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

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Can the return of justice halt the Taliban?

From CNN's Reza Sayah CNN

STORY HIGHLIGHTS :

-Population of Pakistan's Swat valley grew frustarted at the implementaion of justice

-The Taliban was able to exploit this and introduce its own strict code of law

-Courthouses were shut, lawyers' hall bombed, floggings and beheadings took place

-Pakistan army retook the region is spring, justice has taken longer to restore


A Pakistani soldier patrols Mingora, the main town of Swat Valley, on August 1, 2009.

MINGORA, Pakistan (CNN) -- Nasir Rehman has been waiting 25 long years to resolve a land dispute case. In that time, he's lost his mother, father and two children. He sold his house and a chunk of his land to pay for the dragging litigation.

But now, with a new judicial system in gear in Pakistan's Swat Valley, Rehman, 74, is hopeful that he will finally find resolution.

"I'm happy," Rehman said. "May Allah let the system continue forever."

Residents said the courts here were ineffective -- slow moving and often corrupt.

Lawyers at the Mingora courthouse said that all you had to do to delay a case was simply not show up. People grew frustrated.

"They were fed up with the proceedings of the court, particularly the delay in proceedings" said lawyer Hazrat Usman.

That was one of the major reasons that the Taliban was able to take control of Swat.

The militants exploited the grievances of the population and gained support with promises of swift justice in the form of Sharia, a strict code of law based on the Quran.

But what the Taliban delivered was their own brand of the law.

Courtrooms fell silent as the Taliban captured the region. The main courthouse was shut and the local lawyers' conference hall, bombed. Public floggings and beheadings outraged the people.

The government regained control of Swat Valley after a successful Army offensive last spring. But the court hiatus did not end until recently.

Swat's main courthouse is now back in full swing, teeming with lawyers in their trademark black suits.

New regulations impose strict time limits, giving judges four months to hear criminal cases and six months for civil cases. Those who fail to show for court dates face fines.

"Of course, people are happy," said lawyer Aftab Alam.

Usman added that before, insecurity prevented people from going to court. But Swat remains a work in progress and Usman said it was imperative for the government to provide safety.

"Not just for the courts," he said, "but for all people."

Lawyer Qawi Khan said it felt good to be back in court.

"We have been tortured. We have been humiliated. We lost our businesses." he said. "We lost everything for the sake of peace."

He said the new system is a golden opportunity for Swat as it struggles to recover from war.

But not everyone is that optimistic.

Judge Khalil Khan Khalil fled the fighting in Mingora in March and did not return home until August. He said he has received death threats for his work but the government has yet to give him shelter and facilities in which he feels safe.

He said more than 1,000 cases are pending in Swat's anti-terrorism court alone. And he is the sole judge.

"It's not possible," he said, for the new system to work.

"We need more judges because the dependency is huge and it is impossible in the stipulated period," he said.

For Pakistan, which remains a mostly moderate and secular country, an enormous amount is riding on the success of the judicial system in places like Swat, home to thousands of people who live below the poverty line.

If the government fails to provide more judges and an effective court process, it will fail people like Nasir Rehman, Khalil said.

And perhaps open the door for the Taliban yet again.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/11/14/pakistan.swat.justice/index.html

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At least seven killed in suicide car blast in Peshawar

Saturday, 14 Nov, 2009 
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/metropolitan/03-suicide-car-bomb-blast-in-peshawar-ss-08

   
Pakistani policemen examine the site of a suicide car bomb blast on the outskirts of Peshawar on November 14, 2009. – AFP Metropolitan


 A suicide bomber blew up his explosives-filled car Saturday at a police checkpoint in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, killing at least seven people, officials said.

'At least seven people have been killed and more than 20 others wounded,' Peshawar police chief Liaqat Ali Khan told AFP.

'There are two policemen among the dead,' Khan said.

Peshawar district administration chief Sahibzada Anis said that the bomber detonated when policemen asked him to stop for the search.

'A suicide bomber exploded his car when police tried to search his car at a checkpoint at a big crossing at the outskirts of Peshawar,' Anis said.

Senior police official Mohammad Alim Shinwari also said that it was a suicide bombing.

Live television footage showed a huge cloud of smoke above the Pushta Khara neighbourhood of Peshawar and the wreckage of several cars.

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Militants Attack Anti-Taliban Mayor in Pakistan

Sunday , November 15, 2009
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,575167,00.html


PESHAWAR, Pakistan —

More than a dozen militants opened fire on the house of an anti-Taliban mayor in northwestern Pakistan on Sunday, but security guards repelled the attack, killing three assailants who had disguised themselves by wearing women's burqas, police said.

Militants have staged a wave of attacks in northwestern Pakistan in recent weeks in retaliation for an army offensive launched last month in the tribal area of South Waziristan, where Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders are believed to be hiding.

Three militants who initiated the attack in the town of Bazid Khel against Mayor Mohammad Fahim Khan's house concealed themselves by donning all-encompassing burqas traditionally worn by Muslim women, police official Nabi Shah said.

"Seeing three burqa-clad women early in the morning, Fahim Khan's security guards challenged them, and the men threw away their disguise and opened fire," Shah said. "But the guards were alert and they retaliated quickly."

The guards killed the three militants, but several others joined the fight, Shah said. The two groups waged a gunbattle before the remaining militants fled, he said.

Khan is the second mayor to be attacked in the last week who has organized a local militia to fight against the Taliban. A homicide bomber hit a crowded market outside the main northwestern city of Peshawar last Sunday, killing 12 people, including a mayor who once supported but turned against the Taliban.

Militants have made several attempts to assassinate Khan. Bazid Khel lies about 10 miles south of Peshawar.

"Militants have exploded three bombs near my house, killing innocent people, and they have opened fire on me several times but have failed so far," Khan said. "These attacks will not weaken my resolve against militants."

The recent wave of attacks has killed hundreds since the beginning of October. The insurgents appear to believe the violence will weaken the determination of both the people and the government to counter the rising militant threat.

Many attacks have targeted areas in and around Peshawar, which borders Pakistan's semiautonomous tribal region where the army is fighting its offensive. Strikes in the past week alone have killed more than 50 people, including 11 who died Saturday when a homicide car bomber attacked a police checkpoint on the outskirts of Peshawar.

A day earlier, another homicide car bomber attacked the regional office of Pakistan's top intelligence agency in Peshawar, killing 10 people.

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No let-up in Peshawar bombings
 
Sunday, November 15, 2009
http://thenews.jang.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=25573

12 perish in another suicide car blast; four children, three women, two cops among dead
 
By Javed Aziz Khan



PESHAWAR: Twelve people, including three women and four children, were killed and 26 others injured in a suicide car bomb blast at a police check-post on the Ring Road Chowk in the suburban Pishtakhara village here Saturday.

It was the fourth suicide attack in Peshawar during the last six days.

Eyewitnesses said the bomber coming from the Ring Road probably wanted to enter the Cantonment area where the military installations and government offices are located. He detonated the explosives-laden car when policemen at the security barrier on the Bara Road tried to stop him at around 4:30 pm. The check-post is located almost a kilometre to the west of the Peshawar International Airport and two kilometres from the limits of the Cantonment.

Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) Liaquat Ali Khan confirmed the killing of 10 people and injuries to 20 others. “It was a suicide attack. The cops signalled the vehicle to halt for checking when the bomber struck,” he added. He praised a policeman for sacrificing his life to save others.

One of the cops on duty was killed while others sustained injuries. Those killed included a woman Nazia, her three-year-old daughter Rehana, Zarshana (wife of Mahmood), an unnamed young daughter of Khalil Khan, a student of the PAF College Kamran, Kashif Zakir, Amjad Rahman, Adnan, Rahman and Ameerullah.

Bodies and injured were taken to the Lady Reading Hospital (LRH), the Khyber Teaching Hospital and the Hayatabad Medical Complex where a state of emergency had been declared.

Those wounded also included women passing the area. Some of the injured were identified as Azad, Muslim, Akbar Khan, Yousuf, Gul Hameed, Tariq, Noor Bibi and Murad Ali.

Nine of the injured succumbed to their injuries at hospitals. Another 25 wounded are under treatment.

NWFP Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain reached the LRH to enquire about the injured.

Seven vehicles, including a van of the Pakistan Red Crescent Society, were destroyed in the blast and a number of nearby houses and some shops were partially damaged.

Officials of the bomb disposal unit (BDU) estimated that 50 to 60 kilograms of explosives were used in the attack involving a white Suzuki Alto car, which reportedly came from the Bara side in Khyber Agency. According to DSP (BDU) Tanveer, mortar shells were loaded in the car to cause maximum casualties and damage.

Meanwhile, a high-level security meeting was held late on Saturday at the Malik Saad Shaheed Police Lines where Additional Chief Secretary Home Fiaz Ahmad Toru, IGP Malik Naveed, CCPO Liaqat Ali, SSP Coordination Alam Shinwari and SSP Operations Karim Khan along with other officials discussed the growing terrorist attacks in the city. The meeting decided to take immediate measures to avoid more casualties and losses in coming days.

District Coordination Officer (DCO) Sahibzada Mohammad Anis said the barricade in Pishtakhara village was set up to stop the entry of terrorists into the Peshawar Cantonment and policemen on duty sacrificed their lives to avoid any major disaster in the city. He added that the government was looking to get explosive detectors to be provided at all the entry-points, and for the purpose funds had been sanctioned.

The barricade that was attacked in Saturday’s bombing was erected on the Bara Road in a square where one route leads towards Hayatabad, another to Bara subdivision of Khyber Agency and one more to the Kohat Road.

NWFP Senior Minister Bashir Ahmad Bilour told reporters at the LRH that those involved in killing of innocent women, children and other people were “beasts”. “We will never hold talks with those who are killing our children, sisters and brothers. They are barbarians, they are neither Muslims nor humans,” said the minister.

Bilour was of the view that terrorists were being funded by foreign elements. “We will fight till their elimination or our death. They have killed Benazir Bhutto and thousands of others across the country,” the nationalist leader said.

Agencies add: Malik Jehangir, in charge of the checkpoint, told AFP that policemen were checking vehicles when he saw a suspicious black car across the barrier and asked one of the policemen to go and check it.

“I saw that there was some argument between the driver and the policeman and suddenly a blast downed me with shrapnel piercing my shoulder,” he said.

Another witness, Akbar Ali, said that he was riding a motorcycle and waiting in the queue at the checkpoint when he saw a scuffle between the bomber and the policeman.

Meanwhile, President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani and others have strongly condemned the terrorist attack in Pishtakhara.

In their separate messages, the president and premier expressed deep sorrow and grief over the loss of lives and said the government will speed up efforts to wipe out extremists and terrorists from the country.

PML-N Quaid Mian Mohammad Nawaz Sharif, Punjab Chief Minister Mian Shahbaz Sharif, Governor Salmaan Taseer, NWFP Governor Owais Ahmad Ghani, Chief Minister Amir Haider Khan Hoti and Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi also condemned the blast.
 

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Monday, November 16, 2009
11:27 Mecca time, 08:27 GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/11/2009111632553711727.html
   
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA  
 
Blast hits Pakistan police station 

 
The explosion outside Peshawar damaged the police station, a mosque and nearby shops [AFP]

 
A suspected suicide bomb attack has killed at least two people in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, police say.

The explosion targeted a police station in Badaber, about 12km south of the centre of Peshawar, the province's main city, early on Monday.

"Three people were killed and more than 20 are injured," Sahib Zada Anis, head of the northwestern city's administration, said.

Liaqat Ali Khan, a local police official, told The Associated Press news agency that officers had opened fire on a vehicle as it approached a checkpoint in front of the police station, but the driver was able to detonate his explosives.

Witnesses said that the explosion, close to a Pakistani air force base, damaged the police station, a mosque and nearby shops.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but numerous attacks in recent weeks, which have left more than 300 civilians and soldier dead, have been blamed on Taliban fighters.

Waziristan offensive

The attacks appear to be aimed at weakening the government's resolve in its military operation against anti-government groups in South Waziristan on the border with Afghanistan.

In depth

-  Video: On Pakistan's frontline
-  Video exclusive: South Waziristan's civilians suffer 
-  Video: Civilians flee Pakistani army offensive
-  Video: Security crisis in Pakistan
-  Video: Pakistan army HQ attacked
-  Profile: Pakistan Taliban
-  Witness: Pakistan in crisis
-  Riz Khan: The battle for the soul of Pakistan
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/11/2009111632553711727.html

 
"This is an obvious reaction to the operation in the tribal areas," Anis said.

At least 11 people were killed when a bomber blew himself up at a checkpoint in Peshawar on Saturday, the day after a lorry bombing at the regional headquarters of Pakistan's intelligence agency leaving at least 10 people dead.

Last month, a car bomb exploded in a crowded grocery market in the centre of Peshawar, killing more than 100 people, mainly women and children.

The Taliban said it did not carry out that attack, described as the deadliest in the country in two years.

Separately, Malik Sher Zaman, a pro-government ethnic Pashtun tribal elder was shot dead in the Bajaur region, north of Peshawar, a government official said.

Zaman had signed an agreement with the government to battle the Taliban, Abdul Malik, a local official, said.

Several hours later, more than one dozen fighters attacked the house of Mohammad Fahim Khan, an anti-Taliban mayor, outside Peshawar, but security guards repelled the attack, killing three of the assailants, Nabi Shah, a police official, said.

"Seeing three burqa-clad women early in the morning, Fahim Khan's security guards challenged them, and the men threw away their disguise and opened fire," Shah said. "But the guards were alert and they retaliated quickly."
 
 Source: Agencies 
 
 
 
 
 

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latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-cia-pakistan15-2009nov15,0,4066853.story


CIA says it gets its money's worth from Pakistani spy agency

It has given hundreds of millions to the ISI, for operations as well as rewards for the capture or death of terrorist suspects. Despite fears of corruption, it is money well-spent, ex-officials say.

By Greg Miller

November 15, 2009, Reporting from Washington


A damaged car is removed after the bombing at the regional office in Peshawar of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency. The U.S. has had misgivings about the ISI, with some officers believed to support radicals. (K. Parvez / Reuters / November 13, 2009)
 


The CIA has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to Pakistan's intelligence service since the Sept. 11 attacks, accounting for as much as one-third of the foreign spy agency's annual budget, current and former U.S. officials say.

The Inter-Services Intelligence agency also has collected tens of millions of dollars through a classified CIA program that pays for the capture or killing of wanted militants, a clandestine counterpart to the rewards publicly offered by the State Department, officials said.

The payments have triggered intense debate within the U.S. government, officials said, because of long-standing suspicions that the ISI continues to help Taliban extremists who undermine U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and provide sanctuary to Al Qaeda members in Pakistan.

But U.S. officials have continued the funding because the ISI's assistance is considered crucial: Almost every major terrorist plot this decade has originated in Pakistan's tribal belt, where ISI informant networks are a primary source of intelligence.

The White House National Security Council has "this debate every year," said a former high-ranking U.S. intelligence official involved in the discussions. Like others, the official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. Despite deep misgivings about the ISI, the official said, "there was no other game in town."

The payments to Pakistan are authorized under a covert program initially approved by then-President Bush and continued under President Obama. The CIA declined to comment on the agency's financial ties to the ISI.

U.S. officials often tout U.S.-Pakistani intelligence cooperation. But the extent of the financial underpinnings of that relationship have never been publicly disclosed. The CIA payments are a hidden stream in a much broader financial flow; the U.S. has given Pakistan more than $15 billion over the last eight years in military and civilian aid.

Congress recently approved an extra $1 billion a year to help Pakistan stabilize its tribal belt at a time when Obama is considering whether to send tens of thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan.

The ISI has used the covert CIA money for a variety of purposes, including the construction of a new headquarters in Islamabad, the capital. That project pleased CIA officials because it replaced a structure considered vulnerable to attack; it also eased fears that the U.S. money would end up in the private bank accounts of ISI officials.

In fact, CIA officials were so worried that the money would be wasted that the agency's station chief at the time, Robert Grenier, went to the head of the ISI to extract a promise that it would be put to good use.

"What we didn't want to happen was for this group of generals in power at the time to just start putting it in their pockets or building mansions in Dubai," said a former CIA operative who served in Islamabad.

The scale of the payments shows the extent to which money has fueled an espionage alliance that has been credited with damaging Al Qaeda but also plagued by distrust.

The complexity of the relationship is reflected in other ways. Officials said the CIA has routinely brought ISI operatives to a secret training facility in North Carolina, even as U.S. intelligence analysts try to assess whether segments of the ISI have worked against U.S. interests.

A report distributed in late 2007 by the National Intelligence Council was characteristically conflicted on the question of the ISI's ties to the Afghan Taliban, a relationship that traces back to Pakistan's support for Islamic militants fighting to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan.

"Ultimately, the report said what all the other reports said -- that it was inconclusive," said a former senior U.S. national security official. "You definitely can find ISI officers doing things we don't like, but on the other hand you've got no smoking gun from command and control that links them to the activities of the insurgents."

Given the size of overt military and civilian aid to Pakistan, CIA officials argue that their own disbursements -- particularly the bounties for suspected terrorists -- should be considered a bargain.

"They gave us 600 to 700 people captured or dead," said one former senior CIA official who worked with the Pakistanis. "Getting these guys off the street was a good thing, and it was a big savings to [U.S.] taxpayers."

A U.S. intelligence official said Pakistan had made "decisive contributions to counter-terrorism."

"They have people dying almost every day," the official said. "Sure, their interests don't always match up with ours. But things would be one hell of a lot worse if the government there was hostile to us."

The CIA also directs millions of dollars to other foreign spy services. But the magnitude of the payments to the ISI reflect Pakistan's central role. The CIA depends on Pakistan's cooperation to carry out missile strikes by Predator drones that have killed dozens of suspected extremists in Pakistani border areas.

The ISI is a highly compartmentalized intelligence service, with divisions that sometimes seem at odds with one another. Units that work closely with the CIA are walled off from a highly secretive branch that has directed insurgencies in Afghanistan and Kashmir.

"There really are two ISIs," the former CIA operative said. "On the counter-terrorism side, those guys were in lock-step with us," the former operative said. "And then there was the 'long-beard' side. Those are the ones who created the Taliban and are supporting groups like Haqqani."

The network led by Jalaluddin Haqqani has been accused of carrying out a series of suicide attacks in Afghanistan, including the 2008 bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul.

Pakistani leaders, offended by questions about their commitment, point to their capture of high-value targets, including accused Sept. 11 organizer Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. They also underscore the price their spy service has paid.

Militants hit ISI's regional headquarters in Peshawar on Friday in an attack that killed at least 10 people. In May, a similar strike near an ISI facility in Lahore killed more than two dozen people. Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, who served as ISI director before becoming army chief of staff, has told U.S. officials that dozens of ISI operatives have been killed in operations conducted at the behest of the United States.

A onetime aide to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described a pointed exchange in which Kayani said his spies were no safer than CIA agents when trying to infiltrate notoriously hostile Pashtun tribes.

"Madame Secretary, they call us all white men," Kayani said, according to the former aide.

CIA payments to the ISI can be traced to the 1980s, when the Pakistani agency managed the flow of money and weapons to the Afghan mujahedin. That support slowed during the 1990s, after the Soviets were expelled from Afghanistan, but increased after the Sept. 11 attacks.

In addition to bankrolling the ISI's budget, the CIA created a clandestine reward program that paid bounties for suspected terrorists. The first check, for $10 million, was for the capture of Abu Zubaydah, a top Al Qaeda figure, the former official said. The ISI got $25 million more for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's capture.

But the CIA's most-wanted list went beyond those widely known names.

"There were a lot of people I had never heard of, and they were good for $1 million or more," said a former CIA official who served in Islamabad.

Former CIA Director George J. Tenet acknowledged the bounties in a little-noticed section in his 2007 memoir. Sometimes, payments were made with a dramatic flair.

"We would show up in someone's office, offer our thanks, and we would leave behind a briefcase full of $100 bills, sometimes totaling more than a million in a single transaction," Tenet wrote.

The CIA's bounty program was conceived as a counterpart to the Rewards for Justice program administered by the State Department. The rules of that program render officials of foreign governments ineligible, making it meaningless to intelligence services such as the ISI.

The reward payments have slowed as the number of suspected Al Qaeda operatives captured or killed by the ISI has declined. Many militants fled from major cities where the ISI has a large presence to tribal regions patrolled by Predator drones.

The CIA has set limits on how the money and rewards are used. In particular, officials said, the agency has refused to pay rewards to the ISI for information used in Predator strikes.

U.S. officials were reluctant to give the ISI a financial incentive to nominate targets, and feared doing so would lead the Pakistanis to refrain from sharing other kinds of intelligence.

"It's a fine line," said a former senior U.S. counter-terrorism official involved in policy decisions on Pakistan. "You don't want to create perverse incentives that corrode the relationship."

greg.miller@latimes.com

Times staff writer Alex Rodriguez in Islamabad contributed to this report.



Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

 

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DRONE





The CIA, with the cooperation of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency, has used its Predator drones to strike targets in Pakistan.

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November 16, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/16/world/asia/16policy.html?_r=1&ref=global-home

U.S. Asks More From Pakistan in Terror War


By ERIC SCHMITT and DAVID E. SANGER


Last week, Pakistani police officers escorted suspected Taliban militants, their heads covered, to a court appearance in Karachi.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is stepping up pressure on Pakistan to expand and reorient its fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, warning that failing to do so would undercut the new strategy and troop increase for Afghanistan that President Obama is preparing to approve, American officials say.

While Afghanistan has dominated the public discussion of Mr. Obama’s strategy, which officials say could be announced as early as this week, Pakistan is returning to center stage in administration planning. As the president traveled to Asia, his national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, was quietly sent to Islamabad, its capital.

His message, officials said, was that the new American strategy would work only if Pakistan broadened its fight beyond the militants attacking its cities and security forces and went after the groups that use havens in Pakistan for plotting and carrying out attacks against American troops in Afghanistan, as well as support networks for Al Qaeda.

General Jones praised the Pakistani operation in South Waziristan but urged Pakistani officials to combat extremists who fled to North Waziristan.

General Jones also delivered a letter from Mr. Obama to Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, in which Mr. Obama said he expected Mr. Zardari to rally the nation’s political and national security institutions in a united campaign against extremists threatening Pakistan and Afghanistan, said an official briefed on the conversations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks were confidential.

For their part, Pakistani officials have told the Americans that they harbor two deep fears about Mr. Obama’s new strategy: that the United States will add too many troops on the Afghan side of the border, and that the American effort will end too soon.

Their first concern, described by officials on both sides of the recent discussions, is that if Mr. Obama commits an additional 30,000 or more troops, it will inevitably push more Taliban fighters across the border into Pakistani territory and complicate the South Waziristan offensive.

Every time Mr. Obama declares that the United States will not have an “open-ended” military commitment in Afghanistan, he fuels a second concern of the powerful Pakistani military and intelligence establishment, which believes the United States commitment is fleeting.

It is a concern that some of them say justifies Pakistan’s continuing ties to the militants who fight American troops in Afghanistan.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared to fuel this concern on Sunday in her comments on the ABC program “This Week,” saying: “We’re not interested in staying in Afghanistan. We have no long-term stake there. We want that to be made very clear.”

White House officials have said comparatively little about the Pakistan side of the administration’s evolving war strategy, in part because they have so few options. They cannot place forces inside Pakistan, and they cannot talk publicly about the Central Intelligence Agency’s Predator drone strikes in the country, though they are so much of an open secret that Mrs. Clinton was asked about them repeatedly in meetings she held late last month with Pakistani students and citizens. (She refused to acknowledge the program’s existence.)

In his letter to Mr. Zardari, Mr. Obama offered a range of new incentives to the Pakistanis for their cooperation, including enhanced intelligence sharing and military cooperation, according to the official who had been briefed on the letter’s contents.

During Mr. Obama’s Situation Room briefings on his alternatives, those advocating a minimal commitment of new troops in Afghanistan have argued that the United States needs only enough forces to keep Al Qaeda “bottled up” in the mountainous tribal areas of Pakistan.

“You could argue that even under the status quo, we don’t see Al Qaeda coming into Afghanistan,” said one official sympathetic to this view. “And so an additional commitment of forces isn’t going to apply more pressure on our main target.”

Those arguing for a more forceful presence — including Mrs. Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen — have contended that while Afghanistan is not now a haven for Al Qaeda, it could easily become one if the Taliban make further inroads.

American officials have praised Pakistan’s leaders for finally launching comprehensive military attacks against Taliban forces that have conducted suicide bombings in the capital, on the military headquarters and last week against a key office of the main Pakistani intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate.

But the Americans are now trying, as the Bush administration did with little success, to persuade Pakistan to do more, not just against the Qaeda leadership holed up in the country’s unruly tribal areas, but also against the Afghan Taliban leadership in the southern Pakistani city of Quetta and the Haqqani militant network in the tribal areas.

Representative Jane Harman, a California Democrat who heads the House Homeland Security subcommittee on intelligence and who visited Pakistan last week, summed up the administration’s frustrations and her own after meetings with senior Pakistani officials: “They are focused on who they think are threats to them. Period.”

A recurring theme in Mrs. Clinton’s visit to Pakistan was the perception that the United States and NATO forces are drawing down troops along the Afghan border with Pakistan. This, Pakistani officials said, allows Afghan militants to pour across the border into South Waziristan, where they become Pakistan’s problem.

Mrs. Clinton argued that NATO had actually increased troop levels along that border but had decided to consolidate about a half-dozen remote outposts into fewer, larger installations, because they were easier to defend. According to American military officials, the Pakistani military got no warning of the change.

So great was the Pakistani concern over the outpost closures that Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, made a special point during an unannounced trip to Islamabad after Mrs. Clinton’s visit to reassure Pakistani officials of American resolve.

“We’re stuck between not wanting to suggest we’re going to be there forever, but on the other hand, if we don’t show some kind of commitment, everyone continues to play the same game,” a senior administration official said Sunday. “That’s the challenge.”

If Pakistanis voice concerns about a lack of American commitment, they express equal concern that sending tens of thousands more American troops to Afghanistan could force Taliban militants into Pakistan.

“Whatever we do — put in more troops or put in fewer troops — they’ll freak out,” said an American intelligence officer who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing his relations with Pakistani officials. But the intelligence officer acknowledged that the long-term security picture and the American commitment in Afghanistan were still unclear. “Look, if I were in Pakistan, I’d be hedging my bets, too,” the officer said. “We need to be much more convincing that we have a better game plan.”

Mark Landler contributed reporting.

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Car suicide attack kills four, injures 26 in Badhaber

Monday, 16 Nov, 2009     
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/metropolitan/07-bomb-attack-at-badhaber-police-station-injures-10-ha-01


 Police officials examine the site of the suicide car bomb blast. —Reuters Photo

PESHAWAR: A suicide bomber on Monday blew up a car packed with explosives near Peshawar, killing four people in the latest attack on the city.

The bomber struck in a suburban road as children were going to school in Badhaber, devastating a mosque, destroying two rooms at a boys’ college and bringing down one wall of a police station, witnesses said.

It was the fifth suicide attack in eight days to hit the sprawling city of 2.5 million people, where US officials say al-Qaeda are plotting attacks on the West.

‘The death toll is four and there are 26 injured,’ doctor Zafar Iqbal at the Lady Reading hospital told AFP. One child was among the dead with four wounded.

Witnesses said that a pick-up vehicle sped towards the police station and exploded nearby, leaving much of the building in ruins as ambulances raced through the streets in the densely populated suburb of Badhaber.

Teacher Mohammad Shahid said he just dropped off his children at school when he heard a deafening blast, which left a five feet deep and nine feet wide crater (one metre by two metres) in the ground.

‘I looked back and saw parts of a vehicle flung in the air and then the body of my neighbour fell on the ground near me. It was a horrible sight,’ he said.

Javed Khan, who drives a horse cart, said the car sped towards him forcing him to leap out of its path, before the explosion hit.

‘I fell on the ground, shrapnel hit my forehead. I saw debris all around and people crying for help,’ Khan said.

Senior police official Khursheed Khan confirmed it was a suicide attack.

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Monday, November 16, 2009
19:45 Mecca time, 16:45 GMT 
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/11/20091116145058336650.html
 
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
 
Pakistan Taliban airs video denial  

VIDEO :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GG9p1qibeW4&feature=player_embedded


Attacks that have continued across Pakistani towns and cities are being blamed on Tehreek e-Taliban, Pakistan's Taliban.

However, the group has issued its first video statement denying involvement in targeting civilians and has blamed external forces for at least two recent blasts.

Azam Tariq, a spokesman of the Tehreek e-Taliban, posted the video statement on YouTube on Monday.

The message refers to a bombing at the Islamic University in Islamabad, which the spokesman said was orchestrated to prepare the ground for a military operation in South Waziristan, a stronghold for Pakistan's Taliban fighters.

He also said his group had no role in the bomb blast in a Peshawar market that killed at least 100 people as well as an attack in Charsada, a town located in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province.

Tariq said Taliban attacks never aimed to target civilians, but that the explosions were linked to Blackwater activities in the country.

Blackwater is a private military and security company founded in the United States.

Propaganda war

Kamal Hyder, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Islamabad, said: "Even when those bomb blasts did happen, the Taliban denied they had anything to do it."

He said: "It was surprising to see that it [the video message] came up on the al-Sahab video. That is the Al-Qaeda wing of media publicity."

Blackwater has denied having any contracts in Pakistan.

Hyder added: "There is a growing anger among Pakistanis. If one looks at the type of attacks that have been taking place - indiscriminate attacks – the first thing that came out, even reported by local media, was the blaming of Blackwater and other American agencies.

"The public opinion has turned against the Americans. The video that has appeared today would be trying to capitalise on that."
 
 
 Source: Al Jazeera 
 
 
 
 
 

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US Presses Pakistan to Escalate War

Success of Afghan War 'Depends' on Pakistan

by Jason Ditz, November 16, 2009
http://news.antiwar.com/2009/11/16/us-presses-pakistan-to-escalate-war/

                   

According to an unnamed US official, President Obama has sent a letter to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari urging him to rally support for escalating his war across the nation. The letter reportedly claims that the Afghan war ‘depends’ on Pakistan doing so.

The US has been pressuring Pakistan, basically since the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, to launch an ever escalating series of invasions into its tribal areas along the Afghan border.

This year’s massive war in the Swat Valley, which drove millions of civilians from their homes, was in no small measure the result of US condemnations of a peace treaty until Pakistan finally abandoned it and sent the military in.

And even as that offensive was going on through the summer, the US was pressuring Pakistan to invade South Waziristan, which they finally did last month. Now it seems the US has its eye on getting Pakistan into even more wars.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Qureshi insists that the nation will never be pressured into launching an operation by outsiders. But after his government has been quite successfully and repeatedly pressured by the US into doing exactly that, their ability to resist American pressure to start wars is very much in doubt.

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Tuesday, November 17, 2009
21:56 Mecca time, 18:56 GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/11/2009111717721202243.html
   
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
 
Pakistan 'clears Taliban towns'  

 
The Pakistani army said it seized ammunition, arms, suicide vests and pamplets in Saraogha [AFP] 

Pakistani troops have cleared Taliban fighters from most towns in a district close to the border with Afghanistan, the army has said.

Major General Athar Abbas, the army spokesman, told reporters in Sararogha in South Waziristan on Tuesday that the "major town and population centres have been secured".

Pakistan deployed 30,000 troops to South Waziristan a month ago, vowing to crush the Tehreek-e-Taliban network which has been blamed for scores of deadly bomb attacks across the country.

At least 550 Taliban fighters and 70 Pakistani soldiers have been killed since October 17, Abbas said.

"The myth has been broken that this was a graveyard for empires and it would be a graveyard for the army," he said.

Taliban 'hiding'

However, Abbas cautioned that many of the Taliban leaders had melted away as the military had advanced into the region.

"We still believe many are still here. They have gone to the countryside, the forested areas, to villages and into the caves," he said.

"After taking complete control of the roads and the tracks, we are going to chase them in the forested areas, wherever they are hiding in the countryside."

Sararogha itself, which before the fighting was home to 10,000 people, was deserted and its mudbrick homes destroyed when journalists visited on Tuesday.

"The military is trying to take over the populated centres, but the population has of course left," Al Jazeera's Kamal Hyder, reporting from Sararogha, said.

"Their first priority is to gain a foothold in South Waziristan before their troops start fanning out into the hinterland."

Thousands of people fled South Waziristan as the military offensive got under way, but despite the apparent security improvements they will find the area devastated on their return.

Brigadier Mohammad Shafiq said that his men had battled hard to recapture a base that had previously been seized by Taliban fighters.

"Their defences were well-constructed and we faced extremely tough resistance," he said.

Soldiers showed journalists purported Taliban pamphlets, including one on making bombs, captured ammunition and weapons, and pouched vests that suicide bombers pack with explosives.

'Capture or kill'

In nearby Ladha, Brigadier Farrukh Jamal said his men had surrounded 35 Taliban fighters hiding in the forest-covered mountains.

"They are hiding in caves and we will capture them soon or kill them," he said.

Several rifle shots rang out and smoke rose over the slopes where the Taliban were said to be hiding.

The claims of success came after James Jones, the US national security adviser reportedly delivered a letter from Barack Obama, the US president, Asif Ali Zardari, his Pakistani counterpart, urging him to engage in a campaign against fighters threatening Afghanistan as well as Pakistan.

The New York Times newspaper said that in the letter Obama presented a range of fresh incentives to Islamabad, including enhanced intelligence sharing and military co-operation.

There has been an increase in suicide bombings since the military offensive was launched, with Peshawar, the main city in the North West Frontier Province, the scene of a previous ofensive against Taliban fighters, bearing the brunt of many attacks.
 
 
 Source: Al Jazeera and agencies 
 
 
 
 
 

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Thursday, November 19, 2009
13:22 Mecca time, 10:22 GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/11/2009111953831340813.html
   
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA  
 
Deadly blast near Peshawar court 

 
At least 30 people were wounded in Peshawar in Thursday's suicide blast, which killed 16 people [AFP]



At least 16 people have been killed in a suicide bomb blast outside the main gate of a court building in Peshawar.

Thursday's attack was the seventh deadly explosion to hit the northwestern Pakistani city in less than two weeks.

Officials said about 30 people were wounded in the attack, which occurred during rush hour when the area is normally crowded with lawyers, administrative personnel and the public.

The court building is located on Khyber Road, across the street from the Pearl Continental Hotel, which was the target of a deadly bomb attack in June.

"It happened outside the judicial complex," Abdul Wali, a police officer, told the Reuters news agency.

'Attacker on foot'

Sahibzada Anees, the head of Peshawar city administration, said that a suicide bomber carried out the attack.

"The attacker was on foot and blew himself when guards tried to search him at the gates of the court," he said.

In depth

  Video: On Pakistan's frontline
  Video exclusive: South Waziristan's civilians suffer 
  Video: Civilians flee Pakistani army offensive
  Video: Security crisis in Pakistan
  Video: Pakistan army HQ attacked
  Profile: Pakistan Taliban
  Witness: Pakistan in crisis
  Riz Khan: The battle for the soul of Pakistan
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/11/2009111953831340813.html
 

Three policemen were among the dead, Anees said.

Up to 16 bodies had been brought to Peshawar's Lady Reading Hospital, Sahib Gul, the most senior official, said.

Al Jazeera's Kamal Hyder, reporting from Islamabad, said the attacker was trying to enter the court's complex when he was stopped by security personnel.

"The attack took place at 10:20am [local time] when the Khyber Road is jam packed with traffic as well as people," he said.

"As that suicide bomber tried to enter the court, the police decided to conduct a search at which point he detonated the device, with devastating consequences."

A wave of attacks have targeted police checkpoints, police stations and the provincial headquarters of Pakistan's spy agency, ISI, this month, killing dozens of people.

The Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility for several of the attacks.

The blast comes as military battles members of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, one of the main anti-government groups, in the country's semi-autonomous tribal region of South Waziristan.

The military launched its offensive nearly three weeks ago, pitting about 30,000 troops against an estimated 10 to 12,000 Taliban fighters in South Waziristan.
 
 Source: Al Jazeera and agencies 
 
 
 
 
 

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South Asia
Nov 20, 2009 
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KK20Df08.html 
 
Nuclear fallout rocks Pakistan

By Syed Saleem Shahzad

ISLAMABAD - Sharp differences between Pakistani leaders over safeguarding the country's nuclear arsenal are placing increasing pressure on the embattled administration of President Asif Ali Zardari.

Zardari is already seriously at odds with the military establishment over dealing with the Taliban-led insurgency and there is a strong likelihood that his government will face a make-or-break test within weeks in the form of mass street protests.

Pakistan has reacted strongly to an article in The New Yorker by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh on November 16, "Defending the arsenal", in which he claimed that Pakistan was discussing "understandings" with the US that could even see specialists take sophisticated nuclear triggers out of the country to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands.

The administration of President Barack Obama is clearly deeply concerned over the safety of Pakistan's weapons, especially after militants last month entered the Pakistani army headquarters in Rawalpindi and subjected it to a bloody 22-hour siege.

General Tariq Majid, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, said the claims were "absurd and plain mischievous".

This might be the case, but within Pakistan, the issue of the arsenal - estimated to contain between 80 and 100 warheads - has turned into a major political row.

In an obvious attempt to address international concerns, the chairman of the National Assembly's standing committee on defense, Azra Fazal Pechuho, rushed a report of her 17-member committee into the assembly on November 11 seeking immediate legal endorsement to the Nuclear Command Authority (NCA) ordinance of 2007, which sets out a multi-layered structure for the control of the nuclear arsenal.

According to this report, the president would be chairman of the authority and the prime minister would be the deputy chairman. Other members would be the ministers for foreign affairs, defense, finance and interior, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, three services chiefs and the director general of the Strategic Planning Division.

The operational control of the nuclear weapons is currently solely in the hands of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of the Staff Committee, General Majid.

The Nuclear Command Authority bill seeks to bring into law an ordinance from the time of former president, General Pervez Musharraf, to strengthen control over the country's nuclear weapons.

However, the bill was deferred by the speaker, Fehmida Mirza, on a request from Parliamentary Affairs Minister Babar Awani, who gave no reason for the move.

Asia Times Online has learned that obstacles created by former premier, Nawaz Sharif, led to the deferment. Sharif, leader of the opposition, apparently sees Zardari as unreliable, and wants the authority to be headed by the prime minister. He also urged that the leader of the opposition be a part of the NCA.

Over the past months, Zardari has become increasingly isolated. He has lost the trust of the military, which the US now views as the power to deal with in Pakistan, the political opposition is growing more assertive.

People close to Sharif say a mass campaign, much like the one in March that forced the government to restore the judiciary that had been dismissed by Musharraf, is inevitable.

The current situation is a fresh episode of an overall political imbalance that occurred after the assassination of former premier, Benazir Bhutto, (Zardari's wife) in December 2007 that led to the August 2008 resignation of Musharraf as president and the election of Zardari as president in September 2008.

In just over a year, General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani, the army chief, has eclipsed Zardari and he is now Washington's point man on the Pakistani side of the South Asian war theater. The Americans believe Kiani will push relentlessly to gain victory in the tribal areas against the Pakistan Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Significantly, the US sees Kiani as the most trusted person to protect Pakistan's nuclear assets. Hersh wrote in his article:
The ongoing consultation on nuclear security between Washington and Islamabad intensified after the announcement in March of President Obama's so-called Af-Pak policy, which called upon the Pakistan Army to take more aggressive action against Taliban enclaves inside Pakistan. I was told that the understandings on nuclear cooperation benefited from the increasingly close relationship between Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General Kayani [Kiani], his counterpart, although the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] and the Departments of Defense, State, and Energy have also been involved.
General Majid denied parts of the article that suggested an American role in the protection of Pakistan's arsenal, but Kiani, whose dealings were a major discussion point in the article, did not utter a single word.

During US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's recent visit to Pakistan, it was made clear that Washington's political administration also approves of Kiani. (See US puts its faith in Pakistan's military Asia Times Online, November 6, 2009. )

This faith in the military, rather than in any political force, comes at a time when the controversial National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) is due to expire on November 28 and opposition parties are ready to challenge it in court. Legal experts are unanimous that the ordinance is discriminatory and directly clashes with the constitution and that the judiciary will not allow it to be extended.

The NRO was promulgated in 2007 by Musharraf after a deal was brokered by Washington and London between him and Benazir Bhutto, who at the time was the West's preferred person to succeed Musharraf's military government. The NRO pardoned all corruption cases pending against Benazir Bhutto and Zardari, as well as dozens of activists of her Pakistan People's Party (PPP) who had held important positions in previous governments.

Although Zardari, as president, cannot be tried under the law, cases could be opened against many incumbent ministers after November 28, which would be a major setback for the Zardari government. The PPP's secretary general, Jehangir Badr, has already warned party cadre who benefited from the NRO to obtain bail before possibly being arrested.

The military establishment has seized the moment to hand over a list of names to Zardari of people it believes should be immediately replaced. At the top of the list is the ambassador to Washington, Husain Haqqani, whom the army has always regarded as a foe for being too close to the American administration. Minister of the Interior Rahman Malik is second in line. Although he has been credited with helping destroy the financial arteries of militants, he is regarded as too close to Western intelligence agencies and he often bypasses the military establishment in anti-terror operations.

The ministers for water and power, agriculture, health and many others are also named in the list, accused of incompetence or corruption. Initially, Zardari agreed to replace them, but now he is stalling.

Zardari has also indicated that he is unwilling to immediately shed his constitutional powers, such as the right to appoint armed forces chiefs and dissolve parliament. He has given a March 2010 date for the delegation of these powers to the prime minister.

This is unacceptable to Zardari's main rival, Sharif, who aims to launch a protest campaign against Zardari by mid-December. It was Sharif's campaign that forced Zardari to restore the judiciary this March.

The military has indicated to Sharif that it won't disturb the democratic setup, come what may; rather, it will press for the removal of people with whom it is uncomfortable and live with a weakened Zardari. It does not want mid-term elections in which Sharif's victory would be most likely. Although the military has good relations with Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League, it views him as too independent and too assertive.

In these uncertain times, Musharraf has re-emerged on the scene. Asia Times Online has learned that he is pondering the formation of a new political party and that he recently funneled large amounts of money into the coffers of former aides to promote his cause. These include former minister of information, Sheikh Rasheed, whom some reports say has been paid US$1 million - the same amount that went to a public relations team to boost Musharraf's image.

Insiders say that Musharraf has vast wealth, much of it accumulated through donations from individuals (these, some say, include Libya's Muammar Gaddafi) and corporations to aid previous election campaigns. There are reports that Musharraf received US$30 million from the United Arab Emirates via one of its top bankers, and $3 million from a Pakistani cellular phone company.

Musharraf believes that with his contacts - especially to the Saudi royal family - and being internationally known, he could play a decisive role in the South Asian "war on terror" theater in which the Americans are looking for new ways to approach the Taliban for reconciliation, along with the elimination of al-Qaeda.

The militants, meanwhile, are not standing idly by.

On Tuesday evening, the Taliban chief in the Malakand Division of North-West Frontier Province, Mullah Fazlullah, showed up in Afghanistan and confirmed a report by Asia Times Online that Pakistani militants from Swat and Malakand - who retreated in the face of military operations earlier this year - were regrouping in the Afghan province of Nuristan. (See Militants change tack in Pakistan Asia Times Online, November 18, 2009.)

Fazlullah claimed that the militants would resume their insurgency in the Swat Valley, and, ominously, he said it would coincide with the planned mass protests against Zardari next month.

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

 
 
 

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US Drone Strikes Pakistani Tribal Belt
 
 
20/11/2009 08:30:23 AM GMT   
http://aljazeera.com/news/articles/34/US_Drone_Strikes_Pakistani_Tribal_Belt.html
 

 
A US drone fired missiles into a Pakistani tribal area bordering Afghanistan on Friday, but there were no immediate reports of casualties, officials said. The strike took place in Mir Ali village, some 16 kilometers (10 miles) northeast of Miranshah, the main town of the restive North Waziristan tribal district, a senior security official told AFP.
   
Another security official confirmed the drone strike, but had no details about the target or casualties. US missiles fired from an unmanned drone killed six militants, including three foreigners -- a word used in Pakistan to refer to Al-Qaeda operatives -- in North Waziristan, Pakistani officials said Thursday.
¬
Source: AJP
 

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Are Blackwater Mercenaries Responsible For False Flag

Bombings In Order To Unleash Civil War In Pakistan?


by Damien Lataan, via thepeoplesvoice

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m60298&hd=&size=1&l=e



November 20, 2009

Yesterday I wrote of media reports saying that the Obama administration had written to Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, 'saying he expects the Pakistani leader to rally political and national security institutions in a united campaign against extremists’. It now seems that Blackwater, the US mercenary company, may well have been responsible for a series of bombings aimed specifically at civilians in an effort to alienate the Pakistani people from the Taliban.

In a recent video, Taliban spokesman, Azam Tariq, denied that the Taliban were responsible for a suicide bombing at the International Islamic University in Islamabad on 20 October 2009, and the massive car-bombing that iscriminately killed scores of civilians at a market in Peshawar, a bombing that coincided with a visit by Hillary Clinton to Pakistan, on 28 October 2009. What gives Tariq’s statement credibility is the fact that, first, the Taliban, as can be seen in the video, are quite happy to claim responsibility for those bombings that were against police and security facilities which they see as legitimate targets. Second, it would not at all be in the Taliban’s interest to indiscriminately murder the very people, particularly in Peshawar where most of the people are Pashtun, that offer the Taliban most support and from whom the Taliban draw new recruits.

Tariq claims that Blackwater mercenaries working in conjunction with Pakistani security, the ISI, are responsible for the bombings. According to a report in the Pakistani online newspaper 'The Nation’, some 202 Blackwater mercenaries arrived in Pakistan on Tuesday, 3 November 2009 on a flight out of Heathrow, London, though the report did not mention the purpose of their being in Pakistan saying only that authorities at Islamabad airport had allowed the men into Pakistan without any of the normal checks for visas, etc. The same report also noted that ex-Army Chief of Staff, Mirza Aslam Beg, had claimed "that former President Pervez Musharraf had given Blackwater the green signal to carry out its terrorist operations in the cities of Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Peshawar and Quetta".

Many Blackwater employees are currently accommodated at the Pearl Continental luxury hotel in Peshawar, a building which has been earmarked for purchase by the US government for use as a future US consulate. They are in Peshawar "to provide security for a US-backed aid project in the area", though what kind of ’aid’ they are providing 'security’ for has not been specified.

As well as bombings, it seems Blackwater operatives have also recently been involved in the targeted killings of several Pakistani military officers; presumably these were officers who had been discovered to have had sympathies or ties with the Taliban.

Looking at the broader picture, one might ask; what would be the purpose of pushing Pakistan toward civil war? The answer is simple: Once having pushed Pakistan to the brink of such a crisis, the situation would be so critical that it would provide an ideal opportunity for the US to step in to support a pro-US government in Pakistan and also to secure Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. It would also provide the opportunity for the US to overtly fight the Taliban on Pakistani soil.

Obviously, the US military are unable to undertake any of these tasks – yet; but Blackwater mercenaries, already in Pakistan providing security to a 'US-backed aid project’, are in a position to ruthlessly and covertly exploit an already potentially lethal political situation between the Pakistan government and the Taliban.

A very senior Australian defence public servant who I spoke to about the situation between the Taliban and Pakistan told me that 'in a year or so Pakistan will be Australia’s, and the West’s, biggest headache but that there were plans to deal with it’.

That was in October of last year.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

Source: http://lataan.blogspot.com/2009/11/are-blackwater-mercenaries-responsible.html

 

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10 dead in US drone strike in North Waziristan

Regional Times

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m60313&hd=&size=1&l=e

November 21, 2009

MIRANSHAH: At least 10 people were killed in suspected US drone strikes in Machhikhel region of North Waziristan Agency on Friday. The strike took place in Machhikhel area of Mir Ali village, some 16 kilometers northeast of Miramshah, the main town of the North Waziristan tribal district.

US pilotless spy planes fired two hellfire missiles at suspected terrorists hideouts, killing 10 people and injuring dozen other. The locals of the have besieged the area after the strike and started retrieving bodies and injured.

The Political administration has confirmed the drone strike, but had no details about the target or casualties. "It was a U.S. drone attack which targeted a militant compound, killing 10 militants and wounding dozen others," a senior security official in the area told a Private TV Channel. He said two missiles were fired from a U.S. drone.

U.S. drone plane's flights are still hovering over the area, witnesses said, adding that the attack pounded militants hideout established in a house. It was the second drone of strike in North Waziristan during last 3 days.

On Wednesday night, six militants were killed and five others wounded in a suspected United States drone missile strike in Shanakhora village of North Waziristan. The U.S drones regularly hit hideouts of the militants in the Pakistani tribal region, which Washington considers as the center of Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants. Pakistan opposes the U.S. strikes inside the country's tribal regions and seeks the drone technology. But the U.S. does not accept Islamabad's request.—Agencies




 

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Pakistan publishes beneficiaries of graft amnesty

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hcDn9fZsxOgwg2Y2RO_ZR69A7DMg
(AFP) – 22 hours ago


Pakistan President Asif Zardari

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan on Saturday published the names of thousands of people, including President Asif Zardari, who are protected from old corruption charges by an amnesty which could formally expire next week.

Former military ruler Pervez Musharraf promulgated a National Reconciliation Ordinance, commonly known as NRO, in October 2007.

Musharraf's decree quashed corruption charges against former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated two months later, her husband Zardari and other politicians in an apparent gesture of reconciliation to prolong his rule.

"A total of 8,041 people benefitted from NRO, including President Zardari," minister of state for law, Afzal Sindhu, told a news conference.

The list is connected to 3,478 cases ranging from murder, embezzlement, abuse of power and write-offs of bank loans worth millions of dollars.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik and Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar were among more than 30 politicians who had cases withdrawn against them, Sindhu said.

Beneficiaries also include top government officials and three ambassadors, including Pakistan's envoy to Washington, Hussain Haqqani, he said.

On July 31, the supreme court declared unconstitutional Musharraf's imposition of a state of emergency and set a November 28 deadline for NRO to be approved by the parliament or else it would lapse.

Zardari's weak civilian government last month tabled the ordinance in the lower house but quickly withdrew after sensing it could not muster a majority amid strong resistance from the opposition parties.

The government's retreat has triggered speculation in Pakistan that the supreme court may reopen corruption charges and heads may roll after November 28.

Sindhu said cases can be reopened if NRO lapses but said Zardari could not be tried because as president he enjoys immunity under the constitution.

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US, Pakistan Eye Opposite Tactics in Terror War

Struggling Pakistani Govt Under Pressure to Escalate Even More

by Jason Ditz, November 22, 2009

http://news.antiwar.com/2009/11/22/us-pakistan-eye-opposite-tactics-in-terror-war/

With America’s military effort in Central Asia large and growing, one of its largest diplomatic efforts is centered around convince key ally Pakistan to escalate its own war more and more.

But though the US and Pakistani governments seem destined to be allies in the endless war against assorted militant factions, they have very different ideas about how this war should be fought.

Both support Taliban negotiations, but while the US and other Western powers seek to bring the low ranking militants on board to undermine the power of the leadership, Pakistan wants them to negotiate with the Taliban’s leadership to end the disastrous war on their northern border.

That border is at issue too. Pakistan’s government has had to pull its troops increasingly away from the northern border to shore up its defenses along the Indian border, and to fight all the wars the US has pressured them into. At the same time, the US strategy has them pulling their troops off the border too and focusing on controlling population centers. Both like their strategies, but are irked that the other side is leaving the border so shoddily patrolled.

US officials have sought to downplay their differences of opinion, but increasingly it is spilling over into Pakistani public dialogue in the form of growing distrust of the US and its goals. It is not lost on them that they were largely able to ignore discontent in their tribal areas and focus on their long-standing feud with India before the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan, which has put much of Pakistan into a state of civil war.

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No bail for terrorists under new law

* Portrayal of terrorists as ‘heroes’ declared an offence
* Suspected terrorists will be deemed guilty unless proven otherwise

By Akhtar Amin

http://dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009\11\23\story_23-11-2009_pg7_14

PESHAWAR: The government has amended the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997 through the Anti-Terrorism (Amendment) Ordinance 2009, which bars courts from granting bail to suspected terrorists liable to the death sentence, life imprisonment or a 10-year prison term.

According to a copy of the ordinance available with Daily Times, the government has amended Section 21-D of the Anti Terrorism Act 1997, under which no court, including the high courts and the Supreme Court, can grant bail to a person liable to these punishments.

The government had included Section 21-E in the act, under which the period of physical remand of suspected terrorists has been increased from 30 days to 90 days, enabling police to effectively interrogate suspects. Under the new Section 21-E, banks and monetary institutions are bound to provide information on transactions and accounts having links with crimes or financial assistance to terrorists.

The government had also amended Section 11-W, under which the portrayal of terrorists as heroes, spreading religious, sectarian or linguistic hate, or promoting extremism through radio, wall-chalking and other means have been declared criminal offences. Any person found involved in portrayal of terrorists as heroes would be liable to a sentence of up to six months and a fine.

NWFP Law Minister Barrister Arshad Abdullah told Daily Times that the amendments were made as hundreds of alleged Taliban and their leaders, including Muslim Khan, commander Mahmood Khan and others, had been arrested during the military operation in Swat and Malakand, but they had not been presented in courts due to complications in the existing anti-terrorism laws. He said three interrogation centres, including Fizzagat, Khwazakhela and Malakand, had been declared sub-jails where the Taliban had been detained.

“Under the new law, Taliban will be deemed terrorists unless they prove themselves otherwise,” he said, adding that the “burden of proof” would now be shifted to the accused under the special law.

The law minister said confessions made by Taliban suspects would be recorded in front of a security official equal to the rank of a senior superintendent of police or an army colonel and would be considered an extra-judicial confession, he added. The minister said the definition of terrorism had been widened and suspects arrested with explosives, lethal weapons, or found operating radio channels as tools of anti-state activities, would be considered terrorists. Abdullah said human rights organisations and lawyers might oppose the legislation, but the government had no other alternative, as citizens were not willing to came forward and volunteer evidence against arrested terrorists. As the military operation in Swat nears completion, the detained terrorists would now be interrogated and tried under the new law, he said. President Asif Ali Zardari, on the advice of the prime minister, had approved the extension of the Anti-Terrorism (Amendment) Ordinance 2009 to Federally Administered Tribal Areas of the NWFP in terms of Article 247.

[bigron]

India supporting militants in Waziristan: Pakistani FM

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 01:07:47 GMT
 http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=111940&sectionid=351020401

 
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi 

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has said that Islamabad has hard evidence of India's interference in the tribal areas and Balochistan.

"Pakistan is collecting concrete evidence against the Indian intervention in the Pakistani tribal areas and Balochistan," Qureshi told reporters in Islamabad on Sunday.

The Pakistani foreign minister said that it will be impossible to establish peace in the country until India revises its hostile policy toward Pakistan.

"Unless (India) dispenses with its visceral animosity towards Pakistan, attaining viable peace and security in South Asia will be even more elusive."

Senior military and civilian officials in Islamabad have repeatedly accused India of supporting militants in the northwest and southwest of the country.

The Pakistani army spokesman, Major General Athar Abbas, recently said a huge quantity of Indian arms used by the militants had been confiscated in South Waziristan.

Pro-Taliban militants based in South Waziristan are believed to be behind several attacks on major Pakistani cities since 2007.

Pakistan's tribal districts along the Afghan border have been plagued by militancy since the US-led invasion of neighboring Afghanistan in 2001.

In the southwestern province of Balochistan, rebels rose up against Pakistan's central government in 2004. They are demanding autonomy and a greater share of the profits from the region's natural resources.

New Delhi has always rejected Pakistan's claims that it is interfering in the country's internal affairs and has repeatedly accused Islamabad of supporting separatists in the Indian-administered Kashmir.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars since they attained independence from Britain in 1947.

JR/SS/HGL

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Civil war spreads across north west Pakistan

By James Cogan

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m60377&hd=&size=1&l=e


WSWS, 23 November 2009

The Pakistani military offensive in South Waziristan against Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP)—the Pakistani Taliban—has escalated into a civil war throughout the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA) and North West Frontier Province (NWFP). Islamists and tribal militants now consider themselves in a fight to the death with the pro-US government of President Ali Asif al-Zardari, which has bowed to Washington’s demands to deploy overwhelming force to stop the predominantly ethnic Pashtun regions being used to support the Taliban resistance over the border in Afghanistan.

On Sunday, the military reported that it had finally taken the area around the town of Shahu Khel in the NWFP district of Hangu, after nearly a month of fighting. In clashes on the weekend, as many as 13 Islamists and one soldier were killed. (Click here if you wish to open a new window showing the area referred to in this article)

Shahu Khel is close to the tribal agency of Orakzai, where a number of TTP militants from South Waziristan are believed to have concentrated after the military launched the offensive. Troops have sealed off all the roads into Orakzai and are converging on villages that are held by the TTP. To justify civilian casualties, the military told the media that the Islamists had stopped people fleeing the area so it could use them as "human shields". In the first stage of the operation, troops captured an FM radio station on Sunday that was being used to agitate for resistance to the government. A radio tower, the station building itself and an alleged militant camp were destroyed.

The military has also launched helicopter gunship assaults over the past several days against alleged Taliban "hide-outs" in Kurram agency, which is to the west of Orakzai and borders Afghanistan. The Dawn news agency reported on Sunday that "residents of central Kurram have started migrating to safer areas".

In Bajaur, the northern-most FATA agency, the military carried out air bombardments of suspected Taliban hideouts on Sunday and claimed to have killed five militants. According to Dawn sources, one of the attacks killed a Taliban leader named Fam Jan, and also slaughtered his wife and two sons. Another attack, ostensibly seeking to assassinate a militant named Maulvi Muneer, instead killed two of his relatives.

Following the air strikes, as many as 40 men made a failed attempt to over-run an army outpost close to the Bajaur-Afghan border on Sunday. Government troops fought them off, reportedly killing 11.

Pakistani troops were sent into an offensive against the Taliban in Bajaur and the neighbouring agency of Mohmand in August 2008. Four months of indiscriminate bombardment forced an estimated 500,000 people to flee their homes. Hundreds of homes, farms, schools and other buildings were destroyed or damaged in major towns such as Loyesam and Khar as well as numerous villages. The military claimed to have killed more than 1,500 militant fighters last year. Unknown numbers of civilians were killed or wounded.

An offensive in the more densely populated NWFP district of Swat Valley was even more devastating, displacing over 1.9 million people and leaving thousands dead.

Less than a year later, the Taliban is once again operating in Swat, Bajaur and Mohmand, underscoring that the earlier operations served only to generate bitterness and hatred and enlarge the pool of recruits for a burgeoning Islamist rebellion against the government.

The Waziristan offensive is being conducted with scant regard for its impact on civilians. A UN mission estimates that over 300,000 people from South Waziristan have been forced from their homes and are living as internally displaced persons (IDPs) in NWFP towns such as Tank and Dera Ismail Khan. The total population of the South Waziristan agency is less than 600,000.

A UN report on November 17 stated: "They [the IDPs] reported large-scale destruction and damage in the conflict-affected areas of South Waziristan (destruction/severe damage to houses, livestock and social infrastructure)." These claims have been substantiated by journalists allowed to conduct brief visits to some of the towns captured from the TTP during the offensive.

Agence France Presse (AFP) correspondent Masroor Gilani wrote on November 19 that in the main market of the town of Sararogha, "mangled shutters lie in the rubble scattered everywhere as if a typhoon had ripped through the dusty valley ringed by mountains." The town of Ladha "is now reduced to a shell of damaged buildings, piles of rubble and ruined paramilitary fort. There is not a civilian in sight."

The fighting for Ladha was reportedly the most intense so far in the offensive. Over 250 militants were allegedly killed defending it. In total, the government claims that the military has killed over 550 TTP fighters, at the cost of 70 troops. The figures cannot be independently verified.

The military is now concentrating its forces in South Waziristan on Makeen, the last major town still held by the TTP. After months of air strikes and ground artillery bombardments, most of it is likely already in ruins.

A TTP spokesman stated last week that the bulk of its forces were not attempting to hold towns such as Makeen and Ladha, but had withdrawn into the mountains "under a strategy that will trap the Pakistan Army in the area". The military has rejected such claims, declaring that the Islamists had suffered a "rout". The reported casualty figures, however, indicate that most of the militants have escaped the offensive in one way or another. The TTP strength in South Waziristan was widely estimated to be at least 10,000.

An ongoing wave of daily suicide bombings and other attacks in Peshawar, the capital of NWFP, suggests that Taliban militants were able to disperse from South Waziristan. Any facility connected with the government and its offensives is being targeted. On Saturday, the compound of an international aid organisation was bombed. On Friday, a roadside bomb killed two police. In the most deadly recent attack, a suicide bomber detonated explosives on the steps of a Peshawar court house last Thursday as police attempted to body search him. The blast killed 19 people and wounded another 51.

Islamists have also conducted attacks in cities outside NWFP, including the capital Islamabad, the military headquarters in Rawalpindi and Lahore. In a reversal of the general trend over the past eight years, Afghan militants are supporting those fighting the Pakistani government. On Saturday, two trucks entering Pakistan from Afghanistan were captured after a firefight with their occupants and found to contain rifles, rocket launchers and large quantities of ammunition, most likely destined for Taliban cells in one of Pakistan’s major cities.

The Obama administration is demanding that Zardari escalate the civil war in the north west by launching a major offensive into the agency of North Waziristan. Many militants from South Waziristan are thought to have fled there and the Haqqani network, one of the main Afghan insurgent organisations, is believed to have bases in the mountainous terrain along the border.

The CIA and US military are continuing their own attacks inside Pakistan, using unmanned Predator drones to attempt to assassinate Taliban and Haqqani leaders and militants. Two Predator strikes were launched last week in North Waziristan. Last Thursday morning, missiles destroyed a house and reportedly killed three men in a remote village near the border with South Waziristan. On Friday, eight militants allegedly died in an attack on a housing compound near the village of Mir Ali.

The escalating violence, taking place on the dictates of Washington, can only have the most explosive political consequences. Barely 14 months after taking over the presidency, Zardari has plunged the country into a worsening civil war that has devastated the north west and is costing as much as $10 billion a year. The war is creating deep-going discontent within the military and more broadly among the wider population, compounding the political crisis surrounding the government.



 

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Tuesday, November 24, 2009
11:33 Mecca time, 08:33 GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/11/20091124835815119.html
   
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
 
Pakistan launches Khyber offensive  
 

 Pakistani forces blame the recent spate of attacks in Peshawar on fighters in Barra, Khyber agency [AFP]
 
 
Pakistan's military has launched a major offensive in the northwest Khyber agency, imposing a 24-hour curfew and a shoot-to-kill policy.

The operation, called "You will like us", is taking place in the Barra Area, where security forces say 18 Taliban fighters have been killed in fighting so far.

Kamal Hyder, Al Jazeera's correspondent in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, said security officials had arrested six people and at least two hideouts and three Taliban strongholds had been destroyed in the operation.

Authorities have claimed that Taliban fighters who escaped from an army operation in South Waziristan may have sought sanctuary in Barra.

Pakistani officials say the spate of recent bloody attacks in Peshawar and surrounding areas, which have killed more than 150 people, were likely to have been co-ordinated from Barra.

Bajaur curfew

Officials on Tuesday also imposed a curfew in Bajaur district, north of Khyber, after deadly clashes with the Taliban.

Authorities imposed an indefinite curfew after clashes in Khar, the main town of Bajaur district on the Afghan border, where US officials say al-Qaeda is plotting attacks on the West.


The unrest in Bajaur comes after a six-month operation the army said was a success [AFP]
 

 
 
"The crossfire continued for three hours. Six militants were killed in retaliatory fire," Adalat Khan, a local government official, told the AFP news agency.

"Two civilians were also killed and four, including two women, wounded when a mortar shell landed inside a house," Khan said.

Taliban fighters have recently stepped up attacks on security forces and government installations in Bajaur, one of Pakistan's seven semi-autonomous tribal districts.

The violence has surged since Pakistan launched a major offensive in the Taliban bastion of South Waziristan on October 17.

Officials say the aim is to distract the army's attention from South Waziristan.

The continued unrest comes despite a six-month operation in Bajaur, which the army declared a success in February.
 
 Source: Al Jazeera and agencies 
 
 
 
 
 

[bigron]

South Asia
Nov 25, 2009 
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KK25Df02.html 
 
Pakistan's military stays a march ahead


By Syed Saleem Shahzad

ISLAMABAD - In an attempt to lend popular support to the United States-led "war on terror", London and Washington orchestrated the victory of secular and liberal political forces in Pakistan. A deal between then-president General Pervez Musharraf and former premier Benazir Bhutto was agreed on which resulted in the promulgation of the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO).

Two years later, blowback from this deal threatens to throw the civilian government into chaos, at the very time it is fighting to establish a new operational control over the country's nuclear arsenal, and while a major offensive is being waged against militants in the tribal areas.

The NRO, issued on October 5, 2007, granted amnesty to politicians, political workers and bureaucrats who were accused of corruption, embezzlement, money-laundering, murder and terrorism between January 1, 1986 and October 12, 1999. Two of the main beneficiaries were Bhutto and her husband, the current president, Asif Ali Zardari. Bhutto, who had been living in exile, then returned to the country as presumptive prime minister, but she was assassinated in December 2007.

Crucially, the NRO expires on November 28, exposing the hundreds of politicians and bureaucrats who took advantage of it to legal action. The Ministry of Law has issued a list of those affected, and it runs from the president to senior members of the cabinet and diplomats.

The original instigators of the deal, Western capitals, are silent spectators now while Pakistan's military establishment (mis)reads the situation in the perspective of a withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan. It is preparing a contingency plan under which all the major players in the Taliban-led insurgency will be invited for talks.

The army has already approached powerful commanders in the Lashkar-e-Zil (Shadow Army) section of the Afghan resistance. The message is that in the event of a withdrawal of foreign troops, the Pakistan military should be viewed as a friend, as it is in no way opposed to the Muslim resistance.

The message was sent to al-Qaeda through commander Ilyas Kashmiri, and to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar through his commanders, Abdul Ghafour, Sirajuddin Haqqani and Hakeemullah Mehsud. The message referenced a recent statement by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, "I have offered London as a venue in January. I want that conference to chart a comprehensive political framework within which the military strategy can be accomplished. It should identify a process for transferring district by district to full Afghan control and set a timetable for transfer starting in 2010."

Militant sources who spoke to Asia Times Online interpreted Brown's speech as an indication that international support for the "war on terror" is waning and that it would not be possible for the US to operate alone.

A perception of this wavering has also influenced the Pakistani military. An armed forces spokesperson claimed recently that the army had reached the headquarters of the Pakistani Taliban in South Waziristan after a month-long campaign, and taken control of all key positions. The next step, under pressure from the US, was to have been to move into neighboring North Waziristan, the purported headquarters of al-Qaeda and the largest Taliban-led group, the Haqqani network.

However, the military, given the signals coming out of Britain, Italy, France and Canada, and the dithering of US President Barack Obama over sending more troops to Afghanistan, is not prepared at this point to extend its operations.

Shivers in the corridors of power
On the domestic front, where the Pakistan army remains a major player, the political situation has suddenly deteriorated with the publication of the names of the people who will be affected when the NRO expires. According to some reports, in several cases arrest warrants have already been issued. There is speculation that several cabinet ministers will soon resign.

A former chief justice of the Supreme Court, Saeeduzzam Siddiqui, says that even the immunity of the president could be challenged in court as no one is above the law. "It [presidential immunity] is a colonial law which aimed to protect the British governor-general and governors," Siddiqui told a television channel. Zardari's name is top of the list, and if his immunity is successfully challenged, the whole government could fall.

The deteriorating situation has emboldened the military to step into a controversy over the country's nuclear arsenal, said to number between 80 and 100 warheads.

Earlier, Asia Times Online wrote that Zardari is already seriously at odds with the military establishment over dealing with the Taliban-led insurgency and there is a strong likelihood that his government will face a make-or-break test within weeks in the form of mass street protests. (See Nuclear fallout rocks Pakistan November 20, 2009)

Pakistan has reacted strongly to an article in The New Yorker by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh on November 16, "Defending the arsenal", in which he claimed that Pakistan was discussing "understandings" with the US that could even see specialists take sophisticated nuclear triggers out of the country to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands.

Obama's administration is clearly deeply concerned over the safety of Pakistan's weapons, especially after militants last month entered the Pakistani army headquarters in Rawalpindi and subjected it to a bloody 22-hour siege.

General Tariq Majid, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, said the claims were "absurd and plain mischievous". This might be the case, but within Pakistan the issue of the arsenal has turned into a major political row. In an obvious attempt to address international concerns, the chairman of the National Assembly's standing committee on defense, Azra Fazal Pechuho, rushed a report of her 17-member committee into the assembly on November 11 seeking immediate legal endorsement to the Nuclear Command Authority (NCA) ordinance of 2007, which sets out a multi-layered structure for the control of the nuclear arsenal.

According to this report, the president would be chairman of the authority and the prime minister would be the deputy chairman. Other members would be the ministers for foreign affairs, defense, finance and interior, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, three services chiefs and the director general of the Strategic Planning Division. The operational control of the nuclear weapons is currently solely in the hands of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of the Staff Committee, General Majid.

The Nuclear Command Authority bill seeks to bring into law an ordinance from the time of former president Musharraf, to strengthen control over the nuclear weapons. However, the bill was deferred by the speaker, Fehmida Mirza, on a request from Parliamentary Affairs Minister Babar Awani, who gave no reason for the move. Asia Times Online also wrote that obstacles created by former premier Nawaz Sharif led to the deferment. Sharif, now leader of the opposition, apparently sees Zardari as unreliable, and wants the authority to be headed by the prime minister. He also urged that the leader of the opposition be a part of the NCA.

It has emerged that Sharif's concerns were not the only reason for problems - the military establishment has its own reservations on the Nuclear Command Authority and these have contributed to the delay.

When the ordinance was promulgated, Musharraf was president as well as chief of army staff, so the military had a strong representation in the authority. Now, Zardari is believed to be too close to Washington, as is retired Lieutenant General Khalid Kidwai, the director general of the Strategic and Planning Division. The military wants the ordinance amended so that no foreign interests can interfere with the authority.

An amended ordinance to this effect, that is, consolidating the military's role in protecting the nuclear weapons, is likely to be presented to parliament next week.

In every facet now, the military is positioning itself for a stronger and more assertive role.

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

 
 
 

[bigron]

Tuesday, November 24, 2009
23:02 Mecca time, 20:02 GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/11/20091124173646886405.html
   
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
 
US firm 'runs covert Pakistan ops'  

 
Peshawar has borne the brunt of recent Taliban attacks in retaliation for a military offensive [AFP]
 
A new report has accused the US private security firm formerly known as Blackwater of operating a covert assassination and kidnapping programme against suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda members in northwest Pakistan.

In an article published on Monday, The Nation magazine alleged that the firm, now known as Xe, is also involved in running a US military drone bombing campaign out of Pakistan.

Jeremy Scahill, the investigative journalist who broke the story, told Al Jazeera on Tuesday that the programme was so secretive that senior officials in the administration of Barack Obama, the US president, were likely unaware of it.

"What I learned is that for years there has been a covert operation of the US military inside Pakistan's borders ... and that Blackwater operatives are at the centre of not only the drone bombing campaign but also planning snatch-and-grab operations of high value targets."

Hunting bin Laden

Scahill, citing military intelligence sources and a former Blackwater official, said the programme began with an agreement between the US and Pakistani governments.

In video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuEMJ6WDSRU&feature=player_embedded
Mosharraf Zaidi and Jeffrey Addicott speak
to Al Jazeera about Blackwater
 
"In 2006, the Bush administration struck a deal with the government in Islamabad that would allow US special forces to actually enter Pakistani territory if what they were doing was hunting Osama bin Laden or his top deputies.

"The agreement was such that the Pakistanis said that they would have the right to deny that they had given permission."

There was no immediate comment from Islamabad on the story, and Scahill said that the White House also failed to respond to his request for comment.

But he said the office of Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, had contacted him to reject the allegations.

"I did not call them, they called me and told me that the [allegations] did not stand up to reality," Scahill said.

"I've talked to my sources though, and they say that it's possible that officials within the military chain of command are simply not in what [they] called 'the circle of love' on this programme."

US officials have said that they believe northwest Pakistan is a hiding place for al-Qaeda fighters, including Osama Bin Laden.

Blackwater blamed

In depth

  Video: On Pakistan's frontline
  Video exclusive: South Waziristan's civilians suffer 
  Video: Civilians flee Pakistani army offensive
  Video: Security crisis in Pakistan
  Video: Pakistan army HQ attacked
  Profile: Pakistan Taliban
  Witness: Pakistan in crisis
  Riz Khan: The battle for the soul of Pakistan
 

The northwest tribal region, and in particular Peshawar, the capital of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), have borne the brunt of attacks perpetrated by the Taliban in recent weeks.

The attacks are in apparent retaliation for a military offensive launched in the country's semi-autonomous tribal region of South Waziristan against members of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, one of the main anti-government groups.

But a spokesman for the Taliban last week blamed Blackwater for at least two of the recent bombings.

Azam Tariq posted a video statement on the internet, saying the Taliban attacks never aimed to target civilians and that the explosions were linked to Blackwater activities in the country.

Xe has denied having any contracts in Pakistan.

The North Carolina-based firm provides security for diplomats around the world, but it is facing charges of human rights violations stemming its part from a 2007 shooting in Iraq that left 17 civilians dead.
 
 Source: Al Jazeera and agencies 
 
 
 
 
 

[bigron]

Wednesday, November 25, 2009
13:14 Mecca time, 10:14 GMT   
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/11/2009112584754436821.html
 
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA  
 
Pakistan faces amnesty deal turmoil 

 
Zardari, who took over the PPP following his wife's death, could find himself forced from office [AFP]
 
Pakistan's president and thousands of other officials in the country could find themselves facing corruption charges as an amnesty deal exempting them from prosecution nears its deadline.

The amnesty deal was announced two years ago by Pervez Musharraf, then the country's president, but the so-called National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) has been called into question by the supreme court, which has branded it unconstitutional.

Parliament has until Saturday to decide if the deal stands or if the corruption charges should be pursued.

The deal grants more than 8,000 government bureaucrats and politicians, including Asif Ali Zardari, the president, and many others from the ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP), immunity from a host of corruption and criminal charges.

Fears mounted on Wednesday over whether the deal would collapse, a development that could force Zardari from office and throw the country into political turmoil.

Media blamed

Many dismiss fears of a crisis, saying the situation has been fuelled by sensationalist politicians, army members unhappy with civilian rule and the media.

"If you look at the Pakistani media these days, if you tune into the big networks, the big word is NRO," Kamal Hyder, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Islamabad, said.

"Pakistan can hardly afford another political crisis at a time when the challenge from Taliban extremists has really increased", Ishtiaq Ahmad, professor of international relations
 
"The demand is that if high officials can be exonerated, then it is paving the way for injustice, and other criminals should be allowed to go scot free from the jails.

"There is a moral debate going on that if these people have such serious charges, then they should have the character and the moral strength to resign, clear their names and then possibly come back into office."

A recent Gallup survey claimed that more than half of Pakistanis - 57 per cent of those polled - blame the media for stirring up political instability.

The uproar comes as Pakistan's army battled Taliban fighters in its tribal regions and the potential crisis is a cause for concern in the US, which wants Pakistan to remain focused on its anti-Taliban campaign.

"Pakistan can hardly afford another political crisis at a time when the challenge from Taliban extremists has really increased in recent weeks," Ishtiaq Ahmad, a professor of international relations at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, was quoted by the Associated Press as saying.

"What you need is relative political stability and an economy that is really marching ahead."

'Politically motivated'

Musharaff's amnesty list was part of a US-backed deal to allow Zardari's late wife, Benazir Bhutto, a former Pakistani prime minister, to return from exile in 2007 and run for office safe in the knowledge she would not be dogged by corruption allegations.

The US and other Western powers supported the bid by Bhutto, who was seen as a secular and pro-Western politician.

But Bhutto, who was forced from her post twice in the 1990s because of alleged corruption, was killed by a suicide bomber shortly after she returned to Pakistan.

Zardari took over as co-chairman of her party and was elected president in September 2008 by federal and regional lawmakers.

Over the weekend, the government released the list of some of those who had been protected by the decree, including the interior and defence ministers.

Many on the list have expressed a willingness to fight the charges in court.

"The PPP co-chairman, our ministers and our members have no issues with going forward with these cases,'' said Farahnaz Ispahani, a presidential spokeswoman.

"Ninety per cent of them were politically motivated cases."
 
 Source: Al Jazeera and agencies 
 
 
 
 
 

[bigron]

Militants target NATO fuel truck in Pakistan

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 13:41:52 GMT
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=112162&sectionid=351020401

 
Militants carry out frequent attacks on NATO trucks


A group of militants in North West Frontier Province (NWFP) have ambushed a truck carrying fuel to neighboring Afghanistan for NATO forces stationed there.

The attack, which took place outside the northwestern city of Peshawar on Wednesday, left the truck driver and his assistant dead.

The incident comes a day after a convoy of oil tankers was ambushed in the southwestern parts of the country.

The Tuesday attack left one driver dead and four trucks completely destroyed.

Trucks carrying supplies for foreign forces in Afghanistan frequently come under attack in Pakistan.

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

JR/MMN

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Why Is the State Department Speaking for JSOC?

Posted By Jeremy Scahill On November 26, 2009 @ 11:00 pm

Interesting chain of command issues seem to be emerging in the official "denials" being offered about my story in The Nation magazine on Blackwater and the Joint Special Operations Command operations in Pakistan. A few hours before the piece was published, I received a call — unprompted — from the office of Admiral Mike Mullen, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I had not called them. The representative that called would not officially — named and on-the-record — deny the story. Instead, I was offered a comprehensive denial from a "defense official" on "background." The DoD spokesman Geoff Morell was asked about it on Tuesday. He said the appropriate agency to address this was the State Department, but he did characterize the story as "conspiratorial":

REPORTER: Thank you for taking the question.  Does the Pentagon have any comment on a report in The Nation today that, puts Blackwater, now Xe Services, firmly at the center of a covert operation in Karachi in Pakistan, from an anonymous source within the military.  And my question is —
MR. MORRELL:  Yes, I — I —
REPORTER:  The question is, you keep denying covert operations in Pakistan, but isn’t this yet more evidence of one?
MR. MORRELL:  Okay, the best person to address this would be the State Department spokesman, who has already put out a statement, or a correction, basically saying these accusations are entirely false. Okay?  But I — for more clarity and more specificity, I urge you to talk to them.
As for what we are doing in Afghanistan — or in Pakistan, rather, I think we have been incredibly forthright about this.  And we have basically, I think, a few dozen forces on the ground in Pakistan who are involved in a train-the-trainer mission.  These are Special Operations Forces.  We’ve been very candid about this.  They are — they have been for months, if not years now, training Pakistani forces so that they can in turn train other Pakistani military on how to — on certain skills and operational techniques.  And that’s the extent of our — our, you know, military boots on the ground in Pakistan.
Despite whatever conspiratorial theories that, you know, magazines or broadcast outlets may want to cook up, there is nothing to it. And obviously, we’ve also made it perfectly clear that we are willing and able and happy to help the Pakistani military in any other ways that they may see fit.  But at this point, that’s the extent to which they would like our help, in terms of American boots on the  ground.  And so we are totally respectful of that.  And that’s what it’s limited to at this point.
Since when is the State Department spokesman the official spokesperson for JSOC? Since when is the DoS the appropriate party to address allegations regarding US military operations? Nonetheless, the State Department spokesperson, Ian Kelly, was asked about it in the first question at his briefing Tuesday:

REPORTER: Do you have any response to the report in The Nation regarding what it says was a joint operation between the Joint Special Operations Command in Pakistan and Xe Services, nee Blackwater?
MR. KELLY: I do not. I have not seen this article.
REPORTER: So you have no response to that?
MR. KELLY: Well, I don’t know. I’m sorry, you’ve – I just am not aware of this article. We’ll look at it and we’ll see if we can get a response for you.
On Wednesday, the US embassy in Islamabad issued a "correction" saying that the report was "completely false":

There is no secret operating base in Karachi or anywhere else in Pakistan being run, occupied, or otherwise operated by U.S. military personnel of any command or organization.  The article’s assertions about U.S. government collusion with Blackwater or any other contracting firm are equally baseless and false.
"U.S. government programs for Pakistan are open and transparent and function in partnership with the Government of Pakistan," said Ambassador Anne W. Patterson.  "U.S. personnel and programs in Pakistan have only one purpose – to assist the government and people of Pakistan as they face the complex challenges confronting their nation."

The way in which the US military and the Administration have chosen to "deny" this story raises several issues, but chief among them is this: Why is the US embassy in Islamabad now the appropriate source to confirm or deny clandestine military operations that are coordinated out of a task force in Afghanistan? Moreover, as Col. Lawrence Wilkerson stated clearly in The Nation story, going back years, these JSOC missions were done without the knowledge of the US ambassadors in the countries where they operate and were done outside the traditional military chain of command.

Read more by Jeremy Scahill
Pentagon Instructs Officials to Cancel Contracts with ACORN – October 23rd, 2009
Where Is the Defund Blackwater Act? – September 25th, 2009
Jamie Rubin, Cruise-Missile Liberal – September 16th, 2009
Federal Prosecutors Say Blackwater ‘Specifically Intended to Kill’ Civilians – September 9th, 2009
Why Doesn’t Hillary Clinton Fire Blackwater? – September 3rd, 2009

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

Article printed from Antiwar.com Original: http://original.antiwar.com

URL to article: http://original.antiwar.com/scahill/2009/11/26/why-is-the-state-department-speaking-for-jsoc/

[bigron]

Pakistan Taliban Regrouping Outside Waziristan

TTP Setting Up Checkpoints, Patrols in Kurram, Orakzai Agencies


by Jason Ditz, November 26, 2009
http://news.antiwar.com/2009/11/26/villagers-report-influx-of-militants-outside-of-south-waziristan/

                                         
 
Villagers across the Kurram and Orakzai Agencies of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) are reporting a massive influx of Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militants setting up checkpoints and patrols in their villages.

The militants are evidently from the South Waziristan Agency, which they left following the Pakistani military’s invasion.

Such a possibility had been feared as a reason why the Pakistani military has been increasing attacks in the areas outside South Waziristan, and has yet to capture a single high profile TTP leader in its offensive.

In spite of this, the military continues to maintain that the attack on South Waziristan is going exceedingly well, and officials say that even if the TTP relocates outside of the agency they will be too disorganized to be any serious threat. While this may be the case from the government’s perspective, the offensive seems to just be exporting South Waziristan’s problems to the rest of FATA.

 

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Pakistan pays $120,000 for Taliban henchman: military

Thu Nov 26, 4:26 pm ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091126/wl_sthasia_afp/pakistanunrestnorthwestarrest


 
 Thu Nov 26, 4:26 PM ET .
In this photograph released by Pakistan's Inter Services Public Relations, the suspected terrorist Abdullah Shah Mehsud is pictured after his arrest in the northwestern town of Tank. Pakistan has paid out the equivalent of nearly 120,000 dollars over the arrest of a lieutenant of the country's Taliban warlord ahead of a major Muslim festival, the military said Thursday.(AFP/ISPR)
 
ISLAMABAD (AFP) – Pakistan has paid out the equivalent of nearly 120,000 dollars over the arrest of a lieutenant of the country's Taliban warlord ahead of a major Muslim festival, the military said Thursday.

It is the first time Pakistan has announced the payment of a reward since it offered five million dollars for information leading to the capture, dead or alive, of Hakimullah Mehsud and 18 lieutenants.

"Security forces have arrested wanted terrorist Abdullah Shah Mehsud" in the northwestern town of Tank. "He had a head money of 10 million rupees," the military said in a statement.

"The head money has been paid to the informer."

Shah Mehsud was number 17 on a list of wanted militants released on November 2 that carried rewards of between 10 and 50 million rupees for the leadership of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

TTP has been blamed for some of the worst attacks that have killed more than 2,550 people in a wave of carnage in the last 29 months in Pakistan. Around 2,000 troops have died fighting Islamist militants since 2002.

Pakistani paramilitary and army soldiers are pursuing a major offensive against TTP strongholds in South Waziristan, part of a tribal belt where US officials say Al-Qaeda fighters are plotting attacks on the West.

Violence has surged in Pakistan since the military launched the air and ground assault on October 17.

Six militants were killed on Thursday during an encounter with Pakistani troops in the Mamray area of Khyber, the tribal district which straddles the main NATO supply line into Afghanistan, said the paramilitary Frontier Corps.

Pakistani troops opened a new front against militants in Khyber on Tuesday and have been drawn increasingly into clashes with fighters elsewhere in the tribal belt with Taliban foot soldiers reportedly escaping from Waziristan.

The United States has welcomed the military action but is reportedly mounting pressure on Pakistan to also counter militants on its soil who launch attacks on NATO and US troops across the border in Afghanistan.

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Scahill and Olbermann on Blackwater: Murderous Crusaders for Christ

Scary stuff.


By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on November 27, 2009, Printed on November 28, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/www.alternet.org/144231/

In the window to your right, see frequent AlterNet contributor discuss Blackwater on Keith Olbermann's show. WATCH :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAeE4SUdshs&feature=player_embedded


 And if you missed it this Tuesday, be sure to check out Jeremy's piece on the shady mercenary firm's secret war in Pakistan.
http://www.alternet.org/story/144153/blackwater%27s_secret_war_in_pakistan_revealed/

Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet.

© 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/www.alternet.org/144231/

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South Asia
Dec 1, 2009 
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KL01Df03.html 
 
US stalls as Pakistan drifts


By Syed Saleem Shahzad

ISLAMABAD - Three developments over the past few days have dealt a severe setback to the designs of the United States in the South Asian theater of war.

Firstly, Taliban leader Mullah Omar last week rejected any possibility of talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai or the United States, indicating that the only way towards peace was for foreign troops to leave Afghanistan.

Then, as war rages against Muslim militants in Pakistan's tribal areas, the chief of army staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani, shocked secular elements in the country by saying that "no one can separate Islam and Pakistan" and that the goal was to turn the country into a true Islamic state.

And thirdly, as Asia Times Online predicted, President Asif Ali Zardari issued an amended ordinance at the weekend in which he abdicated as chairman of the Nuclear Command Authority and transferred command of the country's nuclear arsenal to Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani. (See Pakistan's military stays a march ahead November 25, 2009)

Mullah Omar's statement is likely to derail any attempts at negotiations in Afghanistan, even at the level of junior Taliban commanders. Kiani's statement, meanwhile, can be expected to demoralize secular forces such as the Pashtun sub-nationalist Awami National Party in North-West Frontier Province.

The message is that their role is limited and no matter the hostilities between the Pakistani military and Muslim militants, secular forces will never be allowed to influence broader strategic matters; that is, only Islamic ideology and its flag bearers can have control.

Zardari's handing over of power over the nuclear arsenal is the beginning of the collapse of the Western-hatched secular and liberal coalition in Islamabad.

With the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) having expired on November 28, analysts believe that early next month many politicians could find themselves in court. The NRO, issued on October 5, 2007, granted amnesty to politicians, political workers and bureaucrats who were accused of corruption, embezzlement, money-laundering, murder and terrorism between January 1, 1986, and October 12, 1999. Some of the main beneficiaries were Zardari and several present cabinet members.

Those most affected will be politicians from the ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP) (corruption cases) and its ally, the Muttehida Quami Movement (criminal cases). In this situation, opposition parties like the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) will mount additional pressure on the ruling coalition to resign and call mid-term elections.

The PML-N, the second-largest political party in parliament and led by former premier Nawaz Sharif, and all other opposition parties have unanimously demanded the resignation of Zardari and cabinet members who are alleged to have taken advantage of the NRO.

Zardari has resisted the demands. His approach appears to be an attempt to heal his rift with the military and regain its backing. His move over the nuclear weapons can be viewed in this light - the military is known to have been uneasy with Zardari's control of the arsenal as it believes he is too close to the US.

At the same time, Zardari is preparing to take on the opposition by curtailing sections of the media critical of him.

Last week, Zardari delivered a speech on the occasion of the PPP's 42nd anniversary. For security reasons, the speech was delivered from the president's residence in the capital, Islamabad, and telecast directly to a stadium in the southern port city of Karachi.

Other speakers at the gathering criticized a television talk show host, Dr Shahid Masood, whom they accused of trying to destabilize the rule of the PPP.

Masood, executive director of Geo TV and a campaigner against the NRO, had announced that after a message from the Pakistani government, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) government had banned the broadcast of his show from its Dubai studio. Masood also said he had received threats that if he ever dared to telecast his show from Pakistan, his life would be endangered.

"I told the prime minister [Gillani] when I was visiting Islamabad, that your boss [Zardari] has directly given me threats," Masood told Asia Times Online by telephone from the UAE.

Masood has been a household name for Pakistani television viewers for the past nine years. Politically, he was close to the PPP from his days as a medical student, and after joining the electronic media he was considered very close to slain Benazir Bhutto, Zardari's wife and former leader of the PPP.

But after Zardari's PPP won elections and he was made president in September 2008, Masood fell out with the PPP and joined hands with the civil society movement that was calling for the restoration of the judiciary that had been sacked by former military ruler General Pervez Musharraf. He subsequently took a stance against the NRO.

Masood's conversation with Gillani was strictly private and cannot be made public, but it is well known that there is a cold war between the prime minister and Zardari. Gillani has on several occasions called on the president to resign.

Zardari appears to believe in the saying, "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't"; besides, sacking the prime minister or forcing his resignation would expose differences within the PPP and open the doors of internal dissension.

Zardari, widely known as "Mr 10%", also has his hands full in fending off criticism. He was the center of so much ridicule through a text message campaign that in July Interior Minister Rehman Malik announced that the Federal Investigation Agency had been tasked to trace text messages and e-mails that "slander the political leadership of the country", under the vague Cyber Crimes Act. In response, people simply started using code words for the president and some television stations produced new satires about Zardari.

Apart from occasional excursions, Zardari has fortified himself in the presidential palace, and he even reportedly berated PPP leaders when they advised him to visit the military's General Headquarters Rawalpindi after militants attacked the building on October 10.

Zardari has delegated many of his duties to his sister, Faryal Talpur, or to associates from his days in jail from the mid-1990s to 2004 on various corruption charges. These include Dr Abdul Qayyum Soomro. his physician while he was imprisoned; Senator Syed Faisal Raza Abedi, a fellow inmate turned politician; Senator Islamuddin Sheikh, a former leader of the Pakistan Muslim League linked to corruption charges; and Salman Farooqui, who was a co-accused of Zardari and who is now his principal secretary.

The US will be closely following Zardari's difficulties, as his political demise will end its attempt to put a friendly face on the "war on terror" which Pakistan is waging on Washington's behalf.

In turn, this would have a direct impact on how vigorously the Pakistani military continued its war on militants in the tribal areas, as well as the fortunes of the Taliban-led insurgency across the border in Afghanistan.

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

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Where in the World Is the Pakistani Taliban?

TTP 'Probably Not in North Waziristan'

by Jason Ditz, November 29, 2009
http://news.antiwar.com/2009/11/29/where-in-the-world-is-the-pakistani-taliban/

                                   

It is hardly a secret that as the Pakistani military plays up its dramatic victory in South Waziristan Agency, they have little to show for it. The troops stormed the region, captured a handful of villages, and found not a single Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) leader.

But where did the TTP go? It’s unclear. The military has expanded its offensive through most of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), and reports have some of the militants cropping up in places like Orakzai and Kurram.

But they’re still not finding any leaders and the group’s ability to orchestrate attacks across Pakistan seems virtually unaffected by the Waziristan offensive. There’s no clue where they are, but officials are pretty confident it isn’t North Waziristan, even though the government has said that’s going to be their next target for invasion.

While the military seems content for now with touting its success in capturing largely irrelevant villages along the Afghan border, villages they have no intention of remaining in past the offensive, it will be almost impossible for them to declare any serious victory if the TTP’s leadership remains at large.

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Pakistan Rejects Call to Do More to ‘Break’ Al-Qaeda (Update1)


By Ed Johnson and Kitty Donaldson
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=az8.6tieyQsk&pos=9

Nov. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Pakistan rejected U.K. demands that it must do more to “break” the al-Qaeda terrorist network and said Britain should share intelligence if it knows the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden.

Nobody should doubt Pakistan’s sincerity in the fight against terrorism, Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit said yesterday in Islamabad, the official Associated Press of Pakistan reported.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown yesterday pressured the government in Islamabad to step up security in the tribal regions bordering Afghanistan, which U.S. intelligence agencies say are havens for Taliban and al-Qaeda militants.

“We’ve got to ask ourselves why, eight years after Sept. 11th, nobody has been able to spot or detain or get close to Osama bin Laden,” Brown told the British Broadcasting Corp. “We have got to ask the Pakistani security forces, army and politicians to join us in the major effort that the world is committing resources to, not only to isolate al-Qaeda, but to break them in Pakistan.”

Thousands of Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters sought shelter in Pakistan’s tribal region after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001. There have been no confirmed sightings of bin Laden since he escaped U.S.-led forces in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan in December 2001. The al-Qaeda leader has since made several audio and video recordings posted on the Internet on issues such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bin Laden was within the grasp of U.S. forces at Tora Bora in late 2001 and escaped after military officials rejected calls for reinforcements, according to a Nov. 30 report by Democratic staff on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Border Bases

U.S. intelligence officials say al-Qaeda has bases along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and suspect that Mullah Mohammad Omar, who led the Taliban government that sheltered bin Laden, operates from the southwestern Pakistani province of Baluchistan.

“During the last seven to eight years, Pakistan has either captured or killed more than 700 al-Qaeda operatives,” APP cited Basit as saying.

Bin Laden isn’t in Pakistan, Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters in London, ARY News television reported.

The U.K. has the second-largest contingent of troops in Afghanistan behind the U.S., with about 9,000 soldiers fighting a resurgent Taliban insurgency.

“If we are taking action and British lives are put at risk on the Afghan side of the border, then we need to have effective action taken by the Pakistan government and Pakistan forces on their side of the border,” Brown told Sky News. Brown said he would make an announcement about British troop numbers in Afghanistan later this week.

Afghan Strategy

President Barack Obama will announce his Afghan strategy on Dec. 1, with talks focused on adding 30,000 to 35,000 American soldiers, according to a U.S. official. The U.S. now contributes about 70,000 of the 110,000 international troops waging the Afghan war.

Brown spoke by telephone with President Asif Ali Zardari on Nov. 28 and discussed Pakistan’s operation against militants, APP reported.

Pakistan’s army is waging its largest offensive against Taliban militants that the government blames for 80 percent of terrorist attacks in the country.

The offensive in the South Waziristan tribal region has triggered a spate of retaliatory suicide bombings and commando raids that have killed more than 350 people in towns and cities, including the capital, Islamabad.

Militant violence has increased in the Punjab region, which generates more than half of the country’s economic growth, and the central bank last week cut its benchmark interest rate for a third time this year to aid an economy being dragged down by the conflict.

The military campaign against the Taliban is costing the government more than $8.5 billion a year, Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin has said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Ed Johnson in Sydney at ejohnson28@bloomberg.net; Kitty Donaldson in London at kdonaldson1@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 30, 2009 00:55 EST

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History repeats itself?

By Imran Khan in  Asia  on December 1st, 2009
http://blogs.aljazeera.net/asia/2009/12/01/history-repeats-itself


Photo from AFP


As Afghanistan awaits US president Barack Obama's announcement on deployment of additional troops, Imran Khan talks about speculation in Islamabad surrounding the move.

On the eve of the US troop announcement and Islamabad's chattering classes are abuzz with speculation.

It's not about the level of troops to be deployed in Afghanistan but about the exit strategy.
 
In an official statement sent out by the US embassy in Islamabad there is one telling line: "This is not an open-ended commitment."
 
That has Islamabad buzzing. America's Exit Strategy. At one dinner party I was at on Monday night and attended by a prominent Pakistani politician, a former Western diplomat and a high profile journalist, one theme kept coming up: Afghanistan and America.
 
The Politician kept saying that the US must do a better job in listening to Pakistan's concerns. The high profile journalist countered by saying "Why? They never have listened to us before, why would they start now?" The former Western diplomat was also blunt. "Don't worry, they don't listen to anyone else either!"
 
As the conversation flip-flopped between old memories and the current political climate, I was reminded of that old quote from a Rudyard Kipling poem "Young British Soldier".
 
The poem, written in late 1800s, when Britain tried to tame the wilds of Afghanistan laments the ordinary soldier's lot: One line is particularly poignant:
 
"When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, And the women come out to cut up what remains, Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains An' go to your Gawd like a soldier."

Clearly Britain had a tough time in Afghanistan. Nearly one hundred years later the Mighty Soviet empire faced even greater challenges there. Once it pulled out of the country after 10 years occupying it the Soviet empire crumbled.

It's now America's turn.

"Go to your Gawd like a soldier" Is how the poem ends. It could well be a warning from history to Barack Obama. Kipling was slyly commenting on the madness of a military solution to the Afghan Issue. If Kipling was alive today, he may well offer the same advice to the US President.

Obama inherited the Afghan war but it could come to define his presidency.

The best way to stabilise the country is to strike a deal and pull out. Across dinner parties in Islamabad that is what conclusion keeps coming up. In the next 24 hours we will know Barack Obama's strategy.

But will the lesson's of history be applied? Perhaps not. America insists that this is a different war with different scenarios. For Pakistani's, well,  they have been here before with the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. It was American that armed and funded the Afghan Mujahedeen.

When the Russians left America abandoned the country, leaving Pakistan to pick up the pieces. Pakistan armed and funded the Taliban. They brought peace to the country but at brutal cost. In the coming years we saw the rise of Osama Bin Laden, the attacks of September the 11th 2001, America's war with the Taliban and then eventually Pakistan at war within it's own borders and wave of suicide bombing's across the country.  Now America talks of an exit strategy.

History, Some Pakistani's fear, is repeating itself.

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Wednesday, December 02, 2009
13:15 Mecca time, 10:15 GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/12/200912294923735934.html
   
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
 
Suicide blast at Pakistan navy base 

 
Four people were wounded in the blast by an attacker witnesses say was a teenager
 
A suicide bomber has attacked Pakistan's navy headquarters, killing one security guard and wounding four others, police say.

The attacker detonated his explosives after he was stopped at the entrance to the heavily fortified naval complex at around 1.30pm (0830GMT) on Wednesday.

Bin Yameen, a senior police official, said: "The bomber was on foot. We have reports of four wounded."

Fazil Asghar, Islamabad's police commissioner, said the security guard was killed after he asked the man to remove his coat.

Witnesses say the bomber was a teenager.

Security forces quickly cordoned off the area. The naval installation suffered no damage because it was a safe distance from the gate, officials said.

Swat valley attack

The attack comes a day after a suicide bomber killed a provincial politician, detonating his explosives as he received guests at his home in Pakistan's northwest Swat valley.

More than a dozen people were wounded in that attack in Kanju town, police said.

Khan, 59, was a member of the Awami National Party, part of a coalition that rules the North West Frontier Province (NWFP).

The attacker struck as guests gathered to mark the end of the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, and the force of the blast damaged parts of the house and grounds.

Kanju town was the former headquarters of Mullah Fazlullah, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban.

Both attacks come during a Pakistani army offensive in Swat which began in April.
 
 
 

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South Asia
Dec 3, 2009 
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KL03Df03.html 
 
Pakistan moves to drone independence

By Syed Fazl-e-Haider

QUETTA, Pakistan - Having already gained experience and guidance from the United States on the effective use of drones, Pakistan is working on its own Predator-like unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which have helped revolutionize warfare.

The growth of Pakistan's indigenous UAV industry is of great importance for the country's defense, as the nation is on the front line of the "war on terror".

State-owned defense enterprise Pakistan Aeronautical Complex (PAC) in Kamra, east of the capital, Islamabad, is engaged in manufacturing Falco pilotless planes in collaboration with Selex Galileo of Italy. Initially, the Falco system is for aerial reconnaissance and information gathering. The country later plans to induct UAVs equipped with weapon systems to carry out offensive operations.

These high-tech efforts come as the country's defense expenditure is expected to exceed the budgetary allocation of 343 billion rupees (US$4 billion) by about 20% during the fiscal year ending next June, because of military operations against militants in North-West Frontier Province.

Local analysts believe that production of surveillance drones is the first step and that by modifying existing UAVs the country can eventually achieve its ultimate goal of producing drones equipped with missiles. The US is already using such weapons against Islamist extremists in the country's tribal areas along the Afghanistan border.

Rebuffed for security reasons in its efforts to buy UAVs from the US, Pakistan instead bought unarmed Falco reconnaissance drones from Italy, according to a report published in Los Angeles Times in October. Pakistan has not stopped trying to acquire drones from the US, but has decided to begin making its own. The report claimed that Pakistani technicians at Kamra are still in training and several months away from beginning to manufacture them.

The Falcos produced in Pakistan, like the Italian-made aircraft, won't have strike capability or be able to fly nearly as far as the US's Predator and Reaper drones, the LA Times report said, citing Lieutenant Colonel Gohar Majeed, who is helping lead drone production at the PAC.

Pakistan's armed forces are at war with Pakistani Taliban insurgents in the country's northwest and are working with American drones. The drones' capabilities are being put at the disposal of the Pakistani forces, giving them experience in the effective use of the machines and their successful deployment.

Burraq is the country's latest domestically produced UAV, is based on the Falco-Selex Galileo technology and is believed to be intended as the Pakistan's main equivalent to the American Predator.

"PAC engineers have been working on the first UAV project of the country for two years," according to a report published on the aviation industry Flightglobal website in August. Pakistan is also reported to be flight-testing the Burraq, named for a winged-horse type creature in Islamic tradition. The Burraq is to be equipped with National Engineering and Scientific Commission (or NESCom) designed laser designator and laser-guided missiles. Unlike the Falco, Burraq will be able to attack and destroy targets.

Pakistan has now virtually become a member of the club of countries manufacturing drones. The Pakistan Air Force (PAF) desperately needs UAVs capable of firing at targeted militants.

The Falco, with an autonomous navigation and control system, has a standard control link range of 200 kilometers and is capable of short take-offs from semi-prepared airstrips. Among its prominent features are automatic take-off and landing, fully redundant and fault-tolerant control systems and near-real-time target image processing.

Selex Galileo has test flown a Falco at the company's UAV test facility at ParcAberporth in west Wales in the UK. The vehicle was equipped with the active electronically scanned array PicoSAR and an infrared sensor. The high-resolution SAR (synthetic-aperture radar) makes the radar particularly useful for detecting disturbances in ground surface.

Pakistan's aviation firms have been involved in manufacturing small drones for years. Integrated Dynamics (ID), a local firm has been producing smaller UAVs for the government and commercial market for the last 12 years. Other private enterprises, including Surveillance & Target Unmanned Aircraft (Satuma) and East West Infiniti (EWI), have been involved in manufacturing UAVs in the country. State-owned aviation firms which produce UAVs include the Air Weapons Complex (AWC), National Development Complex (NDC) and PAC.

Some analysts believe that Pakistan is manufacturing the latest UAVs with the help of Turkey and China. The new Uqaab UAV is believed to have been developed with the help of Turkey. In March 2008, Pakistan announced the successful completion of flight tests of Uqaab, which appears similar to the US Army RQ-7B Shadow 200. Equipped with a night vision camera, the US Shadow 200 UAV has the capability to fly as high as 15,000 feet and stay 5.5 hours in the air.

China has helped Pakistan in strengthening its defenses, particularly the aviation industry. Beijing extended support in designing a fighter aircraft, the JF-17 Thunder, to meet Pakistan's specific defense needs, besides helping to set up aircraft production facilities in the country.

The first production JF-17 Thunder produced in Kamra was last month handed over to PAF. The light-weight, all-weather aircraft has the capability to carry short as well as long-range air-to-air missiles and its integrated avionics made it capable for fighting in the air for a longer period.

Pakistan plans also to acquire four airborne warning and control system (AWACS) aircraft from China.

In the current fiscal year, Pakistan's defense expenditures are estimated to be somewhere between 400 billion and 410 billion rupees, up by about 70 billion rupees on the 343 billion rupee allocation. Last year, the allocated amount of 296 billion rupees was twice revised upwards to 329 billion rupees, to be 11% over the budget estimates.

Syed Fazl-e-Haider (www.syedfazlehaider.com ) is a development analyst in Pakistan. He is the author of many books, including The Economic Development of Balochistan (2004). He can be contacted at sfazlehaider05@yahoo.com.

 
 
 

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Obama quietly authorises expansion of war in Pakistan

The Indian Express

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m60694&hd=&size=1&l=e

December 2, 2009

As the US announced deepening of its involvement in Afghanistan by despatching 30,000 more troops, President Barack Obama has quietly authorised an expansion of war against terrorism in Pakistan under which CIA would widen its campaign of strikes against militants by unmanned drones.

The expanded operations by the CIA could include drone strikes in the southern province of Baluchistan, where senior Afghan Taliban leaders are believed to be hiding, New York Times reported today quoting officials.

CIA has submitted its plan to widen its campaign in Pakistan to the White House and has asked for commitment to jack up the agency's budget for operations inside the country.

CIA also wants to send more spies into the terrorist infested areas in Pakistan's tribal belt to try to infiltrate into groups like Taliban and other foreign militant groups.

But the 'Times' said, Obama Administration was aware that any expansion of overt American presence in Pakistan could fuel anti-Americanism in a country that fears that US is plotting to run its government and seize its nuclear weapons.

So, the paper said Obama officials were working to get a weak, divided and suspicious Pakistani government to agree to the terms.

'New York Times' quoting US officials said that authorising drone strikes in Baluchistan was also planned as Americans believe that it is from there that top Taliban leaders direct many of the attacks on their troops in Afghanistan and that these are likely to increase as more US troops pour into the country.

The President endorsed intensification of the campaign against the al-Qaeda and its violent allies including even more operations targeting terrorist safe havens.

This message was delivered recently to Pakistani leaders and officials by General James Jones, the National Security Adviser. But the Pakistanis suspicious of Obama's intension have not yet agreed.

In his address to the cadets at the West Point Academy, the US President said that the murky border areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan offers refuge to extremists of many strifes.

Obama identified the region as the birthplace of the September 11, 2001 attacks and said it was from here that new attacks are being plotted.

The stakes are much higher now, Obama said as al-Qaeda and other extremist groups were seeking nuclear weapons and "we have every reason to believe that they would use them.




 

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Worse Than Bush

by Mike Whitney

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m60714&hd=&size=1&l=e

December 2, 2009

George Bush never pretended to be something he wasn't. The same cannot be said for Barack Obama. Obama exploited the persona of a reformer to the maximum extent. And it worked. He rode into the White House on a wave of public enthusiasm. As soon as he was sworn in, he kicked the left to the curb, expanded the GWOT, and reinforced the regressive policies of the Bush administration. Last night's speech is just the icing on the cake. It exposes Obama as a fraud and a hypocrite. The policy has not changed at all. In fact, it is getting worse. More than 2 million people have been driven from their homes in the Swat Valley. These are the victims of Obama's undeclared war in Pakistan. Hundreds more have been killed in robotic-drone attacks, the Pentagon's twisted antidote to additional troop commitments. Obama has appointed death squad leader Stanley McChrystal to oversee military operations in Afghanistan, proof-positive that US strategy will soon devolve into massive covert bloodletting, ethnic cleansing, and cross-border strikes on villages in the tribal areas of Waziristan. Obama supporters need to "man up" and admit they were wrong; admit that clinging to false hope and fairy dust is a stupid and lethal way to cast one's vote.

Everyone who voted for Obama needs to accept responsibility for the gratuitous violence about to befall the Afghan people. You voted for him. The blood is on your hands.

Obama's public approval ratings are dropping like a stone. The glitz and the glamor are beginning to wear-thin. Now he's just another homicidal maniac disguised as a respected world leader. He's doomed to be a one-term president. Good riddance.
_______





 

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Published on Thursday, December 3, 2009 by The Guardian/UK


Anti-US Feeling Running High as CIA Drones Take a Civilian Toll

Turbulent Pakistan presents a conundrum for Barack Obama
by Declan Walsh in Islamabad

It is one of the ironies of America's war: while close to 100,000 troops will soon be deployed inside Afghanistan, Obama's core enemy – the men who plotted the 9/11 attacks – are located across the border in Pakistan.


A Reaper drone, as used by the CIA and American military in Pakistan and Afghanistan. (Photograph: Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
In his West Point speech, Obama identified the tribal belt that straddles the two countries as the "epicentre of the violent extremism practised by al-Qaida". There, he said, "new attacks are being plotted as I speak".

If it is a chilling thought, few Pakistanis appreciate it. Anti-American feeling is running at fever pitch in a country with deep-rooted hostility towards Washington and an increasingly hawkish media.

Many Pakistanis see the US military presence in their region as the cause of militant extremism, not its cure. Reaction to Obama's speech was ambivalent, with rightwing commentators insisting his true aim is to invade Pakistan and capture its nuclear weapons.

"If you ask me, the surge is really meant for Pakistan," said Hamid Gul, a former chief of the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

The hostility means that, in Pakistan, Obama relies more heavily on spies than soldiers. Obama's favoured tactic has been the use of CIA-operated pilotless drones, which have made over 80 strikes in the tribal belt since 2006, half of them this year. Targets included the Pakistani Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, killed last August, and al-Qaida leaders. Today the New York Times said the CIA is pushing to extend drone strikes into Balochistan province, further west along the Afghan border.

A former US official said a committee of US agencies regularly updates a list of drone targets, which it shares with Pakistani authorities. "They tell the Pakistanis that if they don't take these people out, we will," he said.

While the drones put few American lives in danger, they still carry substantial risks. Strikes that have killed at least 750 people in the past two years have provoked public hostility. Any move into Balochistan is likely to spark a fierce backlash.

The US strategy in Pakistan is to "drive a wedge between transnational jihadists of al-Qaida and their local Taliban allies," said Kamran Bokhari of the thinktank Stratfor. The difficulty is that some Taliban – for instance, Gul Bahadur in North Waziristan – enjoy tacit alliances with the Pakistan military, which considers the "good" Taliban as a ticket to influence in Afghanistan once the US withdraws. "There is a divergence of interests," said Bokhari.

Obama's conundrum is complicated by turbulent politics. President Asif Ali Zardari looks more beleaguered than ever. To appease his critics, Zardari has relinquished control over Pakistan's nuclear weapons. But the gesture – the weapons are really controlled by the military – has done little to silence his media critics, who daily cry for his removal. The strife makes Washington deeply uneasy.

© 2009 Guardian News and Media Limited

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Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/12/03-9