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

[bigron]

Thursday, March 26, 2009
15:25 Mecca time, 12:25 GMT   
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/03/200932653113578946.html

 
 
Many dead in Pakistan suicide blast 


 
Victims of the attack in Jandola receive medical treatment in a hospital in Dera Ismail Khan [EPA]
 

 
At least 11 people have been killed in a suicide-bomb attack at a restaurant in northwest Pakistan, intelligence officials say.

About two dozen people opposed to Baitullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban leader, were in the restaurant when the suicide bomber struck on Thursday, they said.

Several other people were wounded in the attack, which tookplace in the Jandola district of South Waziristan.

The intelligence officials said those killed were loyal to Turkistan Bittani, a pro-government Pakistani tribal leader.

The US state department on Wednesday authorised a reward of up to $5m for information leading to the location, arrest, or conviction of Mehsud.

The state department website said Mehsud posed a threat to US troops in Afghanistan and has facilitated cross-border attacks from Pakistan.

Mehsud is believed to be in the tribal areas of South Waziristan.

'Drone attacks'

Meanwhile, in the adjoining region of North Waziristan, intelligence officials said four people were killed after a suspected US drone aircraft fired two missiles into a house outside the town of Mir Ali.

"Two missiles fired from a suspected US drone hit the compound of a local pro-militant tribal elder Malik Gulab Khan, killing four residents," a local security official told the AFP news agency.

Other Pakistani officials, however, denied there had been an attack.

"There was no missile strike," said Habibullah Khan, an administration official in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, of which North Waziristan is a part.

Residents of Mir Ali said they had heard an explosion in a house, but they had no details about possible casualties.

A missile believed to have been launched by an unmanned US drone killed at least seven suspected pro-Taliban fighters in South Waziristan on Wednesday, intelligence officials and Taliban sources said.

Expanded programme

The reported raids came as a US newspaper said that Washington was planning further drone attacks in Pakistan.

The drone programme, which the US administration reportedly views as "a success", is under evaluation as part of a review of the US military strategy in Pakistan and Afghanistan, The Wall Street Journal said.


US intelligence officials are said to be drawing up a fresh list of drone targets [Reuters]


Intelligence officials from the US and Pakistan are composing a "fresh list of terrorist targets for drone strikes along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border", the daily said citing officials involved.

Adjustments could me made to "change the pace and size of the programme, and make some technical refinements in an effort to hit targets faster", the report said.
 
Accounts from Pakistani officials, residents and fighters say around 30 attacks have killed more than 300 people since August 2008.

The Pakistani government has protested to Washington that drone strikes violate its territorial sovereignty, saying that the attacks are counterproductive as the civilian casualties they often inflict have boosted support for fighters in the area.

The US in turn accuses Pakistan of not doing enough to crack down on fighters who cross the border to attack US and Nato troops in Afghanistan.

'ISI-Taliban nexus'

In a related development, The New York Times, citing American, Pakistani and other security officials, reported on Thursday that operatives in Pakistan's military intelligence agency are aiding the Taliban’s campaign in southern Afghanistan.

"The support consists of money, military supplies and strategic planning guidance to Taliban commanders," the newspaper said.

"There is even evidence that ISI [Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence] operatives meet regularly with Taliban commanders to discuss whether to intensify or scale back violence before the Afghan elections."

Hundreds of Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters sought refuge in Pakistan's northwest tribal region after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan toppled the Taliban government in late 2001.
 
 Source: Agencies 
 
 
 
 
 

[bigron]

Friday, March 27, 2009
15:34 Mecca time, 12:34 GMT   
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/03/2009327101924713636.html

 
Deadly blast in Pakistan mosque 


 
The attack left at least 50 people dead and injured dozens who had gathered for Friday prayers [AFP]

 
At least 50 people have been killed in a mosque in northwestern Pakistan after a suicide bomber blew himself up during Friday prayers.

The attack destroyed the mosque in the village of Bagarin in Khyber Agency, Al Jazeera's Kamal Hyder said.

Up to 250 people were believed to be praying at the time of the blast.

"At least 50 bodies have been dug out and another 100 people are reportedly wounded in the attack," Hyder said.

"Hundreds of people have now arrived to see the aftermath. There is still some confusion as to how a lone suicide bomber could have had such devastating effect, giving rise to suspicion that a bomb may have been placed there."

He called it the deadliest attack this year.

Tariq Hayat Khan, the most senior administrator in the Khyber region, told reporters the death toll could rise, perhaps to 70.

About 70 wounded had been taken to hospitals, he said.
   
"It was a suicide attack. The bomber was standing in the mosque. It's a two-storey building and it has collapsed," he said.

Police were digging in the rubble for any survivors, Bakhtiar Khan, a local government official, said.

'Enemies of Pakistan'

Khan accused pro-Taliban fighters of carrying out the bombing after a recent offensive aimed in part at protecting a supply route for Nato and US troops operating in Afghanistan.

"These infidels had warned that they will take revenge"

Tariq Hayat,
Khyber tribal region administrator
 
"Residents of this area had co-operated and helped us a lot. These infidels had warned that they will take revenge," Khan said.

"They are the enemy of Pakistan. They are the enemy of Islam."

Zeina Khodr, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Islamabad, said many of those killed were members of the security forces.

The mosque is near a police checkpoint and "people in that checkpoint usually pray in this mosque", she said.

"But the political agents are saying that, and I quote, 'no Muslim could carry out such a crime suggesting that foreign hands were responsible'."

Rising violence in Pakistan's northwest is fuelling doubts about the country's ability to counter pro-Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters blamed for attacks there, and across the border in neighbouring Afghanistan.
 
 Source: Al Jazeera and agencies 
 
 
 
 
 

[bigron]

Saturday, March 28, 2009
15:51 Mecca time, 12:51 GMT   
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/03/200932863124562413.html
 
Nato supplies terminal attacked
 
 
A large number of security personnel died in Friday's suicide attack in Pakistan's Khyber Agency [AFP]

 
Dozens of fighters have fired rockets at a transport terminal in northwest Pakistan that is used to ship supplies to Nato soldiers based in Afghanistan, police say.

At least 12 shipping containers were damaged in the attack early on Saturday at the Farhad terminal in Peshawar, capital of the North West Frontier Province, Zahur Khan, a local police official, said.

He said police opened fire at the fighters but they managed to flee.

Afghan-based US and Nato forces get up to 75 per cent of their supplies via routes that pass through Pakistan's Khyber tribal region and a southwestern Chaman border crossing - areas where Taliban fighters are believed to be operating.

In nearby Mohmand agency, meanwhile, security forces launched a search operation against pro-Taliban fighters and shelled their positions at several places, a security official said.

Syed Ahmed Jan said on Saturday that a night curfew was imposed in Mohmand before the launch of the ground operation, in which no casualties have yet been reported.

Mosque bombing

The attack on the Peshawar transport terminal came less than a day after a suicide bomber blew up in a mosque in Jamrud in the nearby Khyber agency, killing 48 people and wounding scores more.

Pro-Taliban fighters were the main suspects, apparently to avenge recent military operations in the area aimed at protecting the Nato supply route, authorities said.

The route passes in front of the mosque, where about 200 worshippers were present at the time of the blast.

Relatives and residents buried the bombing's victims on Saturday, local officials and witnesses said.

Still parked near the mosque are several lorries whose drivers and helpers might have stopped to offer prayers and died in the blast, Bakhtiar Mohmand, a local administration official, told the AFP news agency on Saturday.

"The whole town is in mourning," he said, referring to the funerals under way.

Suspects in custody

Pakistani authorities are reported to be holding two suspects in connection with the attack.

Tariq Hayat, the most senior administrator of Khyber, said 48 bodies were found in the Jamrud mosque's rubble, and he predicted the death toll would likely rise.

More than 100 people were wounded, medical officials said.

 
 
Zeina Khodr, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Islamabad, said many of those killed were members of the security forces.

The mosque is near a police checkpoint and "people in that checkpoint usually pray in this mosque", she said.

Asif Ali Zardari, the Pakistani president, and Yousuf Raza Gilani, the prime minister, both  "strongly condemned the suicide attack".

They vowed that the perpetrators would be brought to justice, government statements said.
 
 Source: Al Jazeera and agencies 
 
 

[Biggs]

Pakistan army raid 'kills rebels'
 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7969812.stm

Pakistan's army says troops backed by artillery and helicopter gunships have killed 26 militants in an attack near the Afghan border.

The army said the battle took place in Mohmand, North-West Frontier Province, said to be a hub for Taleban militants.

Earlier, Pakistan's president said his country would not allow use of its soil for terrorist activity.

It came after the US said elements in Pakistan's ISI military intelligence were still supporting the Taleban.

Adm Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a CNN interview on Friday night the ISI had links with militants on both Pakistan's borders with Afghanistan and India.

Earlier on Saturday, the Taleban destroyed 12 parked trucks - laden with supplies for Nato personnel in Afghanistan - near the city of Peshawar, capital of North-West Frontier Province.

During a heavy battle with police, fighters armed with rockets targeted the Farhad transport terminal - the latest in a series of attacks on goods bound for foreign forces over the border.

[bigron]

Obama escalates war in Central Asia


World Socialist Web Site editorial board

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m53005&hd=&size=1&l=e

30 March 2009

The new military strategy announced by President Barack Obama in Afghanistan marks a major escalation of the war in Afghanistan and the official transformation of Pakistan into a theater of US military action.

Prepared behind the backs of the American people and with contempt for anti-war opinion expressed in the presidential election, Obama's plan calls for replicating in Afghanistan Bush's military "surge" in Iraq and launching military strikes at will in Pakistan. It confirms that Obama's candidacy was not a move towards peace, but the expression of a struggle inside the American ruling elite over the strategic priorities of US imperialism. Obama served as the front man for those who believed the Pentagon had focused too much attention on Iraq and that the main target of military violence should be Central Asia.

Obama is preparing a bloody pacification campaign in Pakistan and Afghanistan, aiming to exterminate those sections of their populations that interfere with US control of the area. There will be a heavy price paid by the American people as well, in thousands of military casualties, the squandering of hundreds of billions of dollars, and an increased risk of terrorist attacks on Americans, as Washington reinforces the widely held perception that it is waging war on the Islamic world.

Pakistan, a nominal US ally, is threatened with reduction to colonial status. A country with 173 million inhabitants and a nuclear-equipped military, Pakistan is desperately poor and riven by regional and ethnic divisions. An escalation of US attacks, which have already killed hundreds of Pakistanis living in tribal regions bordering Afghanistan, will further enrage Pakistani public opinion, antagonize sections of the Pakistani army and push the country towards civil war, with incalculable consequences in the region.

Those who echo the New York Times' description of Obama's plan as a "narrowing" of the war, because it abandons "Mr. Bush's vague talk of representative democracy in Afghanistan," are only trying to deceive the public.

Not only are these claims belied by the expanding scope of US military action, they are directly contradicted by blunter representatives of US imperialism. Asked on a Fox Network television interview yesterday about the difference between Bush's "war on terror" and Obama's "campaign against extremism," Defense Secretary Robert Gates replied, "I think that's people looking for differences where there are none." Gates added that the US would deploy 68,000 US troops to Afghanistan, rather than the 59,000 announced thus far by Obama.

Obama's escalation is a unilateral decision by Washington, despite favorable statements from European governments. Britain has proposed contributing 1,700 more troops and several other countries may send trainers for Afghan police. However, US officials do not expect NATO allies to contribute significant numbers of troops and they are setting up a separate American military command for operations in southern Afghanistan.

The reasons given by Obama for the escalation are half-truths and lies—above all, the claim that it is a response to the threat of terrorism. This war is a continuation of the struggle for domination of oil-rich Central Asia, the stakes of which—pipeline routes, control of international commerce, military advantage—have motivated all of the US wars of the last 25 years. One could easily quote countless analyses of think tanks and US foreign policy experts establishing the strategic significance for US imperialism of this region—the crossroads between China, Russia, the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East.

The region has long been a central preoccupation of the American ruling class. This year marks the 30th anniversary of Washington's first major intervention in Afghanistan—its 1979 decision to destabilize a Soviet-backed regime in Kabul with the aim of provoking a Soviet invasion. After the Kremlin invaded, Washington financed and armed anti-Soviet mujahedin commanders and rural notables, from whom today's Afghan ruling elite of narco-warlords emerged.

In his interview on "Fox News Sunday," Gates responded to a question about Pakistani intelligence links to anti-US insurgent forces in Afghanistan by noting his own personal involvement in the 1980s in "helping make sure that some of those same groups got weapons from our safe haven in Pakistan."

After the collapse of the USSR, the US continued its intrigues in the region, initially backing the Taliban in the 1990s and then invading Afghanistan to overthrow them after the September 11 attacks.

As with every previous war launched by Washington, Obama's intervention only sets into motion developments that will generate further, even more dangerous conflicts. Russia will view US escalation in Afghanistan with alarm. Building US supply lines to Afghanistan that avoid the war zones in Pakistan will mean increasing US influence in areas where Russia has powerful strategic interests: the Caucasus, ex-Soviet Central Asia, and possibly Iran. This comes only a few months after Washington nearly provoked a war by supporting an attack by its puppet regime in Georgia on Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia.

The longstanding enmity between Muslim Pakistan and majority-Hindu India notwithstanding, Pakistan's descent towards chaos and civil war will pose serious threats to India. US missile strikes will further roil the Indo-Pakistani border conflict in Kashmir, and they will inflame right-wing Muslim opinion which the Pakistani state mobilizes to aid guerillas in Indian Kashmir. Besides threatening the vulnerable position of India's Muslim minority, this brings with it the risk of a fourth Indo-Pakistani war, this time between two nuclear-armed states.

As US-China tensions mount over China's reluctance to keep funding US deficits and propping up the dollar, an American intervention in Pakistan—China's main ally in the Indian subcontinent—will intensify the risk of an American confrontation with China.

Obama's plan exposes the connection between US militarism and the decayed state of American democracy. Overwhelming popular opposition to war is routinely ignored and violated. Obama's plan was adopted without congressional authorization or public debate.

Its release was timed to avoid public attention and scrutiny. Just two days before, Obama held a prime time news conference where the issue of Afghanistan was not raised. He chose to announce a major escalation of the war at a 9:30 AM no-questions-asked press conference, when most of the population was at work and unable to watch. As Obama spoke, he was flanked by Gates and other Bush administration holdovers, and he noted the presence of military satraps, think-tank operatives and other professional war criminals.

This militarization of the office of the presidency expresses malignant tendencies in US social life. Commenting ten years ago on the US bombing of Serbia, the World Socialist Web Site wrote: "The widening social chasm within American society is fast approaching—if it has not already been reached—the point at which even the pretense of a broad-based social consensus, rooted in core democratic values, cannot be maintained. [...] The specific character of the wealth-generating process—that is, enrichment through rising share values—quite naturally produces social and political attitudes that are of a deeply anti-working class and pro-imperialist character." [See "After the Slaughter: Political Lessons of the Balkan War,"]

The subsequent explosion of US militarism under Bush and the outbreak of a major economic crisis last year only confirm this analysis. With the US occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and now Obama's escalation, war has become an indispensable tool of US foreign policy as well as a means of suppressing class conflict at home and ensuring the profitability of American corporations. Obama's Central Asian policy, formulated on behalf of powerful oil and gas interests, is the outer face of a domestic policy centered around trillion-dollar handouts to Wall Street and the super-rich.

Obama's policies demonstrate that his election campaign for "change" was a political fraud, aimed at setting the stage for a tactical shift in the violent assertion of US imperialist interests. War and social reaction cannot be opposed through appeals to the Democratic Party, but only through the mobilization of the working class in struggle against capitalism.

World Socialist Web Site editorial board



 

[Biggs]

Lahore police academy recaptured

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7971993.stm


Pakistani security forces have recaptured a police academy after eight hours of clashes with gunmen who seized the complex during a morning drill.

Military helicopters opened fire on the compound near Lahore as troops entered to confront grenade-throwing militants.

Pakistan's Interior Ministry said 18 people had been killed, including eight policemen and eight militants. Other reports put the death toll higher.

Nearly 100 people have been injured, the ministry adds.

The assault comes less than a month after gunmen attacked the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore, killing six policemen. Those gunmen escaped.

Chaotic scenes

The siege at the Manawan police training school on the outskirts of Lahore ended at around 1600 local time (1100GMT) after sustained heavy gunfire lasting 10-15 minutes.
   Jill McGivering reports from outside the academy near Lahore


This was a well-organised attack that will raise concern about the sophistication of the group behind it.

Pakistan is facing a broad insurgency from groups linked to al-Qaeda, the Afghan Taleban and the Pakistani Taleban, as well as from religious extremists and criminals taking advantage of the situation.

It is unclear who was responsible for this attack, but its co-ordinated nature could point to one of the more international groups.

'I saw the attackers'
How attack started
In pictures: Lahore siege
Analysis: Why attack Lahore?


Military helicopters swooped low, firing directly into the training school.

As paramilitary forces tried to force their way into the main building, the gunmen retaliated by throwing grenades.

Roads around the site were clogged with vehicles and people.

Paramilitary troops were seen celebrating on the roof of the compound after the siege had ended.

The BBC's Damian Grammaticas, who has since been into the police academy, said rescue teams with masks were carrying out bodies under white sheets.

He described the scene there as chaotic, with broken glass, bullet casings and pieces of human flesh scattered over the floor.

'Planned attack'

The gunmen attacked from four sides, while trainee police were doing their morning drill on the academy's parade ground, officials and witnesses said.

They threw grenades before opening fire, and at least some of the gunmen were said to be disguised in police uniforms.

Elite troops were called in to retake the area.   MAJOR PAKISTAN ATTACKS
27 March 09: Suicide bomber demolishes crowded mosque near the north-western town of Jamrud, killing dozens.
3 March 09: Six policemen and a driver killed, and several cricketers injured, in ambush on the Sri Lanka cricket team in central Lahore
20 Sept 08: 54 die in an attack on the Marriott hotel in Islamabad
6 Sept 08: Suicide car bombing kills 35 and wounds 80 at a police checkpoint in Peshawar
Aug 08: Twin suicide bombings at gates of a weapons factory in town of Wah leave 67 dead
March 08: Suicide bombs hit police headquarters and suburban house in Lahore, killing 24


Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik increased the death toll from 14 to 18, with a further four militants confirmed dead.

Two civilians had died, along with eight policemen and eight militants, and 95 people had been injured, he said.

The military has put the death toll at 27.

At least two of the attackers are believed to have blown themselves up.

Mr Malik called the assault a "planned, organised, terrorist attack".

"This shows the extent to which the enemies of our country can go," he told the local Geo TV station.

But he added: "It is wrong to say that law and order has collapsed in Pakistan.

"We are very near to [tracing] the attackers involved in this."

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but it comes days after US President Barack Obama pledged to put Pakistan, along with Afghanistan, at the heart of his fight against al-Qaeda militants.

He said "al-Qaeda and its extremist allies are a cancer that risks killing Pakistan from within."

US officials have pledged to help Pakistan target so-called "safe havens" for militants in Pakistan's north-west tribal region bordering Afghanistan.

[bigron]

Tuesday, March 31, 2009
17:57 Mecca time, 14:57 GMT   
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/03/200933182132428394.html

 
Pakistan Taliban claims Lahore raid 


Mourners said prayers on Tuesday for thosekilled in the attack [AFP]
 
The leader of Pakistan's Taliban has claimed responsibility for an attack on a police academy in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore.

Baitullah Mehsud said on Tuesday that his group carried out the attack, which left at least eight policemen dead, and vowed to launch an attack on Washington DC, in the US.

"Soon we will launch an attack in Washington that will amaze everyone in the world," The Associated Press reported Mehsud as saying.

A report from the Reuters news agency quoted Mehsud as saying: "We wholeheartedly take responsibility for this [the Lahore] attack and will carry out more such attacks in future."

He said the attack on Monday was "revenge for the [suspected US] drone attacks in Pakistan".

Police attacked

At least 100 people were injured in the Lahore attack, which only came to and end when security forces arrived to overpower the fighters.

+ + +

In depth :

 Video: Lahore siege shows Pakistan's vulnerability:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/03/200933015304913200.html

 Timeline: Pakistan under attack:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2008/07/200876171657463104.html

 Your Views: Pakistan's security situation:
http://english.aljazeera.net/your_views/centrals.asia/200933074743137615.html

+ + +
 
Security officials said at least four of the attackers were killed and at least three were seized.

Rehman Malik, Pakistan's interior minister, said that the fighters involved in the attack came from the southern province of Waziristan, which is the stronghold of Pakistan's Taliban and said to be a sanctuary for al-Qaeda, and that one of them men captured was an Afghan.

Rashid Qureshi, a Pakistan security analyst based in Islamabad, said that the attack had reflected badly on Pakistan's government.

"This is definitely a big embarrassment for the government and also for our intelligence agencies and security apparatus that ... the capital of the largest and most prosperous province of Pakistan [the Punjab] was held hostage for eight hours and what was attacked was a law enforcement agency," he told Al Jazeera.

Taliban forces

Mehsud, who has a $5m bounty on his head from the US,  leads the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or Movement of Taliban Pakistan, a loose umbrella group of factions which has carried out attacks across the country.

The US says the group sends fighters across the border to fight Western forces in Afghanistan.

Al Jazeera's Kamal Hyder, reporting from Lahore, said: "Pakistan has been saying all along that the problems within its territory are a direct consequence from the escalation of the war in Afghanistan where Nato and US fores say they face an up hill task.

"Whenever there is conflict in Afghanistan, it has a direct consequence on Pakistan because of the continuity of the tribes living on both sides of the border."

Funeral prayers were said for the dead on Tuesday, with security forces deployed on rooftops around the Lahore compound to ensure security.

The Lahore attack came less than a month after a dozen gunmen attacked Sri Lanka's cricket team in the city, killing six police guards and a bus driver.

Meanwhile, Pakistan's supreme court suspsended a court ban on Tuesday barring Nawaz Sharif, the leader of Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N), and his brother Shahbaz from holding elected office and restored their government in Punjab.

A statement released from the office of Yousaf Raza Gilani, Pakistan's prime minister, said he "hoped that with today's decision, all political forces in the country would work towards greater political reconciliation."

 
 
 Source: Al Jazeera and agencies 
 
 

[bigron]

The best way to fight terrorism 

31/03/2009 11:55:00 PM GMT
http://aljazeera.com/news/articles/39/The_best_way_to_fight_terrorism.html
 
 Terrorism has come to Pakistan, not just in its northwest provinces.


(Reuters) Paramilitary soldiers arrive to a police training centre after it was attacked by militants in Lahore


The final details of the casualties in yesterday’s attack on the Manawan police training school near Lahore are still awaited. However, one thing is already crystal clear: Terrorism has come to Pakistan, not just in its northwest provinces nor in spectacular attacks such as that on the Sri Lankan cricket team or last year’s assault on Islamabad’s Hyatt Hotel. The terrorists, who may well also have been responsible for the ambush on the visiting cricketers, yesterday made their purpose plain. Every Pakistani now finds himself at war with a great evil.

The response from outside defense analysts to yesterday’s events has been largely negative. The prediction is that Pakistan is too weak to resist a determined assault by Al-Qaeda bigots. One observer said that the country’s intelligence service, the ISI was too compromised by its past close association with the Taleban to be able to act decisively in the all-important intelligence campaign against terror cells. Another predicted that the political system was too weak, too riven by discord, for it to be able to survive a concerted assault by the men of violence. A further intervention by the armed forces, he speculated, might be generally welcome if it restored security.

The problem is that a return of military rule is almost certain not to stop the terrorists in their tracks. Draconian security measures might in the short term make life more difficult for them, but in the longer term it would be playing into their hands, because it would be undermining the constitutional democracy on which Pakistan is built. And anything that undermines this pluralism is welcome to the men of violence. They are also hoping to make life so dangerous for ordinary decent citizens, that those that can will choose to leave the country, robbing it of its professional classes, of its doctors, teachers and lawyers and leaving the poor to bear the brunt of a savage terror campaign.

And there is doubtless another key strand to the terrorists’ thinking. Pakistan could become the first nuclear power to suffer social and security breakdown. In those circumstances, the outside world, horrified at the possibility of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of Al-Qaeda or some other groups, would seek one way or another, to intervene. Yet, however that intervention was structured, even under UN auspices, it would be a disaster. The solution to Pakistan’s growing tide of problems has to rest in Pakistan’s hands alone, albeit with the unstinting support of the outside world.

The prerequisite for the fight-back against terror is the recognition by the country’s rival politicians and just as importantly by their sometimes almost fanatical followers, that now is not the time for fundamental political division. Nawaz Sharif’s opposition Muslim League and President Asif Ali Zardari’s ruling Pakistan People’s Party must recognize the futility of further bickering and power maneuvers. The terrorists can be beaten but only by the united effort of all Pakistanis regardless of party allegiance. This is the only way to root out the wickedness that has now shown itself to be in their midst.
 





-- Arab News

 

[bigron]

Wednesday, April 01, 2009
12:44 Mecca time, 09:44 GMT   
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA
 http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/04/20094174224928544.html

 
'US drone' in deadly Pakistan raid 
 
 

 
At least 10 people have been killed in an air raid by a suspected US drone on a village in northwest Pakistan, local officials say.

Al Jazeera's Kamal Hyder, reporting from Islamabad, said that two missiles struck a compound in the Orakzai region west of Peshawar, on Wednesday.

The missiles are thought to have hit a compound that belongs to Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistan Taliban.

Mehsud had claimed responsibility for Monday's attack on a police academy in Lahore in which at least 12 people where shot dead.

"Everybody here will now be bracing for some sort of reprisal," Hyder said.

"The attack hit a very strategic area because it is at the confluence of three tribal agencies: Khyber, Orakzai and Kurram.

"We are told that up to a dozen people have been wounded," he said.

Since last year, more than 30 US strikes have killed at least 300 people, including al-Qaeda members, according to reports from officials in Pakistan.

'Disturbing development'

"If you look at the events of the past few months, it seems now pretty clear that the Obama administration is hell-bent upon using the drone attacks as a way of achieving its objectives," Hyder said.

"This is indeed a disturbing development that will lead to an escalation of violence in the country"

Kamal Hyder, Islamabad correspondent
 
"There has been an escalation in those drone attacks much more than what was happening during the Bush administration ... that is of course leading to some trouble.

"[This is because] every time there is an attack within the tribal territory from drones, the fighters who are opposed to the Americans are then using the Pakistani forces, who they say are allied with the Americans, as legitimate targets.

"So this is indeed a disturbing development that will lead to an escalation of violence in the country and it also shows a clear policy of the Obama administration that it wants to continue with its drone attacks inside the Pakistani territory," he said.
 
 Source: Al Jazeera and agencies 
 
 

[Biggs]

Beware Those Treacherous Afpakis

By Eric Margolis

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22329.htm

April 01, 2009 "Lew Rockwell" -- -President Barack Obama has now taken full ownership of the Afghanistan War. Gone are Washington’s pretenses that a western "coalition" was waging this conflict. Gone, too, is the comic book term, "war on terrorism," replaced by the Orwellian sobriquet, "overseas contingency operations."

Obama’s announcement last week of deeper US involvement in Afghanistan and Pakistan – now officially known in Washington as "Afpak" – was accompanied by a preliminary media bombardment of Pakistan for failing to be sufficiently responsive in advancing US strategic plans.

The New York Times in a front-page story last week that was clearly orchestrated by the Obama administration charged that Pakistan’s military intelligence agency, Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), has been secretly aiding Taliban and its allies in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In 2003, the NY Times severely damaged its once stellar reputation by serving as a primary conduit for fake war propaganda put out by the Bush administration over Iraq. The Times has been beating the war drums for more US military operations against Pakistan.

Even so, these latest angry charges being hurled by Washington at Pakistan’s spy agency ring true. Having covered ISI for almost 25 years, and been briefed by many of its director generals, I would be very surprised if ISI was not quietly working with Taliban and other Afghan resistance movements.

Protecting Pakistan’s interests, not those of the United States, is ISI’s main job.

According to Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Washington threatened war against Pakistan after 9/11 if it did not fully cooperate in the US invasion of Afghanistan. Pakistan’s bases and ports were and remain essential for the US occupation of Afghanistan.

Pakistan was forced at gunpoint to accept US demands though most of its people supported Taliban as nationalist, anti-Communist freedom fighters and opposed the US invasion. Taliban, mostly composed of Pashtun tribesmen, had been nurtured and armed by Pakistan.

Many of Pakistan’s generals and senior ISI officers are Pashtun, who make up 15–18% of that nation’s population and form its second largest ethnic group after Punjabis. ISI routinely used Taliban and militant Kashmiri groups Lashkar-i-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed.

Pakistan was enraged to see its traditional Afghan foes, the Communist-dominated Northern Alliance of Tajiks and Uzbeks, put into power by the Americans. The Northern Alliance was strongly backed by India, Iran, Russia, and the Central Asian post-Communist states.

Pakistan has always considered Afghanistan it "strategic hinterland" and natural sphere of influence. The 30-million strong Pashtun people straddle the artificial Pak-Afghan border, known as the Durand Line, drawn by Imperial Britain as part of its divide and rule strategy.

Pakistan supports the Afghan Pashtun, who have been excluded from power in US-occupied Afghanistan. But Pakistan also fears secessionist tendencies among its own Pashtun. The specter of an independent Pashtun state – "Pashtunistan" – uniting the Pashtuns of Afghanistan and Pakistanhas long been one of Islamabad’s worst nightmares.

Pakistanis are outraged by US bombing attacks against their own rebellious Pashtun tribes in the frontier agencies. Most also strongly oppose Washington’s "renting" 130,000 Pakistani troops and aircraft to attack pro-Taliban Pashtun tribesmen. A majority believe the increasingly unpopular and isolated government of President Asif Zardari serves the interests of the US rather than Pakistan.

Pakistan is bankrupt and now lives on American handouts.

Its last two governments have been forced to do Washington’s bidding though most Pakistanis are opposed to such policies.

The US has ignored intensifying efforts by India, Iran, and Russia to expand their influence in Afghanistan. India, in particular, is arming and supplying Afghan foes of Pakistan.

Washington sees Pakistan only as a way of advancing its own interests in Afghanistan, not as a loyal old ally. Obedience, not cooperation, is being demanded of Islamabad.

President Barack Obama announced that more US troops and civilian officials will go to Afghanistan, and more billions will be spent sustaining a war against the largely Pashtun national resistance in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

None of this will benefit Pakistan. In fact America’s deepening involvement in "Afpak" brings the threat of growing instability and violence, even the de facto breakup of Pakistan as the US tried to splinter fragile Pakistan just as it did Iraq.

It is ISI’s job to deal with these dangers, to keep in close touch with Pashtun on both sides of the border, and to counteract the machinations of other foreign powers in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal belt.

Many Pakistanis also know that one day the US and its allies will quit Afghanistan, leaving a bloody mess behind them. Pakistan’s ISI will have to pick up the pieces and deal with the ensuing chaos. Pakistan’s strategic and political interests are quite different from those of Washington. But few in Washington seem to care in the least.

ISI is not playing a double game, as Washington charges, but simply assuring Pakistan’s strategic and political interests in the region. The Obama administration is making an historic mistake by treating Pakistan with imperial arrogance and ignoring the concerns and desires of its people. We seem to have learned nothing from the Iranian revolution.

Eric Margolis [send him mail], contributing foreign editor for Sun National Media Canada. He is the author of War at the Top of the World and the new book, American Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World. See his website.

[Biggs]

Suspected US drone strike in Pakistan kills 12
Ians
April 1st, 2009

http://blog.taragana.com/n/suspected-us-drone-strike-in-pakistan-kills-12-24259/

ISLAMABAD - A suspected US missile strike killed 12 Taliban militants Wednesday in Pakistan’s tribal region near the Afghan border, officials said.


Two missiles believed to have been fired by a US drone hit a compound in Khadezai village of the Orakzai Agency, one of seven semi-autonomous tribal districts known to serve as sanctuaries for Al-Qaeda and Taliban rebels.

‘Twelve militants were confirmed dead but the toll could be even higher,’ an intelligence official said on condition of anonymity. At least a dozen more people were also wounded in the drone attack, which was the first one in Orakzai.

Local administrators confirmed the strike, but gave no details.

The compound was allegedly being used as a training centre and also housed quarters for ‘foreigners’, a term used by Pakistani officials to describe militants of Arab and Central Asian origin.

Identities of those killed in the strike were not immediately known, as local insurgents cordoned off the area following the missile attack.

Orakzai, which does not share border with Afghanistan, is the stronghold of a senior aide of rebel commander Baitullah Mehsud, who confirmed Wednesday that his fighters stormed a police training school in the eastern city of Lahore March 30, killing seven recruits and one civilian.

Mehsud told reporters by phone from an undisclosed location that the Lahore assault and two other recent attacks were carried out by his group in revenge for US drone strikes.

Nearly three dozen US airstrikes have targeted suspected militant hideouts in Pakistan’s tribal region since August 2008, killing more than 300 people, including few lower-tier Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Dozens of non-combatants have also been killed in the strikes.

Pakistan has opposed the attacks, calling them counter-productive because they fuel anti-US sentiments and increasing public support for militants in the tribal districts.

[Biggs]

Pakistan could get $2.8 bn military aid from US
IANS
Washington,  April 1, 2009    

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/index.php?issueid=86&id=34894&option=com_content&task=view&sectionid=4

Pakistan could get $2.8 billion in military aid from the US in addition to the proposed $7.5 billion civilian aid package spread over five years, a defence official has been quoted as saying.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the FOX News channel that the additional money would be spent on "equipping, training, and building infrastructure directly related to counter insurgency operations".

Gen. David Petraeus, who heads the US Central Command, separately told the channel that the money would be provided under the "Pakistani Counter-insurgency Capability Fund".

The money would be disbursed over five years, with $400 million in 2009, $700 million in 2010 and thereafter, $575 million a year between 2011 and 2013.

Quoting unnamed US officials, the channel said that the money would be spent in a way that would not give Pakistan a greater capacity to attack another country, such as India.

Unveiling his AfPak policy on Friday, US President Barrack Obama said he would ask Congress to authorise $1.5 billion non-military aid for Pakistan every year for five years to enable it build up its infrastructure and institutions.

At the same time, he warned there would be no "blank cheque" and that Pakistan would have to live up to its commitment in the war against terror.

[Biggs]

'Deadly air strike' in Pakistan
 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7982880.stm

A suspected US missile strike in north-west Pakistan, the second drone attack in four days, has killed 13 people.

Local officials in North Waziristan, near the Afghan border, said the dead included women and children as well as militants - some of them foreigners.

But a Taleban spokesman denied this, saying all those killed were civilians.

The US military does not routinely confirm drone attacks, but US forces in Afghanistan are believed to be the only ones in the region with the capability.

Pakistan is critical of drone use because, it says, civilians are often killed, fuelling support for militants.

Retaliation threatened

Local administration officials say the missiles destroyed part of a house owned by a school teacher in a village near the region's main town of Miranshah.

A number of foreign militants were among those killed in the strike at 0300 local (2200 Friday), security officials said.

But a Taleban spokesman said all the dead were civilians.
Dozens of suspected drone strikes have killed hundreds in recent months


The spokesman said the Taleban held Pakistan responsible for the strike, adding that it should be ready for retaliation.

The latest incident comes only three days after a missile fired by a suspected US drone killed at least 14 people in Pakistan's Orakzai tribal area, near the Afghan border.

Correspondents say that more than 35 suspected drone strikes have killed more than 340 people since August 2008, shortly before the election of President Asif Ali Zardari.

US President Barack Obama has pledged to make the war against the Taleban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan a foreign policy priority.

Most missile strikes by drones have targeted foreign fighters in the Waziristan region over the past couple of years.

The drone attacks are said to be part of a new US strategy to eliminate the Taleban and al-Qaeda leadership who are reportedly operating from Pakistan's tribal region next to the border with Afghanistan, says the BBC's Shoaib Hasan in Islamabad.

[Biggs]

Bomb hits Islamabad police base
 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7983426.stm

A suicide bomber has killed at least five paramilitary police in an attack on a security base in the Pakistan capital, Islamabad, police say.

The attacker apparently slipped into the base under cover of darkness and attacked a mess tent, also injuring a number of policemen.

Shots heard after the explosion are believed to have come from guards.

It was the second attack on security forces in Islamabad in two weeks and comes amid a rise in militant violence.
 


A suicide bomb attack on a police station on 23 March left one policeman dead and another injured.

The Pakistani Taleban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, claimed responsibility for that attack.

Violence in Pakistan has surged in recent months amid a wave of attacks blamed on Islamist militants.

Last June a massive bomb blast in Islamabad's Marriott hotel killed at least 53 people and injured more than 250.

[Biggs]

America's Proxy "War on Terrorism" in Pakistan
Lahore Attack: Dress Rehearsal for The Horrors to Come

by Tom Burghardt


Global Research, April 3, 2009
Antifascist Calling...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13024


Monday's brazen assault on a police academy in Lahore, Pakistan's second largest city and cultural capital, is a grim reminder that the "killing season" has begun in earnest across Central- and South Asia.

At least 13 police recruits were killed and another 100 wounded, according to Dawn.

The Lahore assault followed the horrific Jamrud mosque suicide bombing March 27 in the Khyber Agency that killed upwards of 80 people during Friday prayers.

The raid by as yet unknown gunmen is a stark demonstration to Lahore residents that last month's attack on the Sri Lankan national cricket team, also carried out by heavily armed and well-trained commandos, was not a one-off affair but the opening round in a destabilization operation by any number of suspects.

Pakistani Taliban, the Afghan-Arab database of disposable Western intelligence assets also known as al-Qaeda, as well as militants "trained-up fierce" by Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI) and America's CIA have all been named as the responsible parties. Fleshing out the rogues' gallery one finds: Baitullah Mehsud's Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ), or, when all else fails, a "foreign hand," e.g. India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).

Given the modus operandi of the attack, one cannot preclude Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. LEJ is a virulently anti-Shia sectarian outfit that evolved from the neo-Wahabbi Sipah-e-Sahaba during the 1990s. With strong connections to Pakistan's military intelligence agency, the group served as a training ground for notables such as the operational whiz-kid behind the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, Ramzi Yousef, and the reputed "mastermind" of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Like LET, the LEJ has aligned itself--and fought alongside--the Afghan Taliban and, according to some analysts, was involved in the 2002 kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal investigative reporter Daniel Pearl; a murder orchestrated by ISI asset and 9/11 bagman, former London School of Economics student Omar Saeed Sheikh.

Historically, LET and LEJ have been ISI proxies and have targeted leftist and secular opponents of the shadowy intelligence agency as well as serving as a cats' paw for plausibly deniable attacks against Pakistan's geopolitical rival India.

On Tuesday however, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan chieftain Mehsud claimed it was the TTP that carried out the assault, according to The New York Times.

Mehsud told the BBC, that the raid was "in retaliation for the continued drone strikes by the US in collaboration with Pakistan on our people". During a phone call, the TTP's head honcho told Reuters, "We wholeheartedly take responsibility for this attack and will carry out more such attacks in future."

But Mehsud went further and claimed that TTP-aligned militants will mount a terror operation in Washington, perhaps targeting the White House. The Wall Street Journal reported Mehsud told Pakistani journalists from--where else--an "undisclosed location (!) that "soon we will launch an attack in Washington that will amaze everyone in the world."

As if on cue, CENTCOM commander General David Petraeus of Iraq "surge" fame told the Senate Armed Services Committee Wednesday, that the "government was doing a 'deep dive' investigation" into Mehsud's claims, according to The New York Times. The "newspaper of record" failed however to inform readers whether the "threat level" had been raised in response!

Earlier this month, the U.S. State Department issued a $5 million bounty for Mehsud, a frequent target of CIA Predator and Reaper drone strikes that have killed scores of innocent civilians in Pakistan's "lawless" borderlands.

The New York Times reported April 2, that missiles fired from a CIA drone struck an alleged "militant training camp," killing at least 10 people. The raid, according to the Times targeted Hakimullah Mehsud, one of Baitullah's top lieutenants.

According to Times, Hakimullah's forces "have been held responsible by Pakistani officials for attacking NATO supply depots in Peshawar used to resupply international forces in Afghanistan. His influence is such that he has imposed Sharia Islamic law in the Orakzai region, residents said."

However, according to Dawn, "at least 14 people, including 12 militants were killed and 13 injured." The Karachi-based newspaper reported that "two women and several children were also among the victims of the strikes."

To further muddy the waters, the Associated Press reported March 31 that Omar Farooq, the spokesman for the little-known jihadi outfit, Fedayeen al-Islami, also claimed responsibility for Monday's attack.

Claiming the assault was a reprisal raid for U.S. drone strikes and Pakistani Army intervention in the tribal areas, Farooq also demanded the release of former Red Mosque chief cleric Maulana Abdul Aziz.

While Pakistani officials have blamed the TTP for a series of attacks, including the December 2007 assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, it is just as likely the police academy raid had been carried out by Punjabi-based militants such as LET or LEJ.

The overwhelming majority of Mehsud's forces are Pashtun-speaking residents of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). While Shahid Iqbal, the deputy inspector general for operations for the Lahore Police Department claimed the attackers were "Afghans," many recruits described the attackers as Punjabis speaking a local dialect.

According to The New York Times, the militants, some dressed in police uniforms scaled the walls, fired automatic weapons and hurled grenades while shouting "'Oh, Red Mosque attackers, we have come,' a reference to the 2007 takeover by Pakistani authorities of a militant mosque in Islamabad, Pakistan's capital." Meanwhile, "according to militant contacts" Asia Times Online reports,

A group of militants once associated with the Harkat-e-Jihad-i-Islami and the Lashkar-e-Taiba--groups with strong roots to the struggle over divided Kashmir--a few days ago traveled to Lahore from a militant camp in the North Waziristan town of Razmak, a year-round hill station situated at the crossroads of North Waziristan and South Waziristan on the Afghanistan border. ...

In light of statements made by some cadets, intelligence agencies maintain that some of the militants came from Pakistani Punjab and spoke three languages--Urdu, Punjabi and Seraiki. (Seraiki is spoken in southern Punjab.) (Syed Saleem Shahzad, "Pakistan braces for more attacks," Asia Times Online, April 1, 2009)

The unmistakable message to the Zardari administration and the United States, according to the online publication is that Monday's attack, "mark ominous muscle-flexing by Pakistan's 'original' jihadis, mostly Punjabis trained by the military in the 1990s as the first line of defense for the country, especially in Kashmir."

As I reported March 29, the corporate media's belated "discovery" of linkages amongst ISI officers, the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the form of "money, military supplies and strategic planning guidance to Taliban commanders," one cannot rule out the possibility that some ISI officers, still committed to Pakistan's policy of seeking "strategic depth" against India may have been complicit in Monday's attack.

However, it is U.S. imperialism which for decades nurtured, armed and financed such retrograde outfits to advance its own geopolitical agenda--military bases and resource extraction--that is fueling the far-right insurgency, and the justifiable rage felt by Pakistanis over the continued slaughter.

Cheekily, Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), the chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, perhaps channeling the spirit of the British Raj, said that Pakistan "must prove" it is willing to take on the insurgency "before the U.S. delivers financial aid or weapons to the government there," the Associated Press reported March 31.

Such comments by leading imperialist spokespersons are nothing new and are fully within the framework of American neocolonial arrogance. Calling for "benchmarks" and "metrics" by which Washington power brokers will measure "progress," what are these if not so many flaming hoops through which sovereign nations must jump through like so many trained poodles to curry favor with the Global Godfather.

As if Pakistani workers and farmers, crushed beneath the iron heel of venal, ruling class elites fêted by Pentagon bureaucrats or IMF/World Bank thieves who tout Islamabad's "responsible" policies that line the pockets of international debt merchants beholden to shady American and European banks have but one role, that of mute spectators!

As if to drive home the point, Daily Times reported that "Pakistan has suffered economic losses amounting to $6 billion during 2007-08 while supporting the global war on terror."

Dr. Hafiz Pasha, heading a panel of Planning Commission economists, told the Pakistan Institute of Development Economists' annual meeting,

"This loss to the economy, according to the government of Pakistan, is over $8 billion," said Pasha, adding that the US should double the funds being given to Pakistan for its support to the war on terror in view of the massive losses. He said the prevailing economic situation was "not very positive", as tax collection had fallen, imports were very high, real effecting exchange rate was functioning at the level of last year and the ministries' expenses had increased by Rs 100 billion. (Sajid Chaudhry, "'Pakistan suffered $6bn terror war losses in 2007-08'," Daily Times, April 2, 2009)

Stating that the IMF's role in Pakistan "focused on stability rather than growth," I might add for corporate grifters and comprador elites, Pasha went on to comment that such program's are "not good for Pakistan in the long run". "Pakistan paid a heavy price for stability at the cost of growth during the previous regime's tenure ... and [Pakistan] should not repeat the same mistake."

Committed to so-called "structural adjustment" policies that sacrifice the economic well-being of the Pakistani people so that huge debts incurred by previous military regimes are repaid to international banks, the IMF continues to urge the sell-off of state assets at fire-sale prices even as Western imperialist nations pump trillions of dollars into their failing economies to stave-off the capitalist melt-down.

Let it be said, once again: the entire drive by the United States to "secure" the "Afpak theatre" has very little to do with "fighting them there, so we don't have to fight them here," and everything to do with that most American of motives: greed and plunder.

As analyst Pepe Escobar points out in Asia Times, the "U.S. Empire of Bases" is "still in overdrive and in New Great Game mode--which implies very close surveillance over Russia and China via bases such as Bagram, and the drive to block Russia from establishing a commercial route to the Middle East via Pakistan." Escobar goes on to comment:

Last but not least, the energy wars. And that involves that occult, almost supernatural entity, the $7.6 billion Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline, which would carry gas from eastern Turkmenistan through Afghanistan east of Herat and down Taliban-controlled Nimruz and Helmand provinces, down Balochistan in Pakistan and then to the Pakistani port of Gwadar in the Arabian Sea. No investor in his right mind will invest in a pipeline in a war zone, thus Afghanistan must be "stabilized" at all costs. (Pepe Escobar, "The secrets of Obama's surge," Asia Times Online, April 2, 2009)

A dozen dead police recruits? Fifty or a hundred or thousands more people transmogrified into corpses by CIA drones or suicide bombers? "So is AfPak the Pentagon's AIG," Escobar wonders. "We gotta bail them out, can't let them fail?"

"Whatever it is, it's not about 'terrorists'. Not really. Follow the money. Follow the energy. Follow the map." Indeed, but whatever we do, pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!

Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, an independent research and media group of writers, scholars, journalists and activists based in Montreal, his articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily, Pacific Free Press and the whistleblowing website Wikileaks. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press.

Tom Burghardt is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

[Biggs]

Suicide Bombing At Pakistan Mosque Kills 22

11:14am UK, Sunday April 05, 2009
At least 22 people have been killed and more than 50 others hurt after a suicide bomb attack at a mosque near Pakistan's capital, officials say.

 CLICK HERE FOR LINK


The blast happened as hundreds of people gathered for a religious ceremony, 37 miles south of Islamabad.

The mosque is used by Shi'ite Muslims, who are a minority in Pakistan.

Rescuers have been searching through the debris after the explosion in the town of Chakwal, in Punjab province.

Senior police official Chaudhry Zulfiqar said: "A suicide bomber blew himself up at the gates of Imambargah (Shi'ite mosque) where a religious gathering was taking place.

"Our policemen deployed at the gate tried to stop the attacker from going inside where some 1,200 people were attending a majlis (Shi'ite religious meeting)."

Another security official Nadim Hasan Asif said the bomber set off his explosives in the entrance of the mosque.

"The suspected man was stopped at the entrance and pushed himself in and exploded," Mr Asif said.

The blast came a day after eight paramilitary soldiers were killed in a suicide attack in Islamabad.

Pakistan has a long history of tit-for-tat attacks by militants from majority Sunni and minority Shi'ite Muslim communities in which thousands of people have been killed.

The country has also been plagued by violence caused by Taliban militants based near Afghanistan.

They recently said they would step up attacks unless the US stops drone missile strikes against fighters in the border region.

It was unclear who carried out the latest attack at the mosque.

[bigron]

Tuesday, April 07, 2009
13:57 Mecca time, 10:57 GMT   
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/04/20094755429141735.html

 
Pakistan urges 'unconditional' aid 


Zardari, right,  told US envoys that Pakistan is committed to "eliminating extremism" [AFP]
 
Pakistan's president has told senior US envoys that his country needs "unconditional support" to defeat pro-Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in the northwest of the country.

The call came in a statement released by Asif Ali Zardari's office on Tuesday, the day after he met Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.

"Pakistan is committed in eliminating extremism from the society, for which it needs unconditional support by the international community in the fields of education, health, training and provision of equipment for fighting terrorism," Zardari said in a statement released on Tuesday.

"Military action is only one aspect of the solution."

Washington has pledged to provide Islamabad with about $7.5bn in economic aid over the next five years to tackle the violence along its border with Afghanistan.

However, the aid bill passed by the US congress requires the White House to certify that Islamabad is tackling terrorism and the intelligence services are not aiding armed groups in the country's northwest.

Last month, Mullen told CNN television that there were "indications" that elements within Pakistan's intelligence agencies were "supporting" fighters both on the border with Afghanistan and India.

'Common task'

Speaking after talks with Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Pakitsan's foreign minister, on Tuesday, Holbrooke did not address Zardari's comments, but said that the two countries must work together.

"We did talk about drones and let me be very frank. There's a gap":
Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Pakistani foreign minister
 
"The United States and Pakistan face a common strategic threat, a common enemy and a common challenge and, therefore, a common task," he said.

Qureshi said that despite the shared interests along the Afghan border, there remained "gaps" over certain issues, including suspected US drone attacks in Pakistan's border areas

There are believed to have been 37 drone attacks since August 2007, killing about 360 people.

The US does not confirm raids but the military in neighbouring Afghanistan and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) are both known to use the unmanned aircraft.

"We did talk about drones and let me be very frank. There's a gap. There's a gap between us and them, and I want to bridge that gap," Qureshi said.

"My view is that they are working to the advantage of the extremists. We agree to disagree on this.

"We can only work together if we respect each other and we trust each other. There is no other way. Nothing else will work."

Regional strategy

Pakistan has complained that the attacks violate its sovereignty and have increased resentment of the government in some areas. The Pakistani Taliban has threatened to carry out two attacks a week until the strikes stopped.

Barack Obama, the US president, recently unveiled a strategy for the region which aims to take a joint approach to deal with the problems in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Thousands more troops have been pledged for Afghanistan, as well as 4,000 advisers to train the military, alongside the economic assistance for Pakistan. 

Holbrooke and Mullen are expected to travel to India after Pakistan.

Relations between New Delhi and Islamabad have been increasingly strained since the Mumbai attacks in November last year.

India blames a Pakistan-based group for the three-day rampage in the city that left nearly 180 people dead.
 
 Source: Agencies 
 
 

[Optimus]

More Drone Attacks in Pakistan Planned
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/world/asia/07drone.html?_r=1&ref=world
By ERIC SCHMITT and CHRISTOPHER DREW
Published: April 6, 2009

WASHINGTON — Despite threats of retaliation from Pakistani militants, senior administration officials said Monday that the United States intended to step up its use of drones to strike militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas and might extend them to a different sanctuary deeper inside the country.

On Sunday, a senior Taliban leader vowed to unleash two suicide attacks a week like one on Saturday in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, unless the Central Intelligence Agency stopped firing missiles at militants. Pakistani officials have expressed concerns that the missile strikes from remotely piloted aircraft fuel more violence in the country, and some American officials say they are also concerned about some aspects of the drone strikes.

But as Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Richard C. Holbrooke, the special envoy to the region, arrived in Islamabad on Monday, the administration officials said the plan to intensify missile strikes underscored President Obama’s goal to “disrupt, dismantle and defeat” Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well as to strike at other militant groups allied with Al Qaeda.

Officials are also proposing to broaden the missile strikes to Baluchistan, south of the tribal areas, unless Pakistan manages to reduce the incursion of militants there.

Influential American lawmakers have voiced support for the administration’s position.

Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who heads the Armed Services Committee, acknowledged last week that “the price is very heavy” when missile strikes mistakenly kill civilians, but he said the strikes were “an extremely effective tool.”

The plans have met strong resistance from Pakistani officials and have also worried some former American officials and some analysts, who say that strikes create greater risks of civilian casualties and could further destabilize the nuclear-armed nation.

“You will be complicating and compounding anti-Americanism here,” said Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani general and military analyst in Islamabad. “How can you be an ally and at the same time be targeted?”

Some American experts say a crucial change in aerial warfare, in which American forces are now often stalking individuals rather than tanks and other large armaments as in past wars, has raised new legal issues.

A. John Radsan, who worked as a C.I.A. lawyer from 2002 to 2004, argued in a recent scholarly article he wrote with Richard W. Murphy, a fellow law professor, that the United States should follow the lead of the Israeli Supreme Court and require an investigation of “targeted killings” by the C.I.A. to control the practice.

While the notion of remote-control killing may seem chilling, military experts say the drones, which can transmit live video for nearly a day at a time, typically supply the weapons targeting officers with enough information to avoid civilian casualties.

Marc Garlasco, a former military targeting official who now works for Human Rights Watch, the international advocacy group, said the drones had helped limit civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the Air Force uses them to attack people laying roadside bombs and to attack other insurgents.

But in trying to take advantage of what can be fleeting chances to kill top Taliban and Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, the C.I.A. faces a much more difficult task, especially if it follows the targets into more populated areas.

“When you’re operating under very short time frames, like the C.I.A. is in Pakistan, you are exponentially increasing the risk of killing noncombatants,” Mr. Garlasco said.

In Pakistan, the extensive missile strikes have been limited to the tribal areas, and authorities say they have killed 9 of the top 20 Qaeda leaders. American officials say the missile strikes have forced some Taliban and Qaeda leaders to flee south toward Quetta, a city in the province of Baluchistan, which abuts the parts of southern Afghanistan where recent fighting has been the fiercest.

One of the prized attributes of the drones — the Cessna-size Predators and their larger and more heavily armed cousins called the Reapers — is that they can linger over an area day after day, sending back video that can be used to build a “pattern of life” analysis.

Some experts have compared them to mini-satellites that can monitor a suspected terrorist compound for weeks, watching where the people go and with whom they interact, to help confirm that the right people are being singled out for attack.

Experts say the drones also carry laser-guided weapons with small warheads that are precise enough to kill a group of people in a street without damaging nearby buildings.

Like the military services, the C.I.A. uses computer software to assess possible collateral damage, and the fusing on the bombs can be adjusted to limit their impact.

But in Pakistan and Afghanistan, it can also be hard to evaluate tips about the locations of Taliban or Qaeda leaders if there are no troops nearby to help check them out.

While the Air Force operates its drones from military bases in the United States, the C.I.A. controls its fleet of Predators and Reapers from its headquarters in Langley, Va.

The final preparations for strikes in Pakistan take place in a crowded room lined with video screens, where C.I.A. officers work at phone banks and National Security Agency personnel monitor electronic chatter, according to former C.I.A. officials.

The intelligence officers watch scratchy video captured by the drones, which always fly in pairs above potential targets.

According to the former officials, it is generally the head of the C.I.A.’s clandestine service or his deputy who gives the final approval for a strike. The decision about what type of weapon to use depends on the target, according to one former senior intelligence official.

Top national security leaders have approved lists of people who can be attacked, officials say, and the lawyers determine whether each attack can be justified under international law.

[agentbluescreen]

There is no desk!

There is no curtain!

There are no knobs and levers!

There is nobody behind any curtain!

Everybody knows Our Enemy is Iran!

Throw away those guns, we'll keep you safe!

Pay no attention to that man at the control desk!

Destroy the Iranian Empire of Evil before they nuke America!

[rustygunn]

Riots in Pakistan After Dissidents Found Dead
Thursday , April 09, 2009

QUETTA, Pakistan —

Rioting has broken out in southwestern Pakistan after police said they found the dead bodies of three missing political dissidents.

Police say one officer has been shot dead in southwestern Pakistan during the rioting.

Ghulam Ali Lashari, a senior police official, said the officer was fatally wounded when protesters opened fire in Khuzdar, a town in Pakistan's restive Baluchistan province.

Television footage showed police swinging batons to disperse protesters who set fire to a bus in the city of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province.

Police official Khalid Masood says the mutilated bodies of three ethnic Baluch nationalist leaders were found before dawn on Thursday in another part of the province.

Some Baluch groups have waged a long, low-level insurgency against the central government demanding more autonomy or secession for the impoverished but resource-rich province.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,513497,00.html

[bigron]

Published on Wednesday, April 8, 2009 by TomDispatch.com



Terminator Planet: Launching the Drone Wars



by Tom Engelhardt

In 1984, Skynet, the supercomputer that rules a future Earth, sent a cyborg assassin, a "terminator," back to our time. His job was to liquidate the woman who would give birth to John Connor, the leader of the underground human resistance of Skynet's time. You with me so far? That, of course, was the plot of the first Terminator movie and for the multi-millions who saw it, the images of future machine war -- of hunter-killer drones flying above a wasted landscape -- are unforgettable.

Since then, as Hollywood's special effects took off, there were two sequels during which the original terminator somehow morphed into a friendlier figure on screen, and even more miraculously, off-screen, into the humanoid governor of California. Now, the fourth film in the series, Terminator Salvation [1], is about to descend on us. It will hit our multiplexes this May.

Oh, sorry, I don't mean hit hit. I mean, arrive in.

Meanwhile, hunter-killer drones haven't waited for Hollywood. As you sit in that movie theater in May, actual unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), pilotless surveillance and assassination drones armed with Hellfire missiles, will be patrolling our expanding global battlefields [2], hunting down human beings. And in the Pentagon and the labs of defense contractors, UAV supporters are already talking about and working on next-generation machines. Post-2020, according to these dreamers, drones will be able to fly and fight, discern enemies and incinerate them without human decision-making. They're even wondering about just how to program human ethics [3], maybe even American ethics, into them.

Okay, it may never happen, but it should still make you blink that out there in America are people eager to bring the fifth iteration of Terminator not to local multiplexes, but to the skies of our perfectly real world -- and that the Pentagon is already funding them to do so.

An Arms Race of One

Now, keep our present drones, those MQ-1 Predators and more advanced MQ-9 Reapers, in mind for a moment. Remember that, as you read, they're cruising Iraqi, Afghan, and Pakistani skies looking for potential "targets," and in Pakistan's tribal borderlands, are employing what Centcom commander General David Petraeus calls "the right of last resort" [4] to take out "threats" (as well as tribespeople who just happen to be in the vicinity [5]). And bear with me while I offer you a little potted history of the modern arms race.

Think of it as starting in the early years of the twentieth century when Imperial Britain, industrial juggernaut and colonial upstart Germany, and Imperial Japan all began to plan and build new generations of massive battleships or dreadnoughts [6] (followed by "super-dreadnoughts") and so joined in a fierce naval arms race. That race took a leap onto land and into the skies in World War I when scientists and war planners began churning out techno-marvels of death and destruction meant to break the stalemate of trench warfare on the Western front.

Each year, starting in 1915, new or improved weaponry -- poison gas, upgrades of the airplane, the tank and then the improved tank -- appeared on or above the battlefield. Even as those marvels arrived, the next generation of weapons was already on the drawing boards. (In a sense, American auto makers took up the same battle plan in peacetime, unveiling new, ramped up car models each year.) As a result, when World War I ended in 1918, the war machinery of 1919 and 1920 was already being mapped out and developed. The next war, that is, and the weapons that would go with it were already in the mind's eye of war planners.

From the first years of the twentieth century on, an obvious prerequisite for what would prove a never-ending arms race was two to four great powers in potential collision, each of which had the ability to mobilize scientists, engineers, universities, and manufacturing power on a massive scale. World War II was, in these terms, a bonanza for invention as well as destruction. It ended, of course, with the Manhattan Project, that ne plus ultra of industrial-sized invention for destruction, which produced the first atomic bomb, and so the Cold War nuclear arms race that followed.

In that 45-year-long brush with extinction, the United States and the Soviet Union each mobilized a military-industrial complex to build ever newer generations of ever more devastating nuclear weaponry and delivery systems for a MAD (mutually assured destruction) world. At the peak of that two-superpower arms race, the resulting arsenals had the mad capacity to destroy eight or ten planets our size.

In 1991, after 73 years, the Soviet Union, that Evil Empire, simply evaporated, leaving but a single superpower without rivals astride planet Earth. And then came the unexpected thing: the arms race, which had been almost a century in the making, did not end. Instead, the unimaginable occurred and it simply morphed into a "race" of one with a finish line so distant -- the bomber of 2018, Earth-spanning weapons systems, a vast anti-ballistic missile system, and weaponry for the heavens of perhaps 2050 -- as to imply eternity.

 [7]The Pentagon and the military-industrial complex surrounding it -- including mega-arms manufacturers, advanced weapons labs, university science centers, and the official or semi-official think tanks that churned out strategies for future military domination -- went right on. After a brief, post-Cold War blip of time in which "peace dividends" were discussed but not implemented, the "race" actually began to amp up again, and after September 11, 2001, went into overdrive against "Islamo-fascism" (aka the Global War on Terror, or the Long War).

In those years, our Evil Empire of the moment, except in the minds of a clutch of influential neocons, was a ragtag terrorist outfit made up of perhaps a few thousand adherents and scattered global wannabes, capable of mounting spectacular-looking but infrequent and surprisingly low-tech attacks on symbolic American (and other) targets. Against this enemy, the Pentagon budget became, for a while, an excuse for anything.

This brings us to our present unbalanced world of military might in which the U.S. accounts for [8] nearly half of all global military spending and the total Pentagon budget is almost six times that of the next contender, China. Recently, the Chinese have announced relatively modest plans to build up [9] their military and create a genuinely offshore navy [10]. Similarly, the Russians have moved to downsize [11] and refinance their tattered armed forces and the industrial complex that goes with them, while upgrading their weapons systems. This could potentially make the country more competitive when it comes to global arms dealing, a market more than half [12] of which has been cornered by the U.S. They are also threatening to upgrade their "strategic nuclear forces," [13] even as Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama have agreed to push forward a new round of negotiations for nuclear reductions.

Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has just [14] announced cutbacks [15] in some of the more outré and futuristic military R&D programs inherited from the Cold War era. The Navy's staggering 11 aircraft-carrier battle groups will over time also be reduced by one. Minor as that may seem, it does signal an imperial downsizing, given that the Navy refers to [16] each of those carriers, essentially floating military bases, as "four and a half acres of sovereign U.S. territory." Nonetheless, the Pentagon budget will grow modestly and the U.S. will remain in a futuristic arms race of one, a significant part of which involves reserving the skies as well as the heavens for American power.

Assassination by Air

Speaking of controlling those skies, let's get back to UAVs. As futuristic weapons planning went, they started out pretty low-tech in the 1990s. Even today, the most commonplace of the two American armed drones, the Predator, costs only $4.5 million a pop, while the most advanced model, that Reaper -- both are produced by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems of San Diego -- comes in at $15 million. (Compare that to $350 million [17] for a single F-22 Raptor, which has proved essentially useless in America's most recent counterinsurgency wars.) It's lucky UAVs are cheap, since they are also prone to crashing. Think of them as snowmobiles with wings that have received ever more sophisticated optics and powerful weaponry.

They came to life as surveillance tools during the wars over the former Yugoslavia, were armed [18] by February 2001, were hastily pressed into operation in Afghanistan after 9/11, and like many weapons systems, began to evolve generationally. As they did, they developed from surveillance eyes in the sky into something far more sinister and previously restricted to terra firma: assassins. One of the earliest armed acts of a CIA-piloted Predator, back in November 2002, was an assassination mission over Yemen in which a jeep, reputedly transporting six suspected al-Qaeda operatives [19], was incinerated.

Today, the most advanced UAV, the Reaper, housing up to four Hellfire missiles and two 500-pound bombs, packs the sort of punch once reserved for a jet fighter. Dispatched to the skies over the farthest reaches of the American empire, powered by a 1,000-horsepower turbo prop engine at its rear, the Reaper can fly at [20] up to 21,000 feet for up to 22 hours (until fuel runs short), streaming back live footage from three cameras (or sending it to troops on the ground) --- 16,000 hours of video a month.

No need to worry about a pilot dozing off during those 22 hours. The human crews "piloting" the drones, often from thousands of miles away, just change shifts when tired. So the planes are left to endlessly cruise Iraqi, Afghan, and Pakistani skies relentlessly seeking out, like so many terminators, specific enemies whose identities can, under certain circumstances -- or so the claims go -- be determined even through the walls of houses [21]. When a "target" is found and agreed upon -- in Pakistan, the permission of Pakistani officials to fire is no longer considered necessary -- and a missile or bomb is unleashed, the cameras are so powerful that "pilots" can watch the facial expressions of those being liquidated on their computer monitors "as the bomb hits." [22]

Approximately 5,500 UAVs, mostly unarmed -- less than 250 of them are Predators and Reapers -- now operate over Iraq and the Af-Pak (as in the Afghanistan-Pakistan) theater of operations. Part of the more-than-century-long development [23] of war in the air, drones have become favorites of American military planners. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in particular has demanded increases in their production (and in the training of their "pilots") and urged that they be rushed in quantity into America's battle zones even before being fully perfected.

And yet, keep in mind that the UAV still remains in its (frightening) infancy. Such machines are not, of course, advanced cyborgs. They are in some ways not even all that advanced. Because someone now wants publicity for the drone-war program, reporters from the U.S. [24] and elsewhere [22] have recently been given "rare behind-the-scenes" looks at how it works. As a result, and also because the "covert war" in the skies over Pakistan makes Washington's secret warriors proud enough to regularly leak news of its "successes," we know something more about how our drone wars work.

We know, for instance, that at least part of the Air Force's Afghan UAV program runs out of Kandahar Air Base in southern Afghanistan. It turns out that, pilotless as the planes may be, a pilot does have to be nearby to guide them into the air and handle landings. As soon as the drone is up, a two-man team, a pilot and a "sensor monitor," backed by intelligence experts and meteorologists, takes over the controls either at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona, or at Creech Air Force Base [25] northwest of Las Vegas, some 7,000-odd miles away. (Other U.S. bases may be involved as well.)

According to Christopher Drew [24] of the New York Times, who visited Davis-Monthan where Air National Guard members handle the controls, the pilots sit unglamorously "at 1990s-style computer banks filled with screens, inside dimly lit trailers." Depending on the needs of the moment, they can find themselves "over" either Afghanistan or Iraq, or even both on the same work shift. All of this is remarkably mundane -- pilot complaints generally run to problems "transitioning" back to wife and children after a day at the joystick over battle zones -- and at the same time, right out of Ali Baba's One Thousand and One Nights.

In those dimly lit trailers, the UAV teams have taken on an almost godlike power. Their job is to survey a place thousands of miles distant (and completely alien to their lives and experiences), assess what they see, and spot "targets" to eliminate -- even if on their somewhat antiquated computer systems it "takes up to 17 steps -- including entering data into pull-down windows -- to fire a missile" and incinerate those below. They only face danger, other than carpal tunnel syndrome, when they leave the job. A sign at Creech warns a pilot [20] to "drive carefully"; "this, it says, is 'the most dangerous part of your day.'" Those involved claim that the fear and thrill of battle do not completely escape them, but the descriptions we now have of their world sound discomfortingly like a cross between the far frontiers of sci-fi and a call center in India.

The most intense of our various drone wars, the one on the other side of the Afghan border in Pakistan, is also the most mysterious. We know that some or all of the drones engaged in it take off from Pakistani airfields; that this "covert war" (which regularly makes front-page news) is run by the CIA [26] out of its headquarters in Langley, Virginia; that its pilots are also located somewhere in the U.S. [21]; and that at least some of them are hired private contractors.

William Saletan of Slate has described [27] our drones as engaged in "a bloodless, all-seeing airborne hunting party." Of course, what was once an elite activity performed in person has been transformed into a 24/7 industrial activity fit for human drones.

Our drone wars also represent a new chapter in the history of assassination. Once upon a time, to be an assassin for a government was a furtive, shameful thing. In those days, of course, an assassin, if successful, took down a single person, not the targeted individual and anyone in the vicinity (or simply, if targeting intelligence proves wrong, anyone in the vicinity). No more poison-dart-tipped umbrellas [28], as in past KGB operations, or toxic cigars [29] as in CIA ones -- not now that assassination has taken to the skies as an every day, all-year-round activity.

Today, we increasingly display our assassination wares with pride. To us, at least, it seems perfectly normal for assassination aerial operations to be a part of an open discussion in Washington and in the media. Consider this a new definition of "progress" in our world.

Proliferation and Sovereignty

This brings us back to arms races. They may be things of the past, but don't for a minute imagine that those hunter-killer skies won't someday fill with the drones of other nations. After all, one of the truths of our time is that no weapons system, no matter where first created, can be kept for long as private property. Today, we talk not of arms races, but of "proliferation," which is what you have once a global arms race of one takes hold.

In drone-world, the Chinese, the Russians, the Israelis, the Pakistanis, the Georgians, and the Iranians, among others, already have drones. In the Lebanon War of 2006, Hezbollah flew drones [30] over Israel. In fact, if you have the skills, you can create your own drone, more or less in your living room (as your basic DIY drone website [31] indicates). Undoubtedly, the future holds unnerving possibilities for small groups intent on assassination from the air.

Already the skies are growing more crowded. Three weeks ago, President Obama issued what Reuters termed [32] "an unprecedented videotaped appeal to Iran... offering a 'new beginning' of diplomatic engagement to turn the page on decades of U.S. policy toward America's longtime foe." It was in the form of a Persian New Year's greeting. As the New York Times also reported [33], the U.S. military beat the president to the punch. They sent their own "greetings" to the Iranians a couple of days earlier.

After considering what Times reporters Rod Nordland and Alissa J. Rubin term "the delicacy of the incident at a time when the United States is seeking a thaw in its relations with Iran," the U.S. military sent out Col. James Hutton to meet the press and "confirm" that "allied aircraft" had shot down an "Iranian unmanned aerial vehicle" over Iraq on February 25th, more than three weeks earlier. Between that day and mid-March, the relevant Iraqi military and civilian officials were, the Times tells us, not informed. The reason? That drone was intruding on our (borrowed) airspace, not theirs. You probably didn't know it, but according to an Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman, "protection of Iraqi airspace remains an American responsibility for the next three years."

And naturally enough, we don't want other countries' drones in "our" airspace, though that's hardly likely to stop them. The Iranians, for instance, have already announced [34] the development of "a new generation of 'spy drones' that provide real-time surveillance over enemy terrain."

Of course, when you openly control squads of assassination drones patrolling airspace over other countries, you've already made a mockery of whatever national sovereignty might once have meant. It's a precedent that may someday even make us distinctly uncomfortable. But not right now.

If you doubt this, check out the stream of self-congratulatory comments being leaked by Washington officials about our drone assassins. These often lead off [21] news pieces about America's "covert war" over Pakistan ("An intense, six-month campaign of Predator strikes in Pakistan has taken such a toll on Al Qaeda that militants have begun turning violently on one another out of confusion and distrust, U.S. intelligence and counter-terrorism officials say..."); but be sure to read to the end of such pieces. Somewhere in them, after the successes have been touted and toted up, you get the bad news: "In fact, the stepped-up strikes have coincided with a deterioration in the security situation in Pakistan."

In Pakistan, a war of machine assassins is visibly provoking terror (and terrorism), as well as anger and hatred among people who are by no means fundamentalists [35]. It is part of a larger destabilization [36] of the country.

To those who know their air power history, that shouldn't be so surprising. Air power has had a remarkably stellar record when it comes to causing death and destruction, but a remarkably poor one when it comes to breaking the will of nations, peoples, or even modest-sized organizations. Our drone wars are destructive, but they are unlikely to achieve Washington's goals.

The Future Awaits Us

If you want to read the single most chilling line yet uttered about drone warfare American-style, it comes at the end of Christopher Drew's piece. He quotes Brookings Institution analyst Peter Singer saying of our Predators and Reapers: "[T]hese systems today are very much Model T Fords. These things will only get more advanced."

In other words, our drone wars are being fought with the airborne equivalent of cars with cranks, but the "race" to the horizon is already underway. By next year, some Reapers will have a far more sophisticated sensor system with 12 cameras capable of filming a two-and-a-half mile round area from 12 different angles. That program has been dubbed "Gorgon Stare" [37], but it doesn't compare to the future 92-camera Argus program whose initial development is being funded by the Pentagon's blue-skies outfit, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Soon enough, a single pilot may be capable of handling not one but perhaps three drones, and drone armaments will undoubtedly grow progressively more powerful and "precise." In the meantime, BAE Systems already has a drone four years into development, the Taranis [20], that should someday be "completely autonomous"; that is, it theoretically will do without human pilots. Initial trials of a prototype are scheduled for 2010.

By 2020, so claim UAV enthusiasts, drones could be engaging in aerial battle and choosing their victims themselves. As Robert S. Boyd of McClatchy reported recently [3], "The Defense Department is financing studies of autonomous, or self-governing, armed robots that could find and destroy targets on their own. On-board computer programs, not flesh-and-blood people, would decide whether to fire their weapons."

It's a particular sadness of our world that, in Washington, only the military can dream about the future in this way, and then fund the "arms race" of 2018 [38] or 2035. Rest assured that no one with a governmental red cent is researching the health care system of 2018 or 2035, or the public education system of those years.

In the meantime, the skies of our world are filling with round-the-clock assassins. They will only evolve and proliferate. Of course, when we check ourselves out in the movies, we like to identify with John Connor, the human resister, the good guy of this planet, against the evil machines. Elsewhere, however, as we fight our drone wars ever more openly, as we field mechanical techno-terminators with all-seeing eyes and loose our missiles from thousands of miles away ("Hasta la Vista, Baby!"), we undoubtedly look like something other than a nation of John Connors to those living under the Predators. It may not matter if the joysticks and consoles on those advanced machines are somewhat antiquated; to others, we are now the terminators of the planet, implacable machine assassins.

True, we can't send our drones into the past to wipe out the young Ayman al-Zawahiri in Cairo or the teenage Osama bin Laden speeding down some Saudi road in his gray Mercedes sedan. True, the UAV enthusiasts, who are already imagining all-drone wars run by "ethical" machines, may never see anything like their fantasies come to pass. Still, the fact that without the help of a single advanced cyborg we are already in the process of creating a Terminator planet should give us pause for thought... or not.

[Note for TomDispatch readers: I particularly recommend the Christopher Drew New York Times piece cited above, "Drones Are Weapons of Choice in Fighting Qaeda," [24] which gives a vivid picture of our drone wars at home. In addition, let me offer a small bow to Nick Turse, who, back in 2004 [39], began writing at this site about the way our government has restricted [40] blue-skies dreaming to the military. To keep up on drones and drone warfare, there is no better place to start than Noah Shachtman's Danger Room blog [41] at Wired.com. It's a must. To keep track of drone strikes as they occur in our world, keep an eye on Antiwar.com [42]. And a final note of thanks to Christopher Holmes, whose keen copyediting eye makes this process so much less embarrassing than it might otherwise be.]

 

© 2009 TomDispatch.com
Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com [43] ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire Project [44] and, most recently, the author of Mission Unaccomplished: Tomdispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts and Dissenters [45] [45](Nation Books), the first collection of Tomdispatch interviews. His book, The End of Victory Culture [46] (University of Massachusetts Press), has been thoroughly updated in a newly issued edition that deals with victory culture's crash-and-burn sequel in Iraq.  He is the editor of the recently released The World According to TomDispatc: America and the Age of Empire. [47]


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

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/04/08-4

[bigron]

US expands war into Pakistan

Missile strikes to be intensified

Keith Jones

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m53258&hd=&size=1&l=e


8 April 2009

The head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, and Richard Holbrooke, the US Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, visited Islamabad Monday and Tuesday to press Pakistani authorities to intensify their efforts to staunch the anti-American insurgency in the country’s Pashtun-speaking Afghan borderlands.

Unveiled by US President Barack Obama late last month, Washington’s new strategy to pacify Afghanistan calls for a dramatic escalation of the war—US troop strength in Afghanistan is to almost double from 38,000 to 68,000—and for the war’s further expansion in Pakistan, both through coordinated action with Islamabad and unilateral US strikes inside Pakistan.

Since 2004, the Pakistani military has repeatedly mounted anti-insurgency operations in the historically autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), suffering some 1,500 fatalities, provoking widespread popular anger over its wanton indifference to civilian casualties, and triggering a growing humanitarian crisis. More than half a million FATA residents have been rendered refugees.

In Bajur, the site of heavy fighting last fall, the military flattened whole villages. According to a recent BBC report, there is growing anger among refugees over the government’s failure to provide them with assistance to rebuild their homes. Teacher Abdul Haleem, who is now living at a refugee camp near Peshawar that used to house Afghanis displaced by the civil war of the 1980s, told the BBC, "They’ve destroyed the whole village, the whole market. There are no hospitals, no schools, no teachers in Bajur. They’re all here."

But the US political and military elite is adamant that Pakistan act more aggressively to quell the insurgency, charging that FATA and neighboring parts of Baluchistan and the North-West Frontier Province have become a "safe-haven" for anti-US forces. In recent days, top US officials including Holbrooke and General David Petraeus, the head of the Pentagon’s Central Command, have publicly charged that elements within Pakistan’s military intelligence agency, the ISI, are continuing to consort with the Taliban and other anti-US Islamic insurgents.

In the midst of Holbrooke’s and Mullen’s visit to Islamabad, the New York Times, no doubt at the behest of the Obama administration, published a report meant to underline Washington’s determination to wage war in Pakistan. Titled "More drone attacks in Pakistan Planned," the report cited "senior administration officials" as saying that the US intends "to step up its use of drones to strike militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas."

Since last August, US forces have carried out at least 35 drone missile strikes inside Pakistan, killing more than 340 people, many, if not most of them, civilians. The most recent attack came on the morning of April 4 in North Waziristan. Local officials said women and children were among the 13 dead.

Tuesday’s Times article also reported that the Obama administration is considering broadening "the missile strikes to Baluchistan," repeating a claim made in an earlier Times report.

US officials claim the drone missile strikes in FATA have caused some leaders of the anti-US insurgency to flee to Quetta, Baluchistan’s capital. The implication is that if Pakistani authorities don’t soon act to apprehend or kill these insurgents, the US will begin mounting drone attacks in and around Quetta, a city of well over a million people.

The drone attacks very much exemplify the servile relationship that exists between Washington and Islamabad and are seen as such by ordinary Pakistanis. Having for the better part of a decade sustained the dictator General Pervez Musharraf in power, because he was providing vital support to the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, Washington now brazenly asserts the right to violate Pakistani sovereignty at will and rain down death on impoverished villagers.

Such is the popular feeling, all sections of the Pakistani political elite have been compelled to condemn the drone attacks. Aftab Ahmad Sherpao, interior minister during much of Musharaff’s rule, recently told the Times that only about 1 to 2 percent of Pakistanis support the US’s policy toward their country: "A cross-section of people is dead set against the Americans. Another section is not happy, but not vocal."

A spokesman for the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has said the FATA-based pro-Taliban group will mount two suicide bombings a week until the US ceases its drone attacks. Pakistani authorities have blamed TTP leader Baitullah Mehsud for a series of devastating attacks in the heart of Pakistan’s major cities, including the December 2007 assassination of Pakistan People’s Party leader Benazir Bhutto. Mehsud has denied most of these claims, but he did claim authorship of last week’s attack on a police academy in Lahore and a paramilitary camp in Islamabad.

Popular sentiment notwithstanding, it is an open secret that the Pakistani government tolerates the drone attacks, albeit grudgingly, as necessary to sustain the reactionary, client-patron partnership between the Pakistani military and the Pentagon that has for decades been at the heart of the Pakistani elite’s geo-political strategy. Indeed, it has been all but conclusively established that many of the drone attacks are launched from a CIA base located within Pakistan.

Speaking at a press conference Tuesday alongside Holbrooke and Mullen, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said, "We did talk about drones and let me be very frank, there is a gap between us and them [the US officials]. I want to bridge that gap.

"My view is that [the drone attacks] are working to the advantage of the extremists."

Qureshi said the two sides "agree to disagree on this." In other words, the US will continue to carry out unilaterally military strikes inside Pakistan, a violation of international law that is tantamount to an act of war.

Qureshi claimed that the US has agreed to abide by "certain red lines," specifically that there will be no "foreign boots on Pakistani soil." In fact, already last month Holbrooke and the US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Richard Boucher made statements stipulating that there will not be a repeat of the US Special Forces’ raid mounted inside Pakistan last September. That raid provoked a crisis in US-Pakistani relations with the Pakistani military briefly closing down the principal Pakistani supply route for US forces in Afghanistan and demonstrably shooting at US helicopters when they passed over from Afghanistan into Pakistani air space.

The Pentagon clearly would like US forces in southern Afghanistan to have the option to cross into Pakistan. But the far more important objective for it and for Washington is to get Pakistan to coordinate military action with US forces in Afghanistan and to bear a large part of the fighting and the surge in casualties that will result from the intensification of the war in what the Obama administration now officially describes as a single war-theater embracing Afghanistan and Pakistan’s border regions.

The tensions that underlie the US-Pakistan relationship were given muted expression when Qureshi declared, "The bottom line is the question of trust.... We can only work together if we respect and trust each other."

These remarks were clearly in reaction to the assertions of top US officials that sections of the ISI retain relations with the Taliban and like groups, believing them to be an important instrument of Pakistani geo-political strategy, and more generally US complaints that Islamabad has not given Washington good value for the more than $10 billion in military aid and "war on terror payments" that the Bush administration funneled to the Musharraf regime.

A key element in the Obama administration’s Afghan war strategy is a redefinition of Washington’s relations with Islamabad. The Obama plan calls for Pakistan to be given $1.5 billion per year in development aid for the next 5 years and close to $3 billion in additional counter-insurgency aid over 5 years. The development aid constitutes less than $10 per year per Pakistani, but it is far more than the US has ever offered Islamabad in non-military aid.

To the frustration of the Pakistani elite, the offer of aid comes with significant strings attached. Obama pointedly proclaimed that there will be "no blank checks" for Pakistan. The annual development money will be tied to as yet unspecified conditions meant to measure and judge, at least on an annual basis, that Pakistan is doing the US’s bidding in the Afghan-Pakistan war. The "Pakistani Counterinsurgency Capability Fund" will be subject to unprecedented Pentagon controls and US stipulations that the military aid cannot be used against India.

Islamabad has long complained that Washington has failed to supply the Pakistani military with advanced counter-insurgency equipment, including night vision glasses and attack helicopters.

In announcing its new Afghan War strategy, top Obama administration officials also made clear, to Islamabad’s chagrin, that the US has no intention of getting involved in the Indo-Pakistani dispute over Kashmir. In the run-up to last November’s US elections, Obama and several of his aides suggested that the US should take a more active role in resolving the Kashmir dispute, with the implied suggestion that placing pressure on India to make concessions to Pakistan over Kashmir would be a quid pro quo for getting Pakistan to be even more supportive of the US occupation of Afghanistan.

India, being the larger and stronger power, has always insisted that the Kashmir dispute is a bilateral issue and vigorously opposed any suggestion of third party involvement. In recent months, New Delhi has made thwarting any possible US intervention in the Kashmir conflict a key priority. Through diplomatic channels it has strongly voiced its opposition directly to Washington. But India also seized on last November’s Mumbai terrorist atrocity to press its claim that Pakistan is the nexus of world terrorism and that the Kashmir insurgency is simply a product of the machinations of the Pakistani military-security establishment.

Washington has gotten the message and is anxious to assuage India, which it has been courting for a decade as a potential Asian counterweight to a rising China. To appease New Delhi, Holbrooke’s job description was changed at the last minute to Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, rather than Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. Top US officials charged with briefing reporters on the Obama administration’s new Afghan War strategy reiterated that the US will not get involved in resolving the Kashmir dispute. "We don’t intend to get involved in that issue," declared US National Security Advisor General James Jones. "But we do intend to help both countries build more trust and confidence, so that Pakistan can address the issues that it confronts on the western side of the nation."

The reality is that Washington’s drive to extend US influence in oil rich Central Asia through the conquest of Afghanistan and its attempt to make India a "global, strategic partner" are placing great pressure on the crisis-ridden Pakistani state.

Thirty years ago the US instigated Islamabad to mentor Islamic fundamentalist militias in Afghanistan as part of its reactionary drive against the Soviet Union and backed the Pakistani dictator and Islamic reactionary General Zia ul Haq to the hilt.

Today it demands that Pakistan crush the Taliban. This not only undercuts the Pakistani elite’s attempt to maintain influence in Afghanistan under conditions where the government in Kabul, with US support, has developed extensive ties to India. It enflames Pashtun nationalist feeling on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border further feeding national-ethnic tensions within the Pakistani state, has caused fissures within the military, and has further discredited the government in the eyes of the Pakistani people by demonstrating it to be a US mercenary regime.



 

[Biggs]

The Political Economy of Taliban Terror in Swat Valley

by Tom Burghardt

Global Research, April 8, 2009
Antifascist Calling...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13117

Antifascist Calling...

Fury amongst Pakistan's citizens erupted after a human rights' group surfaced a video April 3 showing the flogging of a 17-year-old girl in Swat Valley.

The vile display was carried out by thugs allied with Baitullah Mehsud's Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

Dawn reports that the video, apparently shot by a mobile phone "shows the girl, wearing a blue burqa, lying on the ground face down. Her legs, hands and head are held by two men and a third, bearded man wearing a turban is shown whipping her repeatedly."

The hideous scene continues for several minutes until the girl, allegedly "guilty" of the "crime" of adultery is dragged off by armed fighters. Dawn avers:

After the first couple of lashes, the girl starts to scream loudly, but no one moves to help her. "Please, please," she shouts in Pushto. "Stop it, please. For God's sake, stop it, I am dying."

A man off-camera is giving orders to his companions. "Hold her feet tightly. Lift her burqa a bit." ("Flogging in Swat outrages nation," Dawn, April 4, 2009)

In February, the "secular" Awami National Party (ANP) that controls the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) government, signed a peace deal pledging to impose Sharia law on Swat residents.

The pact, which halted murderous and largely ineffective artillery barrages on residents by the Army, was negotiated by ANP leaders and Maulana Sufi Mohammed, the leader of the Tehrik-Nifaz-Shariat-e-Muhammadi (Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law, TNSM) in NWFP's Malakand district where Swat is located.

The Guardian reported April 3 Sufi Mohammed, "In a rare interview with any media outlet, domestic or foreign...told the Guardian that the new courts would formalise penalties including flogging, chopping off hands and stoning to death."

TTP "emir" Maulana Fazlullah, the sociopathic son-in-law of Sufi Mohammed has promised to expand the Taliban's writ throughout Pakistan. Indeed Muslim Khan, a key commander and spokesperson for the group told The Guardian by telephone that sharia would be implemented "whether the government likes it or not."

Aftab Alam, president of the Swat Lawyers Association, said that the creaking colonial-era legal system needed to be speeded up, not replaced.

"They [the Taliban] want to establish a complete autonomous state, that's the real agenda," said Alam. "A utopian empire, a Taliban empire. Sometimes utopias become real." ...

Khan added: "Swat is a test case. After this, it [sharia] should be brought in in the whole of Pakistan. How can we have British law here? It is the task of the Taliban to make them agree. It is our right, 95% of the population is Muslim." (Saeed Shah, "Pakistan region in grip of fear as leader begins to implement sharia law," The Guardian, April 3, 2009)

And if the Taliban's pornographic display in Swat is any indication of the future direction affairs might take, the prospects for tackling Pakistan's overwhelming poverty, endemic corruption by capitalist elites and military repressors are indeed grim.

As if to drive home the point, Reuters reported that "two female Pakistani teachers, a female aid worker and their driver were found shot dead on Monday, police and a doctor said, in an area where Islamists have attacked aid groups."

The attack took place about 40 miles north of the capital, Islamabad. The bodies had been dumped in a heavily forested area.

When the agreement was signed in mid-February, it was condemned by human rights' and left-wing groups as a capitulation by the state to jihadi terrorists and their friends in the Army and Pakistan's shadowy Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI).

As outrage over the girls' flogging spread, human rights' and leftist groups staged protests Sunday. In Lahore, a coalition of women's organizations, socialist parties and trade unions organized a 2,000 strong march denouncing the state's sell-out to the Taliban. The Labour Party Pakistan reported on their website Monday that,

Speakers condemned the flogging of women in Swat and acts of terrorism by religious fundamentalists. They also condemned the Drone attacks by Americans as well. They announced the launch of a national movement against Talbanisation of the society. Taliban are not anti-imperialist, they are neo-fascist and forces of suppression, we have to fight them. Terrorism can not be defeated by more terrorism. "We have to mobilize people to fight them both" was the main theme of the speakers. ("Lahore Rally Against Talibanisation and Terrorism," Labour Party Pakistan, April 6, 2009)

In a further sign that strains between America and Pakistan threaten to derail the Obama administration's plan to expand CIA drone attacks, The New York Times reported that "two senior American officials came under withering public criticism from Pakistan on Tuesday, with the Pakistani foreign minister saying that 'trust' between the countries was in question, particularly over the issue of American missile attacks in Pakistan's tribal areas."

During meetings in Islamabad, the Foreign Minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi told the Times he informed Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen and Obama's regional envoy Richard Holbrooke, "there is a gap between us" regarding the issue of drone attacks.

There are indications that gap has widened into a chasm. ISI director, Lt. General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, refused to meet separately with Holbrooke and Mullen who had requested a private meeting. Pasha is apparently miffed over reports that elements within ISI continue to provide logistical and material aid to the Taliban even as the imperialists shower "carpets of bombs" as well as a "carpet of gold" on the Army.

Meanwhile, Daily Times reported in Thursday's edition that "Al Qaeda, Taliban and other militants have been relocating from the Tribal Areas to Pakistan's overcrowded and impoverished cities, which is likely to make it harder to find and stop them from staging terrorist attacks, officials say."

Cynically, an unnamed "senior U.S. defence official" told the Lahore-based newspaper, "putting these guys on the run forces a lot of good things to happen. It gives you more targeting opportunities."

"Opportunities" in the form of dead civilians caught in the cross hairs of a Hellfire missile blast. "The downside," the official continues, "is that you get a much more dispersed target set and they go to places where we are not operating." As the World Socialist Web Site reported April 8,

Since 2004, the Pakistani military has repeatedly mounted anti-insurgency operations in the historically autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), suffering some 1,500 fatalities, provoking widespread popular anger over its wanton indifference to civilian casualties, and triggering a growing humanitarian crisis. More than half a million FATA residents have been rendered refugees. (Keith Jones, "U.S. expands war into Pakistan," World Socialist Web Site, April 8, 2009)

Even as the TTP and their allies threaten to mount two suicide bombings a week until the Americans cease their drone attacks, the U.S. response--other than rank indifference to the suffering of the Pakistani people--is to demand more, in the form of total capitulation to the Global Godfather by Pakistan's mercenary elite.

Flogging Video: "It's all a Conspiracy"

In the wake of the incident for which TTP spokesperson Muslim Khan claimed responsibility, The News reports that NWFP's Minister for Information, Mian Iftikhar Hussain, called the video release by electronic and print media "a conspiracy against the peace deal in Malakand."

While Hussain insisted that the outrage occurred before the Taliban's deal with the provincial government, the man who actually shot the video told Dawn that the girls' humiliating torture took place two weeks ago, and not in January as ANP and TTP leaders allege.

Rejecting the mendacious fairy-tale concocted by the Taliban and NWFP's "secular" government, the girl was mercilessly beaten not for some presumed "immoral" breech, but because she had rejected the marriage proposal made by a local Taliban thug, allegedly the son of none other than Muslim Khan himself!

Implying the monstrous punishment was actually "merciful," Khan told Dawn "the girl should have been stoned to death, but the Taliban had only flogged her because qazi courts had not been set up at the time."

Asma Jahangir, chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, denounced the incident and accused the federal and provincial governments of giving the neofascists "a free hand to attack people and disgrace women." Jahangir told Dawn,

"The government has handed over Swat to those who have played with the lives of people. If they are really popular, why this was not reflected in the last general elections?" she wondered.

Ms Jahangir criticised the leaders who were claiming that peace had been restored in Swat. "Why don't they take their families there and stay just for one week?" In reply to a question about recent terrorist attacks, she said cricket players and police had nothing to with drone attacks. ("Flogging in Swat outrages nation," Dawn, April 4, 2009)

On Monday, Pakistan's Supreme Court Chief Justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, assailed the government for "not taking up the case until it became a national scandal" The New York Times reports.

The head of the Peshawar Bar Association, Abdul Latif Afridi, told the High Court, "the most fundamental rights are violated every second of every day. People are being ejected from their houses, courts are closed, 300 schools have been demolished."

After listening to Afridi's grim assessment, Chaudhry demanded to know what the attorney general was doing about it. Apparently, not much.

And when a Musharraf-appointed secretary of the Interior Ministry, Kemal Shah, refused to answer the chief justice when he demanded to know why the official had not been to Swat, Chaudhry ordered: "You go to Swat yourself. You must be very bright. You go yourself. We command you do it and report to us what is happening."

While embarrassing the pack of thieves who rule the roost is well and good as far as it goes, might there be other, less seemly motives, behind the reign of terror in Swat Valley? Let's take a look.

Looting Swat's Resources

As is so often the case, religion serves as the handmaid of organized crime. This observation is no different in Pakistan than it is the U.S. heimat, or for that matter, aboard America's stationary aircraft carrier in the Middle East, Israel, where the dispossession of the Palestinian people by a coterie of settler loons similarly, is backed-up by the armed fist of the capitalist state.

While proclaiming the purest motives for their crimes, TTP "emirs" are enriching themselves on various illegal schemes to loot the region's natural resources.

Toss in narcotrafficking, kidnapping and extortion and these self-proclaimed "saviors of the Nation" bear a striking resemblance to their erstwhile "adversaries," America's own gang of murderous Tony Sopranos. In this context, the Abu Dhabi-based newspaper, The National, revealed April 3 that,

Militants are funding a campaign of violence with profits made from the illegal mining of emeralds and felling of timber in the volatile valley of Swat in northern Pakistan.

Swat, which holds one of Asia's two largest known deposits of high-quality emeralds, has been brought under the control of militants following a peace deal struck between the Pakistani Taliban and the government last month. (Ashfaq Yusufzai and Isambard Wilkinson, "Militants stripping Swat of resources," The National, April 3, 2009)

According to investigative reporters on the ground in Mingora, Swat's largest city, "the gemstones are sold as quickly as possible at rates sometimes as low as US$50 (Dh184) per carat, far below their market price."

Citing anonymous officials too terrified to speak publicly, after looting the collective wealth of Swat's citizens, the gems "are then smuggled to Jaipur, India, before being transported to Bangkok, Switzerland and Israel."

As we have seen, Muslim Khan, who believes that flogging a 17-year-old girl is "merciful" told The National, "We know that all the minerals have been created by Allah, the Mighty, and the Merciful for the benefit of his creatures. We should avail the opportunity."

While the newspaper claims that the government has not challenged "the Taliban's control of the valuable emerald mines," more likely bigwigs in Peshawar and Islamabad are sharing the "opportunity" afforded by their so-called "peace" by profiting handsomely from the cosy arrangement to despoil Swat of its mineral wealth.

But wait, there's more!

Another lucrative source of income for the bandits are "Swat's once thick forests, which are already on the verge of extinction."

Abdul Jamil, a local timber trader who can expect swift punishment for spilling the beans, told The National: "The Taliban are mercilessly cutting the forest, applying the same [primitive] mechanisms as they do in the case of emeralds."

One government official speaking anonymously said that "the losses suffered by forests in the last one year were more than the losses of the last two decades."

Who, pray tell, would have the "means, motive and opportunity" to assist the TTP's smuggling precious gems to India and Israel? Why, none other than ISI asset and organized crime kingpin, Dawood Ibrahim that's who!

The mafia don, whose D-Company reportedly assisted Lashkar-e-Toiba's terrorist siege in Mumbai last November, has for decades run sophisticated smuggling operations that traffic in everything from gold, nuclear materials, arms and drugs. As investigative journalist Misha Glenny points out, Ibrahim,

took the obvious plunge and started trafficking in drugs, chiefly in heroin bound for the European market and mandrax for South Africa. And in Dawood's part of the world, if you want to guarantee the success of a narcotics business, there is only one organization you need to cozy up to--the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Pakistan's secret service. (McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008, p. 135)

With extensive smuggling networks operating across South Asia and into the Gulf states, D-Company operatives would be the perfect facilitators for the illicit and very profitable trade in blood emeralds. Needless to say, the illegal trade in gemstones would prove a boon not only for unscrupulous local officials and gangsters but as an additional source of black funds for enterprising intelligence agencies and their terrorist proxies.

Is this one reason why, as Daily Times reported April 5, that despite the flogging outrage and murder of citizens "the government freed three more Taliban from Mingora on Saturday, as part of its peace accord with Tehreek Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi. The total number of released Taliban has reached 47."

While the United States plans new atrocities in Central and South Asia, and as the imperialists search for "moderate Taliban" with whom they can share the spoils, it would do us well to heed the impassioned words of Pakistani writer Shandana Minhas:

From an extremist movement behind heinous attacks and punishments against anyone and everyone--suicide bombings, burning music and books, banning education, impeding access to healthcare, flogging women for leaving their homes, throwing acid on girls faces, public executions without trial, archive footage of most of which exists in digital libraries across the country--an effort has been made to market it as a romanticized movement of idealistic men with guns who fight injustice when the state doesn't and really just want to bring the world closer to God you know? ("Lashes to lashes, dust to dust," The News, April 5, 2009)

As is so often the case, the "enemy of my enemy" more often than not is still an enemy.

Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, based in Montreal, his articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily, Pacific Free Press and the whistleblowing website Wikileaks. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press.

Tom Burghardt is a frequent contributor to Global Research.  Global Research Articles by Tom Burghardt

[Biggs]

PAKISTAN: 300 Pashtuns held in crackdown
Dictatorship Watch

www.uruknet.info?p=53270

Link: www.dictatorshipwatch.com/2009/04/08/300-pashtuns-held-in-crackdown.html

April 8, 2009


Lahore City police Tuesday launched a massive crackdown against Pashtuns belonging to NWFP and Afghanistan and arrested hundreds of them during raids at their colonies in the provincial capital. …

A senior police officer seeking anonymity said that law enforcement agencies had collected information about the indirect involvement of the Pashtuns in the recent terrorists’ strikes in Lahore. The terrorists always used the Pashtuns settled in the city, for accommodation, transportation, for the information about the targeted places and other help. The terrorists also used their residences as hideout before, during and after the attacks in the city. more….

Anyone who knows the general ins and outs of the occupation or iraq and Afghanistan would know how Shiite were used against Sunnis in Iraq and how Northern Alliance was used against the rest of the country in Afghanistan. They would also in the know about the division of Baghdad and other parts of the country on ethnic lines. The same game of balkanizing Paksitan has begun. Now the terrorists are not just al-Qaeda and taliban. All Pashtun are now target. All Pashtun are now providing logistical support to terrorists. all Pashtun are suspect. What a nice way to widen the divide along the lines proposed for the division of the country.

[bigron]

Death By the Numbers: Pakistan Counts the Toll of the Bush-Obama Drone War

Chris Floyd
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m53325&hd=&size=1&l=e



April 10, 2009

As we all know, the Terror Warriors in the White House (of whatever political stripe) don't do body counts. They just kill people, make unsupported claims of "clean hits" on "militants," backtrack a bit later when eyewitness reports confirm extensive civilian casualties, promise "investigations" that kick the PR can way down the road -- and carry on killing.

But strangely enough, the people who are being killed by these well-wadded, massively protected elites do count how many of their sons and daughters and mothers and fathers are being slaughtered by American ordnance. Imagine that! It's almost like they are real people or something!

Pakistan is the latest target of the Terror Warriors; the progressive, anti-war, last-best-hope-for-world-peace Barack Obama has made it his special project to lay some heavy hurt on the Pakistanis, escalating the drone bombing campaign initiated by his much-emulated predecessor, George Widowmaker Bush. Indeed, the Obama administration is mulling expanding their expansion of the drone war into Pakistan's troubled -- but oil-rich -- southern province of Baluchistan. One begins to suspect that the progressive humanitarians in the White House have been drawing on the beserker fantasies of General Ralph Peters for strategic guidance on the "Af-Pak" front.

In any case, every week brings new reports of deadly attacks in Pakistan's frontier regions, almost all of them involving the deaths of civilians. Americans generally hear little or nothing about these attacks beyond official snippets about "successful" attacks against the apparently endless, ever-replenishing supply of "top Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders." [Or to put it in reality's terms, the United States government and its progressive, humanitarian leaders regularly order, admit and applaud the "extrajudicial killing" -- i.e., murder -- of uncharged, untried individuals living within the borders of an allied country. As it saith in the Scriptures: These be your gods, O progressives!] But while Americans turn a deaf ear, in Pakistan the blood cries out, and is measured, as far as possible, by a government that is further shaken by each American attack and the violent extremism it engenders.

This week, Pakistani officials released stunning figures of the civilian death count in the American drone war: almost 700 innocent men, women and children killed so far -- as opposed to 14 actual, wanted extremist leaders. As the Pakistani paper The News reports:



Of the 60 cross-border predator strikes carried out by the Afghanistan-based American drones in Pakistan between January 14, 2006 and April 8, 2009, only 10 were able to hit their actual targets, killing 14 wanted al-Qaeda leaders, besides perishing 687 innocent Pakistani civilians. The success percentage of the US predator strikes thus comes to not more than six per cent....

According to the figures compiled by the Pakistani authorities, a total of 537 people have been killed in 50 incidents of cross-border US predator strikes since January 1, 2008 to April 8, 2009, averaging 34 killings per month and 11 killings per attack. The average per month killings in predator strikes during 12 months of 2008 stood at 32 while the average per attack killings in the 36 drone strikes for the same year stood at 11.

Similarly, 152 people have been killed in 14 incidents of cross-border predator attacks in the tribal areas in the first 99 days of 2009, averaging 38 killings per month and 11 killings per attack.


Now there's change you can believe in (to coin a phrase)! In just a few months in office, Obama has managed to raise the average kill rate achieved by Bush from 32 to 38 per month. And who can doubt that this young, capable, charismatic president will not increase that civilian slaughter rate even further as he ratchets up the drone war in the months -- and years and years -- to come?

 

[Biggs]

An increasingly powerful taliban is moving into big cities from their sanctuaries in NWFP villages. Reports claim that the incessant drone attacks by USAF on the proposed sanctuaries of the taliban...
An increasingly powerful taliban is moving into big cities from their sanctuaries in NWFP villages. Reports claim that the incessant drone attacks by USAF on the proposed sanctuaries of the talibans have triggered this mayhem. Today the taliban spokesman Muslim Khan officially called off the peace deal and said that they are going to attack with full force in Islamabad ( Pakistan's Capital). As off now the talibans are busy surrounding the capital.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Isi5SVPqZQ

[Biggs]

Peace deal in Swat setto collapse
DPA/Islamabad

http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=283765&version=1&template_id=41&parent_id=23

A radical cleric who has mediated a deal between local Taliban and the government in Pakistan’s north-western Swat valley announced Thursday he was pulling out of the peace talks, a move that could lead to a resurgence of violence in the region.
Maulana Sufi Mohamed said he was leaving Swat district because the government failed to implement the February agreement under which it promised to establish Islamic courts in return for an end to the militant’s insurgency.
“We have established peace in Swat as much as we could but the only way to durable peace is the Islamic judicial system that the government has not established so far,” his spokesman Izzat Khan told reporters in Mingora, the main town in Swat.
But while Khan said that the peace accord was still in place, local politicians expect it to collapse with its main mediator gone. 
“The peace deal is almost history. Maulana Sufi Mohamed left the place because he could not deliver peace. But we will also blame the (President Asif Ali) Zardari government which hesitated from approving the agreement mainly because of pressure from the Americans,” said a local lawmaker who spoke on condition of anonymity. 
Mohamed on February 16 announced the agreement with the North West Frontier Province’s (NWFP) regional government, to end a 16-month armed campaign to enforce Taliban rule led by his son-in law Maulana Fazlullah.
The campaign left hundreds of militants and dozens of security personnel killed and tens of thousands of civilians displaced.
Following the February agreement Mohamed set up a peace camp in Mingora and convinced Taliban to respect the deal.
The accord has yet to be approved by Zardari, who made complete peace in Swat a precondition. Swat used to be a popular tourist destination, located some 140 kilometres north-west of Islamabad.
Little interested in laying down their weapons, the Taliban used the peace process to consolidate their control over the district and capture nearby areas.
However, Mohamed’s spokesman said Zardari and the central government were to be blamed if the violence returned to Swat.  “President Zardari should have signed it immediately to avoid the problem.”
The Swat agreement is the latest in a series of peace deals Pakistan’s government struck with insurgents under its botched effort to make peace with the Taliban.

[Biggs]

21 killed in militants-police clashes as Taliban enter Buner district in northwest Pakistan
Wed, 2009-04-08 04:02

By Farzana Shah-Asian Tribune Correspondent in Pakistan

http://www.asiantribune.com/?q=node/16646

Buner, 08 April, (Asiantribune.com): As many as 12 people including three police officials, two lashkar (militia) men and sixteen militants were killed in overnight clash between Taliban and Qaumi Lashkar (a tribal force) in Buner district in northwest Pakistan, police and residents said on Tuesday.

The fierce fighting erupted on Monday night when the local tribal force (Qaumi Lashkar) and local police force made efforts to enter Gokand valley via Rajagaly Kandow from Pir Baba area side to flush out Taliban militants who had sneaked in to the district on Saturday from neighbouring Swat.

According to sources Taliban militants had dispatched sixteen bodies and shifted thirteen wounded colleagues to Swat via Kalil Kandow area early Tuesday morning after the shootout.

There are also reports that Taliban took possession of the bodies of two Lashkar men and three police constables.

Malakand commissioner Mohammad Javed Khan, Taliban commander Mehmood Khan, TNSM vice chief Maulana Mohammad Alam, district chief Maulana Salar and others visited Dara Gokand on Tuesday and held several rounds of talks with the Taliban commander Rizwan Bacha of Puechar Swat.

The dialogue continued till Tuesday evening after which Taliban commander allowed the handover of bodies of the Qaumi Lashkar men and police personnel to a third party.

The bodies of the police personnel were dispatched to their hometowns after funeral prayers at Police Line Buner.

Earlier Taliban after entering Buner District from Swat valley seized control of a mountain top and established their headquarters there in Buner district. They want to hold “peace march” in the district and to monitor the affairs in accordance with the Nizam-i –Adl Regulation.

The Taliban have claimed to have consolidated their position in whole of Dara Gokand, advanced to Kalabat in Batai Dara and near occupying Bagra post, a few kilometers from Pir Baba Bazaar and now eyeing Sultanwas area.

Earlier the local elders asked the militants to leave but the later refused and took positions in the Gokand valley. The local jirga elders and district administration officials held several rounds of talks with the Taliban through a reconciliatory committee which included leaders of Tehrik Nefaz-i-Shariat Muhammadi (TNSM) in a bid to convince Taliban to leave the area and also offered safe passage. But the militant commander said that Tehrik-e-Taliban high command had ordered their tashkeel (stay) in the area and they would leave after holding a peace march and visiting the families of six killed Taliban in Shalbandi area.

More bloody clashes are feared as reinforcement and heavy weaponry have been shifted to Taliban from Swat on Monday night and they are all set to attack the locals and local tribal force.

- Asian Tribune -

[Biggs]

5 Killed in Taliban Gunbattle With Pakistan Police

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,513178,00.html

PESHAWAR, Pakistan —  Police in Pakistan say at least five people have been killed in a gunbattle with Taliban militants trying to expand their stronghold in the Swat valley.

The clash took place overnight in Buner, a previously peaceful district to the southeast of Swat.

According to Zakir Khan, a police official in Buner's Pir Baba area, a group of Taliban militants crossed into a mountainous area of Buner late Monday.

Khan said armed tribesmen and police confronted them, and three officers and two tribesmen were killed. He estimated that more than a dozen militants also died.

[Biggs]

Pakistan drone attacks to intensify, Obama officials say
On Tuesday, Pakistani leaders reportedly rebuked visiting US officials over the airstrikes, which have prompted violent responses from militants.
By David Montero

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0408/p99s01-duts.html

posted April 08, 2009 at 9:00 am EST

As Pakistan sharply rebukes United States Predator drone attacks inside Pakistani territory, the Obama administration plans to turn up the number of those attacks in Pakistan's restive tribal belt, according to news reports.

The controversial announcement comes as fierce fighting erupted between the Taliban and a homegrown militia force that the Pakistani government is backing against the extremist force, according to Dawn, an influential English newspaper in Pakistan.

Three police officials, two Lashkar (militia) men and sixteen militants were killed in [an] overnight clash between Taliban and Qaumi Lashkar in Buner district, police and residents said on Tuesday.

The fierce fighting erupted on Monday night when the Qaumi Lashkar and local police force made efforts to enter the Gokand valley via Rajagaly Kandow from Pir Baba side to flush out Taliban militants who had sneaked in to the district on Saturday from neighbouring Swat.

The Taliban, who have recently carved out a safe haven in the northern Swat Valley, are now pushing to seize control of neighboring Buner province, reports Agence France-Presse.

Residents and police officials said a group of some 60 Taliban militants armed with light and heavy weapons managed to cross from Swat and take control of the mountain top in neighbouring Buner district.

More fighting is expected in Buner, reports The Nation, a Pakistani daily.

The situation in Buner is further deteriorating when the Taliban militants have refused to leave the area after killing of four people including three policemen. People from all over scattered areas of Buner particularly from Daggar, Gagra and Gadezai Tehsil are consolidating their positions with a view to forcing the Taliban to return to Swat.

The possible spread of the Taliban out of the Swat Valley highlights the heated debate currently underway between Washington and Islamabad over how best to neutralize the militant group on either side of the Afghan border.

Since August 2008, some 37 predator attacks have killed 360 people along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, according to Agence France-Presse.

But while those attacks may have proved effective in eliminating terrorist targets, they have sowed deep resentment among Pakistani officials and violent responses from the militants themselves.

Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, vowed last week to carry out two strikes a week inside Pakistan as retaliation against the drone attacks, and even threatened an attack on Washington if those attacks continue, reports the Associated Press.

"Soon we will launch an attack in Washington that will amaze everyone in the world," Mehsud said in a phone interview, without providing details.

The Taliban are not the only ones who are upset. Pakistani officials reportedly rebuked US special representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen as the officials made a visit to Pakistan this week, according to Dawn. The Pakistani officials rejected a US proposal for joint military operations against the militants, according to the newspaper, and criticized the drone attacks.

The sources said the US officials were also told that continuing drone attacks inside Pakistan's territory were counter-productive and they were asked to shift the drone technology and authority to the Pakistan Army.

The sources said that army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, during his meeting with Mr Holbrooke and Admiral Mullen, also took a tough stance over drone attacks. He voiced serious concern over the tirade of allegations against Inter-Services Intelligence levelled by US generals and said that linking the ISI with the Taliban was inappropriate.

Agence France-Presse points out that the official visit is the "first since President Barack Obama last month unveiled a new strategy for Afghanistan, drawn up after a two-month assessment of flagging efforts to subdue an extremist insurgency and stabilise the turbulent country."

Obama's NATO allies backed his Afghan war plan at a summit on Saturday, also pledging up to 5,000 more troops to add to 21,000 US soldiers the US leader said he would send to Afghanistan.

Despite the tough talk from Islamabad, senior US officials said Monday that the US intended to step up its use of drones to strike militants in Pakistan's tribal areas and might extend them to a different sanctuary deeper inside the country, reports The New York Times.

Officials are also proposing to broaden the missile strikes to Baluchistan, south of the tribal areas, unless Pakistan manages to reduce the incursion of militants there....

American officials say the missile strikes have forced some Taliban and Qaeda leaders to flee south toward Quetta, a city in the province of Baluchistan, which abuts the parts of southern Afghanistan where recent fighting has been the fiercest.

[Biggs]

Pakistan:

The Most Dangerous Country?

Video and Petition

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3I6SxMpivo

The war in Afghanistan and its potentially catastrophic impact on Pakistan are complex and dangerous issues, which further make the case why our country needs a national debate on this now starting with congressional oversight hearings.

Posted April 09, 2009

 

The war in Afghanistan and its potentially catastrophic impact on Pakistan are complex and dangerous issues, which further make the case why our country needs a national debate on this now starting with congressional oversight hearings.

Sign the petition to help make hearings a critical first step and then send this video to all of your friends and family. Imagine someone like Andrew Bacevich having the ear of Congress as he explains the perils of war. Now imagine a national dialogue filled with rational, thoughtful discussions on the issues surrounding Afghanistan. That is our goal.

Sign the petition: http://rethinkafghanistan.com#petition

Robert Greenwald will soon travel to Afghanistan to interview some of the country's elected leaders, experts, bloggers, people, and organizations who could help us provide a more complete Afghan perspective, and would love to have your thoughts and questions to take with him. Please submit them on the Rethink Afghanistan website, and then sign up to follow updates from this journey.

Submit your questions: http://rethinkafghanistan.com/blog/?p=68

Sign up for updates from Afghanistan: http://rethinkafghanistan.com#signup

[Biggs]

60 drone hits kill 14 al-Qaeda men, 687 civilians

http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=21440

Friday, April 10, 2009

By Amir Mir

LAHORE: Of the 60 cross-border predator strikes carried out by the Afghanistan-based American drones in Pakistan between January 14, 2006 and April 8, 2009, only 10 were able to hit their actual targets, killing 14 wanted al-Qaeda leaders, besides perishing 687 innocent Pakistani civilians. The success percentage of the US predator strikes thus comes to not more than six per cent.

Figures compiled by the Pakistani authorities show that a total of 701 people, including 14 al-Qaeda leaders, have been killed since January 2006 in 60 American predator attacks targeting the tribal areas of Pakistan. Two strikes carried out in 2006 had killed 98 civilians while three



attacks conducted in 2007 had slain 66 Pakistanis, yet none of the wanted al-Qaeda or Taliban leaders could be hit by the Americans right on target. However, of the 50 drone attacks carried out between January 29, 2008 and April 8, 2009, 10 hit their targets and killed 14 wanted al-Qaeda operatives. Most of these attacks were carried out on the basis of intelligence believed to have been provided by the Pakistani and Afghan tribesmen who had been spying for the US-led allied forces stationed in Afghanistan.

The remaining 50 drone attacks went wrong due to faulty intelligence information, killing hundreds of innocent civilians, including women and children. The number of the Pakistani civilians killed in those 50 attacks stood at 537, in which 385 people lost their lives in 2008 and 152 people were slain in the first 99 days of 2009 (between January 1 and April .

Of the 50 drone attacks, targeting the Pakistani tribal areas since January 2008, 36 were carried out in 2008 and 14 were conducted in the first 99 days of 2009. Of the 14 attacks targeting Pakistan in 2009, three were carried out in January, killing 30 people, two in February killing 55 people, five in March killing 36 people and four were conducted in the first nine days of April, killing 31 people.

Of the 14 strikes carried out in the first 99 days of April 2009, only one proved successful, killing two most wanted senior al-Qaeda leaders - Osama al Kini and Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan. Both had lost their lives in a New Year’s Day drone strike carried out in the South Waziristan region on January 1, 2009.

Kini was believed to be the chief operational commander of al-Qaeda in Pakistan and had replaced Abu Faraj Al Libi after his arrest from Bannu in 2004. Both men were behind the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Dares Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, which killed 224 civilians and wounded more than 5,000 others.

There were 36 recorded cross-border US predator strikes inside Pakistan during 2008, of which 29 took place after August 31, 2008, killing 385 people. However, only nine of the 36 strikes hit their actual targets, killing 12 wanted al-Qaeda leaders. The first successful predator strike had killed Abu Laith al Libi, a senior military commander of al-Qaeda who was targeted in North Waziristan on January 29, 2008. The second successful attack in Bajaur had killed Abu Sulayman Jazairi, al-Qaeda’s external operations chief, on March 14, 2008. The third attack in South Waziristan on July 28, 2008, had killed Abu Khabab al Masri, al-Qaeda’s weapons of mass destruction chief. The fourth successful attack in South Waziristan on August 13, 2008, had killed al-Qaeda leader Abdur Rehman.

The fifth predator strike carried out in North Waziristan near Miranshah on Sept 8, 2008 had killed three al-Qaeda leaders, Abu Haris, Abu Hamza, and Zain Ul Abu Qasim. The sixth successful predator hit in the South Waziristan region on October 2008 had killed Khalid Habib, a key leader of al-Qaeda’s paramilitary Shadow Army.

The seventh such attack conducted in North Waziristan on October 31, 2008 had killed Abu Jihad al Masri, a top leader of the Egyptian Islamic group. The eighth successful predator strike had killed al-Qaeda leader Abdullah Azzam al Saudi in east of North Waziristan on November 19, 2008.

The ninth and the last successful drone attack of 2008, carried out in the Ali Khel region just outside Miramshah in North Waziristan on November 22, 2008, had killed al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubair al Masri and his Pakistani fugitive accomplice Rashid Rauf.

According to the figures compiled by the Pakistani authorities, a total of 537 people have been killed in 50 incidents of cross-border US predator strikes since January 1, 2008 to April 8, 2009, averaging 34 killings per month and 11 killings per attack. The average per month killings in predator strikes during 12 months of 2008 stood at 32 while the average per attack killings in the 36 drone strikes for the same year stood at 11.

Similarly, 152 people have been killed in 14 incidents of cross-border predator attacks in the tribal areas in the first 99 days of 2009, averaging 38 killings per month and 11 killings per attack.

Since September 3, 2008, it appears that the Americans have upped their attacks in Pakistani tribal areas in a bid to disrupt the al-Qaeda and the Taliban network, which they allege is being used to launch cross border ambushes against the Nato forces in Afghanistan.

The American forces stationed in Afghanistan carried out nine aerial strikes between September 3 and September 25, 2008, killing 57 people and injuring 38 others. The attacks were launched on September 3, 4, 5, 8, 12, 15, 17, 22 and September 27. However, the September 3, 2008 American action was unique in the sense that two CH-47 Chinook transport helicopters landed in the village of Zawlolai in the South Waziristan Agency with ground troops from the US Special Operation Forces, fired at three houses and killed 17, including five women and four sleeping children.

Besides the two helicopters carrying the US Special Forces Commandos, two jet fighters and two gun-ship helicopters provided the air cover for the half-an-hour American operation, more than a kilometre inside the Pakistani border.

The last predator strike on [April 8, 2009] was carried out hardly a few hours after the Pakistani authorities had rejected an American proposal for joint operations in the tribal areas against terrorism and militancy, as differences of opinion between the two countries over various aspects of the war on terror came out into the open for the first time.

The proposal came from two top US visiting officials, presidential envoy for the South Asia Richard Holbrooke and Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen. However, the Pakistani military and political leadership reportedly rejected the proposal and adopted a tough posture against a barrage of increasing US predator strikes and criticism emanating from Washington, targeting the Pakistan Army and the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and creating doubts about their sincerity in the war on terror and the fight against al-Qaeda and Taliban.

[bigron]

Obama threatens Pakistan


Roedad Khan

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m53368&hd=&size=1&l=e

April 12, 2009


As I listened to President Obama's address to the nation and his wartime rhetoric, I held my breath. He didn't speak softly. His tone was harsh and threatening. He carried a big stick. That was quite obvious. The spontaneous reaction of all those present was that Obama had learned nothing from history and was not going to change course in Afghanistan or Pakistan. As they say, it was deja vu all over again. What he said was no different from what George W Bush had been saying for years.

Once we thought this one-of-a-kind American president could do great things. In his inaugural address he focused more on 'soft power’ and told the Muslim world that he wants 'a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.’ All that seems to have changed. His message for Pakistan now is loud and clear: Do as I tell you, or else. This is not the way the Americans treated us or talked to us when they were wooing us. This is what happens when you have been in the harem too long. Oh, What a difference a half a century can make!

Obama's decision to send additional troops to Afghanistan is simply an extension of the failed policy of George W Bush. Beefing up the American occupation in Afghanistan is not the solution. It is part of the problem. The presence of foreign troops on their soil is perceived by Afghans as deeply humiliating, a constant reminder of the loss of everything they cherish, everything they hold dear—freedom, sovereignty, liberties, honour and national pride. They will never accept foreign occupation of their country, and they will never collaborate with the enemy. Let there be no doubt about it.

Talking about escalation in Vietnam, President Kennedy told Defence Secretary Robert McNamara. 'It is like taking a drink. The effect wears off and you have to have anotherÉ The war in Vietnam could be won only so long as it was their war. If it were ever converted into a white man's war, we would lose it as the French had lost a decade earlier.’ The American war in Afghanistan and Pakistan's tribal territory is essentially a white man's war and is not winnable.

Today the United States is at war in Afghanistan and our tribal area. However you title or define it, it is war, a war it cannot win. Today nationalism is among the most potent phenomena of political life in this part of the world. In the past, nationalism had succeeded in disrupting the British, French, Dutch, Portuguese, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires. If the United States persists in waging this totally unnecessary and unjustified war, it would suffer a similar fate.

The fundamental question Obama must address is whether American combat troops will be able to prevail over the insurgent forces that drove the Red Army out of Afghanistan. The Obama administration's programme for Afghanistan and Pakistan is rash to the point of folly. I foresee a perilous voyage for the Americans. One thing is for sure. With more Americans in combat, there will certainly be greater losses. Obama is sending conventional troops to do an unconventional job in Afghanistan. He is bound to fail.

'Afghanistan taught us an invaluable lesson,’ former Soviet general, Boris Gromov said on the anniversary of the withdrawal of Soviet troops on Feb 15, 1989. 'You cannot kill your way out of insurgency in Afghanistan. It has been, and always will be, impossible to solve political problems using force.’

Americans invaded Afghanistan more than eight years ago. They have not broken the back of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. They have not captured or killed Osama bin Laden or any other high-profile leader. They have no exit strategy.

As Thomas Powers wrote recently: 'What no country can do for long is force strange people in distant places to reshape their politics and society more to our liking. The effect passes as nation-building at the outset, but in the long run counter-insurgency always comes down to the same self-defeating strategy Ð killing locals until they stop trying to make us go away.’ This is exactly what Americans are doing in Afghanistan and our tribal area.

In the early 1900s, a crusty British general, Andrew Skeen, wrote a guide to military operation in the Pashtun tribal belt. His first piece of advice: 'When planning a military expedition into Pashtun tribal areas, the first thing you must plan is your retreat. All expeditions into this area sooner or later end in retreat under fire.’

The wise course in Afghanistan would be for the United States to emulate France's example of divesting itself of its colonial obligations. If you look at the prestige of France today, it is certainly higher than it was when France fought in Algeria, and certainly higher than when France fought in Indochina. If ever there was an occasion of tactical withdrawal from Afghanistan, this is it.

Lyndon Johnson, despite a booming economy, lost his Great Society to the Vietnam War. He would later tell Doris Kearns Goodwin: 'If I left the woman I really loved Ð the Great Society Ð in order to get involved with that bitch of a war on the other side of the world, then I would lose everything at home. All my programmesÉ all my dreamsÉ’. Obama runs a similar risk of losing everything in the mountains of Afghanistan and Waziristan. Why not, Mr President, profit from Lyndon JohnsonÕs experience and withdraw before it is too late.

'The single greatest threat to (Pakistan),’ Obama said recently, 'comes from Al Qaeda and their extremists allies.’ This is only partially true. All our major problems stem from the American invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. It has turned our tribal area into a protracted ulcer, a quagmire Ð a place where Pakistan is spending blood and treasure to protect American interests.

Obama must know that each strike by Predators or American ground forces reverberates in Pakistan. With the targets now spreading, an expanding US role inside Pakistan may be more than anyone can stomach. The anger level in the country is reaching a dangerous level. Obama will be well advised to scale back American ambitions in Afghanistan. No puppet government in Kabul can exercise effective control in the country beyond the capital or assure that it does not become a sanctuary for terror groups.

'The United States,’ Obama said, 'has great respect for the Pakistani people.’ Bombing our villages and killing innocent men, women and children, Mr President, is no way of earning the respect of our people. Like millions of my countrymen, I feel a deep antipathy toward the 'Yankees who have, with the help of power-hungry generals of the Pakistani army, turned independent, sovereign, proud Pakistan into a 'pseudo-Republic’ and a 'rentier state’ and allowed venal dictatorship to take root.

Who says we are friends? There can be no friendship between the strong and the weak. There can be no friendship between unequals, neither in private life nor in public life. 'The strong do what they can,’ the Athenians told the intractable Melians, 'and the weak must suffer what they must.’ The farewell address of George Washington will ever remain an important legacy for small nations like Pakistan. In that notable testament, the father of the American Republic cautioned that 'an attachment of a small or weak towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter.’ 'It is folly in one nation,’ George Washington observed, 'to look for disinterested favours from anotherÉit must pay with a portion of its independence for what ever it may accept under that character.’ No truer words have been spoken on the subject. Who did this to us? Angry. So very, very angry. Unable to speak due to mega-anger washing over every pore and fiber of my being.

If you want to know what happens to an ill-led and ill-governed, small country, which attaches itself to a powerful country like the United States, visit Pakistan. Nuclear Pakistan has lost its independence. It is now virtually an American satellite, without its manhood, its honour, its dignity, and its sense of self-respect.

The writer is a former federal secretary.
Email: roedad@comsats.net.pk,www.roedadkhan.com




 

[bigron]

Tuesday, April 14, 2009
16:18 Mecca time, 13:18 GMT   
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/04/20094148223761561.html
 
 
Fears over Swat sharia deal 

 
The deals supporters hope it will bring an end to violence in the Swat valley [EPA]
 
The decision of Pakistan's government to allow a stricter implementation of Sharia law in part of the country's northwest, in an effort to end a long-running conflict, has sparked fears the deal could lead to the "Talibanisation" of large areas.

Analysts voiced their concerns on Tuesday, a day after Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan's president, formalised the deal in Malakand district, which includes the Swat valley.

"I believe that politicians have capitulated," AH Nayyar, an analyst at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute, said.

"This is going to badly impact the future of Pakistan and open [the] floodgates for Talibanisation."

Nayyar predicted that the entire province will fall to Taliban within the next few months.

"I also see there will be pressures by Taliban in other provinces and Pakistan is going to go back to the dark ages," he said.

The deal has also raised fears among the US and its Western allies that the valley will turn into a sanctuary for fighters from across the border in Afghanistan.

Swat conflict

Pakistan's government lost control in Swat after Maulana Fazlullah, a local Muslim leader, launched a campaign to enforce sharia there.

During the government's battle against the Taliban in Swat, hundreds were killed, schools were bombed and tens of thousands of people fled their homes.

Zardari had referred the deal to Pakistan's parliament, which voted on Monday to compel him to sign the deal.

Legislators from the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, a party based in the southern city of Karachi that has a strong anti-Taliban stance, walked out of the parliament session before the vote.

"We can't accept Islamic law at gunpoint," Farooq Sattar, a party leader, said.

Government backing

But despite the boycott, Pakistan's parliament voted unanimously to adopt a resolution urging Zardari to sign the deal and many hope the deal will help bring peace.

"It is hoped that those who wanted this law in Swat will now surrender their arms and also bring the peace"

Rehman Malik, Pakistani interior minister
 
"God willing it will have a positive impact on the situation in Swat," Rehman Malik, Pakistan's interior ministry chief, said.

"It is hoped that those who wanted this law in Swat will now surrender their arms and also bring the peace." :
Al Jazeera's Kamal Hyder, reporting from Islamabad, said many believe the government's decision merely represents the will of the people.


"There will be people who say this was giving into the demands of the Taliban in Swat, but other people will tell you that there has been a precedence for sharia law, that before Swat was amalgamated into Pakistan, the place was governed by sharia," he said.

"So in the interest of peace, the political parties in power have indeed made a dramatic move and supported the will of the people of Swat."

Amir Izzat Khan, a spokesman for Sufi Mohammad, a pro-Taliban Muslim leader who helped mediate the agreement, said that the deal would allow peace in Swat.

"We will make all-out efforts to establish peace in the region. The Taliban have disarmed themselves and those who have not yet disarmed will do so soon," Izzat Khan said.

Muslim Khan, a Pakistani Taliban spokesman, said that, with the deal in place, "there will be no need to fire a bullet".

"Women will not be allowed either to go to jobs or markets because we do not want to make them show-pieces," he said.

'Islamic syllabus'

Khan also said that the Taliban wanted to introduce an "Islamic syllabus" at schools.

Even without the president's approval, judges trained in Islamic law had begun hearing cases in Swat, and witnesses say Taliban fighters effectively control of much of the region.

Islamic courts have been operating in Swat since last month, but Swat residents appear to still have recourse to appeal courts under the federal judicial system, a mixture of colonial British law and sharia regulations.

Earlier in April, a video showing a veiled woman being flogged in public provoked widespread criticism of the deal.
 
 Source: Al Jazeera and agencies 
 
 

[bigron]

332 people killed in the first 100 days of 2009

Web posted at: 4/12/2009 5:40:32
Source ::: Internews

http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_News&subsection=Pakistan+%26+Sub-Continent&month=April2009&file=World_News2009041254032.xml

LAHORE: The ongoing spate of suicide bombings across the country has killed 332 people in 20 deadly attacks, which were carried out in the first 100 days of 2009 (between January 1 and April 10). Of those killed, 30 belonged to security forces, while the rest of the 302 victims were innocent civilians. Data compiled by authorities showed that suicide bombers struck 20 times in the first 100 days of 2009 in various parts of Pakistan and killed at an average of 83 people per month.

While the per-week average killing comes to 24. The daily average casualty rate stands at three. Of the 30 security forces personnel killed since January 1, 18 belonged to the Army and the Frontier Constabulary (FC), while 12 were policemen.

The number of those who had sustained injuries due to the suicide attacks in the first 100 days of 2009 comes to 421, most of whom were civilians, the data showed. The figures compiled by the authorities showed that the suicide bombers struck four times in January 2009, killing 21 people and injuring 52. The month of February saw seven suicide attacks, leaving 118 people dead and 158 injured.

Six suicide bombers blew themselves up in March, killing 130 people and injuring 147. The deadliest suicide attack of 2009 was carried out on March 27 at a mosque on the Peshawar-Torkham Highway in the Jamrud subdivision of Khyber Agency during the Friday congregation, which killed 85 people, including over a dozen security forces personnel. In the first 10 days of April, three suicide bombers blew themselves up, killing 63 people and injuring 64.

The NWFP was the most affected by the deadly attacks. It was struck eight times by the suicide bombers in the first 100 days, targeting Mingora, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan and Peshawar.

The Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) were hit six times by the suicide bombers during the same period, targeting different areas in the Khyber and North and South Waziristan Agencies. The suicide bombers struck five times in the Punjab - twice in Islamabad and once in Rawalpindi, Dera Ghazi Khan and Chakwal, respectively. The first suicide attack of 2009 in Islamabad was carried out on March 23 when a suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance of the Special Branch headquarters, located in the Sitara Market, killing a policeman.

[Biggs]

11 killed as protests continue in Balochistan
12 Apr 2009, 0349 hrs IST, PTI

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/11-killed-in-Balochistan-protests/articleshow/4390560.cms

ISLAMBAD: Eleven people were killed and property worth millions of rupees damaged in continuing violence in Pakistan's southwestern Balochistan province, where protests against the killing of three nationalist leaders entered the third day on Saturday.

Police found the mutilated bodies of six men at Margat coal field, 40 km from the provincial capital Quetta, police official Abdul Malik Durrani said. Their hands and legs were tied before they were shot in the head. The Balochistan Liberation Army claimed responsibility for killing the six men in phone calls made to several media representatives.

A personnel of the Balochistan Constabulary was killed in Quetta by unidentified gunmen while three other men were gunned down in separate incidents.

A policeman who was seriously wounded in a bomb blast in Khuzdar later succumbed to his injuries in a hospital in Karachi.

Unidentified attackers fired four rockets at a security check post at Loti in Sui district on Satuday morning. The rockets landed near the check post without causing any casualties, officials said. A railway track was blown up at Killi Gul Muhammad, suspending train services to the border town of Chaman.

Life in many parts of Balochistan was hit by a strike called by nationalist parties to protest the killing of Baloch Nationalist Movement chief Ghulam Muhammad Baloch, BNM leader Lala Munir and Baloch Republican Party leader Sher Muhammad Bugti, whose bodies were found late on Wednesday.

The three leaders were kidnapped by unidentified gunmen on April 3 in Turbat, a town near the border with Iran. No group has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping and killings.

In Turbat, angry protestors set on fire an office of the PML-Q, a bank and a district assembly hall.

The Balochistan government made strict security arrangements to prevent violence during the protests. However, the strike affected life in Gwadar, Khuzdar, Turbat, Kalat, Noshki and Mastung, where rallies and demonstrations were organised today.

The killing of the three leaders has been condemned by the Pakistan Army, top political leaders like opposition PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif and the US.

[Biggs]

Taliban threats put Islamabad on high alert - 10 Apr 09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TalQnLrt3Uo

[Biggs]

Pakistani cleric: Swat deal gives Taliban immunity

By ZARAR KHAN – 1 day ago

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hkiMxbHNH0BqgpWA2ZG6VD6wVTmAD97IA3O00

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan's imposition of Islamic law in a cease-fire deal to blunt a gathering Taliban rebellion will protect militants accused of brutal killings from prosecution, a hardline cleric who mediated the deal said Tuesday.

The assertion highlights the dilemma facing Pakistan's beleaguered government as it seeks to halt 18 months of bloodletting in the Swat Valley while convincing the U.S. and other foreign sponsors that it is not capitulating to allies of al-Qaida.

President Asif Ali Zardari approved plans Monday to introduce Islamic law, or Sharia, in a large mountainous portion of the Northwest Frontier Province under mounting domestic pressure on his pro-Western government. Parts of the region, including Swat, are less than 100 miles from the capital, Islamabad.

Defenders of the deal argue it will drain public support for extremists who have hijacked long-standing calls in Swat for reform of Pakistan's snail-paced justice system.

But critics worry that it rewards hard-liners who have beheaded political opponents and burned scores of schools for girls in the name of Islam — and that it will encourage similar demands in other parts of the nuclear-armed country.

Militants in Swat declared a cease-fire in February after the provincial government agreed to introduce Islamic law in the surrounding Malakand division of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, a largely conservative region which stretches north along the Afghan border for hundreds of miles.

The measure was part of a peace deal brokered by Sufi Muhammad, a white-bearded cleric who led tens of thousands to fight U.S. forces in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, but later renounced violence.

The terms of the agreement remain murky, fueling concern that it cedes effective control over the region to the private army of Taliban leader Maulana Fazlullah, the cleric's son-in-law. Officials have said radical groups allied with al-Qaida have helped fight security forces in Swat.

Asked Tuesday in a television interview if the new courts would hear complaints from Swat residents about Fazlullah or his followers, Muhammad said they could not.

"We intend to bury the past," Muhammad told the ARY channel, sitting off-screen because he considers photographic or TV images to be against Islam. "Past things will be left behind and we will go for a new life in peace."

Asked if the Taliban would enjoy such immunity, a provincial government minister only pleaded for calm so that peace could take hold.

"Everyone should understand what we have gone through and what kind of hardship people in Swat have suffered," Wajid Ali Khan said. "We can look into any disputes and controversy at some later stage."

After weeks of foot-dragging, Zardari approved the Sharia regulation late Monday only after Parliament voted unanimously to adopt a resolution urging him to sign it.

His apparent reluctance has fueled doubts about whether the pact will hold. Few of the estimated 500,000 people displaced by the fighting have felt confident enough to return.

The resolution also diluted Zardari's personal responsibility for a pact that has drawn fierce criticism from rights groups as well as Pakistan's foreign backers, who are pumping billions of dollars into the country in hopes of stabilizing its pro-Western democracy.

Federal Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira said Tuesday that the pact was little more than a tactical maneuver in the country's "long war" with extremists.

"Those people who want to hijack Pakistan and destabilize Pakistan, they used (the demand for speedy justice) as a propaganda tool," Kaira said. "We have taken that idea out of the hand of the exploiters."

He insisted the Sharia legislation would not introduce a version of Islamic law like that introduced by the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

"It is a misconception that we are going to enforce Mullahism," he said.

A spokesman for the Taliban said the militants would cooperate. If the law is quickly implemented, "the world will see how much peace and prosperity comes to this region," Muslim Khan said.

Many observers, however, doubt their ambitions end there.

Taliban militants from Swat recently made a violent push into the neighboring Buner region, and Muhammad has repeatedly denounced Pakistan's democratic system as being against Islam — a view shared by the extremist groups blamed for the country's rising violence.

Muhammad said his followers would tour all districts of Malakand, including Buner, to "ensure peace."

He also said the courts would interpret civil rights according to Islamic strictures.

"Women will have full protection and rights under Sharia. They will live a better life — but behind the veil," he said.

Associated Press writer Asif Shahzad contributed to this report.

[Biggs]

Suicide car bomber hits Pakistan

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8000724.stm



A suicide car bomber has attacked a security post in north-western Pakistan, killing at least 18 people, nine of them police, police say.

The bomber set off his explosives as he pulled up at a checkpoint in Charsadda, a town near the city of Peshawar.

There has so far been no claim of responsibility for the attack.

But correspondents say Pakistani Taleban militants, allied to al-Qaeda, have carried out numerous such attacks over the past two years.

The bombing shattered windows of buildings near the explosion and destroyed power cables, plunging the area into darkness, police told the BBC.
 


"We had information that some people from Swat wanted to get into Peshawar to carry out terrorist attacks, so we had beefed up the force at the check post," Peshawar police chief Sifwat Ghyur said.

He said that the bomb left a crater about 3m wide, while the surrounding area is littered with blood spattered bodies and debris.

The Charsadda district is near the Malakand division - including the picturesque Swat valley - where the government on Monday signed an agreement to enforce Sharia law as part of its efforts to end the long-running insurgency in the north-west.

The district has been hit by several suicide bombings and is home to the chief of the ruling Awami National Party, Asfandyar Wali Khan, who himself narrowly avoided a suicide attack last year.

[Biggs]

POLITICS: Errant Drone Attacks Spur Militants in Pakistan
By Gareth Porter*

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46511

WASHINGTON, Apr 15 (IPS) - The U.S. programme of drone aircraft strikes against higher-ranking officials of al Qaeda and allied militant organisations, which has been touted by proponents as having eliminated nine of the 20 top al Qaeda leaders, is actually weakening Pakistan’s defence against the insurgency of the Islamic militants there by killing large numbers of civilians based on faulty intelligence and discrediting the Pakistani military, according to data from the Pakistani government and interviews with senior analysts.

Some evidence indicates, moreover, that the top officials in the Barack Obama administration now see the programme more as an incentive for the Pakistani military to take a more aggressive posture toward the militants rather than as an effective tool against the insurgents.

Although the strikes have been sold to the U.S. public as a way to weaken and disrupt al Qaeda, which is an explicitly counter-terrorist objective, al Qaeda is not actually the main threat to U.S. security emanating from Pakistan, according to some analysts. The real threat comes from the broader, rapidly growing insurgency of Islamic militants against the shaky Pakistani government and military, they observe, and the drone strikes are a strategically inappropriate approach to that problem.

"Al Qaeda has very little to do with the militancy in the tribal areas of Pakistan," said Marvin Weinbaum, former Afghanistan and Pakistan analyst at the Bureau of Intelligence Research at the U.S. Department of State and now scholar-in-residence at the Middle East Institute.

John McCreary, a senior intelligence analyst for the Defence Intelligence Agency until his retirement in 2006, agrees with Weinbaum’s assessment. "The drone programme is supposed to be all about al Qaeda," he told IPS in an interview, but in fact, "the threat is much larger."

McCreary observes that the targets in recent months "have been expanded to include Pakistani Pashtun militants." The administration apparently had dealt with that contradiction by effectively broadening the definition of al Qaeda, according to McCreary

Ambassador James Dobbins, the director of National Security Studies at the Rand Corporation, who maintains contacts with a range of administration national security officials, told IPS in an interview that the drone strikes in Pakistan are aimed "in the short and medium term" at the counter-terrorism objective of preventing attacks on Washington and other capitals.

But as they have shifted to Pakistani Taliban targets, Dobbins said, "To degree the targets are insurgents and are Pakistanis not Arabs it would be correct to assess that they are part of an insurgency." That raises the question, he said, whether the drone programme "is feeding the insurgency and popular support for it."

The drone program cannot even be expected to be a decisive factor in al Qaeda’s ability to operate, according to McCreary. "All you can do with drones is decapitate leadership," McCreary told IPS in a recent interview. "Even in relation to al Qaeda’s organisational dynamics, it has only limited, temporary impact."

McCreary warned that the drone strikes will cause much more serious problems when they increase and expand into new parts of Pakistan as the administration is now seriously considering, according to a New York Times article Apr. 7. "Now al Qaeda is fleeing to other cities, "said McCreary. "The programme is escalating and having ripple effects that are incalculable."

McCreary said one of the longer-term consequences of the attacks is "the public humiliation of the Pakistan Army as a defender of the national patrimony". That effect of striking Pakistani targets with U.S. aircraft is "the least understood dimension of the attacks, the most discounted and most dangerous". McCreary said the attacks’ "ensure that successive generations of Pakistani military officers will be viscerally anti-American."

Administration officials have defended the drone strikes programme as necessary to weaken and disrupt al Qaeda to prevent terrorist attacks, and officials have leaked to the media in recent weeks the fact that the programme has killed nine of 20 top al Qaeda leaders.

But the Pakistani government leaked data last week to The News in Lahore showing that only 10 drone attacks out of 60 carried out from Jan. 29, 2009 to Apr. 8, 2009 actually hit al Qaeda leaders, while 50 other strikes were based on faulty intelligence and killed a total of 537 civilians but no al Qaeda leaders.

The drone strikes have been even less accurate in their targeting in 2009 than they had been from 2006 through 2008, according to the detailed data from Pakistani authorities. Of 14 drone strikes carried out in those 99 days, only one was successful, killing a senior al Qaeda commander in North Waziristan and its external operations chief. The other 13 strikes had killed 152 people without netting a single al Qaeda leader.

Dobbins, speaking to IPS before the Pakistani data on drone strikes was released, said it was difficult for an outsider to evaluate the benefits of the programme but that "we can assess that there is a significant price that is being paid" in terms of the impact on Pakistani opinion toward U.S. efforts to stem the tide of the insurgency.

Dobbins said one of the reasons for the continuing drone attacks, despite the high political price, is that "it is an incentive aimed prodding the Pakistani government." He said he believes the United States would be happy to trade off the strikes in return for a more effective counterinsurgency campaign by the Pakistani government.

Further bolstering that interpretation of the objective of continued drone strikes is a report, in the same story in The News, that the most recent strike took place only hours after U.S. officials had reportedly received a rejection by Pakistani authorities Apr. 8 of a proposal for joint military operations against militant organisations in the tribal areas from U.S. South Asia envoy Richard Holbrooke and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, who were visiting Islamabad.

Other analysts suggest that the programme has acquired bureaucratic and political momentum because it a politically important symbol that the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan are against al Qaeda and because the United States has no other policy instrument to demonstrate that it is doing something about the growth of Islamic groups that share al Qaeda’s extremist Islamic militancy.

McCreary believes that the programme is related to the fear of the Obama administration that it would be unable to get support for operations in Afghanistan if it didn’t focus on al Qaeda. "I think it was a way to link Afghanistan operations to al Qaeda," he said.

"That suggests to me that the tactic for motivating domestic support is influencing the policy," said McCreary. The former senior DIA analyst added that the drone strike programme "has acquired its own momentum, which is now having immense consequences."

Weinbaum told IPS in an interview that the drone attacks are being continued, "primarily because we’re enormously frustrated, and they represent the only thing we really have."

*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.

(END/2009)