General Secretary Mazhar Abbas said.

[Optimus]

Pakistan denies accord with U.S. on drone attacks
http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2008/nov/17/8922192650-no-headline/?zIndex=13548
9:26 a.m. November 17, 2008

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — (Reuters) - Pakistan denied on Monday a U.S. media report that it had given tacit approval to the United States to carry out missile strikes by pilotless drones against al Qaeda and Taliban targets on its soil.
 
The Washington Post on Sunday cited unidentified Pakistani and U.S. officials as saying that the two countries agreed in September on a don't-ask-don't-tell policy that allowed Predator aircraft to attack militants in the Pakistani border region with Afghanistan.
 
But Pakistani ministers said there was no such agreement.
 
"There is no understanding. There is no tacit understanding," Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi told parliament.
Information Minister Sherry Rehman rejected the report as "cooked up".
 
"There is absolutely no question of government entering into such agreement that would allow bombardment of its own people."

Relations between the United States and its major ally in the war against al Qaeda and the Taliban have become more strained since U.S. forces launched a ground attack against militants in the Pakistani tribal region on the border with Afghanistan in September.
 
Although the United States has refrained from sending ground troops into Pakistani territory since the Sept. 3 incursion, its Predators have carried out nearly 20 missile strikes since then, the latest in the past week in which 12 people, including five foreign militants, were killed.
 
The Washington Post said the agreement between Pakistan and the United States on drone attacks coincided with the suspension of U.S. ground assaults into Pakistan.
 
Under the deal, the Post said the U.S. government would refuse to publicly acknowledge the attacks while Pakistan would continue to complain noisily about the politically sensitive strikes.
 
Pakistani officials say the U.S. strikes will incite public anger against the United States in the country where the U.S.-led war on terrorism is very unpopular.

[bigron]

Will It Prove to be Obama's Cambodia?

Perils of Pakistan


GEORGE C. WILSON

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m48869&hd=&size=1&l=e

November 18, 2008

President-elect Obama has committed himself to stepping up the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. It is not an overstatement to say that he will risk his whole presidency, and perhaps even unwittingly put nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists who might use them to attack the United States, if he leaps too far into neighboring Pakistan in pursuit of elusive victory.

The rub, as the Vietnam and Iraq wars showed us all, is unintended consequences. Our military leaders can, and almost certainly will, make a strong case to Obama that there is no way to defeat the Taliban and their allied tribes in Afghanistan without cleaning out their sanctuaries just over the Afghan border in Pakistan.

I can hear frustrated U.S. commanders on the ground in Afghanistan making the same kind of argument to Obama’s team tomorrow that I heard yesterday in Vietnam when I was a combat correspondent there.

I could empathize with this lament, for example, that I heard in 1968 from a 9th Division infantry battalion commander, whose mission was to rid his area — South Vietnam’s rice bowl, the Delta — of the stealthy Viet Cong guerrillas:
"I can have my kids chase the Viet Cong all day and all night. But whenever they catch up to a good number of them, they just run over the border into Cambodia where we can’t go. All I’m really doing down here is buying time with my kids’ lives for the diplomats to settle this thing."

His was among the impressive military arguments I heard for either invading Cambodian border sanctuaries or getting the United States out of the otherwise unwinnable Vietnam War.

President Lyndon Johnson resisted invading Cambodia. He had concluded that this would only widen the war, infuriating an already skeptical Congress. Early on in Johnson’s presidency he confided to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, but not the public, that he saw the war as a no-win. Secret tapes of Johnson’s conversations, since made public, document him saying this to McNamara on Feb. 26, 1965: "I don’t think anything is going to be as bad as losing, and I don’t see any way of winning."

His successor, Richard Nixon, who took office in 1969 after the Vietnam War had ruined Johnson’s presidency, including his dream of building a Great Society, rushed into Cambodia where Johnson had feared to tread.

First, Nixon authorized, without telling the public, secret bombings of Cambodia, which had tried to stay neutral. Then on April 30, 1970, Nixon announced he had ordered the invasion of Cambodia with U.S. and South Vietnamese troops to "clean out" the enemy’s border sanctuaries.

Now think "Pakistan" to hear the same ring. Four days later — on May 4, 1970 — National Guardsmen killed four student anti-war protesters on the campus of Kent State in Ohio.

Those two events, coming right on top of each other, mobilized anti-war lawmakers in Congress to curb the president’s war-making powers and to cut off the money the South Vietnamese army needed to continue fighting the war after U.S. troops left the field under Nixon’s Vietnamization strategy.

The military defeat Johnson had feared all along, without saying so publicly, came in 1975 when Communist North Vietnam conquered capitalist South Vietnam.

Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia, even though his announced purpose was just to clean out the border sanctuaries, contributed to Cambodia’s political turmoil.

The invaders also failed to achieve the military objective of finding and destroying the Communist headquarters in Cambodia known as COSVN for Central Office for South Vietnam.

The Communist Khmer Rouge in the aftermath of the invasion toppled the pro-American leader of the country, Lon Nol, and wiped out the upper classes in a bloodbath that some reports estimated murdered 2 million Cambodians. Again, unintended consequences.

Fast forward to Pakistan today. President Asif Ali Zardari, husband of Benazir Bhutto, a Muslim moderate who was assassinated in December while campaigning in parliamentary elections, is already complaining about U. S. military strikes against alleged al Qaida and Taliban targets in Pakistan’s border regions.

An American-led ground invasion of Pakistan under the same "clean out" rationale Nixon used could cause such political turmoil that the bad guys might get their hands on one or more of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates Pakistan has at least 60 nuclear weapons.

Imagine a worst case scenario of terrorists sneaking just one nuke into New York City and setting it off at lunch hour. Thousands of people could be incinerated, skyscrapers toppled and the air poisoned for years.

The Bush administration, Congress and the media have been rightly faulted for not worst-casing the American invasion of Iraq before it was ordered in 2003. History warns that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Obama needs to look long and hard at the worst unintended consequences of leaping into Pakistan. While he’s at it, the new president should consider what would happen if U. S. forces captured or killed Osama bin Laden. Osama’s deputies would feel compelled to retaliate against the United States in a spectacular way. Does Obama want another 9/11? Better to keep American fingerprints off the deed if it is done.

George C. Wilson is a veteran national security reporter.



 

[Optimus]

From Times Online November 19, 2008

US missile strike kills six in Pakistan village
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/global/article5188914.ece
Jeremy Page, in Islamabad
 
A suspected American missile strike hit a village well inside Pakistani territory today, killing six alleged militants, according to local officials, despite Pakistan's repeated demands for the United States to stop such attacks.

The US has enraged many Pakistanis since March by escalating missile attacks from pilotless drones on al-Qaeda and Taleban militants sheltering in tribal areas near the border of Afghanistan.

This was the first such attack beyond the lawless tribal areas, which have never been fully under government control, and is thus likely to provoke even more public and official outrage.

The two missiles destroyed a house in Indi Khel village in Bannu district in North West Frontier Province, about 25 miles from the Afghan border, local officials said.

Between four and six militants, including some from the former Soviet Central Asian state of Turkmenistan, were killed, according to Pakistani intelligence officials.

One security official said that among the dead was Abdullah Azam al-Saudi, a senior Arab member of al-Qaeda responsible for liaising with the Taleban around the Afghan border.

The US never gives official confirmation of such attacks, which are thought to be conducted by the CIA, but US officials say that they have a tacit agreement with Pakistani leaders to continue with the strikes.

Pakistani officials deny that and say the attacks constitute a violation of national sovereignty and have caused hundreds of civilian casualties as well as fuelling anti-American sentiment across the nation.

One large Islamist political party responded to today's attack by threatening to block the two routes through Pakistan that are used to take about 70 per cent of supplies to Nato forces in Afghanistan. "If these missiles attacks continue, then we will ask the people to create hurdles in the way of supplies for Nato," Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the head of Jamaat-e-Islami, told reporters.

The supply lines have not been blocked by public protests before, but the Pakistan Government halted Nato fuel deliveries briefly in September in protest at a ground assault on its tribal areas by US forces.

Militants have also staged a series of raids on Nato supply convoys this year, including one last week in which they stole two American Humvees and hundreds of tonnes of food aid.

US officials have often criticised Pakistan for not doing enough to combat the militants who have been sheltering in the tribal areas since fleeing Afghanistan after a US-led invasion toppled the Taleban government in late 2001.

That criticism has eased since September, when the Pakistani Army launched a big offensive on the tribal region of Bajaur, which it now says has killed some 1,500 alleged militants.

Pakistani forces have also stepped up border co-operation with Nato and Afghan forces over the past month under an initiative called Operation Lionheart, according to US officials.

[David Rothscum]

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/001200811200330.htm
Pak asks NATO to stop US missile strikes

Islamabad (PTI): Pakistan on Wednesday asked the top NATO military generals to halt the US missile strikes within its territory even as six militants were killed in a suspected strike by US drones in a remote village in the country's northwest.

General Kayani, in his address to top NATO military generals in Brussels, highlighted the need to reinforce Pakistan's effort and operate in a coordinated manner within respective national boundaries.

"The General urged halt to unarmed combat aerial vehicle(UCAV) within Pakistan territory," the Army said in a statement.

Kayani also apprised the NATO military committee of the overall security situation in the region and Pakistan's perspective on the obtaining environment, operational issues and the way forward.

General Kayani clearly spelt the need for security and stability in the region through a comprehensive approach, the statement said.

His comments came hours after suspected US drone fired missiles in Bannu, killing six militants. Pakistani officials say that US has fired some 20 missiles in the tribal region since August.

Earlier, General Kayani held separate bilateral meeting with Secretary General NATO, Jaap, D Hoop, D Schesser and Chairman Military Committee NATO, Admiral Giampaolo Di Paolo. He also held individual meetings with French Chief of Defence and Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff, USA, the statement said.

[David Rothscum]

Pakistan Lowers Growth Outlook to Slowest in 7 Years (Update1)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=awowNSKpD3s4&refer=asia
By Khalid Qayum

Nov. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Pakistan, on the verge of a bailout from the International Monetary Fund, expects the economy to grow at the slowest pace in seven years as inflation averages 20 percent and industrial and farm output slows.

The $150 billion economy may grow 4.3 percent this fiscal year to June 30, lower than the earlier predicted 5.5 percent, Waqar Masood, secretary at the finance ministry, said in a phone interview. Inflation will exceed the government's previous target of 12 percent, he said.

Pakistan is counting on a $7.6 billion IMF rescue this month to avoid defaulting on its debts after foreign-exchange reserves shrank 75 percent in a year to $3.5 billion. Growth may slow after central bank Governor Shamshad Akhtar increased the benchmark interest rate to 15 percent from 13 percent as part of IMF loan condition to curb inflation.

The Washington-based IMF may approve Pakistan's first bailout in four years and release funds as early as Nov. 21, Massod said from the capital, Islamabad.

Consumer prices in Pakistan rose an average 24.6 percent in the first four months of this fiscal year, according to data on the Web site of state-owned Federal Bureau of Statistics. The economy expanded an average 6.8 percent in the past five years, according to the government.

``We expect inflation will slow in coming months as global crude and commodity prices have reduced,'' said Masood. The government will formally revise the economic targets later this month or next month, he said.

Lower Than Target

Farmers are likely to produce 12 million bales of cotton this year, less than the target of 14 million, he said. Agriculture accounts for 21 percent of the country's gross domestic product.

Pakistan needs the IMF loan to help it win additional aid from a group of other lenders and donor nations, including the U.S., U.K., China and Saudi Arabia. The group's Nov. 17 meeting in Abu Dhabi adopted a ``work plan'' for financial help to Pakistan, the foreign ministry has said.

``We are trying to hold a ministerial meeting of `Friends of Pakistan' group next month,'' said Masood. ``The prospects of more financial aid and investment from donor countries are good.''

Pakistan left its last IMF program in 2004 with a credit rating from Standard & Poor's of B+, four levels below investment grade. S&P on Nov. 14, one day before the latest IMF loan was announced, cut the nation's rating to CCC, citing a risk of default on external debt payments.

Moody's Investors Service, which rates Pakistan's debt at B3, said Nov. 17 the rating remains on review for a downgrade as the country needs to show it will secure additional assistance from donors and other lenders.

Pakistani rupee in October plunged to an all-time low and the balance of payments deficit in the first three months of the fiscal year started July 1 widened to $3.95 billion, from $2.27 billion a year earlier. The deficit reached a record $14 billion last year.

[Biggs]

The US strikes deeper in Pakistan

By Syed Saleem Shahzad

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JK21Df01.html

"The al-Qaeda leadership (shura) has apparently now installed itself in Jani Khel village in the Bannu district of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP)."
Taliban a step ahead of US assault Asia Times Online, August 11, 2007.

KARACHI - Wednesday's missile attack by an unmanned United States Predator drone on the Pakistani village of Jani Khel marks a significant development in the battle against militants.

On the one hand, it is the first such attack to take place outside of the semi-autonomous tribal areas, that is, in territory directly ruled by Islamabad. Previous US strikes have focused on North

 

Waziristan and South Waziristan, where at least 20 missile attacks and a cross-border commando raid have killed scores of people since September.

But on the other hand, the strike also signifies that there is now a genuine alliance between the Pakistani military and US forces against the common foe of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Previously, under former president General Pervez Musharraf, this relationship was blurred by pockets of latent sympathy on the side of the Pakistanis for the militants.

The drone is reported to have fired at least two missiles early on Wednesday morning at a house near North Waziristan. An unnamed Pakistani security official said that six foreign militants "with links to al-Qaeda" had been killed. Unconfirmed reports said one of them was Dr Abdullah Azzam al-Saudi, who is said to be a coordinator between the Taliban and al-Qaeda leadership.

Whether al-Saudi is indeed dead is not so much the point. What matters is that the Pakistanis had passed on to the Americans information of al-Qaeda's shura (council) in Jani Khel.

Pakistan had known of the shura since it was set up over a year ago, but as it was not in a tribal area and therefore directly under the writ of the Pakistani government, this intelligence was never shared.

Indeed, on one occasion Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, the al-Qaeda deputy leader, was cornered during a shoot-out between the Pakistani security forces and militants in the district of Bannu, which lies just outside the semi-autonomous tribal areas, but on learning of his presence the law-enforcement agencies allowed him a safe passage.

Clearly, under Pakistan's army chief, General Ashfaq Kiani - currently in Brussels for talks with North Atlantic Treaty Organization officials - highly sensitive information is now being relayed to the US. This has dangerous implications.

Al-Qaeda is likely to spread out south into the cities, instead of going north to the tribal areas. The result could be the bloodiest of all battles in urban centers.

The village of Jani Khel was initially chosen as the tribal areas, although remote, were not suitable for regular high-profile meetings and they were coming under increasingly more drone attacks. There was also no precedence of US attacks outside the tribal areas - and neither were any anticipated. To date, heavily armed militants and their local supporters had kept the al-Qaeda leaders safe.

Top Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani is also believed to be active in Pakistan's cities, rather than in his usual compounds in North Waziristan and in Khost province in Afghanistan.

As a possible portend of things to come in this new phase of urban warfare, on Wednesday a trusted member of Musharraf's former team, retired Major General Amir Faisal Alvi, former commander of the elite commando unit Special Services Group (SSG), was assassinated by a group of armed men in the capital Islamabad.

As chief of the army and president, Musharraf, who had also been a member of the SSG, maintained a close relationship with Alvi. Alvi retired two years ago but was credited with masterminding the Angor Ada operation in 2004, when many Arabs and Chechans based in the tribal areas were killed or arrested and turned over to the Americans.

Other key figures who have participated in anti-al-Qaeda and -Taliban operations could be next on the hit list. These include army boss Kiani, who previously served as the director general of military operations, Corps Commander Rawalpindi and as director general of the Intelligence Services. The present chairman of the Joint Staff Committee, General Tariq Majeed, was the architect of the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) operation in 2007 in which the radical mosque was stormed by troops. He was then Corps Commander Rawalpindi.

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

[Optimus]

Pakistani Army Tests Missile Capable of Shooting Down Drones
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601091&sid=a74PWGWYL5SE&refer=india
By Farhan Sharif

Nov. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Pakistan successfully tested a short- range, surface-to-air missile capable of destroying drones, the country's military said, two days after protesting to the U.S. over attacks on its territory by the unmanned aircraft.

``The elements of army air defense demonstrated their shooting skills by targeting drones flying at different altitudes,'' according to a statement posted today on the military's Web site. The test took place during an exercise that also involved the use of radar-controlled guns.

The government in Islamabad summoned U.S. Ambassador Anne W. Patterson on Nov. 19, for the second time in a month, to demand a halt to strikes on its soil by American forces based in neighboring Afghanistan. On Nov. 18, U.S. forces extended their attacks for the first time to an area beyond Pakistan's tribal region along the border, the Foreign Ministry said.

Pakistan has denied giving the U.S. approval to target suspected militants on its territory, after the Washington Post said the nations had an agreement allowing U.S. missile strikes by the unmanned Predator aircraft.

Thousands of Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters sought shelter in Pakistan's northwestern tribal region after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001.

U.S. intelligence agencies say the region is a haven for al- Qaeda and that militants use bases there to plan and carry out attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan.



Pakistan army practises shooting drone aircraft
http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/11/21/asia/OUKWD-UK-PAKISTAN-DRONES.php
Reuters Published: November 21, 2008
By Zeeshan Haider

Pakistani soldiers practised shooting at pilotless "drone" aircraft on Friday, the military said a day after the government lodged a protest with the U.S. ambassador over drone missile strikes in Pakistani territory.

Anti-aircraft guns and short-range surface-to-air missiles were used during the exercise conducted at a desert range near the city of Muzaffargarh in the central Pubjab province.

"The elements of Army Air Defence demonstrated their shooting skills by targeting the drones flying at different altitudes," the military said in a statement.

Air defence commander Lieutenant-General Ashraf Saleem praised the "precision and agility" of the gunners.

Pakistan is bristling over a series of missile strikes by U.S. drones targeting al Qaeda and Taliban militants in the lawless tribal regions along the Afghan border in recent weeks.

The U.S. forces have carried out more than 20 such drone attacks in the last three months, reflecting U.S. impatience over militants from Pakistan fuelling the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan and fears that al Qaeda fighters in northwest Pakistan could plan attacks in the West.

A U.S. commando raid on September 3 led to a diplomatic storm, and there has not been any subsequent incursion by ground troops.

But the controversy over the drones flared again after the latest missile strike on Wednesday hit a target in Bannu district in North West Frontier Province, deeper inside Pakistani territory and south of the semi-autonomous Waziristan tribal region that has borne the brunt of the attacks.

Protesting the strike in Bannu during a session of the National Assembly, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani voiced hope that the incoming U.S. administration of President-elect Barack Obama would exercise more restraint.

Pakistan says the attacks violate its sovereignty, undermine efforts to win public support for the fight against militancy, and make it harder to justify the U.S. alliance.

[Biggs]

More than 50 killed in Pakistan violence - Summary
Posted : Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:21:04 GMT
Author : DPA

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/242561,more-than-50-killed-in-pakistan-violence--summary.html

Islamabad - More than 50 people were killed in a suspected suicide bombing, shelling by army jets and artillery at positions of Islamic militants, in north-western Pakistan, security officials and media reports said on Thursday. At least 24 Islamist insurgents, including al-Qaeda-linked Uzbek fighters, died in the restive tribal district of Bajaur, which borders Afghanistan, an intelligence official said.

The shelling that started late Wednesday and continued Thursday in four areas of the district, also destroyed half a dozen bunkers and an ammunition depot belonging to the militants.

"According to the preliminary reports, two dozens miscreants were killed," the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, said. "Around a dozen of them are Uzbeks."

He said the Uzbeks were believed to have come from Afghanistan to fight Pakistani security forces.

Islamabad launched a major offensive in Bajaur in early August to clear the district of Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters launching cross-border attacks on US-led international forces in the neighbouring Afghan province of Kunar.

A military official said last month that 1,500 militants and 74 troops had been killed in the operation, during which the rebels had offered tenacious resistance.

But the security action has also killed an unknown number of civilians and left around 250,000 displaced.

In the same district, six people were killed and seven injured in a blast outside a mosque in Badan village.

Rehmatullah, a tribal elder, who was heading a lashkar (traditional army) raised by the Mamoond tribe against the Taliban, was among the killed.

The nature of the explosion was not immediately clear, but some media reports said while citing security officials it could be a suicide attack.

Pakistani government has recently encouraged the local tribes to oust Taliban and al-Qaeda militants from their areas where they were given refugee after US-led forces invaded Afghanistan following September 2001 terrorist attacks on United States.

But these ill-trained and poorly equipped tribesmen become easy targets to Taliban carnage.

Separately, army aircraft bombarded militants in two villages in troubled district of Swat in North Western Frontier Province (NWFP), leaving "between 15 and 20 miscreants," dead, another security official said.

Six members of the same family died and 16 more injured when a strayed mortar shell hit a house of Safeer Gul in Ganj Alam area of the district, Urdu-language Aaj news channel reported.

[Biggs]

Bomb hits Pakistan Shia funeral
 
Many people were wounded in Friday's attack

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7741097.stm


A bomb has killed at least six people at the funeral of a Shia Muslim in north-western Pakistan, police say.

The blast, in the town of Dera Ismail Khan, injured many more. The town has a history of violence between Sunni and Shia Muslims.

In violence elsewhere, a suicide bomber killed nine worshippers on Thursday night at a mosque in the tribal district of Bajaur.

The dead included the head of a local militia formed to fight the Taleban.

Mourning hymns

The bomb in Dera Ismail Khan exploded as Shia Muslims were burying a man murdered on Thursday. Before the funeral took place a Shia cleric was killed in the town.
   

Anti-Taleban elder killed


"One of our men was martyred yesterday and one today. We were taking the coffin to the graveyard, reciting mourning hymns, when suddenly this blast happened," mourner Tauqir Zaidi told the Reuters news agency.

It is not clear how the bomb was triggered. Officials said it appeared to be another sectarian attack.

It provoked an outbreak of shooting near the hospital where the injured were taken for treatment.

Dera Ismail Khan lies in North West Frontier Province (NWFP). The province's police chief, Malik Naveed, told the BBC Urdu service that six people were confirmed dead but the death toll could rise.

The great majority of Pakistan's Muslims are Sunni. Shias form about 15%. Violence between the two communities dates back to the 1980s.

Further north, in district of Bajaur, there was more violence blamed on the Pakistan Taleban late on Thursday when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives at a mosque.

Among the dead was the head of a local militia formed to fight the Taleban.

The army has been encouraging the tribes to take on the militants in their areas and suspected Taleban insurgents have retaliated with attacks on tribal gatherings.

For some months the Pakistan military has waged a sustained campaign against Islamic militants in Bajaur that forced up to 300,000 people to flee their homes.

US ambassador summoned

The United States has been encouraging the Pakistan government to step up its fight against Islamist militants.
 
The rubble of a house hit by a US drone missile attack near Bannu


But at the same time relations have soured over America's growing use since August of unmanned drone aircraft to carry out missile attacks on targets across the border from Afghanistan.

On Thursday the US ambassador in Islamabad was summoned to receive a formal protest over a drone attack near the town of Bannu.

The Bannu attack was unusual in that it took place in NWFP, much deeper inside Pakistani territory than previous attacks.

[bigron]

 Pakistanis Fear U.S. Collision with Neighboring Enemies

By Jane Perlez


Sunday, November 23, 2008 "IHT" -- ISLAMABAD,
http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=18063263

Pakistan: A redrawn map of South Asia has been making the rounds among Pakistani elites. It shows their country truncated, reduced to an elongated sliver of land with the big bulk of India to the east, and an enlarged Afghanistan to the west.

That the map was first circulated as a theoretical exercise in some American neoconservative circles matters little here. It has fueled a belief among Pakistanis, including members of the armed forces, that what the United States really wants is the breakup of Pakistan, the only Muslim country with nuclear arms.

"One of the biggest fears of the Pakistani military planners is the collaboration between India and Afghanistan to destroy Pakistan," said a senior Pakistani government official involved in strategic planning, who insisted on anonymity as per diplomatic custom. "Some people feel the United States is colluding in this."

That notion may strike Americans as strange coming from an ally of 50 years. But as the incoming Obama administration tries to coax greater cooperation from Pakistan in the fight against militancy, it can hardly be ignored.

This is a country where years of weak governance have left ample room for conspiracy theories of every kind. But like much such thinking anywhere, what is said frequently reveals the tender spots of a nation's psyche. Educated Pakistanis sometimes say that they are paranoid, but add that they believe they have good reason.

Pakistan, a 61-year-old country marbled by ethnic fault lines, is a collection of just four provinces, which often seem to have little in common. Virtually every one of its borders, drawn almost arbitrarily in the last gasps of the British Empire, is disputed with its neighbors, not least Pakistan's bitter and much larger rival, India.

These facts and the insecurities that flow from them inform many of Pakistan's disagreements with the United States, including differences over the need to rein in militancy in the form of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

The new democratically elected president, Asif Ali Zardari, has visited the United States twice since assuming power three months ago. He has been generous in his praise of the Bush administration. But that stance is criticized at home as fawning and wins him little popularity among a steadfastly anti-American public.

So how will the promise by President-elect Barack Obama for a new start between the United States and Pakistan be received here? How can it be begun?

One possibility could be some effort to ease Pakistani anxieties, even as the United States demands more from Pakistan. That will probably mean a regional approach to what, it is increasingly apparent, are regional problems. There, Pakistani and American interests may coincide.

American military commanders, including General David Petraeus, have started to argue forcefully that the solution to the conflict in Afghanistan, where the American war effort looks increasingly uncertain, must involve a wide array of neighbors.

Obama has said much the same. Several times in his campaign, he laid out the crux of his thinking. Reducing tensions between Pakistan and India would allow Pakistan to focus on the real threat the Qaeda and Taliban militants who are tearing at the very fabric of the country.

"If Pakistan can look towards the east with confidence, it will be less likely to believe its interests are best advanced through cooperation with the Taliban," Obama wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine last year.

But such an approach faces sizable obstacles, the biggest being the conflict over Kashmir. The Himalayan border area has been disputed since the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, and remains divided between them.

Pakistan's army and intelligence agencies have long fought a proxy war with India by sponsoring militant groups to terrorize the Indian-administered part of the territory.

After the 9/11 attacks, Pakistan reined in those militants for a time, but this year the militants have renewed their incursions. Talks between the sides made some progress in recent years but have petered out.

Pakistanis warn that the United States should not appear too eager to mediate. First, they caution, India has always regarded Kashmir as a bilateral question. India, they note, also faces a general election early next year, an inappropriate moment to push such an explosive issue.

Second, some Pakistanis are concerned about the reliability of the United States as a fair mediator. "Given the United States' record on the Palestinian issue, where the Palestinians had to move 10 times backwards and the Israelis moved the goal posts, the same could happen here," said Zubair Khan, a former commerce minister who has watched Kashmir closely.

It was discouraging, Khan said, that the United States ignored the importance of the huge nonviolent protests by Muslims in Kashmir against Indian rule this summer. "Anywhere else, and they would have been hailed as an Orange Revolution," he said, referring to the wave of protests that led to a change in the Ukrainian government in 2004.

Such distrust has been exacerbated by what Pakistanis see as the Bush administration's tilt toward India.

Exhibit A for the Pakistanis is India's nuclear deal with the United States, which allows India to engage in nuclear trade even though it never joined the global Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Pakistan, with its recent history of spreading nuclear technology, received no comparable bargain.

The nuclear deal was devised in Washington to position India as a strategic counterbalance to China. That is how it is seen in Pakistan, too, but with no enthusiasm.

"The United States has changed the whole nuclear order by this deal, and in doing so is containing China, the only friend Pakistan has in the region," said Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani army general.

Further, Pakistan is upset about the advances India is making in Afghanistan, with no checks from the United States, Masood said.

India has recently made big investments in Afghanistan, where Pakistan has been competing for influence. These include a road to the Iranian border that will eventually give India access to the Iranian port of Chabahar, circumventing Pakistan.

India has offered training for Afghanistan's military, given assistance for a new Parliament building in Kabul and has re-opened consulates along the border with Pakistan.

The consulates, the Pakistanis charge, are used by India as cover to lend support to a long-running separatist movement in Baluchistan Province. (Baluchistan was even made an independent state on the theoretical map, which accompanied an article by Ralph Peters titled "Blood Borders: How a Better Middle East Would Look," originally published in Armed Forces Journal.)

Both India and Pakistan in fact have a long and destructive history of, gently or not, putting in the knife. Exhibit A for the Indians is the bombing in July of its embassy in Afghanistan, which American and Indian officials say can be traced to groups linked to Pakistan's spy agency.

If the Obama administration is indeed to convince Pakistanis that militancy, not the Indian Army, presents the gravest threat, it will not be easy.

The commander of American forces in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, got a taste of the challenge this month, when he visited Islamabad and sat down with a group of about 70 members of Pakistan's Parliament at the residence of the United States ambassador, Anne Patterson. Their attitude showed an almost total incomprehension of the reasons for American behavior in the region after Sept. 11, 2001.

"A couple of the questions I got were, 'Why did you Americans come to Afghanistan when it was so peaceful, before you got there?' " McKiernan recalled during an appearance at the Atlantic Council in Washington last week.

"Another one," he said, "was, 'We understand that you've invited a thousand Indian soldiers to serve in Afghanistan by Christmas.' "

There was no truth to the claim, he told the Pakistanis. "We have a lot of work to do," he told his audience in Washington.

Indeed, among ordinary Pakistanis, many still regard Al Qaeda more positively than the United States, polls find. Talk shows here often include arguments that the suicide bombings in Pakistan are payback for the Pakistani fighting an American war.

Some commentators suggest that the United States is actually financing the Taliban. The point is to tie down the Pakistani Army, they say, leaving the way open for the Americans to grab Pakistan's nuclear weapons.

Recently, in the officer's mess in Bajaur, the northern tribal region where the Pakistani Army is tied down fighting the militants, one officer offered his own theory: Osama bin Laden did not exist, he told a visiting journalist.

Rather, he was a creation of the Americans, who needed an excuse to invade Afghanistan and encroach on Pakistan.

[Biggs]

Deadly pilotless aircraft that have helped fuel anti-American feeling in tribal belt
Saeed Shah in Islamabad
guardian.co.uk, Monday November 24 2008 00.01 GMT

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/24/drone-aircraft-pakistan-al-qaida

Pilotless "drone" aircraft deliver a silent, deadly payload that has proved effective in killing militants, but has also killed civilians when intelligence goes awry or in "collateral damage" from a successful strike.

In Pakistan, strikes were infrequent - every few months - until August, when there was a sudden and dramatic increase in the drone attacks. Since then there have been at least 20 strikes - more than one a week - possibly in a stepped-up attempt to kill Osama bin Laden before George Bush leaves office on January 20 next year.

The intensity of the bombardment now has made the drone attacks a highly emotive political issue in Pakistan, feeding anti-Americanism. Pakistan's government and army protest loudly after each strike. And yet it is thought that Islamabad is secretly cooperating with the attacks, providing much of the human intelligence that allows the drones to target safe houses in the tribal area where al-Qaida militants are suspected of hiding out. The country even goes as far as hosting CIA agents in Pakistani army compounds in the tribal area, who call in the strikes.

Drones are operated by pilots who sit thousands of miles away, manning their controls from Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, in the US. The drones send back video images of the area they are flying over, which, together with human intelligence from agents on the ground, allow the pilots to pick out their targets. The Predator drones used by the US are each armed with two Hellfire missiles but are used mostly to spy on activity on the ground.

The drones that hover over the tribal belt are usually operated not by the US military but by the CIA, giving American generals plausible deniability that they are behind the strikes. Such is the perceived success of the clandestine drone programme that there is now a rush to train hundreds more US Air Force pilots to fly the remote-control planes.

Drones were originally deployed in Afghanistan before 9/11, as part of a then secret operation to get Osama bin Laden, and it seems they twice had him in their sights. But it is in Pakistan that the drones have become most notorious, as a seemingly constant presence flying high over the country's wild tribal belt, known as a haven of al-Qaida and Taliban militants. Terrified tribesmen regularly try to shoot them down but the planes fly too high.

The current campaign can be dated back to 2006, when on two separate occasions the drones targeted a village in the Bajaur part of the tribal area, on intelligence that al-Qaida number two Ayman al-Zawahiri was present. But it is thought that they managed to kill dozens of civilians instead, fuelling the tribal uprising against both the Pakistani army and international forces in neighbouring Afghanistan.

The drones have hit major al-Qaida operatives in the tribal area, especially this year, which has seen them kill Abu Laith al-Libi, a charismatic senior military commander, and Abu Khabab al-Masri, the terror group's chemical and biological weapons expert.

[sociostudent]

Deadly pilotless aircraft that have helped fuel anti-American feeling in tribal belt
Saeed Shah in Islamabad
guardian.co.uk, Monday November 24 2008 00.01 GMT

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/24/drone-aircraft-pakistan-al-qaida

Pilotless "drone" aircraft deliver a silent, deadly payload that has proved effective in killing militants, but has also killed civilians when intelligence goes awry or in "collateral damage" from a successful strike.

In Pakistan, strikes were infrequent - every few months - until August, when there was a sudden and dramatic increase in the drone attacks. Since then there have been at least 20 strikes - more than one a week - possibly in a stepped-up attempt to kill Osama bin Laden before George Bush leaves office on January 20 next year.

The intensity of the bombardment now has made the drone attacks a highly emotive political issue in Pakistan, feeding anti-Americanism. Pakistan's government and army protest loudly after each strike. And yet it is thought that Islamabad is secretly cooperating with the attacks, providing much of the human intelligence that allows the drones to target safe houses in the tribal area where al-Qaida militants are suspected of hiding out. The country even goes as far as hosting CIA agents in Pakistani army compounds in the tribal area, who call in the strikes.

Drones are operated by pilots who sit thousands of miles away, manning their controls from Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, in the US. The drones send back video images of the area they are flying over, which, together with human intelligence from agents on the ground, allow the pilots to pick out their targets. The Predator drones used by the US are each armed with two Hellfire missiles but are used mostly to spy on activity on the ground.

The drones that hover over the tribal belt are usually operated not by the US military but by the CIA, giving American generals plausible deniability that they are behind the strikes. Such is the perceived success of the clandestine drone programme that there is now a rush to train hundreds more US Air Force pilots to fly the remote-control planes.

Drones were originally deployed in Afghanistan before 9/11, as part of a then secret operation to get Osama bin Laden, and it seems they twice had him in their sights. But it is in Pakistan that the drones have become most notorious, as a seemingly constant presence flying high over the country's wild tribal belt, known as a haven of al-Qaida and Taliban militants. Terrified tribesmen regularly try to shoot them down but the planes fly too high.

The current campaign can be dated back to 2006, when on two separate occasions the drones targeted a village in the Bajaur part of the tribal area, on intelligence that al-Qaida number two Ayman al-Zawahiri was present. But it is thought that they managed to kill dozens of civilians instead, fuelling the tribal uprising against both the Pakistani army and international forces in neighbouring Afghanistan.

The drones have hit major al-Qaida operatives in the tribal area, especially this year, which has seen them kill Abu Laith al-Libi, a charismatic senior military commander, and Abu Khabab al-Masri, the terror group's chemical and biological weapons expert.

So, do you guys think they'll blame the next terror attack on pakistan this time instead of iran?

[bigron]

Are India and Afghanistan colluding to destroy Pakistan?

News Desk
The Nation (Pakistan)
Publication Date: 24-11-2008 
http://www.asianewsnet.net/news.php?id=2808&sec=1
 


An article in The New York Times says that there is an “increasing belief” among Pakistanis, including members of the armed forces, that what the US really wants is the breakup of Pakistan, the only Muslim country with nuclear arms.

“One of the biggest fears of the Pakistani military planners is the collaboration between India and Afghanistan to destroy Pakistan,” an unnamed senior Pakistani government official involved in strategic planning, was quoted by the newspaper as saying. “Some people feel the United States is colluding in this.”

The Times’ correspondent in Islamabad, Jane Perlez, says the belief about US complicity was fuelled by a redrawn map of South Asia, which shows Pakistan truncated, reduced to an elongated sliver of land with the big bulk of India to the east, and an enlarged Afghanistan to the west. That the map, which is making the rounds among Pakistani elites, was first circulated as a theoretical exercise in some American neo-conservative circles.

 
“This is a country where years of weak governance have left ample room for conspiracy theories of every kind. But like much such thinking anywhere, what is said frequently reveals the tender spots of a nation’s psyche. Educated Pakistanis sometimes say that they are paranoid, but add that they believe they have good reason, she wrote under the headline: 'Ringed by Foes, Pakistanis Fear the US, Too'.

The dispatch claims that virtually all of Pakistan’s borders, drawn almost arbitrarily in the last gasps of the British Empire, is disputed with its neighbours, not least Pakistan’s bitter and much larger rival, India. “These facts and the insecurities that flow from them inform many of Pakistan’s disagreements with the United States, including differences over the need to rein in militancy in the form of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, it said.

Correspondent Perlez wrote, “The new democratically elected President Asif Ali Zardari has visited the United States twice since assuming power three months ago. He has been generous in his praise of the Bush administration. But that stance is criticised at home as fawning and wins him little popularity among a steadfastly anti-American public.

“So how will the promise by President-elect Barack Obama for a new start between the United States and Pakistan be received here? How can it be begun?

“One possibility could be some effort to ease Pakistani anxieties, even as the United States demands more from Pakistan. That will probably mean a regional approach to what, it is increasingly apparent, are regional problems. There, Pakistani and American interests may coincide.

“American military commanders, including general David H Petraeus, have started to argue forcefully that the solution to the conflict in Afghanistan, where the American war effort looks increasingly uncertain, must involve a wide array of neighbours.

"Mr Obama has said much the same. Several times in his campaign, he laid out the crux of his thinking. Reducing tensions between Pakistan and India would allow Pakistan to focus on the real threat--the al-Qaeda and Taliban militants who are tearing at the very fabric of the country."

"If Pakistan can look towards the east with confidence, it will be less likely to believe its interests are best advanced through cooperation with the Taliban,” Obama wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine last year.

“But such an approach faces sizable obstacles, the biggest being the conflict over Kashmir.”

But the dispatch said: “Pakistanis warn that the United States should not appear too eager to mediate. First, they caution, India has always regarded Kashmir as a bilateral question. India, they note, also faces a general election early next year, an inappropriate moment to push such an explosive issue. “Second, some Pakistanis are concerned about the reliability of the United States as a fair mediator.”

Zubair Khan, a former commerce minister who has watched Kashmir closely, was quoted as saying, “Given the United States’ record on the Palestinian issue, where the Palestinians had to move 10 times backwards and the Israelis moved the goal posts, the same could happen here.”

It was discouraging, Zubair Khan said, that the United States ignored the importance of the huge non-violent protests by Muslims in Kashmir against Indian rule this summer. “Anywhere else, and they would have been hailed as an Orange Revolution,” he said, referring to the wave of protests that led to a change in the Ukrainian government in 2004. A Controversial Imagining of Borders such distrust has been exacerbated by what Pakistanis see as the Bush administration’s tilt toward India, The Times said, adding: “Exhibit A for the Pakistanis is India’s nuclear deal with the United States, which allows India to engage in nuclear trade even though it never joined the global Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Pakistan, with its recent history of spreading nuclear technology, received no comparable bargain.

“The nuclear deal was devised in Washington to position India as a strategic counterbalance to China. That is how it is seen in Pakistan, too, but with no enthusiasm.”

“The United States has changed the whole nuclear order by this deal, and in doing so is containing China, the only friend Pakistan has in the region,” Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani Army general, was quoted as saying. Further, Pakistan is upset about the advances India is making in Afghanistan, with no checks from the United States, Masood said.

The Times said India has recently made big investments in Afghanistan, where Pakistan has been competing for influence. These include a road to the Iranian border that will eventually give India access to the Iranian port of Chabahar, circumventing Pakistan. India has offered training for Afghanistan’s military, given assistance for a new Parliament building in Kabul and has re-opened consulates along the border with Pakistan, it said.

The consulates, the Pakistanis charge, are used by India as cover to lend support to a long-running separatist movement in Balochistan. Balochistan was even made an independent state on the theoretical map, which accompanied an article by Ralph Peters titled “Blood Borders: How a Better Middle East Would Look,” originally published in Armed Forces Journal.

“Both India and Pakistan in fact have a long and destructive history of, gently or not, putting in the knife. Exhibit A for the Indians is the bombing in July of its embassy in Afghanistan, which American and Indian officials say can be traced to groups linked to Pakistan’s spy agency,” correspondent Perlez wrote. “If the Obama administration is indeed to convince Pakistanis that militancy, not the Indian Army, presents the gravest threat, it will not be easy.”

The commander of American forces in Afghanistan, general David D McKiernan, got a taste of the challenge this month, when he visited Islamabad and sat down with a group of about 70 members of Pakistan’s Parliament at the residence of the US Ambassador Anne W Patterson.

Their attitude showed an almost total incomprehension of the reasons for American behaviour in the region after Sept 11, 2001.

“A couple of the questions I got were, ‘Why did you Americans come to Afghanistan when it was so peaceful before you got there?’” McKiernan recalled during an appearance at the Atlantic Council in Washington last week. “We have a lot of work to do,” he told his audience in Washington.

Indeed, among ordinary Pakistanis, many still regard al-Qaeda more positively than the United States, polls find. Talk shows here often include arguments that the suicide bombings in Pakistan are payback for the Pakistani Army fighting an American war.

Some commentators suggest that the United States is actually financing the Taliban. The point is to tie down the Pakistani Army, they say, leaving the way open for the Americans to grab Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.



 

[Optimus]

Pakistan can stop drone raids
http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/news/news.php?article=15195
25-11-2008


KARACHI, (Dawn): Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Tanvir Mahmood Ahmed said on Tuesday that Pakistan Air Force (PAF) is fully capable to stop drones’ flights and missile strikes.

He said that it was up to the government to decide whether it wanted to benefit from PAF capabilities and deter the aggressors violating territorial integrity of the country.

Air Chief Marshal made these remarks while speaking to newsmen during IDEAS-2008 exhibition at the Expo Center here.

Tanvir Mahmood Ahmed said that most of the fighter jets of PAF would complete their life span over the next few years after which JF-17 fighter jets (co-developed by China) would be phased in to replace the aging fleet.

“The fighter jets of Pakistan Air Force are fully capable to carry all types of warheads, Air Chief added.

[Optimus]

Pakistan seeks to counter US strikes
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=76612&sectionid=351020401
Wed, 26 Nov 2008 14:51:35 GMT
 

Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani says Islamabad is considering a number of options to stop US missiles attacks on targets inside Pakistan.

These options would be considered by newly formed parliamentary committee on national security, the prime minister said in an interview with Geo TV late on Tuesday.

Gilani's remarks came hours after the chief of Pakistan Air Force (PAF), Air Marshal Tanvir Mahmood Ahmad, told reporters in port city of Karachi that the PAF was capable of stopping drone attacks inside Pakistan.

Defense Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar said on Tuesday that Pakistan was trying to acquire surface-to-air missile technology to counter US drone attacks on the tribal belt bordering Afghanistan.

This is while Federal Defense Production Minister Abdul Qayyum Khan Jatoi had said that Pakistani scientists were working to develop a sophisticated system to hit highflying spy planes within a year.

"Concerted efforts are underway to enhance the capacity to target the intruding planes," he had said.

However, Federal Minister and the Chairman of the National Security Committee Mian Raza Rabbani said on Saturday the option of taking the matter to the UN was still on the table.
 
The top officials' remarks come amid growing tensions between Islamabad and Washington over US missile strikes on suspected militant targets in Pakistan's northwestern tribal region along the Afghan border.

In recent weeks, more than 130 people among them suspected militants and civilians have been killed in the tribal belt by US missile attacks.

The issue has become extremely sensitive in Pakistan where anti-American sentiment is rising.