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

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Published on Friday, January 8, 2010 by Reuters


US Senators Defend Pakistan Drone Attacks

by Michael Georgy

ISLAMABAD - U.S. senators on Friday defended American drone aircraft strikes in ally Pakistan, an issue likely to become more volatile if Washington intensifies the attacks to hunt down enemies after the bombing of CIA agents in Afghanistan.


US Senator John McCain arrives for a press conference at the US Embassy in Kabul. Pakistan warned US senators Thursday that American drone attacks against militants on its territory undermined "the national consesus" that supported the war against militancy. (AFP/Massoud Hossaini)

Pakistan officially objects to the attacks on suspected al Qaeda and Taliban militants along its border with Afghanistan, saying they violate its sovereignty.

And Islamabad has pushed Washington to provide it with the drones to allow it to carry out its own attacks on Taliban insurgents, a move that could ease widespread anti-American sentiment in Pakistan.

"We don't agree on every issue. We believe that, as I have stated and as our government has stated, that it is one of many tools that we must use to try to defeat a very determined and terrible enemy," said U.S. Senator John McCain.

There have been a high number of pilotless drone aircraft attacks in Pakistan since a double agent blew himself up at a U.S. base in Afghanistan on December 30, killing seven CIA agents.

That blast, which marked a huge CIA intelligence failure, will pile pressure on the U.S. military to kill high-profile militants based along the Afghan-Pakistan frontier.

The United States sees the drones as a highly effective weapon in a global hub for militants. The strikes have killed some prominent al Qaeda militants.

Many al Qaeda and Taliban members fled to northwestern Pakistan's ungoverned ethnic Pashtun belt after U.S.-led forces ousted Afghanistan's Taliban government in 2001. From there they have orchestrated insurgencies in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistan has not objected to drone strikes that have killed militants fighting the Pakistani state, such as Pakistan Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud.

But Pakistan does oppose strikes on strategic regional assets such as the Afghan Haqqani militant group, which had ties with Pakistan's ISI spy agency and would give it leverage in Afghanistan if the country is gripped by chaos again.

STRATEGIC COMPLEXITIES

At the same time the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani group is high on the U.S. hit list, and speculation is growing it may have been linked to the bomb attack on the CIA, illustrating the complexities and sensitivities in U.S.-Pakistani ties.

The drone issue was raised when a delegation of U.S. senators led by McCain met President Asif Ali Zardari on Thursday. They have also met the prime minister, as well as army chief general Ashfaq Kayani. He is the pivotal figure because the military makes security decisions and effectively sets foreign policy.

Drone attacks are a politically charged issue between the United States and Pakistan, which Washington sees as the front-line state in its war against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Pakistan fears the strikes could undermine efforts to deal with militancy because the civilian casualties inflame public anger and bolster support for the fighters.

Asked if he had the same concerns, McCain told reporters:

"There are elements operating in Pakistan that if allowed to do so would go to Afghanistan and kill Americans and destroy that government and re-establish Afghanistan as a base for attacks on the United States and our allies. That's what I understand."

The United States carried out 51 drone air strikes in Pakistan last year, killing about 460 people, including many foreign militants, according to a tally of reports from Pakistani officials and residents.

McCain suggested no other options were under consideration in the event that the drone strikes failed to deliver. Asked if he would support U.S. ground operations on Pakistani soil, McCain said he had never been briefed on that.

"Very frankly, I think it would have to be done in coordination and in agreement with the Pakistani government and military," he said.

Pakistan's reluctance to go after the Haqqani network, whose leader worked with the CIA in the 1980s against Soviet occupation troops in Afghanistan, has strained ties with Washington.

"The Americans see it as absolutely vital to eliminate the Haqqani network because they are the ones that can carry out attacks in the major cities in Afghanistan, which nobody else has the capacity to do," said Ahmed Rashid, an expert on militant groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The U.S. embassy has accused Pakistan of taking provocative action and making false allegations against U.S. personnel. U.S. officials say Pakistan is also stalling their visa applications.

"It's a point of friction. We would like to see it resolved. We would like to see the visas granted that are necessary for our embassy to do our job," said McCain.

Al Qaeda's Afghan wing claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing, the second-most deadly attack in CIA history, saying it was revenge for the deaths of militant leaders, including Mehsud, who was killed in a drone attack. His death had not eased a raging Taliban insurgency gripping Pakistan.

(Additional reporting by Faisal Aziz in Karachi; Editing by Robert Birsel)

© 2010 Reuters

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Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/01/08-3

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Cival War?

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'US missiles kill four' in Pakistan

UKPA

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m61966&hd=&size=1&l=e

January 8, 2010

Suspected US missiles have killed four people in north-western Pakistan near the Afghan border, Pakistani officials said.

The strike was the sixth attack in eight days, an unusually intense bombardment.

Two intelligence officials said a pair of missiles hit a house and a vehicle near Miran Shah in the al-Qaida and Taliban stronghold of North Waziristan.



 

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Jeepers..highly unusual I'd say!!

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Exchange with Guardian journalist about US drone strikes

by Ian Sinclair
http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m61980&hd=&size=1&l=e

                                   

January 8, 2010

Below is an email exchange I had with the Guardian's Declan Walsh (declan.walsh@guardian.co.uk) regarding Pakistani public opinion and the continuing US drone strikes.

 

 

Email to Declan Walsh on 28 December 2009:

 

Dear Declan

 

I was interested to read your recent article in the Guardian 'US forces mounted secret Pakistan raids in hunt for al-Qaida' (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/21/us-forces-secret-pakistan-raids).

 

There was a lot of valuable information in your report, but I was baffled by your assertion that Pakistani "public opinion has grudgingly tolerated CIA-led drone strikes in the tribal areas" of Pakistan.

 

I am aware of three recent public opinion polls conducted in Pakistan on this issue.

 

-          "Nearly three-fourths of poll respondents said they oppose U.S. military action against al Qaeda and the Taliban inside Pakistan" according to a September 2007 Terror Free Tomorrow/D3 Systems poll (http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/09/11/poll.pakistanis/index.html)

 

-          An August 2009 Al-Jazeera/Gallup Pakistan poll found 67% of respondents "oppose drone attacks by the United States against Taliban and al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan" (http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2009/08/2009888238994769.html)

 

-          An October 2009 International Republican Institute poll found 73% of respondents oppose the "U.S. making military incursions in the tribal areas" and 76% do not think the "United States should partner with Pakistan in conducting drone attacks against extremists." (http://www.iri.org/mena/pakistan/pdfs/2009_October_1_Survey_of_Pakistan_Public_Opinion_July_15-August_7_2009.pdf)

 

With the above results in mind could you tell me what percentage of the Pakistani population would have to be opposed to the US drone attacks for you to report them as such?

 

Kind regards

 

Ian Sinclair

 

 

Reply from Declan Walsh on 28 December 2009:

 

Dear Ian
I said the Pakistani public has tolerated - not supported - drone attacks, which is demonstrably true. I'm not sure the same would be true of american 'boots on the ground', which was the point of the comparison. We've previously reported public opinion on drone strikes.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/30/clinton-pakistan-drone-attacks
bests
d

 

 

Reply to Declan Walsh on 29 December 2009:

 

Dear Declan
 
Thanks for your reply.
 
You say it is "demonstrably true" that the "Pakistani public has tolerated" the US drone attacks. 
 
This seems to be a very strange way of interpreting the three polls that show around 70 percent of Pakistanis oppose the US drone attacks. What would the Pakistani public have to do to actually oppose the attacks, and be reported as opposing the attacks, in your eyes?
 
I note that it was widely reported in early 2003 the majority of the British public opposed the invasion of Iraq (see http://www.ipsos-mori.com/newsevents/ca/ca.aspx?oItemId=287).  Would you also describe the British public of "tolerating" the invasion?
 
Kind regards
 
Ian

 

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THIS IS A MUST READ


Image of the Beast

BY Peter Chamberlin

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m61988&hd=&size=1&l=e
 

January 9, 2010

                         

Up until now, the United States has been able to exert control over most of the earth just by controlling the narrative that reflects popular opinion about the war on terror.  Whatever government spokesmen or reporters have said happened on a particular day, was what really happened; it was validated by popular consent.  The ability to shape people’s thoughts and opinions is a power that every tyrant has dreamed about.  Global trust in the good intentions of the people of the United States moves individuals and entire nations to give American leaders the benefit of the doubt, even when common sense cautions against it.

Until fairly recently, popular opinion did not often call into question the American or allied version of events.  Widespread civilian "collateral damage" from air strikes and disagreements between the Pakistani and American military have opened the door to questions about the very nature of this war and the leadership, or lack thereof, displayed by Western decision-makers.

The US has decided that to win the war in Afghanistan, it must attack its closest ally in the war, because allegedly, Pakistan is the state sponsor of the Afghan Taliban.  The Pak Army refuses to fight all the militants in Pakistan at one time, because their numbers are so great and tribal connections run so deep that it would be suicidal.  American leaders claim that such a nationwide Pakistani offensive is the only way that the war can be won.  Pakistan, on the other hand, maintains that the US, India and Israel are the state sponsors of the "Pakistani Taliban" terrorist outfit which is waging war against the people of Pakistan.  Since the United States controls the narrative, the whole world holds Pakistan accountable for all the terrorism in the world, no matter whether it is true or not.

Now is a good time to question American motives and CIA dishonesty as the primary source of problems in this war.  Obama’s minor investigation into agency shortcomings demonstrated during the underwear bombing incident, the destruction of the CIA drone center in Khost and the scathing NATO report on US intelligence shortcomings ("Fixing Intel"), on the heels of the Eric Holder investigation of CIA torture—all of these ongoing problems scream of an out-of-control spy agency.  We have entrusted the CIA to lead this intelligence-driven war and time after time, but the egomaniacal spooks have consistently dropped the ball.

But the CIA has done much worse than merely fumbling their appointed tasks, they have demonstrated malice and outright criminality in their multi-layered covert war, which goes far beyond targeting any real or imagined enemy, as the plan moves forward to wage war against the entire human race, in order to accomplish their Imperial goals.  Obama touched on the problem indirectly when he said someone "took their eye off the ball," but he did not pursue the idea to its obvious conclusion—a lot of people "took their eyes off the ball," all at the proper time to make the "al Qaida" plan work.  Clearly, there are assets in key security positions who facilitated the Yemen attack, just as there were complicit facilitators who made the 911 attacks happen.  It is no coincidence that there seem to be crossovers between militant groups and the security agencies which are tasked with pursuing them.  This is because the militant groups are all children of various intelligence agencies, most of them working under contract for the CIA, knowingly or not, at some point.

Pakistan is allegedly the "epicenter of terrorism," but if that was true, then why do most terror attacks in the world happen in Pakistan?  Do not forget that the CIA provides 50 percent of the ISI’s budget.  The ISI is a primary American contractor, as is India’s RAW.  Western popular opinion fully accepts the American/Indian narrative, that only Pakistan sponsors terror.  This ignores revelations by former Indian spy chiefs, who have confirmed that India did sponsor thousands of terrorists within Pakistan in the past, under a program called "Counterintelligence Team X," but this allegedly ended in 1998.

Contrary to Indian and American statements, India is still a primary state sponsor of terrorism within Pakistan, but Western apologists help hide that fact, because the CIA is a partner in the current operations.  In the past, India’s RAW and the CIA have been adversaries.  Up until the era of the India/US nuclear agreement that hostility prevailed between the agencies.

The ongoing controversy over American spy David Headley is not the only public embarrassment that RAW has suffered at the CIA’s hands.  In 2004, RAW spy chief Rabinder Singh was caught obtaining documents for the CIA and meeting with a female agent at a local motel.

 
He escaped to the US, where he was located in New Jersey in 2006.  The Indian government tried to extradite him, appealing the charges against him, he claimed that he quit the agency and fled to the United States after being ordered to "participate in an assassination plot against a senior religious Sikh leader."

Sometime after the extradition papers were filed, the following document was posted on the Internet.  That document, called Summer Offensive Report was on the operations of "Counterintelligence Team X," Singh had formerly ran the "Counterintelligence Team J," which terrorized the Sikhs in Punjab.  The Report gives no clue as to who ran the "X" Team, but the name Alok Tiwari comes-up in another paper, titled "Operation Blue Tulsi."

The Summer Offensive Report claims to describe Indian/Israeli operations against Pakistan in 2004, centered around the town of Wana. A new operation did begin in Wana that year, the beginning of the "Pakistani Taliban" (TTP) project.   That operation began with the killing of Nek Muhammad on June 17.  Arguably, it probably began in with the Ilyas Kashmiri attack upon Musharraf.  After being picked-up by the security services, the former Pakistani Special Forces commando/militant was captured was allegedly tortured until his release in early ’04.  The experience left him a shattered man and he retired from the jihad until 2007.

The guided missile attack that killed Nek set in motion the events that would bring Baitullah Mehsud to power.   He inherited a ready-made army from his cousin Abdullah Mehsud, which formed the hardcore Uzbek center of the TTP.  After his sudden release from Guantanamo to Afghanistan in 2002, Abdullah suddenly amassed thousands of Uzbek and Northern Alliance fighters and became endowed with millions of dollars in cash and tons of the most advanced weapons.

Until now, researchers have consistently charged that the Pakistani Taliban were sponsored by India and Israel, but have had nothing to prove this other than photos of tons of Indian/Israeli/American arms.  The following from Summer Offensive Report reinforces those charges:

"The summer offensive includes establishment of 57 training camps in Occupied Kashmir, East Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Assam to train and launch terrorists inside Pakistan. Trainees are generally drawn from the Indian hatched dissident groups of Mohajir Qaumi Movement (MQM), Jiye Sindh Mohaz (JSM), Jiye Sindh Students Federation (JSF) and Balochi nationalists and other nationalist groups from various parts of Sindh, Balochistan and Tribal Areas.

For Pakistan RAW centers at London, Dubai, Iran, and South Africa operate against Pakistan jointly with Israeli MOSSAD.

India has opened Consulates (IOC’s) in Kandahar, Jalalabad, Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat, besides having an oversized diplomatic mission in Kabul.

Kandahar and Jalalabad are near the borders of Pakistan, which insinuates many things. The ongoing Wana operation is being fed cash, weapons and ammunition indirectly by RAW operatives under cover of Al-Qaeda. MOSSAD and AMMAN have also contributed heavily towards the funding and material requirements for these operations. The direct result of this was the effective slaying of 121 Pakistani regular infantry soldiers on Nov 8th’2004, just 3 days after the infusion of war material and assistance in logistics and planning operations of the tribals by operatives of RAW.

The summer offensive of RAW includes working on ethnic, regional, parochial and secular themes, which include Sindhu Desh Movement in Sindh, Saraiki Movement in Punjab, Tribal Balochis in the name of Greater Balochistan and taking advantage of Northern Alliance Government in Afghanistan and using its tentacles at Kabul, Jalalabad, Khost, Kandahar and Spin Boldak, the tribals in Waziristan and Balochistan are continuously being kept activated for fomenting trouble – while Taliban and Al-Qaeda are getting the blame and Pakistan gets the rap for "not doing enough" by US and "FRIENDLY" Afghan authorities.

After the Indian consulate in Karachi was wound up. RAW started maintaining contacts in their sources/links in Pakistan through their consulates at Zahidan and Dubai. Most of the staff at Indian Consulate in Zahidan is from intelligence/security organisations including RAW, Intelligence Bureau and Military Intelligence. The sizeable cover staff in their Embassy at Dubai under the pretence of tourist traffic. The set-ups are dedicated units mainly responsible for promoting ethnic unrest in Pakistan. They continue to provide financial and material support to various regionalist/sectarian parties in Sindh and Balochistan

UAE is being used as a launching pad for terrorist activities in Pakistan. Agents are getting hold of young, disgruntled elements and after carrying out their proper brainwashing, they are dispatched to Dubai. Indian Consulate in Dubai is issuing temporary passport to these activists for getting training/briefing. After completion of their formal training, they are launched into Pakistan to carry out their terrorist/sabotage activities."

About the content:

I checked the Fata timeline and found the following—The Report claimed that "121″ soldiers were killed near Wana in a large attack sometime between Nov. 4 and 8, 2004–the timeline doesn’t list anything like that, but it does report that 140 soldiers and scouts were killed in or near Wana between March 16 and Dec. 9, 2004.

Beginning in November, the Report list dozens of rocket, mortar and land-mine/IED attacks around Wana.

The report author claims that the Indian embassy in Zeheden is the source of attacks in Iran, attacks that have probably been attributed to "Jundullah."  Jundullah did begin around Wana in ’04.  The Report also mentions Amman, Jordan as a participant with Israel in the Wana effort.  The suicide bomber who recently targeted the CIA drone base in Khost, Afghanistan was a Jordanian intelligence officer, related to King Abdullah, from the same hometown as "al Qaida in Iraq" leader Abu Musab Zarqawi.  The Jordanian attacker was sent by Hakeemullah Mehsud, the commander of the Tehreek e-Taliban Pakistan, from Wana.  It was a revenge attack for the killing of Baitullah.

watch:
Mehsud's death sparked CIA attack - 09 Jan 10

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F-VO1MAoX0&feature=player_embedded

more about "CIA Khost Bomber and Hakeemullah Mehsud", posted with vodpod

Another document, which continues the alternative narrative since 2006 is the report titled, "Operation Blue Tulsi," which began in early 2001, marking the start of Israeli/Indian operations against and within Pakistan.

By mid 2001 eyebrows were being raised over R&AW and Mossad’s cooperation and in July 2001 Janes Information Group reported that RAW and Mossad are cooperating to infiltrate Pakistan to target important religious and military personalities, journalists, judges, lawyers and bureaucrats. In addition, bombs would be exploded in trains, railway stations, bridges, bus stations, cinemas, hotels and mosques of rival Islamic sects to incite sectarianism. At the same time the Balochistan Liberation Army rose out of dead like a second incarnation and Balach Marri a Moscow graduate declares himself as the leader of BLA. Within weeks in Balochistan numerous training camps sprouted with each camp reported to be training up to a hundred militants. Agents from RAW, Mossad and CIA operating in Afghanistan started moving in.

In mid 2001 reports appeared that Special Operations Division of Mossad, also known as Metsada, specializing in assassinations and sabotage, has been based in India since May 2001 to train RAW operatives and Mossad and Shin Bet or Shabak were operating a number of teams in Indian Held Kashmir and were also operating a delicate spy network from Indian soil. In July 2001 RAW increased its budget for Indian consulates in Afghanistan by nearly 10 times.

Late in 2002 US and India signed an agreement on cooperation in disarming Pakistan’s nuclear assets and the two-player offensive team of OperationBlueTulsi found a third partner in the form of CIA. As a result of this deal Abdullah Mehsud was freed from Guantanamo Bay and returned to Pakistan with millions of dollars in cash.

By mid 2004, the government had ample evidence that BLA and some Baloch leaders were conspiring against the government, aided by foreign countries.

On 13 August 2004, the Chief Minister of Baluchistan, Jam Muhammad Yousaf is quoted by The Herald (Sep 2004-Karachi) as saying: "Indian secret services (RAW) are maintaining 40 terrorist camps all over the Baloch territory".

Jan. 1, 2005 was the starting date. The local agents got the signal and the operation started with the ominous rape of a female doctor in Sui on 2 January 2005.

As expected the incident created headlines all around and culprits not being found created a widespread indignation. This was shortly followed by the firing of hundreds of small rockets at gas installation in Sui on 7 January 2005 which put a hole in the supply of gas to the rest of the country for an entire week.

Starting March 2007…,the numbers of 'Pakistani Taliban’ in Swat surged and just their ammunition and their military hardware did. Some of this hardware was more advanced to what the Pakistani soldiers used.

A portion of this military hardware ended up in the ill-fated Lal Masjid. While intelligence and military were busy keeping Musharraf’s seat safe in Pakistan, a new political game started in the UAE.

Rehman Malik enthusiastically started pursuing the goal of National Reconciliation Ordinance. He became instrumental in the final deal between Benazir Bhutto, US and Pervez Musharraf and NRO.

Near the end of 2007, the intelligence and the military were convinced that a conspiracy had been hatched in the country with the sole aim of removing Musharraf from power.

The Assassination of Benazir Bhutto, simultaneous riots throughout the country, terrorist activities occurring in every province, all of this had considerable similarities to the Bush Administration-backed Color Revolutions. In order to keep Musharraf in power the government kept giving into one demand after the other. As a result Rehman Malik becomes head of Interior Ministry, Yusuf Raza Gilani becomes the Prime Minister of Pakistan and sweeping changes are made in the security and intelligence community. Still, the government saw the war finally over when in one move Gilani puts ISI under the Interior Minister on 27 July 2008.

The entire Wana-centric destabilization plan can be seen in the so-called Tehreek Taliban Pakistani movement, the Punjabi-Taliban influence and the leadership succession.  In addition, it traces the roots of the entire "Islamist" psyop that grew from CIA/ISI operations against the Soviets and the Iranians.  Anti-Shia sectarian terror outfits were formed in Pakistan, then sent into Afghanistan, where they slaughtered both Soviets and Shiites.  After the Soviet defeat, they turned against the Iranian-sponsored Northern Alliance troops, before being fought to a standstill by the forces of legendary rebel leader

Ahmed Shah Mahsoud.     (Mahsoud was eliminated by a suicide bomber on September 10, 2001, his forces taken over by Uzbek General Abdul Rashid Dostum with the aid of one Amrullah Saleh, who is now the head of the Afghan secret police (NDS) and might be working for Iran.)

In ’07 the British operation in Helmand, Afghanistan, which had been centered around recruiting the brother of militant Mullah Dadullah, Mansoor was merged with the Indian/American/Israeli hotbed of terrorism in S. Waziristan.  Baitullah was promoted to top dog in the militant hierarchy, as Benazir Bhutto was killed and Mansoor Dadullah took the blame.  The Afghan Taliban transferred Dadullah’s forces to Mehsud, conferring legitimacy upon the operation, Mullah Omar not yet realizing that Baitullah was really anti-Taliban.

Mehsud’s Swat operation under radical disc jockey, Mullah Fazlullah, was the opening front of the Wana-trained forces against the Pakistani Army.  It is no coincidence that there was not a single Predator attack against Fazlullah’s forces, and all drone attacks from that point on were against Baitullah Mehsud’s main adversary, Mullah Nazir in Wana.  Nazir was the head of the Pak Army supported tribal lashkars who had run the Uzbeks of Mehsud out of Wana.

In 2008 Bush signed a secret order authorizing operations inside Pakistan and the Pakistani Army secretly acquiesced to American Predator show attacks upon former Guantanamo alumni.  This provided a means to keep up the show for the American audience.  It also opened the door to covert commando strikes in conjunction with action by the Pakistani Taliban.

The rest is history.  On August 6, 2009, Baitullah Mehsud was mistakenly killed by an American guided missile, tracking a Pakistani-planted transmitter.  It is likely that the CIA was tricked into killing Pakistan’s primary enemy.  Ten days later, the tribal rival of Mehsud, Maulvi Nazir, who very likely had planted the tracking device,  is killed by black-clad Special Forces type commandoes near Wana; probably payback from the United States.

The "AfPak" zone of conflict is a land of smoke and mirrors intended to put-on a show and simultaneously obscure the action on the ground.  Beginning in 2007, the action obscured was a covert Indian/American war upon the people of Pakistan.

All the usual voices will chime in here, saying—"We didn’t create al Qaida; we didn’t sponsor Abdullah Mehsud, or Baitullah; we don’t create terrorists"!  No matter how much they yell, the truth remains to be seen in these militants and their actions.  After his release from Guantanamo, Abdullah Mehsud did not kidnap or kill Americans; he went straight after America’s greatest competitor, the Chinese.  Likewise, in the case of Abu Musad al-Zarqawi, the leader of "al Qaida in Iraq," after his release from Jordanian prison, his victims were usually Iraqi Shiites, not Americans.  After being captured, abused and then released, both of these guys went after our enemies, no matter what the press has reported otherwise.  Were they brainwashed, "Manchurian candidates," or were they merely paid-off?   US Rep. Mark Kirk has raised the issue that most of the militant leaders in southern Afghanistan were formerly held at Guantanamo and Bagram.  Is that also a coincidence, or by design?  "Islamists" are primarily a product of the intelligence agencies.

American/Israeli/Indian/Iranian/British hands are all extremely dirty after taking a walk on Dick Cheney’s "dark side" in Pakistan and they owe a heavy penalty to both Pakistan and Afghanistan for what they have done there.  It is high time to drag all the spooks out of their closets and air their dirty linen to the world.  Only such a complete CIA housecleaning as this will redeem the United States of America in the eyes of the world.  Anything less would do no good at all, and would also be a grave insult to those who have fallen in our poisonous shadow.

peter.chamberlin@hotmail.com

VISIT PAGE FOR MANY IMPORTANT LINKS

 

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Weekend Edition
January 8 - 10, 2010
http://www.counterpunch.org/downing01082010.html

A Long and Porous Frontier

Pakistan and the Afghan Insurgency


By BRIAN M. DOWNING

In recent weeks the US has begun to pressure Pakistan into doing more to counter the insurgency in Afghanistan, by interdicting supplies going to insurgents and by helping to target Taliban leaders operating near Quetta, in western Pakistan. Joint chiefs head Admiral Mullen has strongly urged Pakistan to do more against the Taliban insurgency, and blunter statements have almost certainly been given in private.

Restricting supplies from Pakistani intelligence and the demise of key Taliban leaders in their Pakistani havens would be important developments in the war. They would not turn the tide but they would damage the Taliban’s unity of command, increase the possibility of dissension between regional commanders, and perhaps even lead to a few important defections.

But Pakistan is rejecting these requests, whether expressed diplomatically or forcefully. Though possibly for domestic consumption, the most recent rejection appears firm, leaving Washington in a quandary regarding its putative ally in the war on terror, and regarding how best to defeat the insurgency in Afghanistan.

Ties with Terrorist Groups

It is puzzling why the previous administration refrained from greater pressure on Pakistan, though it is not puzzling as to why Pakistan chooses to protect the Taliban and other insurgent and terrorist groups such as Hizb-i Islami and the Haqqani network. Americans see Afghanistan as part of the war on terror. Pakistan sees it quite differently. While paying lip service to American concerns in the region, Pakistan considers Afghanistan as part of the war on India. And various groups such as the Taliban and Lashkar-i Taiba enjoy government patronage. Even al Qaeda has ably served Pakistan by training volunteers to wage guerrilla war in parts of Kashmir under Indian rule. Indeed, al Qaeda’s base in Eastern Afghanistan, where the 2001 attacks on the US were planned, was built with the assistance of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

Pakistan has turned against the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) but only because its leader, Baitullah Mehsud, was so unwise as to launch an attack toward Islamabad, instead of fighting against westerners in Afghanistan, which was the modus vivendi Pakistan and the TTP reached in early 2009. The army launched a counterattack in the Swat Valley, one is unfolding in the TTP’s homeland of S. Waziristan, and ISI likely helped the US find and kill Mehsud with a Predator strike. Support for like groups remains, and one suspects that the military seeks only to disabuse the TTP of further adventures to its south. Better to focus on Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s support for Islamist terrorism and the Taliban insurgency has been sometimes considered the unofficial acts of rogue elements in ISI, but the recent rejection of targeting Taliban leaders near Quetta suggests broad support, in and out of the military. The Pakistani public sees the Kashmir issue as central to their aspirations and identity, and are not discriminating in whom they ally with to fight India.

Public hostility to the US is widespread and fierce. Pakistanis agree on very little, have little regard for their politicians and generals, but they share a hatred of the United States – a passion that politicians and generals encourage and capitalize on it, as they are now by standing up to the US, harassing its embassy personnel, and protecting the Taliban and their like.

Problems from Greater US Pressure

Pakistan’s duplicity is no recent revelation. US policy makers have known, though perhaps not as fully as they should, that Pakistan and ISI have supported the Taliban and other militant groups as part of its India strategy. Following the 9/11 attacks, it was hoped that more generous trade policies and foreign aid would induce Pakistan to break with the network of Islamist militant groups and become a reliable ally in the war on terror. That has failed.

The US is presently weighing reductions in the inducements of eight years ago. The Pakistani military relies greatly on American support, but decades of military defeats and political failures have not led to professionalization and depoliticization, only to overweening senses of honor and messianic mission to guide the nation. The military will give disingenuous assurances but continue support for its allies. Civilian leaders are wary of those allies but even warier of bowing to Washington and giving the generals reason to ponder more intervention in politics.

The US could move closer to India, or at least pretend to. The US commitment to Pakistan was a product of the Cold War, when Indian neutrality was seen as sympathy for the Soviet Union and Pakistan was deemed a reliable ally against communism. Unfortunately, Pakistan’s concerns and misapprehensions are such that many generals in Rawalpindi already believe a realignment is underway and that India and the US are conspiring to break up Pakistan by supporting an insurgency in the western province of Baluchistan – reinforcing the belief in Rawalpindi that Pashtun militants are the country’s most reliable allies.

Pakistan is perilously close to political chaos and faces an insurgency in the Tribal Agencies, an emerging one in the Punjab, and growing urban populations that are sympathetic to Islamist militancy. Any US pressure to break with the Taliban et al must be exerted cautiously lest it bring about a political implosion in a country with scores of nuclear weapons and a hub of terrorist networks. Perversely, Pakistan might exploit its own frailty and point to it as a reason not to cooperate more with the US.

Unilateral Action in Pakistani Territory

The US has warned of unilateral action inside Pakistan. This could take the form of commando raids on Taliban headquarters near Quetta. A few such raids have already been conducted on al Qaeda targets in the tribal agencies, so more raids would not be a departure from past practice. However, Pakistan’s refusal to help against the Taliban might signal that raids against them will not be tolerated.

Unilateral action could also take the form of drone strikes around Quetta. Such strikes in the northwest have been highly successful in killing al Qaeda and TTP leaders and in sowing fear and mistrust in surviving figures. The demise of Mullah Omar would deprive the Taliban of its charismatic leader and cause a power struggle at the top and maneuverings by regional commanders in Afghanistan.

But the success against al Qaeda and TTP leaders was based in large part on the cooperation of Pakistani intelligence, which is willing to get rid of Arab zealots who dream of a caliphate and also contumacious vassals who dare to strike at the king, but not willing to dispense with a key strategic partner against India. In the absence of ISI help, the US will have to rely on special forces personnel on the ground or on fragmentary images from drones several thousand feet up. Neither is likely to be as useful in identifying targets as ISI agents have been; both will likely lead to misdirected strikes and more non-combatant deaths.

* * *

Pakistan’s rebuff of the request for help against the Taliban may well be for domestic consumption. But the absence of substantive aid south of the frontier leaves the US and NATO with the difficult task of countering an insurgency that has become deeply embedded in Pashtun regions over the last few years – and enjoys support from across a lengthy and porous frontier. For their part, Pakistan and its generals must assess what it provides the US to merit so much economic and military aid.

Brian M. Downing is the author of several works of political and military history, including The Military Revolution and Political Change and The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in America from the Great War to Vietnam. He can be reached at: brianmdowning@gmail.com

[JSG]

i feel soo bad for the people living over there, its terrible   

[bigron]

Pakistan says US drone attacks must end

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 15:04:01 GMT
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=115722&sectionid=351020401

                         
   
 
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Friday reiterated his country's concerns over the US drone strikes in talks with a delegation of visiting US senators.

The US delegation is led by Senator John McCain, the former presidential candidate.

Gilani said his government was "disappointment over the continuing drone attacks" and criticized Washington for not sharing pilotless drone technology with Islamabad, Pakistan's official APP news agency reported Saturday.

Pakistan says it can fight militants operating in its border areas better if it has the know-how.

Senator McCain, who led the US delegation, defended the drone strikes, saying they are "one of many tools that we must use to try to defeat a very determined and terrible enemy."

US officials say the drone strikes are carried out under an agreement with Islamabad. Pakistan denies any such agreement.

Washington has stepped up its drone strikes in Pakistan since seven CIA agents were killed in neighboring Afghanistan almost ten days ago. At least four people died in the latest missile attack.

Pakistan's opposition parties, meanwhile, have expressed regret over the attacks, asking the government to shoot them down.

In 2009, the attacks, launched by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in cooperation with the Pentagon, reportedly killed more than 700 civilians in the country.

They have also fueled anti-American sentiments in the Muslim Pakistan.

MVZ/JR/MTM/MD

[bigron]

Pakistan: unlawful US drone war kills 140 innocent civilians for 1 CIA-alleged terrorist

by Carl Herman

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m62014&hd=&size=1&l=e


                               

January 9, 2010

Pakistan’s government reported US drones killed only civilians in 39 of 44 attacks on their country in 2009; with over 700 innocent civilians killed, according to Pakistan's most widely-read English newspaper. Pakistan has repeatedly publicly denounced the US attacks, making the US guilty of War Crimes as they do not have explicit permission from Pakistan’s government.

Senator and 2008 Republican Presidential choice John McCain called the unlawful program effective and that it should continue. In Orwellian conclusion, Mr. McCain said, "We are always with Pakistan and the people of Pakistan, and our relationship does not have time limitation." Mr. Obama must be in agreement for this prima facie unlawful program, as more drone attacks have occurred in the first year of his presidency than all years of his predecessor.    


The US refuses to discuss the program, calling its CIA-managed program "covert."  New York University law professor Philip Alston, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions since 2004, reports his requests for US legal justification for apparent extrajudicial executions are always denied. The US claims its secret program is legal, despite the obvious violation from Pakistan’s public refusal of permission.
 
The last report on civilian deaths from the US was in July 2009 from the Brookings Institute concluding at least ten civilian deaths for every alleged terrorist killed, and a total consistent with the anonymous Pakistan government report of total 2009 drone deaths. The number of US-caused drone executions is corroborated by leading Pakistani journalist Amir Mir and in the NY Times by counterinsurgency experts David Kilcullen and Andrew Exum.  
 
Some analysis of Pakistan’s refusal of US armed attacks on their soil: if Pakistan is covertly in agreement with the US, they must publicly disagree or else be in likely admission of murder under Pakistan law. If so, the US would also be guilty of mass murders under Pakistan law. With Pakistan’s public refusal, the US is guilty of War Crimes.
 
Analysis: The drone war is:
-unlawful on its face,

-covert and from the same secretive people who torture and lied to initiate illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,

-kills targets who are lawfully engaging US troops in self-defense from an unauthorized and unlawful armed attack and invasion from the US on Afghanistan,

-kills civilians at an evil ratio even if the CIA secret evidence against alleged "terrorists" is justified,
probably greatly increases the number of people who will commit acts of terror against US targets.
 
Also, this unlawful program fits with academic definition of "terrorism." Terrorist attacks are unlawful, indiscriminately kill civilians, create fear and are ideologically driven for a political goal.
 
The US ideological goal is hegemonic control of the Middle East, demonstrated by
 
·        US unlawful rejection of UN Security Council Resolutions for international cooperation in Afghanistan, and instead choosing unauthorized armed attack and invasion,
·        US lies of evidence (known as they were told) for unauthorized and unlawful armed attack and invasion of Iraq,
·        US lies of omission and commission to threaten war with Iran, including official policy of first-strike use of nuclear weapons for contrived possible future threats from Iran
·        US unlawful attacks in Pakistan as perhaps an entry-point for further destabilization.
 
Policy response: Gandhi and Martin Luther King advocated public understanding of the facts and non-cooperation with evil. I’m among hundreds who advocate:

1.Understand the laws of war. These were legislated after WW2 and are crystal-clear that only self-defense, in a narrow legal meaning, can justify war. This investment of your time takes less than an hour and empowers you to legally stand for ending these Wars of Aggression.

2.Communicate. Trust your unique, beautiful, and powerful self-expression to share powerful information as you feel appropriate. Understand that while many people are ready to embrace difficult facts, many are not. Anticipate your virtuous response to being attacked and give it in the spirit of competition, just as you do in other fields.

3.Refuse and end all orders and acts associated with these unlawful wars and constant violation of treaties. Those involved with US military, government, and law enforcement have an oath to protect and defend the US Constitution. Unlawful acts only move forward with sufficient cooperation and public tolerance. Stop cooperating with the most vicious crime a nation can commit: war.

4.Support global security through cooperation, dignity, justice, and freedom. End poverty through global cooperation to achieve the UN Millennium Goals by developed countries investing 0.7% of their income. End extremism by providing all humanity with an opportunity to live a life of peaceful creativity. Create a US Department of Peace to help.

5.Prosecute the war leaders for obvious violation of the letter and spirit of US war laws. You can only understand how these wars are specifically unlawful by investing the time to do so. Because the crimes are so broad and deep, I recommend Truth and Reconciliation (T&R) to exchange full truth and return of stolen US assets for non-prosecution. This is the most expeditious way to understand and end all unlawful and harmful acts. Those who reject T&R either by volunteering their name and/or responding when named are subject to prosecution after the window of T&R closes.
 
Please share this article with all who can benefit. If you appreciate my work, please subscribe by clicking under the article title (it’s free). Please use my archive of work to help build a brighter future.
 
I include the PuppetGov 6-minute video, "We are the ones we've been waiting for."
 
Comments policy: I welcome questions and comments that are civil and pertain to the article topic. Impolite and impertinent comments will be deleted.
 
Please also consider that I’m among hundreds of writers who have documented our own government’s disclosure of propaganda programs to support their wars. I suspect my articles are under such propagandistic attack from comments that use typical rhetorical fallacies to distract readers from the facts. I invite readers to sharpen their ability to discern such propaganda. They are characterized by a combination of: never addressing the facts, diverting attention through unsubstantiated belief in an alleged expert, irrelevant data, straw-man attack that distorts the facts, ad hominem attack of insults to the messenger, and lies of omission and commission.
 
I will use such comments to point-out the propaganda or delete them at my discretion. Again, all relevant and polite questions and factually accurate comments are welcome. As a professional educator I’m in agreement with my experience and research: we learn best from multiple perspectives in mutual commitment to understand the facts, see those facts from diverse points-of-view, and consider various policy proposals of what we should do.
 
puppetgov Video
 
http://www.puppetgov.com/category/puppetgov-videos/


We Are The Ones We Have Been Waiting For from PuppetGov on Vimeo.



 

[bigron]

US-Pakistan bickering gets ugly as ISI fingers American diplomats


by Chidanand Rajghatta, TNN, 9 January 2010, 01:14am IST
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/US-Pakistan-bickering-get-ugly-as-ISI-fingers-American-diplomats/articleshow/5425688.cms

 
WASHINGTON: The wheels seem to be coming off US-Pakistan relations with the once close allies squabbling publicly even as Islamabad is whipping up hysteria over the so-called Indian threats and American machinations to weasel out of its obligation to combat home-grown terrorism.

The simmering discord between Washington and Islamabad came to a boil this week when the US ambassador to Pakistan publicly complained about harassment of American diplomatic personnel by Pakistani authorities and obliquely hinted that Islamabad risked losing US aid and projects if they continued to deny visas to US officials and space for the US mission to fulfill its multi-billion assistance program.

Ambassador Anne Patterson’s warning at a business meeting in Karachi was followed up by a rare public admonition of Pakistan from the US mission in Islamabad in which it expressed concern about the ''continued provocative actions and false allegations against US personnel working to implement the new partnership between the leaders of Pakistan and the United States.''

The wording of the statement suggested that the US believes there is a growing militaristic constituency in Pakistan that is now operating independently of the civilian government. The blog Politico put it rather more
bluntly under the headline, "Pakistan’s ISI steps up harassment of US Embassy," reporting that the ISI had even been putting pictures (with addresses) of US diplomatic personnel in Urdu newspapers" putting their lives in danger.

"Several times recently the RSO (Regional Security officer) at the Embassy has had to contact folks in their offices during the day, and tell them that they can’t go home to their house tonight because of the unwanted attention caused by the ISI/Journalist provocations. Station and Embassy have complained to ISI - but no acknowlegement (not surprising) and no abatement of the activity (worrisome)," it quoted an Af-Pak hand as saying.

Egged on by a hysterical section of the media promoting wild conspiracy theories, hard-line elements in the police and military have been detaining US vehicles and personnel, often accusing them of not carry proper
diplomatic papers and registration and carrying weapons. US vehicles and personnel typically do not display diplomatic registration or identity so they cannot be identified by terrorist hit squads. One Pakistani newspaper called "Nation," which specializes in rabid conspiracy theories, ran a Wall Street Journal
correspondent out of the country recently by alleging he was a CIA agent, recalling the horrible tragedy which befell his predecessor Daniel Pearl. The same paper has carried many stories about the alleged suspicious activity of US diplomats.

In a stern warning to Pakistan, the US Embassy called for ''immediate action'' by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which it said ''has responsibility to facilitate proper arrangements under which a foreign mission
may operate with full security.'' The mission also asked Pakistani officials ''to implement immediately the mutually agreed upon procedures for the issuance of license plates to US. Mission vehicles and to cease these contrived incidents involving US Mission vehicles and personnel.''

In the same toxic spirit, hard-line sections in Pakistan have also willfully contrived to distort remarks by the Indian Army chief Deepak Kapoor to drum up hysteria over the alleged Indian threat. Familiar policy formulations by the Indian general that New Delhi has to prepare for a war under a nuclear overhang because of Pakistani provocation under nuclear cover, has been conflated to ''Indian General threatens Pakistan with nuclear war'' (despite India’s professed policy no-first-use of nuclear weapons).

In the most recent instance, Kapoor’s remarks about the need for India developing capability to fight a two-front war has been translated to ''Indian General threatens Pakistan and China with war.'' While a few Pakistani analysts have responded soberly to the new doctrines being discussed in New Delhi, most commentators, including current and former generals, diplomats, and military frontmen, have reacted hysterically to what would be considered doctrinal deliberations in any mature society.

The idea behind the whipping up of mass hysteria against US and India in what is now being dubbed ''Paranoidistan'' appears to be a ploy by hard-line elements in Islamabad to disengage from fulfilling its bilateral and international obligations to tackle terrorist elements. With each terrorist incident, Pakistan is coming under increasing pressure from US to give up its obsession with the non-existent threat from India and focus on confronting its home-grown threats eating away at the country.

The Pakistani military has signaled clearly that it does not subscribe to the US prescription, and General Kapoor’s outline of new Indian doctrines has come in handy for this escape act. After distorting Gen Kapoor’s remarks and generating a sulfurous discourse in the media, the Pakistani military high command and the civilian cabinet defense committee both met last week to assert that ''Pakistan would never allow its security to be jeopardized.'' Pakistan’s beleaguered president Asif Ali Zardari, under pressure from the army, also joined this military-ISI generated hysteria by promising a 1000-year confrontation with India over Kashmir.

None of this has escaped the attention of Washington, which this week dispatched yet another high-powered Congressional delegation led by former presidential candidate John McCain to talk sense to Pakistan. McCain was unrelenting in response to the familiar Pakistani protests against drone attacks, bluntly insisting that the ''(drone) attacks are imperative to defeat the enemy,'' and ''with an improved decision making process the civilian causalities are totally minimized.''

The US delegation also heard protests from the Pakistani leadership about security measures introduced by Washington for screening Pakistani nationals among citizens of 13 other state sponsors of terrorism and
''countries of interest.'' But with new arrests in the Najibullah Zazi case and developments in the CIA forward base bombing case both revealing links to Pakistan, US threshold for Islamabad’s antics is diminishing all the time even as Pakistan is seen as a state sponsor of terrorism in all but formal designation.

In fact, Pakistan – or Paranoidistan, as some officials refer to it in private – becomes the immediate focus of attention after any terrorist attack, including ones like the Christmas Day bombing attempt of an airplane in Detroit, where there was no immediate Pakistani link. ''The fact that this particular person was not trained in Pakistan does not change the fact that the inspiration for all of this comes from al-Qaida, and al-Qaida's
leadership is based in the remotest areas on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border,'' US special representative to Af-Pak Richard Holbrooke, who will head to Islamabad next week, said at a meeting on Thursday.

Separately, John Brennan, President Obama’s assistant for counterterrorism, said al-Qaida in Yemen, which trained the Christmas Day Nigerian bomber, ''is an extension of the terror outfit's core coming out of Pakistan.''

[bigron]

US airstrike kills five in Pakistan

IANS, 10 January 2010, 12:43pm IST
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/pakistan/US-airstrike-kills-five-in-Pakistan/articleshow/5430141.cms
 
ISLAMABAD: At least five suspected militants were killed in a US drone attack on a Taliban hideout in Pakistan's restive North Waziristan tribal district, media reports said on Sunday.

Six other insurgents were wounded when two missiles fired from a pilotless aircraft struck a compound in Ismailkhel village on Saturday night, English-language The News daily reported.

The newspaper cited unnamed sources as saying that the men killed and wounded in the raid were thought to be affiliated with local tribal leader, Hafiz Gul Bahadur.

The airstrike was the second in two days. At least five Taliban militants were killed on Friday when two missiles struck their vehicle near Miranshah, main town of North Waziristan district.

The US has stepped up airstrikes inside Pakistan's tribal belt, which it says is used by the Taliban and al-Qaida members to plan and launch deadly assaults on Western forces fighting the insurgency in Afghanistan.

Islamabad publicly opposes the drone attacks, but analysts believe the government has an undisclosed agreement with Washington over the issue.

The strikes, which have killed several insurgents including some leaders, stoke up anti-American sentiment among many Pakistanis, who describe the raids as violation of national sovereignty.

However, US officials say the attacks are vital to dismantling the insurgent network.

"We believe that, as I have stated and as our government has stated, that it is one of many tools that we must use to try to defeat a very determined and terrible enemy," US Senator John McCain said in Islamabad.

[bigron]

Pakistan seen becoming more Islamist, anti-U.S


Reuters - Tuesday, January 12
By Myra MacDonald

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20100112/tap-oukwd-uk-pakistan-islam-428a471.html

LONDON - Pakistan is likely to become a more Islamist state and increasingly anti-American in the coming years, complicating U.S. efforts to win its support against Islamist militants, a report released on Tuesday said.

The report, which looks at Pakistan over a one-to-three year time horizon, rules out the possibility of a Taliban takeover or of it becoming the world's first nuclear-armed failed state.

"Rather than an Islamist takeover, you should look at a subtle power shift from a secular pro-Western society to an Islamist anti-American one," said Jonathan Paris, who produced the report for the Legatum Institute, a London-based think tank.

Paris forecasts that Pakistan is most likely to "muddle through", with its army continuing to play a powerful role behind the scenes in setting foreign and security policy.

"Speculation of a Taliban takeover dramatically overestimates the willingness of the political and military elites to surrender power to the Taliban," says the report, the result of months of research on the outlook for Pakistan.

Paris, who also works for the Atlantic Council of the United States, nonetheless sees Pakistan slipping away from the west at a time when Washington needs its support in Afghanistan.

"U.S. and UK leverage over Pakistan is not growing. It is decreasing. Pakistani society is moving towards anti-Americanism and towards more sharia law," he says.

The rising influence of Islamist political parties and of militant groups in its Punjab province will slowly transform Pakistan by exploiting local grievances, including over the economy and the slow and often corrupt legal system.

"The danger for the army, and for Pakistan generally, is not Talibanisation but Islamisation from Punjab-based militants and their allies," the report says.

FRAGMENTATION OF MILITANT GROUPS

Islamist political parties -- which thrive on anti-American rhetoric -- would not become dominant, but would raise pressure on the government to reject public cooperation with Washington and make it harder to crack down on Islamist militant groups.

"The religious parties have generally been opposed to any police or military action taken against any group which is nominally religious..." the report says.

Such a shift would have implications for relations with India, which wants Pakistan to dismantle militant groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba, blamed for the attack on Mumbai in 2008.

Paris, whose research background was originally in the Middle East, also said he saw a risk of militant organisations fragmenting into smaller and sometimes more extreme splinter groups -- a pattern already seen among Palestinian groups.

This would make them harder to control and raise the risk of militants launching attacks not ordered by their leaders.

At the same time, Islamist organisations were expanding operations in welfare and education, making it politically difficult for the state to close them down.

But the report dismisses fears any Afghan Taliban success would encourage the Pakistani Taliban to "march on Islamabad".

It says the Afghan Taliban may be neither defeated nor victorious, "and that what may emerge is a de facto partition of Afghanistan with a nominal central government in Kabul."

The Afghan Taliban would then be tied up fighting non-Pashtun rivals in a revived Northern Alliance, leaving Pakistan alone. "Falling South Asian dominoes may be a chimera."

In this scenario, Pakistan would probably try to return to its earlier strategy of containing and even accepting the presence of the Pakistani Taliban in its tribal areas, resorting to force only if suicide bombings in its major cities continued.

[bigron]

Wednesday, January 13, 2010
12:03 Mecca time, 09:03 GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/01/20101121628467628.html
   
Focus 
 
Pakistan, another bloody year? 
 
 By Alan Fisher in Islamabad


Dozens have died in a growing wave of violence in Pakistan's port city of Karachi [AFP]


In a country which is no stranger to death and destruction, for Pakistan 2009 was the bloodiest year on record.

According to figures compiled by the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies (Pips) there were 3,021 deaths in what it calls terrorist attacks last year, a leap of 48 per cent on the year before.

The bombing of the Ashura procession in Karachi on December 28 which killed more than 30, was the last of 87 suicide attacks in 2009.

These figures just reaffirm what most people thought they knew, Pakistan is one of the most dangerous places on earth.

Just across the border in Afghanistan, slightly more than 2,000 civilians were killed during the first ten months of the year according to the United Nations, while in Iraq, one leading advocacy group put the death toll at 4,500.

The Pips research is collated from observers on the ground, official sources and newspaper, magazine and television reports.

It reveals that there were 12,600 violent deaths across the country last year, with at least half of those being fighters caught up in the army offensives in South Waziristan and the Swat Valley or targeted by US drone strikes. 

Civilian casualties


IN DEPTH :

-  Focus: Pakistan, another bloody year?
-  Focus: Pakistan's drug problem
-  Riz Khan: Is Pakistan heading toward civil war?
-  Riz Khan: Madrassa reform in Pakistan
-  Frost over the World: Yousuf Raza Gilani
-  Blog: Does fact-finding help?
-  Blog: Return to the Swat valley
-  Your views: Is Islamabad fighting a civil war?
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/01/20101121628467628.html
 

Many civilians were also caught up in these attacks. 

Muhammed Amir Rana, the report's author, is softly spoken and genial, but he has a hard hitting message for the government.

"It does not have a comprehensive long–term strategy to address the problem, and is relying mainly on a firefighting approach," he says.

"Though the police were able to thwart many terrorist attacks in the country, scores of ferocious attacks targeting civilians and the security forces served as a reminder of the threat that the country faces."

And he warned that without a comprehensive, multi-layered short- and long-term strategy, the potential is that 2010 "may be as bad or even worse".

The Pakistan army's drive into South Waziristan was its second major offensive in 2009, which followed the operation in Swat and across Malakand.

It is always difficult to confirm battlefield casualties, but the army hailed both operations as a success, claiming they had killed many fighters in their battle against the Pakistani Taliban.   

Human first

Tahira Abdullah is a veteran human rights campaigner.

She was arrested by the Pakistan government back in March and released after a few hours.

Addullah was also branded a CIA agent by the Taliban and attacked in her Islamabad home for her views and opinions. 

Short, with her grey haired pulled back, she looks like a friendly school teacher. She has a readily laugh, but when she talks about the number of deaths outlined in the report, she gets angry.

"I am a Pakistani, but I was a human being before I was a Pakistani and these deaths are unacceptable," she says.

"It is wrong people are being killed by the Taliban, it is wrong that they are being killed in army offensives, and it is wrong that they are being killed by drone attacks.

"It's as if Pakistanis are expendable in the so-called 'War on Terror'. We are being used to fight someone else's proxy war."

2010 has already started badly, with more than 90 people killed in a Taliban suicide attack in Laki Marwat, a district next to South Waziristan on the first day of the New Year.

And with reports that the army is preparing a new offensive, this time in North Waziristan, this could be another bloody year.
 
 
 Source: Al Jazeera 
 
   
 
 
 
 

[bigron]

In Karachi, politics means urban warfare, literally

In the busy Pakistani city, groups battle in the streets,
gunning down rivals and usurping lucrative real estate.

A cease-fire brings a respite after more than 40 people are slain in five days.


By Mark Magnier

January 12, 2010
http://freedomsyndicate.com/fair0000/latimes00096.html

Reporting from Karachi, Pakistan

In most places, newspaper headlines about a cease-fire between rival political parties tend to be about policy squabbles. In Karachi, such references are more often literal.

More than 40 people have died here in the last five days in so-called targeted killings, most of the victims slain because of their political affiliations. Some were executed with shocking brutality -- three of the bodies found Sunday had been decapitated.

"Think of Chicago or New York a century ago," said Ikram Sehgal, a political analyst and longtime Karachi resident.

The violence has gotten so bad in this seething metropolis already known for gang warfare and rough ways that the government has called in paramilitary forces to restore order. This appeared to work, at least temporarily, as Monday passed with no additional casualties.

Many welcomed the calm but said they didn't expect it to last.

"This is a feudal system with lords and peasants," said Farhan Khan, director of a civic group that helps the disabled. "The lords have private armies, intimidate anyone who speaks out and get away with everything."

Including murder.

"Quite simply, investigations get squashed on political grounds," said Mohammed Hanif, a Karachi-based novelist. "It's a cycle. One gang gets hit, it can't go to the police for help so when it gets the opportunity, it hits back."

Political killings nearly doubled in 2009, to 152 from 86 in 2008, according to the Interior Ministry, although some say the actual toll is higher.

Behind the killings, analysts said, is the rich allure of real estate. Rival gangs aligned with political parties are at war in part because a large number of long-term land leases are about to expire, some dating back nearly a century to the days of British rule, with ownership reverting back to the local government.

"This is all about land. It's incredibly valuable and it's up for grabs," Sehgal said. "Whoever becomes the city boss will control this. Then they can route it to their brother-in-law, uncle, whomever."

Even without sweetheart lease deals, the combination of political power and gun-toting muscle often spells heady profits.

One method reportedly used by well-connected gangs involves having two groups work in cahoots. Wielding forged ownership documents for a piece of property actually owned by a third party, the two fake claimants take their "dispute" to court. This leaves the owner excluded from litigation because by law, the fake case must be resolved first.

Going up against a mob with political clout can also weaken the owner's will to fight. Cases drag on for years, giving the mobsters effective control, until the owner eventually sells out to the gangsters at a deep discount.

Alternately, politically backed gangs seize and sell off public parks or forcibly evict squatters -- killing them if necessary -- from land they've occupied for decades. Another reported method is to install squatters on land owned by someone else, making it extremely difficult to evict them or use the property. Eventually, the owners are persuaded to sell it for a relative song, at which point the squatters leave, or are forced out at the barrel of a gun, and the criminals collect their windfall profits.

"The political parties use the gangs for all sorts of purposes," said Murtaza Razvi, editor of Dawn magazine. "It's all about money, and right now they're fighting over the spoils."

With 18 million people, Karachi is not only Pakistan's financial center but the world's largest Muslim-majority city. There are hundreds of rival gangs and factions, analysts said, but the two main parties are the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, or MQM, which controls Karachi, and the Pakistan People's Party, or PPP, which controls the provincial government of Sindh, of which Karachi is the capital.

To further complicate the picture, the two parties are members of the fragile national coalition government, despite their extended history of violence and mistrust. When India was split in 1947, large numbers of relatively well-educated Muslims migrated to the newly formed Pakistan.

Generally better educated, many immigrants prospered in government and private positions, but over the years they faced a backlash from local Sindhis that the PPP tapped into. As a reaction, the Muhajir Qaumi Movement was formed in 1984 to press "muhajir," or immigrant concerns. It later changed its name to Muttahida, meaning united.

In addition to real estate, the gangs and their affiliated political parties also reportedly deal in illicit drugs and the lucrative business of supplying truckloads of water to residents at inflated prices, analysts said, capitalizing on the government's inability to provide basic services.

"People basically lose trust in the administration and law enforcement," Hanif said. "Karachi's going through a convulsion period -- it's not the first and it won't be the last."

[bigron]

Drone fury

Posted by Sana Saleem in Pakistan, Politics on 01 13th, 2010
http://blog.dawn.com/2010/01/13/drone-fury/




In the first-ever, one-on-one interview by any US president to the Pakistani media, President Barack Obama assured Pakistan that the US had no desire to seize Pakistan’s nuclear weapons or to send US troops inside the country. However, in the same interview he avoided commenting on drone attacks. While answering questions on the South Waziristan offensive, he candidly suggested that there are decisions that ultimately need to be made by the Pakistani government and the Pakistani people.

The position of the US is that they are partners in the process of seeking to root out extremism and increase development in Pakistan. Yet, the US government and intelligence agencies also believe that the use of drones is “their most effective weapon against Al Qaeda.”

Over the years there has been a significant increase in the number of drone attacks. According to statistics compiled by Pakistani authorities, the Afghanistan-based US drones have killed 708 people in 44 Predator attacks which targeted tribal areas between January 1 and December 31 in 2009.

For each Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorist killed by US drones, 140 innocent civilians have also died. Over 90 per cent of those killed in the deadly missile strikes were civilians, according to authorities. The success percentage for the drone hits during 2009 was hardly 11 per cent. On average, 58 civilians were killed in these attacks every month, 12 persons every week and almost two people every day. The drone attacks have continued despite a low success rate and meek condemnations from Pakistani authorities.

This brings us to ponder the role of our government and intelligence agencies, who are working in alliance with the US. The most absurd stance comes from the government, which continues to decline their endorsement of the attacks. Even after several reports have clearly documented US drones being parked on Pakistani territory, the government has denied such reports.

The ritual outcries by the authorities focus on how drone strikes are provoking anger among the people, and some have termed it as an incentive that will allow extremists to recruit more veterans into their army. Most drone attacks are carried out on the basis of human intelligence, reportedly provided by Pakistani and Afghan tribesmen who are spying for US-led allied forces in Afghanistan. But in tribal areas, where warlord culture is rampant the motives behind false reporting could easily be to seek revenge, this source of intelligence could be ill-chosen.

As if oblivious to the public’s sentiments, President Asif Ali Zardari recently demanded the transfer of drone technology to Pakistan in his attempt to sabotage questions raised about the country’s sovereignty. Somehow, I fail to understand how a change of authority would prevent civilian causalities resulting from drone attacks.

The secrecy surrounding drone attacks raises more questions about the accuracy of reported civilian causalities. It is the lack of substantial reporting that has led to varying opinions on the attacks from severe condemnations to ringing appreciation. Yet there have been a number of revelations putting the drone attacks in a new light. In the first half of 2009, a report in The New York Times suggested that:

More than 70 United States military advisers and technical specialists are secretly working in Pakistan to help its armed forces battle Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the country’s lawless tribal areas, American military officials said. They make up a secret task force, overseen by the United States Central Command and Special Operations Command. It started last summer, with the support of Pakistan’s government and military, in an effort to root out Al-Qaeda and Taliban operations that threaten American troops in Afghanistan and are increasingly destabilizing Pakistan. It is a much larger and more ambitious effort than either country has acknowledged.
However, the Pakistani authorities have vigorously denied any such involvement. The fact that the tribal areas are remote, and little or no information can be authenticated, makes statements that deny involvement sound like mere assumptions.

But for the majority of the Pakistani population, this is the truth they have feared for years. The belief that “foreign hands” are involved in conspiring to destabilise the country refuses to grow old (especially when its echoed back by the Interior Minister himself).The drone fury is not limited to religious groups, it is also a matter of concern for many others who fear heavy civilian casualties. While the debate on the tactfulness of drone attacks continues, the least the authorities can do is to come clean.

It is our right to be aware of the extent of our cooperation with our allies. The only way to make people come out of denial is for the authorities to enumerate the facts. Until then, most of us can not be blamed for falling prey to conspiracy theories and believing in the involvement of ‘foreign’ hands to destabilise the country. In the end, it will be the people who will bear the brunt of the struggle and they have to make sense of the prevailing crisis. As such, our main threat remains from within the country and not outside.

 Sana Saleem is a Features Editor at BEE magazine and blogs at Global Voices, Pro-Pakistan her personal blog Mystified Justice. She tweets at twitter.com/sanasaleem

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Thursday, January 14, 2010
13:39 Mecca time, 10:39 GMT 
  http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/01/201011453930817749.html

News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
 
Pakistan drone attack 'kills many'  
 

Pakistani officials say Hakimullah Mehsud, Pakistan's Taliban chief, was targeted in the attack [AFP]

 
A suspected US drone attack has killed at least 18 people and injured 14 others in Pakistan's northwest tribal belt, near the Afghan border, security officials say.

The attack took place in Pasalkot village in North Waziristan, a stronghold of Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked fighters.

Two missiles were fired at a compound on Thursday, where Hakimullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban chief, was believed to have been.

"We had information that he was around there. We're checking on whether he was killed," a Pakistani security official, who declined to be identified, told Reuters news agency.

However, a Taliban spokesman told Pakistan's Dawn TV that Mehsud was safe and had left minutes before the assault.

Increased attacks

Mehsud took over as leader of the Pakistani Taliban five months ago, after Baitullah Mehsud, his predecessor, was killed in a similar US drone attack.

The US has increased drone attacks in Waziristan since a suicide bomber crossed
over Pakistan's border and killed seven CIA employees in an attack in eastern Afghanistan on December 30.

A video was later released showing Hakimullah Mehsud sitting beside the CIA bomber, a Jordanian double agent, creating the impression that his group played a major role in the second biggest attack on the CIA in its history.

The attack was the seventh suspected US missile assault in the tribal district this month.

North Waziristan houses Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters as well as members of the Haqqani network, a powerful group known for staging attacks on foreign troops in Afghanistan.

The US government has called on Islamabad to step up its efforts against Taliban- and al-Qaeda-linked fighters who cross over into Afghanistan.

The Pakistani army recently completed an offensive against the Taliban in South Waziristan, which borders North Waziristan.
 
 Source: Agencies 
 
 
 

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South Asia
Jan 15, 2010 
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LA15Df02.html 
 
Pakistan's military makes a stand

By Syed Saleem Shahzad

ISLAMABAD - After several months of backroom wheeling and dealing between the United States and the top brass in the Pakistani garrison city of Rawalpindi, Washington has expressed its full trust in Pakistan's military leadership and its apparatus, including the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which in turn is preparing to fight the next phase in the South Asia war theater.

This will focus on the hunt for high-profile al-Qaeda targets in the Shawal and Datta Khel areas of Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal area, where it is believed Osama bin Laden's deputy, Dr Ayman
Al-Zawahiri, and the shura (council) of al-Qaeda are hiding. Over the past few weeks, the US has stepped up drone attacks in the region.

United States Senator Joe Lieberman, who recently visited Pakistan, confirmed on Sunday that the Pakistani army "is on the move" and that there is the "possibility the US will see activity in that volatile northern region [North Waziristan]". Lieberman met with Pakistan's military chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani.

In the latest drone attack early on Thursday morning, two missile strikes were reported to have killed 10 suspected militants in a compound in the Pasalkot area of North Waziristan. Several days ago, the US said it had killed 12 people at a suspected Taliban training center about 30 kilometers west of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan.

In the latter stages of last year, the Pakistan military waged a months-long offensive in South Waziristan against the Pakistani Taliban, with some success. The operation in North Waziristan, however, will concentrate solely on al-Qaeda and its affiliates.

This understanding was reached after some tricky negotiations. The US initially wanted a broader Pakistani campaign, even suggesting that if Pakistan did not cooperate, it would send in its own special forces for ground assaults and mount daily drone strikes inside North Waziristan.

Pakistan argued that its military was stretched as its forces were already committed in Swat, South Waziristan and the agencies of Mohmand, Bajaur and Khyber.

A senior Pakistani security official told Asia Times Online on the condition of anonymity that Pakistan was also reluctant to undertake a full operation in North Waziristan because that region was not a main sanctuary for the Taliban, as is South Waziristan. The official said that the Americans were therefore told that Pakistan's participation would be limited to the elimination of al-Qaeda and its affiliate groups. At the same time, he hinted at a possible role for Pakistan in facilitating negotiations with the Afghan Taliban.

The recent deadly suicide attack on a US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) base in Khost province in Afghanistan was plotted by al-Qaeda in North Waziristan. (See US spies walked into al-Qaeda's trap Asia Times Online, January 5, 2009.)

The dispute over the level of Pakistan's involvement caused bad blood on both sides. At one point, the Pakistani military establishment clamped down on the many American defense contractors in the country, and even American diplomats were forced to tangle with red tape, so much so that the US ambassador, Anne W Patterson, made a public protest.

Nonetheless, this proved to be just another episode in the love-hate relationship between the two allies who both desperately need one another. As a result, communication began at new levels. Sources privy to the military establishment say that a major turnaround was the visit late last year of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Islamabad.

Washington conceded that the government of President Asif Ali Zardari had a "credibility deficit" and the only option was to rely on the Pakistan army. The visit of Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, in the second week of December was also a milestone. He returned to Washington and lobbied in favor of the US dealing directly with Kiani.

There followed a string of visits by American military officials and senators, including that of Lieberman, who confirmed that the Pakistan army was the only hope in tackling the troubles in South Asia.

One of the consequences of this is that Washington has informed Islamabad that the term of the director general of the ISI, Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, should be extended. He is due to retire in March. A few months later, Kiani is due to step down, and if Pasha is not reappointed, Pasha will be the next chief of army staff by virtue of his seniority.

Understandably, Zardari's government initially reacted badly to being snubbed - and dictated to - by the US. A senior member of the ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP), barrister Kamal Azfar, said in a statement that both the CIA and the Pakistani military headquarters aimed to derail democracy in the country. Then throughout the month of December, Zardari and cabinet members spoke out against the military establishment.

The military hit back, and under its pressure Zardari surprised everybody by giving up the chairmanship of the National Command Authority, which controls the country's nuclear weapons. It is now firmly under the military's wing.

On December 29, on the second anniversary of the assassination of his wife, Benazir Bhutto, Zardari delivered an inflammatory speech against the military, taking aback even members of his PPP.

Frantic meetings followed between Zardari and go-betweens for the military, resulting eventually in an understanding that the president would take briefs from the army chief on all issues and then speak accordingly.

The military has effectively put Zardari in his place, just as it has got its way with the US over North Waziristan: Washington and the Pakistani civilian government have no option but to follow the game accordingly.

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

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Pakistan Warns of 'Massive' Arms Buildup by India

Wednesday, January 13, 2010 
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,582980,00.html

Pakistan expressed concern Wednesday over a "massive" arms buildup by India, warning the buildup could destabilize the regional balance.

Pakistan's National Command Authority, which oversees the country's nuclear assets, took note of developments "detrimental" to the objectives of strategic stability in the region, an official statement said.

"India continues to pursue an ambitious militarization program and offensive military doctrines," the command said, after a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.

"Massive inductions of advanced weapon systems, including installation of ABMs (anti-ballistic missiles), buildup of nuclear arsenal and delivery systems...tend to destabilize the regional balance," it said.

The statement added that Pakistan refused to be "oblivious" to the buildup.

Pakistan conducted nuclear weapons tests in May 1998 in a response to similar detonations by India.

The two countries have fought three wars since their independence in 1947, two of them over Kashmir, which is divided between the South Asian neighbors and claimed by both.

Tension between the two flared in the wake of the Mumbai terror attacks in November 2008, which India blamed on Pakistan-based militants.

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Will the Drone War Sink Pakistani Cooperation?


January 13th, 2010

by Ali Gharib
http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/?p=436
 
Perhaps the most frightening detail of the ever-growing U.S. war in the “Af-Pak” theater — even expanding into the usually quiet off-season of the cold Afghan winter — is that the war could be lost for the U.S. in a country where it can’t acknowledge putting boots on the ground: Pakistan.

Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari has been cooperative with Obama’s designs for the neighborhood — especially in providing a vital lifeline for U.S. supplies — even though the former is under constant assault for not doing more to end the covert drone war on Pakistani soil. But it’s not clear how much longer Zardari’s government or, more generally, Pakistan’s help in the Afghan war will last. But even though the Hellfire missiles fired from U.S. remote aircraft could be the very factor that pushes less compliant Pakistanis into power, Obama seems intent on surging both the C.I.A. and contractors that are carrying out these drone attacks.

In a chilling piece of admittedly speculative thinking about the ramifications of political fighting in Karachi, Juan Cole sketches out a scenario where recent spats may work their way into politics in Islamabad and potentially bring down the government. In the last week, more than 40 people have died in fighting between two political parties in the southern port city and financial hub of around 15 million.

Just as a massive supply-line “surge” is surely being ramped up to outfit and feed the tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers, spooks and mercenaries (to say nothing of other contractors in non-fighting roles) making their way into the theater, one of the paths of these goods — into Karachi and through the Khyber Pass — could be at risk.  Cole writes that

were security in Karachi substantially to worsen, it could form a further impediment to the US and NATO’s use of the port city to transship essential matériel up to the Khyber Pass and into Afghanistan.

Cole acknowledges that such a level of instability is not imminently upon us, but his larger point is that this fighting could affect politics the capital because one of the groups, the Muhajir Qaumi Movement (MQM), is a coalition partner of the other, Zardari’s governing Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). The MQM is threatening to withdraw from the government, alleging that the militants responsible for the attacks on its workers were from a poor district in the city loyal to the PPP.

If the MQM bails, Cole notes, the PPP may not be able to muster enough support in a vote of confidence. If that happens, the main opposition party, The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) will have a chance to form a government. But their ability to form a viable coalition is also in question. If PML-N fails, then there will be elections.

Here’s where the real risk will come in. Many of the religious right parties boycotted the last round of elections because they were held under a military dictatorship. With Musharraf gone, the way is paved for these parties to run and win seats in an open election. They may be able to muster enough support to play kingmakers for one of the larger parties.

The catch is that these potential kingmakers will likely be the most hostile to Obama’s covert war, giving them fodder for the campaign trail as well as a policy goal to pursue should they get a seat at the table.

What’s most troubling is that, as outlined in the must-read post by Nick Turse and Tom Engelhardt at TomDispatch, a part of Obama’s surge that goes largely unmentioned will include beefing up the C.I.A. presence in Afghanistan and Pakistan — and particularly across the largely irrelevant border between the two — to expand a campaign of targeted assassinations there.  Write Turse and Engelhardt:

While you’ve heard about President Obama’s surge in American troops and possibly even State Department personnel in Afghanistan, you’ve undoubtedly heard little or nothing about a CIA surge in the region, and yet the Journal’s reporters tell us that Agency personnel will increase by 20-25% in the surge months.  By the time the CIA is fully bulked up with all its agents, paramilitaries, and private contractors in place, Afghanistan will represent, according to Julian Barnes of the Los Angeles Times, one of the largest “stations” in Agency history.

[...]

Today, in Afghanistan, a militarized mix of CIA operatives and ex-military mercenaries as well as native recruits and robot aircraft is fighting a war “in the shadows” (as they used to say in the Cold War era).  This is no longer “intelligence” as anyone imagines it, nor is it “military” as military was once defined, not when U.S. operations have gone mercenary and native in such a big way.  This is pure “lord of the flies” stuff — beyond oversight, beyond any law, including the laws of war.  And worse yet, from all available evidence, despite claims that the drone war is knocking off mid-level enemies, it seems remarkably ineffective.  All it may be doing is spreading the war farther and digging it in deeper.

Talk about “counterinsurgency” as much as you want, but this is another kind of battlefield, and “protecting the people” plays no part in it.

Digging it in deeper, indeed. Digging in deeper, wider, and bigger. With more C.I.A., more drone strikes, and more subsequent civilian deaths, Obama may be digging himself right out of Pakistan. The problem is that without Pakistani support, digging himself out of the Afghanistan mess will be impossible.

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ACLU Requests Information On Predator Drone Program

January 13, 2010
http://www.aclu.org/national-security/aclu-requests-information-predator-drone-program

Asks For Data On "Targeted Killings" Of Suspected Terrorists And Civilian Casualties

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org

NEW YORK – In a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed today, the American Civil Liberties Union asked the government to disclose the legal basis for its use of predator drones to conduct "targeted killings" overseas. In particular, the ACLU seeks to find out when, where and against whom drone strikes can be authorized, and how the United States ensures compliance with international laws relating to extrajudicial killings.

"The American public has a right to know whether the drone program is consistent with international law, and that all efforts are made to minimize the loss of innocent lives," said Jonathan Manes, a legal fellow with the ACLU National Security Project. "The Obama administration has reportedly expanded the drone program, but it has not explained publicly what the legal basis for the program is, what limitations it recognizes on the use of drones outside active theaters of war and what the civilian casualty toll has been thus far. We're hopeful that the request we've filed today will encourage the Obama administration to disclose information about the basis, scope and implementation of the program."

The administration has used unmanned drones to target and kill individuals not only in Afghanistan and Iraq but also in Pakistan and Yemen. The technology allows U.S. personnel to observe targeted individuals and launch missiles intended to kill them from control centers located thousands of miles away.

Today's FOIA request was filed with the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice (including the Office of Legal Counsel), the Department of State and the CIA.

"The use of drones to conduct targeted killings raises complicated questions – not just legal questions but policy and moral questions as well," said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project. "These are not questions that should be decided behind closed doors. They are questions that should be debated openly, and the public should have access to information that would allow it to participate meaningfully in the debate."

The ACLU's request seeks, in addition to information about the legal basis for the drone program, data regarding the number of civilians and non-civilians killed in the strikes. Estimates of civilian casualties from the government and human rights organizations differ dramatically, from the dozens to the hundreds, giving an incomplete and inconsistent picture of the human cost of the program.

The text of the FOIA request can be found here: www.aclu.org/national-security/predator-drone-foia-request

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Pakistan Anger Grows as Obama Steps Up Drone Strikes

UN Slams Secrecy Around Repeated Strikes


by Jason Ditz, January 14, 2010
http://news.antiwar.com/2010/01/14/growing-resentment-as-obama-steps-up-pakistan-drone-strikes/

                       

Long something quietly tolerated by the Pakistani government and ignored by the international community, the Obama Administration’s repeated escalation of drone strikes into Pakistan’s tribal areas has gotten too big to ignore, with six separate strikes in the first 14 days of the new year killing scores of people.

The attacks and perhaps worse, the ever present drones flying overheard across North Waziristan threatening further attacks are sewing increasing resentment among tribesmen, even as the massive civilian toll of the strikes is sparking outcry across Pakistan and increasingly, abroad.

Even the United Nations seems willing to get involved, with UN human rights investigator Philip Alston that the US needed to show more transparency with the strikes, particularly as the intensity of the strikes increases.

“When we were dealing with isolated cases I raised it with the United States,” Alston noted, “not that it is systematically using drones, it is becoming increasingly important to get that clarification.”

In 2009 the CIA launched 44 strikes into North and South Waziristan, but managed to kill no more than a handful of notable militants. And while the Pakistani government initially labeled virtually everyone slain as a “suspect,” they are increasingly conceding that there is no evidence to back up that suspicion, and that around 700 people, the vast, vast majority of the victims, were likely innocent civilians.

The extralegal killings of hundreds of people without any accountability or in many cases even admission of responsibility is not only harming American credibility with the Pakistani people, it is even straining relations with the Pakistani government, which was willing to quietly support the strikes before the tolls started to soar. Now even they are growing alarmed at the rate with which American missiles are flying into their territory.

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Sunday, January 17, 2010
13:25 Mecca time, 10:25 GMT 
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/01/20101178213701265.html
 
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 


 
US drone kills dozen in Pakistan  
 


A raid by a US drone in northwest Pakistan has killed at least 12 suspected opposition fighters, Pakistani officials have said.

The attack took place on Sunday in the Shaktoi area of South Waziristan, close to the Afghanistan border.

"The target was a militant compound," a senior military official said of the raid, which occurred about 40km southeast of Miranshah, the primary town in North Waziristan.

Another official added: "The drones are apparently tracking and targeting Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud, whose presence is frequently reported in the area."

Conflicting reports have emerged over the past few days of Mehsud's death.

On Saturday, the Pakistani Taliban released an audio recording in which a voice purporting to be that of Mehsud said that he had not been killed in a US bomb attack last Thursday.

About 40 opposition fighters are said to have been killed by drone strikes since last Thursday, as Washington steps up its campaign to counter the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan.

The latest attack is the 10th US drone strike this year. The use of the pilotless aircraft has been criticised by Pakistani officials for causing civilian casualties, as well as for breaching the country's sovereignty.

Barack Obama, the US president, has put Pakistan at the centre of his policy to target the Taliban and al-Qaeda, seeing lawless tribal areas of western Pakistan as a safe haven for such fighters.
 
 Source: Agencies 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Rugged North Waziristan harbors US enemies

Rugged North Waziristan provides sanctuary for al-Qaida and its allies

KATHY GANNON
AP News
http://wire.antiwar.com/2010/01/16/rugged-north-waziristan-harbors-us-enemies/

Jan 16, 2010 12:00 EST

They rumble through the narrow snow-clogged mountain passes in black pickup trucks. In the back, eight to ten men armed with Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenades huddle together against the cold.

These Islamic militants are on their way to Afghanistan to kill Americans and their allies. Their launching point: Pakistan's North Waziristan district_ a lawless border area that has become the nerve center of the insurgency in nearby Afghanistan.

North Waziristan is a place where al-Qaida and its Afghan and Pakistani allies can train fighters, store explosives and rest from the strain of war. The United States is pressuring Pakistan to launch military operations in North Waziristan, and CIA-operated unmanned aircraft are unleashing missiles with increasing frequency at suspected militant leaders holed up there.

However, for now, militants from al-Qaida, the Taliban and allied groups operate with impunity in North Waziristan, a bleak, arid Rhode Island-sized region with mountain passes that run like tentacles into provinces of Afghanistan.

"They go back and forth in pickup trucks, and they are all mixed together," said a senior tribal elder from North Waziristan's Shawal Valley. "They are Arabs, and Afghans and Uzbeks. It's a mix."

He spoke to the Associated Press in Peshawar, about 100 miles northeast of Waziristan, on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. The elder's descriptions were similar to those provided by other Pakistanis who have recently visited North Waziristan, which is off-limits for Western journalists because of safety concerns and Pakistani government regulations.

From Miram Shah, the capital of the region, roads and trails snake across the mountains into Afghanistan. In the winter, rickety old buses and sleek pickup trucks struggle through the narrow passes, sometimes pushed over the most rugged stretches of road by their occupants, most of them wearing only sandals on their feet.

Thick forests stretch the length of the border, providing natural camouflage for insurgents. From caves hewn into the mountain peaks, insurgents can watch American helicopter gunships flying on the Afghan side of the border, often taking aim with their rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

Much of North Waziristan is a wasteland dotted with small clusters of sun-baked mud houses that seem to blend into the dusty brown landscape. Outside the towns, there are few signs of modern life __ no power lines or telephone poles. Occasional herds of goats drift past, shepherded by nomadic tribes searching for water.

It was in the town of Mir Ali that al-Qaida regrouped after the U.S. and its allies ousted the Afghan Taliban regime in 2001. And Miram Shah once served as headquarters for one of the deadliest Afghan Taliban groups, led by Jalaluddin Haqqani.

"Read Haqqani as al-Qaida. They are one and the same," said Mahmud Shah, former security chief for the tribal regions.

In 2006, the Pakistan army signed a peace pact with militants in Miram Shah, which the U.S. said allowed the Taliban and al Qaida to regroup. Under the agreement, Pakistan promised to keep an estimated 10,000 army men in their barracks, while the militants promised to stop crossing into Afghanistan, expel foreigners and stop fighting Pakistan.

The army kept its side of the agreement. But the militants regrouped and rearmed.

U.S. officials believe Afghanistan cannot be stabilized until Pakistan's tribal regions_ and North Waziristan in particular_ have been routed of Taliban and al-Qaida. With nearly 80,000 soldiers deployed on its western border with Afghanistan, Pakistan has launched offensives in several tribal regions, including a recent offensive on Taliban strongholds in South Waziristan.

Yet it is North Waziristan and Haqqani's Afghan Taliban faction that the U.S. has been pressing Pakistan to target. The U.S. believes North Waziristan is where al-Qaida's top leadership, possibly including Osama bin Laden himself, have taken refuge. Haqqani's group plots attacks inside Afghanistan from its North Waziristan base, including the Dec. 30 suicide assault on the CIA base in Khost that killed seven CIA officials.

Pakistan insists its forces are already overstretched, battling its own Taliban and other extremist groups across a territory that extends for several thousand kilometers (miles). It has refused so far to open another front in North Waziristan.

"We are definitely not considering an operation in North Waziristan," Pakistan's army spokesman Gen. Athar Abbas told the AP, only days after Sen. Joe Lieberman said Pakistan may be preparing to move into the area.

With 2,000 Pakistani soldiers already killed fighting insurgents in the border area and with anti-Americanism on the rise, the government has told Washington it will not open a front in North Waziristan against an enemy that isn't targeting Pakistan__ a reference to Haqqani's group and al-Qaida.

"The army is overstretched and getting into an operational imbalance," Abbas said. He said a greater commitment near the country's western border with Afghanistan would draw down forces available to respond to other threats_ including neighboring India, with which Pakistan has fought three wars.

"Pakistan is dealing with it in a logical manner. Pakistan can't underwrite U.S. security in Afghanistan. It doesn't have the capacity," said Shah, the former security chief in the frontier. "It would take at least 50,000 soldiers for an offensive in North Waziristan. Pakistan has to wait until every other area is secure before it goes into North Waziristan because it will need all its soldiers."

In the absence of a Pakistan ground offensive in North Waziristan, the United States has stepped up its unmanned drone assaults on the area, say local residents.

Ehsanullah, a tribesmen from North Waziristan's Miram Shah, told the AP in Peshawar that the whine of the unmanned drones can be heard daily. While Pakistan publicly complains about the use of drone fired missiles, most residents believe the U.S. is operating with tacit approval of the government and military.

"After every attack there is a deep silence and fear is everywhere," said Ehsanullah. "We don't know where it has landed. People from the neighborhood first come out and look around and then we go see who has been killed."

Abbas said the drone attacks are making the army's job more difficult because they are driving local residents to the Taliban.

"If you ask people who they support_ the security forces or the Taliban_ will say the Taliban," Ehsanullah said. "We are angry because the government doesn't protect us from the drones and they don't allow us to protect ourselves."

Source: AP News

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The Sunday Times January 17, 2010
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6991056.ece

Elite US troops ready to combat Pakistani nuclear hijacks

by Christina Lamb in Washington

The US army is training a crack unit to seal off and snatch back Pakistani nuclear weapons in the event that militants, possibly from inside the country’s security apparatus, get their hands on a nuclear device or materials that could make one.

The specialised unit would be charged with recovering the nuclear materials and securing them.

The move follows growing anti-Americanism in Pakistan’s military, a series of attacks on sensitive installations over the past two years, several of which housed nuclear facilities, and rising tension that has seen a series of official complaints by US authorities to Islamabad in the past fortnight.

“What you have in Pakistan is nuclear weapons mixed with the highest density of extremists in the world, so we have a right to be concerned,” said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former CIA officer who used to run the US energy department’s intelligence unit. “There have been attacks on army bases which stored nuclear weapons and there have been breaches and infiltrations by terrorists into military facilities.”

Professor Shaun Gregory, director of the Pakistan security research unit at Bradford University, has tracked a number of attempted security breaches since 2007. “The terrorists are at the gates,” he warned.

In a counterterrorism journal, published by America’s West Point military academy, he documented three incidents. The first was an attack in November 2007 at Sargodha in Punjab, where nuclearcapable F-16 jet aircraft are thought to be stationed. The following month a suicide bomber struck at Pakistan’s nuclear airbase at Kamra in Attock district. In August 2008 a group of suicide bombers blew up the gates to a weapons complex at the Wah cantonment in Punjab, believed to be one of Pakistan’s nuclear warhead assembly plants. The attack left 63 people dead.

A further attack followed at Kamra last October. Pakistan denies that the base still has a nuclear role, but Gregory believes it does. A six-man suicide team was arrested in Sargodha last August.

Fears that militants could penetrate a nuclear facility intensified after a brazen attack on army headquarters in Rawalpindi in October when 10 gunmen wearing army uniforms got inside and laid siege for 22 hours. Last month there was an attack on the naval command centre in Islamabad.

Pakistani police said five Americans from Washington who were arrested in Pakistan last month after trying to join the Taliban were carrying a map of Chashma Barrage, a complex in Punjab that includes a nuclear power facility.

The Al-Qaeda leadership has made no secret of its desire to get its hands on weapons for a “nuclear 9/11”.

“I have no doubt they are hell-bent on acquiring this,” said Mowatt-Larssen. “These guys are thinking of nuclear at the highest level and are approaching it in increasingly professional ways.”

Nuclear experts and US officials say the biggest fear is of an inside job amid growing anti-American feeling in Pakistan. Last year 3,021 Pakistanis were killed in terrorist attacks, more than in Afghanistan, yet polls suggest Pakistanis consider the United States to be a greater threat than the Taliban.

“You have 8,000-12,000 [people] in Pakistan with some type of role in nuclear missiles — whether as part of an assembly team or security,” said Gregory. “It’s a very large number and there is a real possibility that among those people are sympathisers of terrorist or jihadist groups who may facilitate some kind of attack.”

Pakistan is thought to possess about 80 nuclear warheads. Although the weapons are well guarded, the fear is that materials or processes to enrich uranium could fall into the wrong hands.

“All it needs is someone in Pakistan within the nuclear establishment and in a position of key access to become radicalised,” said MowattLarssen. “This is not just theoretical. It did happen — Pakistan has had inside problems before.”

Bashir Mahmood, the former head of Pakistan’s plutonium reactor, formed the Islamic charity Ummah Tameer-e-Nau in March 2000 after resigning from the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. He was arrested in Islamabad on October 23, 2001, with his associate Abdul Majeed for alleged links to Osama Bin Laden.

Pakistan’s military leadership, which controls the nuclear programme, has always bristled at the suggestion that its nuclear facilities are at risk. The generals insist that storing components in different sites keeps them secure.

US officials refused to speak on the record about American safety plans, well aware of how this would be seen in Islamabad. However, one official admitted that the United States does not know where all of Pakistan’s storage sites are located. “Don’t assume the US knows everything,” he said.

Although Washington has provided $100m worth of technical assistance to Islamabad under its nuclear protection programme, US personnel have been denied access to most Pakistani nuclear sites.

In the past fortnight the US has made unprecedented formal protests to Pakistan’s national security apparatus, warning it about fanning virulent anti-American sentiment in the media.

Concerns about hostility towards America within elements of the Pakistani armed forces first surfaced in 2007. At a meeting of military commanders staged at Kurram, on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, a Pakistani major drew his pistol and shot an American. The incident was hushed up as a gunfight.

[bigron]

Suspected U.S. Missile Strike Kills 20 in Pakistan

Sunday, January 17, 2010 

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,583208,00.html

MIR ALI, Pakistan  —  At least one suspected U.S. drone fired on a house in Pakistan's volatile tribal region Sunday, killing 20 people in the 11th such attack since militants in the area orchestrated a deadly homicide bombing against the CIA in Afghanistan, intelligence officials said.

Four missiles slammed into the house in the Shaktoi area of South Waziristan, the same region where a drone strike Thursday targeted a meeting of militant commanders in an apparently unsuccessful attempt to kill Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud.

The militant leader helped organize the Dec. 30 attack against a remote CIA base in Afghanistan's Khost province that killed seven of the agency's employees and appeared in a video alongside the Jordanian man who carried out the bombing.

Analysts suspect the Haqqani network, an al-Qaida-linked Afghan Taliban faction based in North Waziristan, also helped carry out the CIA attack, the worst against the spy agency in decades.

Since the bombing, the U.S. has carried out eleven suspected drone strikes in North and South Waziristan, an unprecedented volley of attacks since the CIA-led program began in earnest in Pakistan two years ago.

The house targeted in Sunday's attack was being used by Usman Jan, the head of the al-Qaida-linked Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, intelligence officials said. Five Uzbeks were killed in the strike, but it was unclear if Jan was among them. Jan's predecessor, Tahir Yuldash, was also killed in a drone strike in South Waziristan last year.

The other 15 people killed in Sunday's strike were Pakistani Taliban, said the officials.

Four more militants were seriously wounded, but their identities were unknown, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

The U.S. does not usually comment on the drone strikes or their targets, but officials have said in the past that they have taken out several senior al-Qaida and Taliban leaders.

While the Pakistani government publicly condemns the strikes as violations of its sovereignty, it is thought to have a secret deal with Washington allowing them. Pakistani criticism has been especially muted when the drones have targeted militants who pose a threat to the state, such as the Pakistani Taliban chief.

Mehsud issued an audio message Saturday denying he had been killed in the Jan. 14 drone strike that Pakistani intelligence officials said targeted him in Shaktoi, which lies along the border between North and South Waziristan.

"Let me clarify that I was neither wounded nor martyred in this attack, nor was I present in this attack," said Mehsud in a message that Pakistani Taliban spokesman Azam Tariq played for an Associated Press reporter. The reporter recognized the voice as Mehsud's.

He said he composed the message because a similar one issued Friday that did not specifically reference the attack was met with doubt that it really proved he was alive.

"A panic among mujahedeen forced me to issue this new message," said Mehsud.

The Pakistani army launched a major ground offensive against Mehsud's stronghold in South Waziristan in mid-October but has resisted U.S. demands to expand its military campaign to target militant groups like the Haqqani network that are more focused on staging cross-border attacks against coalition troops in Afghanistan.

Pakistani officials say they have their hands full fighting the Pakistani Taliban and can't afford to open up additional fronts. More than 600 people have been killed in militant attacks in Pakistan since the army launched its South Waziristan operation.

Two anti-Taliban tribal elders were killed in separate attacks in the Bajur tribal area Sunday, said local political officials.

Gunmen shot and killed Malik Abdul Qayum as he was getting into his car in the main town of Khar, said Abdul Haseeb. The attack also wounded Qayum's cousin, he said.

Several hours later, a roadside bomb killed Malik Hukam Khan in the town of Cahrmang, said Ghulam Saeedullah. Khan was a member of an anti-Taliban militia that fought alongside soldiers to expel militants from Bajur last year, he said.

[bigron]

Report on Pak nukes ’absurd, mischievous: Pakistan

http://www.onlinenews.com.pk/details.php?id=157312

ISLAMABAD Pakistan’s strategic assets are as safe as that of any other nuclear weapon state and these assets are fully safeguarded and secure under the protection of a well-established command and control system, a Foreign Office (FO) spokesman said on Sunday.

When his attention was drawn to a news story published by "Times Online" on January 17 regarding the safety of Pakistan’s strategic assets, the spokesman dismissed its contents as "outlandish musings by an academic".

Talking to a Private TV Channel, he dismissed the report terming it as a conspiracy theory, saying that Pakistan nukes are safe and neither militants nor any other group was capable enough to take over the atomic assets.

The spokesman also rejected the suggestion that there is any danger of Pakistan’s strategic assets falling into the wrong hands. It may be recalled here a UK English daily on Sunday in a report said that The US army is training a crack unit to seal off and snatch back Pakistani nuclear weapons in the event that militants, possibly from inside the country’s security apparatus, get their hands on a nuclear device or materials that could make one.

[bigron]

US drones unlikely to break militants in long term

Monday, 18 Jan, 2010   
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/03-US-drones-unlikely-to-break-militants-in-long-term-ss-07

   
Tribesmen hold pieces of a missile at the site of a missile attack in Mir Ali on the outskirts of Miramshah near the Afghan border. – Reuters Pakistan



ISLAMABAD: A US unmanned drone aircraft that nearly killed Pakistan's Taliban leader may encourage the CIA to keep up its campaign to eliminate high-profile militants by remote control.

But the strikes may only have limited success and generate more anti-American sentiment in Pakistan, which the United States sees as a front-line state in its war against militancy.

Taliban officials said Pakistan Taliban chief Hakeemullah Mehsud was slightly wounded last week after being targeted by a drone, unmanned aircrafts Washington says are key to defeating al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Coming just days after Mehsud appeared in a farewell video with the suicide bomber who killed CIA agents in Afghanistan, the apparent revenge attack in northwest Pakistan was a reminder that drones are highly capable of eliminating top Taliban leaders.

Analysts say the high-tech aircraft - designed to throw al Qaeda and Taliban operations into disarray - are unlikely to break resilient militant groups in the long term and may only generate more anti-American anger in US ally Pakistan.

“Ultimately this is not really an effective weapon. The intent is, that if you can kill off or decapitate a significant extent of the leadership, that you can cause a rift within the movement,” said Kamran Bokhari, regional director for the Middle East and South Asia at STRATFOR global intelligence firm.

Drone attacks in northwest Pakistan have been intensified since the double agent suicide bomber killed seven CIA employees at a US base in Afghanistan on Dec. 30, the second deadliest attack in the agency's history.

Even if sustained over a long period, the drones can only produce limited results - perhaps holding up suicide bombings for a few weeks - since militant leaders are unlikely to be killed in quick succession, analysts say.

In August 2009, a drone strike killed Pakistan Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, who united several groups to form the umbrella Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP), or Taliban Movement of Pakistan.

But the Taliban have managed to hit back with bombs that have killed hundreds. And Hakeemullah's deputy, Wali-ur-Rehman, is waiting in the wings if Hakeemullah is killed.

The problem for the United States and its allies is the over-reliance on the drones to fight the Taliban, and the lack of ground intelligence.

CIA recruitment of agents is tedious and risky since it requires winning over people in a region of tightly knit family and tribal ties. Anyone tempted by cash risks execution if caught by the Taliban or al Qaeda. And intelligence is often sketchy.

That's why the CIA must rely on Pakistani intelligence to provide targets to the virtual pilots who use computers halfway across the world to fly the $4.5 million drones into battle.

That coordination may have put the al Qaeda and Taliban on the defensive in areas of northwest Pakistan.

Pakistani officials complain in public that the drones violate the country's sovereignty and have said intensified strikes could hurt relations between the long-standing allies.

US officials privately say the attacks are carried out under an agreement with Islamabad that allows Pakistani leaders to decry the attacks in public.

Islamabad may be too weak to openly back drone operations, fearing it would inflame anti-American sentiment, said retired Pakistan army general Talat Masood.

“The government does not have that courage or that confidence,” he said.

[bigron]

Downhill for Pakistan?

By Tariq Amin-Khan
Tuesday, 19 Jan, 2010
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/16-downhill+for+pakistan-hs-10     


The long war brings in its wake some terrible consequences in terms of untold death and destruction. — Photo by Reuters National

The CIA recently lost its forward operating base in Khost. Pakistan is under pressure to attack North Waziristan. And the noise about redrawing Pakistan’s borders has increased by a few decibels.

 

Imperial machinations may desire such an outcome, but its realisation will depend on the internal dynamics of state and society. The latter alone can actually make or break a state. But what happens if the state is imploding?

 

Recently, Zardari’s civilian government raised the spectre of the country’s dissolution by actively but unsuccessfully playing the Sindh card. Zardari denies doing this, insisting that he has Pakistan’s interests at heart, yet threatened to invoke the Sindh card. If Sindh has not descended into chaos and bloodshed despite the inflammatory speeches of PPP leaders, this speaks of the sagacity of the people living in the province.

 

Pakistan’s survival as a viable state, though, depends on how the current conjuncture is negotiated: whether the 17th Amendment is rescinded; the courts are respected and the culpable and the corrupt are prosecuted; the problem of social neglect and public disservice is tackled; and that someone among the rulers finally stands up to the US rather than prostrating before its imperial diktats.

 

These are the minimum steps needed to preserve Pakistan. But the bankruptcy of the current leadership is its inability to develop a sense of urgency in tackling the country’s enormous problems.

 

Under Zardari, the security situation has gone to the dogs not because the military is going after the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP); rather, these horrifically random suicide attacks are a result largely of incompetence, sloppy intelligence and the lack of coordination among different security services. Incredibly, there were more suicide bomb attacks during 2009 in Pakistan than in Iraq.

 

Zardari’s government has allowed Pakistan to be a veritable playground for Blackwater/Xe, US Special Forces, a much-expanded US embassy ‘staff’ and complex (mimicking Iraq’s Green Zone), and the trigger-happy controllers of aerial drones. Collectively, these boys with their deadly toys will wreak further havoc in the country.

 

Furthermore, cowing before the demands of the US and the western world to ‘do more’ has been unprecedented under Zardari. He has effectively given a blank cheque to the Americans, while unprotected ordinary Pakistanis are left to face the fallout from his and the military’s commitment to wage US’s ‘long war’ (Pentagon’s language for the ‘war on terror’).

 

The long war brings in its wake some terrible consequences in terms of untold death and destruction, unleashed as state militaries confront non-state players such as the Pakistani Taliban.

 

This is not to say that the TTP should not be confronted, but it can’t be at Washington’s prodding. There cannot be two views about the havoc and human suffering caused by the TTP and their pernicious anti-women and anti-people violence, but the strategy to confront them has to be an indigenously developed mix of social, political and military responses.

 

Beyond the internal dimension, external forces are imposing other indignities. One such xenophobic measure on which an edict was passed almost immediately following the failed bombing attempt over Detroit concerns travellers to the US from Pakistan and 13 other states. Respectable people from these ‘bad’ lands, seen as ‘people of interest’ from ‘terror-linked’ states, will now be singled out for additional scrutiny and invasive security checks.

 

In addressing the consequences of the Christmas Day event, Obama missed an opportunity to mend fences with Muslims around the world by taking a fresh approach. Instead, he chose to take an old page from Bush and the neoconservative’s white book of militarism.

 

As a result, indignities unleashed since Sept 11 have intensified as the fortress mentality of North America and Europe becomes increasingly white supremacist. Immigrant communities in the West, especially Muslims and people who look like Muslims, have faced a sustained and systemic campaign of racist profiling and targeting in an environment of xenophobic racism.

 

More troubling, though, is that the long war has become a perpetual war. The inevitable troop surge in Afghanistan is one indication. The war’s expansion into the Middle East and Africa is another. However, this perpetual war is placing an imperial chokehold on Pakistan.

 

As the troop surge begins, it will worsen the existing state of horrendous insecurity and instability in the country — as if what is already happening is not cataclysmic. In the face of this maniacal violence, the US impositions, the paralysis of the Pakistani state and the challenges to the country’s survival are truly unprecedented.

 

Remarkably, this current state of instability has provided ample grist for the mills of western military planners and think tanks to dream up a host of scenarios: from imagining Pakistan’s demise to the destruction of its nuclear assets.

One such scenario has the Canadian military preparing a contingency plan to contain street battles in the provinces of British Columbia and Ontario whose cities are predicted to be in flames — courtesy of the conflict scenario that has Canadians of Pakistani and Indian descent at each other’s throats (Toronto Star, Oct 17, 2009).

 

The Canadian military planners expect that Pakistan will collapse by 2016, and the territory will be occupied by India. Sound bizarre? Not so to the security analysts in Ottawa.


So, is everything downhill for Pakistan? It does not have to be. When all is said and done, the best-laid imperial plans, conspiracies and campaigns are no match for an internally cohesive society, especially if a visionary leadership refuses the $7bn US minefield developed as the Kerry-Lugar Act, prioritises people’s wellbeing while respecting the rights and diversity of the respective ethnic/national groups, and strives for an honourable existence with its neighbours on the basis of regional cooperation.

 

Given that the present leadership is incapable of promoting these ideals, the Pakistani people will have to decide whether they will roll over and submit or come together and resist. My view, based on the people’s epic struggles for justice, is that they will choose the latter.

 

The writer teaches and lives in Toronto, Canada.

[bigron]

Pak may fence 2,250-mile border with Afghanistan

Pakistan News.Net
Monday 18th January, 2010 (ANI)
http://www.pakistannews.net/story/590139

Islamabad, Jan. 18 : Pakistan is likely to fence its 2,250 miles long porous border with Afghanistan, as the country has failed to get state-of-the art technology to effectively check cross-border infiltration from western countries.

"Pakistan has been left with no other option but to fence its border after reluctance by the USA, UK, France, Sweden and Russia to provide Islamabad with mini mobile radar system," The Nation quoted a government source, as saying.

The sources claimed the proposal had come from Pakistan's security agencies during their recent briefing to the members of Parliamentary Committee on National Security headed by Senator Mian Raza Rabbani.

Fencing the border would be not only be time consuming but also a costly affair in view of the terrain that would require provision of electricity prior to undertaking physical fencing of the border.

Out of the 2,560 kms of the border starting from Chitral up to Zhob district of Balochistan, Pakistan has already fenced 35 kms till date.

In comparison to Pakistan, the US-led coalition forces and the Afghanistan National Army had only 100 security posts on the Pak-Afghan border and are largely banking on satellite facilities to check border crossings from Pakistan into Afghanistan.

The border-fencing plan envisages fencing of the total 3,760 kms of the Pak-Afghan border with an average height of 3000 to 4000 meters.

 

[bigron]

Tuesday, January 19, 2010
22:27 Mecca time, 19:27 GMT   
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/01/2010119181112836158.html
 
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
 
Taliban commander speaks out  

 WATCH :
Interview: Sirajuddin Haqqani, Taliban commander

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrR-5d6okeY&feature=player_embedded

Al Jazeera has obtained an exclusive interview with Sirajuddin Haqqani, a Taliban commander fighting US and Nato forces in Afghanistan.

US commanders have identified the Pakistan-based Haqqani network - widely  believed to have ties with Pakistan's spy agency - as one of the biggest threats to US forces in Afghanistan.

The network, which was initially nurtured by the CIA, carries out attacks on foreign forces across the majority of eastern Afghanistan.

The US has put a $5 million bounty on Sirajuddin Haqqani's head. David Chater has the latest from Kabul.
 
 
 Source: Al Jazeera 
 
 

[bigron]

Updated January 21, 2010


Pakistani Army: No New Offensive for 6-12 Months

AP
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/01/21/gates-discuss-afghan-war-pakistanis/?test=latestnews

The announcement by Pakistan likely comes as a disappointment to the U.S., which has pushed the country to expand its military operations to target militants staging cross-border attacks against coalition troops in Afghanistan.


ISLAMABAD - The Pakistani army said Thursday during a visit by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates that it can't launch any new offensives against militants for six months to a year to give it time to stabilize existing gains.

The announcement likely comes as a disappointment to the U.S., which has pushed Pakistan to expand its military operations to target militants staging cross-border attacks against coalition troops in Afghanistan. Washington believes such action is critical to success in Afghanistan as it prepares to send an additional 30,000 troops to the country this year.

But the comments by army spokesman Gen. Athar Abbas clearly indicate Pakistan will not be pressured in the near-term to expand its fight beyond militants waging war against the Pakistani state. Whether it can be convinced in the long-term is still an open question.

"We are not talking years," Abbas told reporters traveling with Gates. "Six months to a year" would be needed before Pakistan could stabilize existing gains and expand any operations, he said.

The Pakistani army launched a major ground offensive against the Pakistani Taliban's main stronghold near the Afghan border in mid-October, triggering a wave of retaliatory violence across the country that has killed more than 600 people.

Gates said Thursday that he wouldn't directly press Pakistan to expand its military campaign but would instead ask his hosts what their plans are. He also said his talks with Pakistan's military and civilian leaders were intended to explain the U.S. war strategy in Afghanistan.

The defense secretary told reporters traveling with him to Islamabad from India that he would reassure Pakistan that the United States is "in this for the long haul."

But President Barack Obama's comments in December that the U.S. would begin to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan in mid-2011 have raised questions among many Pakistani officials about Washington's commitment.

Analysts say such concerns only reinforce the Pakistani government's reluctance to target the Afghan Taliban as requested by the U.S. Pakistan has deep historical ties with the group, and many analysts believe some officials within the government and the military see the militants as an important proxy once coalition troops leave Afghanistan.

Gates cautioned Pakistan against trying to distinguish between the different militant groups in an essay published Thursday in The News, an English-language Pakistani newspaper.

"It is important to remember that the Pakistani Taliban operates in collusion with both the Taliban in Afghanistan and Al Qaeda, so it is impossible to separate these groups," Gates wrote.

"Only by pressuring all of these groups on both sides of the border will Afghanistan and Pakistan be able to rid themselves of this scourge for good -- to destroy those who promote the use of terror here and abroad," Gates said.

On of the goals of his trip, he said, is "a broader strategic dialogue -- on the link between Afghanistan's stability and Pakistan's; stability in the broader region; the threat of extremism in Asia; efforts to reduce illicit drugs and their damaging global impact; and the importance of maritime security and cooperation."

Gates' first meeting Thursday is with Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar. He also has separate meetings scheduled with Prime Minister Yousaf Reza Gilani and President Asif Ali Zardari.

[bigron]

BlackWater, DynCorp operating in Pakistan, admits Gates

Online-International News Network

http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m62411&hd=&size=1&l=e

January 21, 2010

ISLAMABAD: US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has admitted that US security companies Black Water and DynCorp are operating in Pakistan in private capacities: but will comply with the Pakistani law if its parliament bars foreign security companies in the country.

Pakistani leaders before this had rejected several times the reports saying that Black Water is operating in Pakistan and Rehman Malik had even said that: "I would resign if presence of Black Water in Pakistani areas was proved".

In an interview with a private TV channel here on Thursday, Robert Gates announced that US would share the drone technology with Pakistan and added that drone attacks have been successful in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan.

Praising the sacrifices of Pakistani forces in the war on terror, he said: "US appreciates their sacrifices and condole with the families of those who lost their lives. US has excellent relations with Pakistani government and army and congratulate them over successful military operations".

About the training of Afghan forces by India, he said such proposal of training of Afghan forces by India not under consideration and added that: "Pakistan, US, India and Afghanistan face common enemy".

While replying to a question regarding intelligence sharing with Pakistan, Gates said that US was trying to improve intelligence sharing with Pakistan.

To a question regarding removal of security check posts at Pak-Afghan border, he pointed out that the check posts were removed because of improper locations and new check posts would be constructed at the border, adding, US is also trying to improve security along the border.

Referring to groups operating in the region, Gates said: "Haqqani Group and Lashkar-e-Taiba are dangerous groups".

In reply to a question regarding Pak-India relations, he stressed the need that Pakistan and India should prefer to deal with issues bilaterally and said: "I have raised the Pakistani concerns of Indian involvement in Pakistani internal affairs with India".

To a question about any military relationship between US and India, he made it clear that: "US has no military relationship with India".

About the Supreme Court verdict on NRO, he said that it was Pakistan’s internal matter and US has good relations with Pakistani government, army and wants government to adhere to its constitution.

In reply to a question regarding withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, he said the timeframe given by the US president in this regard is not final.

About the security of Pakistani nukes, he said that US has no concerns about the security of Pakistani nukes and has no intention of taking them into custody and was comfortable with their security.

About the new screening policy of Pakistanis, he made it clear that it is not specifically against Pakistanis but also for citizens of other countries but based on past events. "Control over Taliban in July 2010 would be a great achievement for US", he declared.

[bigron]

MPs urge Gates expulsion from Pakistan
 
 
22/01/2010 02:27:00 PM GMT   
 
 http://www.aljazeera.com/news/articles/34/MPs-urge-Gates-expulsion-from-Pakistan.html

 
Pakistani opposition lawmakers have urged the Islamabad government to expel visiting US Defense Secretary Robert Gates from the country.

Prominent opposition lawmaker Khurshid Ahmed told Press TV that Gates is maneuvering to force Pakistan to allow American security contractors into the country.

The remarks come after the US Defense Secretary confirmed that the US firms were operating in private capacities.

However, Gates added that the companies were abiding by Pakistani laws.

The opposition parliamentarians have protested Gates' visit to Pakistan accompanied by a huge delegation.

Opposition lawmakers accuse US security firms, including Blackwater, now known as Xe Services, of looking to locate Pakistan's nukes, under the cover of NGO activities.

Blackwater has gained widespread notoriety for killing civilians, with impunity and absolute immunity from prosecution, in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past few years.

A former head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence had earlier told Press TV that the notorious firm, Blackwater, was involved in the deadly drone attacks on Pakistani territories, which usually result in civilian casualties.

"I learned somewhere that these people are employed certainly for the logistic support at the drone bases. That is understandable," Asad Durani said earlier in January.

Gates will try to win support from Pakistani leaders on the US war strategy in neighboring Afghanistan.

President Barack Obama and his NATO allies have ordered 40,000 more troops into war-weary Afghanistan which was invaded by US-led coalition forces in 2001.

Senior officials in Islamabad have said that Obama's new Afghan war strategy and the troop surge may destabilize Pakistan.

Hundreds of militants fled into Pakistan to escape the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, plunging the whole region into violent turmoil and instability.


Source: Press TV
 

[trailhound]

I realise the importance Biggs and bothers me to  no  end that my dollars go to support this shit:(

[bigron]

January 21, 2010
http://counterpunch.com/fawzia01212010.html

Confessions of a "Native Orientalist" ... Really?

Pakistan Love Story

By FAWZIA AFZAL-KHAN

On the one hand, the Obama presidency has expanded the so-called war on terror, via its Af-Pak policy leading to ever-increasing drone attacks on the people of Pakistan’s tribal belt bordering Afghanistan and ofcourse in Afghanistan itself, where, as the NYT Sunday magazine article by Peter Baker (Jan 17th, 2010) points out, US troop levels are set to triple under Obama’s watch; on the other, suicide attacks on innocent citizens of Pakistan—mostly the urban working class in Pakistan’s major cities—have seen a dramatic increase in the past year. The Tehrik-i-Taliban, an umbrella group of Pakistani Taliban forces, has accepted responsibility for most of them—the most recent  of these being the December 8th 2009 attack on Lahore’s Moon Market which followed an earlier attack the same day on a market in the frontier city of Peshawer—victims of both these attacks being mostly women and children, a direct departure from the targets of earlier such attacks which were aimed at police and army strongholds.

The obvious conclusion being drawn by the average Pakistani citizen as well as by many analysts of Pakistan based here in US academia, as well as by the intellectual elite of Pakistan and by many of its political leaders (most clear promoter of this line of reasoning being Imran Khan, erstwhile womanizing cricketer-turned-mullah-type-politico and leader of Tehrik-i-Insaaf Party)—is that  the US-led War on Terror (which is seen as imperialist aggression and as an attack on the sovereignty of Pakistan), in which the Pakistani Army’s role is seen as one of pathetic obeisance to its foreign masters and against its own “brothers” (viz. Taliban and Taliban prototypes)—is the cause of this violent blowback from the Pakistani Taliban. The latter, thus, become, quite bizarrely, anti-imperialist freedom-fighters under this line of reasoning.  What is equally interesting is that progressive thinkers and activists aligned with left movements or parties both in Pakistan and here in the US also give credence to this view—though their view of the Taliban is slightly more nuanced, or if one were being unkind, one might say it is more prone to the convolutions of conspiracy theories, all of which ultimately lead back to the machinations of the all-powerful US military-industrial complex and its Zionist policeman in the Middle East, Israel. Added to this, on my latest visit this past December to Lahore and Karachi, were the not unusual, but more vociferously-voiced complaints than ever before against the corrupt ruling elites of Pakistan, be they Army or civilian, who are seen to be in bed with the US-Zionist Masters of the Universe, and hence equally deserving of mass contempt and anger. The Taliban aggressors and suicide bombers wreaking daily havoc on the lives of Pakistanis? Peanuts, by comparison. Or, as one attendee put it in his rejoinder to me during a talk I had just delivered at a Leftist bookstore-café in Lahore called Café Bol: “Oh Bibi” (referring to me)—this 500-pound gorilla (i.e the Taliban) you keep on mentioning as sitting in our living room is not our problem; our real problem is the 2,000 pound gorilla sitting on our borders and bombing us with its drone attacks!”

For defending Pervez Hoodbhoy—a leading physicist and social activist of Pakistan for over three decades—against what I perceived to be an ad hominem attack by a US-based Pakistani-American academic from Boston called Shahid Alam in the pages of CounterPunch, the latter calling Hoodbhoy a “Native Orientalist” for daring to suggest that the Taliban were a threat to Pakistan’s existence—I was verbally castigated by several attendees, including the owner/founder of the café who, toward the end of my visit in Lahore called me an “orientalist” too—because I had dared venture into what he termed was “his territory” of Sufi shrines where he was involved in “revolutionizing” the devotees.

By virtue of entering that space and singing sufi songs myself along with them (unusual for a woman since women are generally not allowed to enter divine spaces in the same way as men or participate equally, especially not if there is a performative angle to it), and moreover, filming the scene for later research purposes, I had somehow defaced the purity of the space, brought in an element of commercialization (somehow, the fact that most of the men doing “dhamal” and performing at these weekly gatherings for huge audiences is immune to commerce, as is the selling of charms and other shrine culture paraphernalia there), and ego-gratification.

Ultimately, though, what I was doing according to his analysis, was “selling sufi culture to the West, thus orientalizing and exoticizing it.”  Wow! What this response indicated to me was the extreme degree of US-hatred and West-rejectionism  which has taken hold of even those like the café-owner who is a product of English schools and universities, having grown up and lived for most of his life in Britain. Any point of view which questions a blind allegiance to the notion of cultural purity he and others have come to embrace in the wake of 9/11 and its aftermath, or a reference to a home-grown fanaticism or even , God forbid, to an internal commercialization of the Sufi path can only elicit such diatribes and anger of which I became the convenient object by virtue of living and working in the Big Bad West. Sufism, it would appear, has become the latest casualty in the imperial game—and perhaps for men angered at their perceived emasculation at the hands of the reigning superpower,  some territory they can call their own needs to exist in the cultural patrimony.

Another, related critique I received was that my own analyses regarding the rise and causes of religious extremism in Pakistan had shifted from being “spot on”—this because I had earlier pointed to the class dimensions of the phenomenon in a piece (published in both CounterPunch and The Friday Times of Pakistan), where I reported my interactions with inmates of the Lal Masjid before it was razed to the ground by the Army in the summer of 2007—to having become “disappointing”  by what was perceived by my critics as a defense of the Pakistani Army actions against the Taliban strongholds in FATA and South Waziristan later that same year.

When I tried to argue with my left-leaning as well as bourgeois but supposedly anti-establishment interlocutors  (who oddly enough all began to sound identical to me!)--that my position was not reducible to such binaries—I was asked by some of them quite bluntly, was I for the Army or the Taliban? Bush’s infamous line, dangerously simplistic to the core, “You Are With Us or Against Us”—had traversed the distance between West and East and led to an ever-more dangerous binary: was it now to be a choice between the Pakistan Army and the Taliban? In this version, the Army was being seen as the “real” problem; the real “enemy of the people”—the Taliban, somehow, neutralized under the threat of army tanks and missiles and CIA-supplied drones. Whatever happened to a both/and frame of analysis, I found myself asking to no avail?  What was this disingenuous “choice” between one horror or another, ranked according to some criteria I could not comprehend? How is it, I found myself wondering despairingly, that we have come to this juncture, where analysis now yields to polemics, where one is seen or must declare oneself either as a revolutionary patriot, a Man (sic) of the People, who sees things in black and white, or else risk censure and condemnation as a lackey of the West, a member of the corrupt bourgeois elite?

Perhaps what I witnessed are the beginnings of a mass revolution, where the Left forces and the Tehrik-i-Taliban will make common cause against a corrupt ruling class which has certainly ground the country and its people into the dust in the past 62 years.  If so, that will be a sad path to follow indeed, because such political bedfellows will not make good marriage partners for either the country or the region. What would be a better alternative as I see it from an admittedly insider/outsider perspective, is a coming together of Left parties and organizations to address the very real economic, social and political disparities resulting from the hierarchical class system of Pakistan which is still in thrall to feudalism,  uniting under a common program for action for all Pakistanis without regard to ethnic, gender or religious differences, and  then working on issue-based agendas where pragmatic solutions and calls to action can result in real, measurable change. To this end, I must say I was pleased to attend various mass gatherings in Lahore and in Karachi where under the banner of the Labor Party of Pakistan (LPP), many of the Left parties came together to declare solidarity, bury their internal ideological differences, and work out a program for action that would have the both/and appeal I mentioned earlier. Thus, for example, at the LPP’s National Committee meeting in Islamabad at the end of the year, it was announced that 30,000 people are being mobilized for the International Mazdoor Kissan (Workers and Farmers Party) Conference to take place in Faisalabad at the end of January. Not a huge number given that Pakistan’s population is approximately 170 million, but an important beginning after decades of apathy and resignation in Left circles nonetheless, which can surely grow into an important movement for radical change. According to an email circular announcing the conference which will mark the LPP’s fifth Congress, a comprehensive document was circulated for discussion at the December meeting in Islamabad—which I believe was presented at the Lahore meeting that I attended at the Mehfil Cinema Hall, hosting a crowd of approximately 1,000 activists, and where I was enormously impressed by the call for unity for the Left/Progressive parties, issued with such clarity by the (unfortunately) only female speaker on the podium: Dr. Farzana Bari, who also heads the Department of Women and Gender Studies at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad. The document that was circulated for further discussion ... takes up the question of religious fanaticism on international level and why the Socialists must oppose and fight against it by building broader alliances.

The LPP NC discussed the national question in Pakistan and agreed to fight for the rights of the oppressed nationalities and demanded an equal distribution of state resources for all nationalities and to put more resources for the under developed areas. It agreed to oppose the military operation carried out in several parts of Pukhtoon Khawa and Tribal Areas and also the terrorist attacks of the religious fanatics. It will continue to oppose both. It agrees that there is no military solution to curb the rising religious fanaticism while there is need for a comprehensive package to fight the fanatics including the steps to separate the state from religion.
Indeed, creative solutions to end BOTH militaristic interventions into the body politic of Pakistan whether by the US, the Pak Army, CIA, ISI, XE Services, RAW, Mossad  or some nefarious combination of all the above, AND Talibanistic terror and extremist thinking have to be sought. Since all such agencies and policies are anti-people, it is the people themselves who have to protest and rise up in ways that can serve their ends in the best possible manner.

It is good to read that the Anjuman Mozareen Punjab which will be hosting the forthcoming International Mazdoor Kissan Conference (along with another Left party, the Labor Qaumi Movement) at the famous Dhobi Ghat Ground in Faisalabad on Jan 29th 2010, will mobilize its forces from all parts of Punjab to achieve a target of 30,000 participants of the conference. The peasants from Okara, Faisalabad, Sarghoda, Jhang, Depalpur, Pakpatten, Khanewal, Toba Tek Singh, Chaniot and other cities and districts of Punjab will join the congress in their traditional manner with Dhools Dhamakas. They will demand land rights and land reforms all over Pakistan. They will also take the question of water shortages and will demand restoration of all state subsidies to agriculture inputs.

These are real demands, based on the daily issues facing the landless peasants of Pakistan and it is crucial that these and other similarly urgent issues take center stage so that the stranglehold of regressive state and non-state actors is loosened and a third way forward can be fashioned, accompanied, as it must be, with an analytically sound  rejection of militarism, feudalism, imperialism, and religious extremism which all combine to keep the status quo in place through the confusion these intertwined ideologies have sown in the minds of too many people.
It is time to think afresh; it is time to believe that spring is coming, even as we feel ourselves to be  in the dead of winter’s icy grip. I conclude with a poem by one of Pakistan’s most revered poets of the Left, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, with hope and just a little bit of faith.

Bahar Ayee (Spring Has Come)
By Faiz Ahmed Faiz
Translated by Ayesha Kaljuvee

Spring has come

So have returned suddenly from the past
 
All those dreams, all that beauty

That on your lips had died
 
That had died and lived again each time

All the roses are blooming

That still smell of your memories

That are the blood of my love for you
 
Spring has come
 
All the torments are raging again
 
That unheeded advice of friends

That intoxication of your embrace
 
The dust of old chapters have opened

With all our questions, all our answers

Spring has come

So have opened

all the journals of my love anew

all the journals of my love anew

Spring has come
Spring has come

Fawzia Afzal-Khan is a Professor in the Department of English at Montclair State University in New Jersey. She can be reached at: khanf@mail.montclair.edu


 

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Wars Without Heroes

By Iftekhar A. Khan

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24487.htm

January 23, 2010 "Information Clearing House "Pakistan -- The war in Iraq has entered its seventh year and in Afghanistan its ninth year yet both imperialist wars have so far failed to produce any ‘war heroes’ to extol. During the Second World War, one of the Royal Air Force ace pilots prided in shooting down six Axis powers fighter planes in one dogfight and was awarded an appropriate gallantry award; no such heroic deeds by the coalition forces have come to fore in Iraq and Afghanistan. As both Muslim countries have neither regular armies nor air forces to offer any modicum of resistance against the massive onslaught of US-led NATO forces, there’re no tales of heroism related to Western troops. These forces only pick up their dead and grievously wounded soldiers to ship them back home. The dead are given a quiet burial without eulogising their achievements in the battlefield.

In fact, to portray the nation as humane and civilised, US has banned showing the pictures and footage of dead heroes reaching home in body bags. Does it depict West’s guilt instead of pride in waging unprovoked, unjustified wars against an invisible enemy? Otherwise, why would the two imperialist powers downplay their heroes? Even the wounded soldiers grumble about maltreatment by the civilians.

Former British chief of general staff, Gen Richard Dannit, complained that retuning soldiers often felt ‘devalued’ with sense of alienation measured in alcohol, drug addiction, divorce, suicide and imprisonment. Sometimes the civilians mock the returning soldiers. Now there’s stark difference between a national war and a corporate war. National wars enjoy the support of the majority of their population; corporate wars are driven by the naked greed of military hardware manufacturers, oil corporations, security companies, and entities that profit from massacring innocent men, women and children of the weaker nations. The corporate wars are ventures in which politicians particularly in the US democratic system, who decide to launch wars, are indebted to corporations which donate funds for their election campaigns. Were such sleazy donations prohibited, the war scenario would change, sanity would prevail, and victimised nations spared the bloodbath.

But peace doesn’t seem at hand in the near future despite President Obama’s intention to withdraw from Afghanistan by 2011. On one hand he intends to withdraw while on the other he has asked the Congress for an additional $33 billion to finance wars in Iraq and Afghanistan besides the whopping $708 billion for defence next year. And the Pentagon urgently wants to acquire more Predator and Reaper drones for surveillance and attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan to go on until 2013 – one reason why Richard Holbrook recently dismissed offhand the possibility of ending drone flights that cause slaughter of innocent people in the tribal areas. It’s well known that CIA operates the drone flights. So it’s a covert war being fought against an undefined enemy, call it counterinsurgency, counterterrorism or whatever. There’s no dearth of misleading names attached to the war, but at the bottom it remains a war of occupation by the foreign troops and war of freedom by the Afghan people whose land has been occupied. In other words, Afghans are refuges in their own territory.

Therefore, these wars will not produce heroes. Can a CIA operative who pushes the joystick button to launch hellfire missiles by a Predator or a Reaper drone to kill mostly innocent people in mud hamlets in FATA be called a war hero? If such an operator is killed, as were the seven in Khost recently, how would he be eulogised; how would his requiem sound like? Similarly, if Worldwide XE mercenaries known as the defence contractors, whose strength in Afghanistan exceeds regular US troops, are killed, how would they be honoured with medals of valour? Perhaps time has come when, instead of uniformed soldiers being decorated for gallantry, nameless, faceless operators of intelligence agencies will embellish the medals of honour on their chests. Even the drones could lay claim to gallantry awards.

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January 23, 2010

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/23/world/asia/23drone.html


C.I.A. Deaths Prompt Surge in U.S. Drone Strikes


By SCOTT SHANE and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON — Since the suicide bombing that took the lives of seven Americans in Afghanistan on Dec. 30, the Central Intelligence Agency has struck back against militants in Pakistan with the most intensive series of missile strikes from drone aircraft since the covert program began.



Beginning the day after the attack on a C.I.A. base in Khost, Afghanistan, the agency has carried out 11 strikes that have killed about 90 people suspected of being militants, according to Pakistani news reports, which make almost no mention of civilian casualties. The assault has included strikes on a mud fortress in North Waziristan on Jan. 6 that killed 17 people and a volley of missiles on a compound in South Waziristan last Sunday that killed at least 20.

“For the C.I.A., there is certainly an element of wanting to show that they can hit back,” said Bill Roggio, editor of The Long War Journal, an online publication that tracks the C.I.A.’s drone campaign. Mr. Roggio, as well as Pakistani and American intelligence officials, said many of the recent strikes had focused on the Pakistani Taliban and its leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, who claimed responsibility for the Khost bombing.

The Khost attack cost the agency dearly, taking the lives of the most experienced analysts of Al Qaeda whose intelligence helped guide the drone attacks. Yet the agency has responded by redoubling its assault. Drone strikes have come roughly every other day this month, up from about once a week last year and the most furious pace since the drone campaign began in earnest in the summer of 2008.

Pakistan’s announcement on Thursday that its army would delay any new offensives against militants in North Waziristan for 6 to 12 months is likely to increase American reliance on the drone strikes, administration and counterterrorism officials said. By next year, the C.I.A. is expected to more than double its fleet of the latest Reaper aircraft — bigger, faster and more heavily armed than the older Predators — to 14 from 6, an Obama administration official said.

Even before the Khost attack, White House officials had made it clear to Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, and Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director, that they expected significant results from the drone strikes in reducing the threat from Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban, according to an administration official and a former senior C.I.A. official with close ties to the White House.

These concerns only heightened after the attempted Dec. 25 bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner. While that plot involved a Nigerian man sent by a Qaeda offshoot in Yemen, intelligence officials say they believe that Al Qaeda’s top leaders in Pakistan have called on affiliates to carry out attacks against the West. “There’s huge pressure from the White House on Blair and Panetta,” said the former C.I.A. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of concern about angering the White House. “The feeling is, the clock is ticking.”

After the Khost bombing, intelligence officials vowed that they would retaliate. One angry senior American intelligence official said the C.I.A. would “avenge” the Khost attack. “Some very bad people will eventually have a very bad day,” the official said at the time, speaking on the condition he not be identified describing a classified program.

Today, officials deny that vengeance is driving the increased attacks, though one called the drone strikes “the purest form of self-defense.”

Officials point to other factors. For one, Pakistan recently dropped restrictions on the drone program it had requested last fall to accompany a ground offensive against militants in South Waziristan. And tips on the whereabouts of extremists ebb and flow unpredictably.

A C.I.A. spokesman, Paul Gimigliano, declined to comment on the drone strikes. But he said, “The agency’s counterterrorism operations — lawful, aggressive, precise and effective — continue without pause.”

The strikes, carried out from a secret base in Pakistan and controlled by satellite link from C.I.A. headquarters in Virginia, have been expanded by President Obama and praised by both parties in Congress as a potent weapon against terrorism that puts no American lives at risk. That calculation must be revised in light of the Khost bombing, which revealed the critical presence of C.I.A. officers in dangerous territory to direct the strikes.

Some legal scholars have questioned the legitimacy under international law of killings by a civilian agency in a country where the United States is not officially at war. This month, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act for government documents revealing procedures for approving targets and legal justifications for the killings.

Critics have contended that collateral civilian deaths are too high a price to pay. Pakistani officials have periodically denounced the strikes as a violation of their nation’s sovereignty, even as they have provided a launching base for the drones.

The increase in drone attacks has caused panic among rank-and-file militants, particularly in North Waziristan, where some now avoid using private vehicles, according to Pakistani intelligence and security officials. Fewer foreign extremists are now in Miram Shah, North Waziristan’s capital, which was previously awash with them, said local tribesmen and security officials.

Despite the consensus in Washington behind the drone program, some experts are dissenters. John Arquilla, a professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School who frequently advises the military, said, “The more the drone campaign works, the more it fails — as increased attacks only make the Pakistanis angrier at the collateral damage and sustained violation of their sovereignty.”

If the United States expands the drone strikes beyond the lawless tribal areas to neighboring Baluchistan, as is under discussion, the backlash “might even spark a social revolution in Pakistan,” Mr. Arquilla said.

So far the reaction in Pakistan to the increased drone strikes has been muted. Last week, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani of Pakistan told Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration’s senior diplomat for Afghanistan and Pakistan, that the drones undermined the larger war effort. But the issue was not at the top of the agenda as it was a year ago.

Hasan Askari Rizvi, a military analyst in Lahore, said public opposition had been declining because the campaign was viewed as a success. Yet one Pakistani general, who supports the drone strikes as a tactic for keeping militants off balance, questioned the long-term impact.

“Has the situation stabilized in the past two years?” asked the general, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Are the tribal areas more stable?” Yes, he said, Baitullah Mehsud, founder of the Pakistani Taliban, was killed by a missile last August. “But he’s been replaced and the number of fighters is increasing,” the general said.

Sabrina Tavernise contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan, and Ismail Khan from Peshawar.

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Govt stumped over Blackwater debate in Senate

Staff Report
http://dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010\01\23\story_23-1-2010_pg7_5

ISLAMABAD: Failing to make the government’s position on Blackwater’s presence in the country clear, State Minister for Interior Tasneem Qureshi on Friday said he had no information on the issue.

The minister failed to address the issue after Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Senator Zafar Ali Shah, citing US Defence Secretary Robert Gates’ statement that the security agency was indeed operating in Pakistan, demanded that Interior Minister Rehman Malik tender his resignation.

“The interior minister had said on the floor of this House that he would tender his resignation if anyone proved Blackwater’s presence in Pakistan. What more proof does the minister require,” Zafar said.Pakistan People’s Party Senator Raza Rabbani said it was time for the government to come clear on the issue.

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January 24, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/world/asia/24military.html

Pentagon Memo
Gates Sees Fallout From Troubled Ties With Pakistan

By ELISABETH BUMILLER

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Nobody else in the Obama administration has been mired in Pakistan for as long as Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. So on a trip here this past week to try to soothe the country’s growing rancor toward the United States, he served as a punching bag tested over a quarter-century.

“Are you with us or against us?” a senior military officer demanded of Mr. Gates at Pakistan’s National Defense University, according to a Pentagon official who recounted the remark made during a closed-door session after Mr. Gates gave a speech at the school on Friday. Mr. Gates, who could hardly miss that the officer was mimicking former President George W. Bush’s warning to nations harboring militants, simply replied, “Of course we’re with you.”

That was the essence of Mr. Gates’s message over two days to the Pakistanis, who are angry about the Central Intelligence Agency’s surge in missile strikes from drone aircraft on militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas, among other grievances, and showed no signs of feeling any love.

The trip, Mr. Gates’s first to Pakistan in three years, proved that dysfunctional relationships span multiple administrations and that the history of American foreign policy is full of unintended consequences.

As the No. 2 official at the C.I.A. in the 1980s, Mr. Gates helped channel Reagan-era covert aid and weapons through Pakistan’s spy agency to the American allies at the time: Islamic fundamentalists fighting the Russians in Afghanistan. Many of those fundamentalists regrouped as the Taliban, who gave sanctuary to Al Qaeda before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and now threaten Pakistan.

In meetings on Thursday, Pakistani leaders repeatedly asked Mr. Gates to give them their own armed drones to go after the militants, not just a dozen smaller, unarmed ones that Mr. Gates announced as gifts meant to placate Pakistan and induce its cooperation.

Pakistani journalists asked Mr. Gates if the United States had plans to take over Pakistan’s nuclear weapons (Mr. Gates said no) and whether the United States would expand the drone strikes farther south into Baluchistan, as is under discussion. Mr. Gates did not answer.

At the same time, the Pakistani Army’s chief spokesman told American reporters at the army headquarters in Rawalpindi on Thursday that the military had no immediate plans to launch an offensive against extremists in the tribal region of North Waziristan, as American officials have repeatedly urged.

And the spokesman, Maj. Gen Athar Abbas, rejected Mr. Gates’s assertion that Al Qaeda had links to militant groups on Pakistan’s border. Asked why the United States would have such a view, the spokesman, General Abbas, curtly replied, “Ask the United States.”

General Abbas’s comments, made only hours after Mr. Gates arrived in Islamabad, were an affront to an American ally that gave Pakistan $3 billion in military aid last year. But American officials, trying to put a positive face on the general’s remarks and laying out what they described as military reality, said that the Pakistani Army was stretched thin from offensives against militants in the Swat Valley and South Waziristan and probably did not have the troops.

“They don’t have the ability to go into North Waziristan at the moment,” an American military official in Pakistan told reporters. “Now, they may be able to generate the ability. They could certainly accept risk in certain places and relocate some of their forces, but obviously that then creates a potential hole elsewhere that could suffer from Taliban re-encroachment.”

Mr. Gates’s advisers cast him as a good cop on a mission to encourage the Pakistanis rather than berate them. And he was characteristically low-key during most his visit here, including during a session with Pakistani journalists on Friday morning at the home of the American ambassador to Pakistan, Anne W. Patterson.

But Mr. Gates perked up when he was brought some coffee, and he soon began to push back against General Abbas. American officials say that the real reason Pakistanis distinguish between the groups is that they are reluctant to go after those that they see as a future proxy against Indian interests in Afghanistan when the Americans leave. India is Pakistan’s archrival in the region.

“Dividing these individual extremist groups into individual pockets if you will is in my view a mistaken way to look at the challenge we all face,” Mr. Gates said, then ticked off the collection on the border.

“Al Qaeda, the Taliban in Afghanistan, Tariki Taliban in Pakistan, Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Haqqani network — this is a syndicate of terrorists that work together,” he said. “And when one succeeds they all benefit, and they share ideas, they share planning. They don’t operationally coordinate their activities, as best I can tell. But they are in very close contact. They take inspiration from one another, they take ideas from one another.”

Mr. Gates, who repeatedly told the Pakistanis that he regretted their country’s “trust deficit” with the United States and that Americans had made a grave mistake in abandoning Pakistan after the Russians left Afghanistan, promised the military officers that the United States would do better.

His final message delivered, he relaxed on the 14-hour trip home by watching “Seven Days in May,” the cold war-era film about an attempted military coup in the United States.