As Washington rises to defend Dr. Afridi, no mention is being made of the potential damage his actions have inflicted on Pakistan's most vulnerable children. The CIA-inspired fake vaccination scheme in Abbottabad to collect bin Laden family's DNA samples has reinforced the fears and doubts in the minds of the parents of the children who really need to be vaccinated. It has also raised suspicions against charities such as Save the Children Fund with which Dr. Afridi claimed affiliation. This misguided effort by Afridi and the CIA has put at risk the heath and well-being of millions of young lives in Pakistan and other developing nations where polio and other similar diseases still persist. Here's how a piece by Maryn McKenna published in Wired magazine describes the outrage:
"I felt, and still feel, that the maneuver — which was belatedly acknowledged by the CIA — was a cynical attempt to hijack the credibility that public health workers have built up over decades with local populations. I especially felt it endangered the status of the fraught polio-eradication campaign, which over the past decade has been challenged in majority-Muslim areas in Africa and South Asia over beliefs that polio vaccination is actually a covert campaign to harm Muslim children — an accusation that seems fantastic, but begins to make sense when you realize some of those areas have perfectly good reasons to distrust vaccination campaigns."
Even without the outrageous scheme by Afridi conducted in collusion with the CIA, the US demands are still hypocritical if one looks at the prison sentences handed out by US courts to Israeli Mossad agent Jonathan Pollard and Pakistani ISI agent Ghulam Nabi Fai in the United States. Both are US citizens.
Some argue that Pakistan should bear the responsibility for CIA's actions because of the country's failure to find bin Laden. While I agree that Pakistan failed badly in capturing bin Laden, there is no evidence to support the assertion that Pakistani government was deliberately hiding bin Laden.
As to the failure to find a most wanted fugitive, one must not forget that it took the FBI 16 years to find crime boss Whitey Bulger. On December 23, 1994, after being tipped off by his former FBI handler about a pending indictment under the RICO Act, Bulger fled Boston and went into hiding. For sixteen years, he remained at large in the United States. For twelve of those years, Bulger was prominently listed on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. On June 22, 2011, Bulger was arrested outside an apartment in Santa Monica, California.
Shuja Nawaz, a scholar with the Atlantic Council in Washington, put it well when he told Voice of America that Pakistanis "see it as the subversion of a Pakistani citizen and his willing participation in an act that was to support the United States intelligence operations inside Pakistan."
Related Links:
Haq's Musings
US Military Undermining Interests in "AfPak"
Northern Distribution Network
From Pakistan to Afghanistan, U.S. Finds Convoy of Chaos
Is US-Pakistan Military Confrontation Inevitable?
Seeing Bin Laden's Death in Wider Perspective
Who Are the Haqqanis?
Military Mutiny in Pakistan?
Can US Aid Remake Pakistan?
The Obama Surge Strategy
US War Effort in Afghanistan Relies on Pakistan
27 comments:
Argument about mistrust in public on Save the children organization and polio vaccination in Pakistan should be backed by credible source e.g. a gallop survey
They are not doing this out of their love for that mole. they are sending a message to other potential moles that US takes care of them and that they should keep selling their mother land for a few ****** dollars.
Why prison, why provide food and bed to a deserter for 33 years from our tax money? why not just execute him Saudi style after Friday prayers outside his hometown mosque/ or preferably an Abbotabad mosque where he committed the crime.
, there is no evidence to support the assertion that Pakistani government was deliberately hiding bin Laden.
Really? So UBL chose 1 km outside the national military academy out of his own free will??
If this isn't circumstantial evidence I don't know what is!
The US by publicly defending and championing the cause of Dr Afridi has established beyond all doubt that Dr Afridi, a Pakistan government employee, was subverted and recruited to work for the CIA. What the US has not explained is why Dr Afridi was left to face the music and why he and his family were not taken out especially when his role was sure to be discovered. The US had abandoned Cuban collaborators after the Bay of Pigs fiasco in the Kennedy era. South Vietnamese collaborators were also abandoned to a horrific fate and now the Afghans are bracing for what awaits them. Angry US law makers have now woken up and demanded that Afridi be released as he has done nothing wrong. He hasn’t under US law but can Pakistan ignore the fact that a Pakistani government official collaborated with a foreign intelligence agency in a clandestine manner? Not if they do not want to set a precedent for others. Dr Afridi under US direction also recruited other government employees to work with him and by using a vaccination campaign as a cover discredited the government’s health care programs. US law makers have proposed a cut of US$ 33mn—one for each year of Dr Afridi’s prison term—to be deducted from the aid to Pakistan and perhaps paid to Dr Afridi as compensation. This cut comes after a proposal to cut all aid to Pakistan by half for the continued closure of the NATO logistics route. The gloves are off and the strategy is to brow beat Pakistan into compliance. Pakistan, and Dr Afridi, are learning what collaboration with the US really means.
Anon: "If this isn't circumstantial evidence I don't know what is!
Whitey Bulger fled Boston after being tipped off by his former FBI handler about a pending indictment under the RICO Act. How's that for "circumstantial evidence" of US govt's role in helping a "most wanted" fugitive?
The movie about the hunt and killing of OBL is shooting in the Indian city of Chandigarh after Bigelow was denied permission to film in Pakistan. The Indian location is standing in for the Pakistani city of Lahore.
If Pakistan was not involved in secretly harboring OBL then the question still remains why OBL was living in a city of high ranking Military Brass of the Pakistan's armed forces. These are the same people who are supposedly in charge of safeguarding Pakistan's nuclear weapons!
The US has to ponder an even more grim situation now.
Here's a Reuters' report on Dr. Afridi's character:
The Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA find Osama bin Laden faced accusations of corruption and other wrongdoing long before he was captured by Pakistani intelligence agents and then jailed for 33 years for treason.
In interviews over the weekend, several current and former Pakistani officials described the doctor, Shakil Afridi, as a hard-drinking womanizer who had faced accusations of sexual assault, harassment and stealing. They said his main obsession was making easy money.
According to a 2002 Pakistan health department document seen by Reuters, Afridi was deemed to be corrupt and unreliable and unfit for government service.
U.S. officials have hailed Afridi, aged in his 40s, as a hero for helping pinpoint bin Laden's location in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad where the al Qaeda leader was killed in May last year in a raid by U.S. Navy SEALs.
Officially Pakistan has said nothing about Afridi except that the court's decision to sentence him should be respected. But the fresh accusations about Afridi's character, coupled with his imprisonment, will almost certainly lead to further strain on already tense bilateral ties.
Pakistani officials' attempts to cast doubt on Afridi's character will likely be viewed in some quarters as retaliation for his work with the Americans, despite the disclosures in the 2002 Pakistani document.
U.S. officials on Monday called the accusations character assassination. In Washington, one senior official said the U.S. government was unaware of any questionable behavior by Afridi.
"Available information showed Afridi was a respected member of the Pakistani health care community," said the senior official. "We are aware of efforts, put in place since Dr. Afridi's arrest, to denigrate his character."
Another U.S. official said: "It's nothing short of puzzling that Pakistani officials would disparage someone who helped in the hunt for bin Laden, a terrorist who had Pakistani blood on his hands."
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His reputation hurt by allegations, Afridi was easy prey for the CIA which found him through his connections to Western aid agencies in about 2009, said the former security official.
"The man was living beyond his means after he was fired," said the former security official. "He got married a third time. He maintained a couple of cars."
Afridi, who came to Abbottabad to carry out the vaccination campaign apparently at the CIA's behest, blundered when he visited the district health officer in the town.
He told the officer he was a volunteer who wanted to provide vaccinations in a certain area and he gave the officer his real name, the former security official said.
The team moved from house to house conducting vaccinations and leaving chalk marks on the door to show the people inside had been vaccinated, as is customary in Pakistan.
"They went in systematically the way a team is supposed to work," said the official. "No eyebrows were raised."
But after bin Laden was killed, his widows unwittingly helped Pakistani authorities track Afridi.
"They said that the only time when somebody from outside visited the house, was this polio vaccination (team)," said the former security official, who believed the only other visitor to the house was bin Laden's courier, about once a month.
Afridi was quickly scooped up by security officials.
When interrogated, Afridi initially said he had no ties with Americans, said the former security official.
"He categorically denied everything to start with," said the former security official. "But when the Americans started asking for him, then I think the cat was out of the bag."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/29/us-pakistan-binladen-doctor-idUSBRE84S01D20120529
Here's a NY Times story on Obama's "kill list":
Nothing else in Mr. Obama’s first term has baffled liberal supporters and confounded conservative critics alike as his aggressive counterterrorism record. His actions have often remained inscrutable, obscured by awkward secrecy rules, polarized political commentary and the president’s own deep reserve.
In interviews with The New York Times, three dozen of his current and former advisers described Mr. Obama’s evolution since taking on the role, without precedent in presidential history, of personally overseeing the shadow war with Al Qaeda.
They describe a paradoxical leader who shunned the legislative deal-making required to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, but approves lethal action without hand-wringing. While he was adamant about narrowing the fight and improving relations with the Muslim world, he has followed the metastasizing enemy into new and dangerous lands. When he applies his lawyering skills to counterterrorism, it is usually to enable, not constrain, his ferocious campaign against Al Qaeda — even when it comes to killing an American cleric in Yemen, a decision that Mr. Obama told colleagues was “an easy one.”
His first term has seen private warnings from top officials about a “Whac-A-Mole” approach to counterterrorism; the invention of a new category of aerial attack following complaints of careless targeting; and presidential acquiescence in a formula for counting civilian deaths that some officials think is skewed to produce low numbers.
The administration’s failure to forge a clear detention policy has created the impression among some members of Congress of a take-no-prisoners policy. And Mr. Obama’s ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron P. Munter, has complained to colleagues that the C.I.A.’s strikes drive American policy there, saying “he didn’t realize his main job was to kill people,” a colleague said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html
ere are NY Times editorial excerpts on Obama's kill list:
How can the world know whether the targets chosen by this president or his successors are truly dangerous terrorists and not just people with the wrong associations? (It is clear, for instance, that many of those rounded up after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks weren’t terrorists.) How can the world know whether this president or a successor truly pursued all methods short of assassination, or instead — to avoid a political charge of weakness — built up a tough-sounding list of kills?
It is too easy to say that this is a natural power of a commander in chief. The United States cannot be in a perpetual war on terror that allows lethal force against anyone, anywhere, for any perceived threat. That power is too great, and too easily abused, as those who lived through the George W. Bush administration will remember.
Mr. Obama, who campaigned against some of those abuses in 2008, should remember. But the Times article, written by Jo Becker and Scott Shane, depicts him as personally choosing every target, approving every major drone strike in Yemen and Somalia and the riskiest ones in Pakistan, assisted only by his own aides and a group of national security operatives. Mr. Obama relies primarily on his counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan.
To his credit, Mr. Obama believes he should take moral responsibility for these decisions, and he has read the just-war theories of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.
The Times article points out, however, that the Defense Department is currently killing suspects in Yemen without knowing their names, using criteria that have never been made public. The administration is counting all military-age males killed by drone fire as combatants without knowing that for certain, assuming they are up to no good if they are in the area. That has allowed Mr. Brennan to claim an extraordinarily low civilian death rate that smells more of expediency than morality.
In a recent speech, Mr. Brennan said the administration chooses only those who pose a real threat, not simply because they are members of Al Qaeda, and prefers to capture suspects alive. Those assurances are hardly binding, and even under Mr. Obama, scores of suspects have been killed but only one taken into American custody. The precedents now being set will be carried on by successors who may have far lower standards. Without written guidelines, they can be freely reinterpreted.
A unilateral campaign of death is untenable. To provide real assurance, President Obama should publish clear guidelines for targeting to be carried out by nonpoliticians, making assassination truly a last resort, and allow an outside court to review the evidence before placing Americans on a kill list. And it should release the legal briefs upon which the targeted killing was based.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/31/opinion/too-much-power-for-a-president.html
Here's a Counterpunch Op Ed on Obama's snub for Zardari & Pakistan at Chicago's NATO summit:
This is a sharp rebuke, given the level of ongoing support that Pakistan has provided to the U.S./NATO war in Afghanistan, which has lasted more than 10 years. Mr. Zardari was apparently under some serious pressure to capitulate. According to an Article in the Christian Science Monitor on May 22, there were high hopes for a deal when he attended the NATO meeting. It appears, however, that he offered to reopen the routes, without demanding the cessation of the Drone Strikes, at a price about 20x higher than what the U.S./NATO had been paying before the routes were closed, an offer unlikely to be accepted . Meanwhile, back in Pakistan, according to any number of sources, Prime Minister Gilani has been convicted by the powerful Supreme Court of Pakistan for refusing to reopen an old corruption case against President Zardari. Their government is in a very vulnerable position.
This is not a happy circumstance in a country where the civilian government has frequently been removed by a military coup, and Mr. Zardari’s father in law was actually executed by Zia al Haq, the military dictator, supported by the U.S., who removed him from office. From the viewpoint of the Pakistani government, this is a defeat any way you look at it. If even the reputedly corrupt Asif Zardari cannot bring himself to reopen the supply routes while the drone strikes continue to wreak havoc on the civilian population of North Waziristan, and cause upheaval in the general population of Pakistan, then it might be time to revisit the policy. However, the self proclaimed Masters of the Universe do not see it that way. This is their world and they will have their way. Violence, humiliation and oppression are their tools of choice. The lives of individuals have no meaning for them, and their mantra of freedom and democracy is meant to drown out the cries of the impoverished and brutalized masses of their victims. As you may imagine, an insult to a already debased opponent was hardly an adequate response to the refusal of a chattel to provide the expected services. So, that wasn’t the end of the affair.
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Mr. President, I have to ask, “What Principles are reflected here? It would appear that Mr. Obama is playing God. Seduced by the power of the Presidency, and at the same time barred from constructive domestic action, President Obama has turned to the minute details of day to day issues of life and death for strangers on the far side of the planet who do not have it in their power to protect themselves from his personally structured version of state terrorism. And last week, his eminence apparently decided to teach the Pakistanis a lesson about defying the mighty powers of the American Olympians. Perhaps, Mr. Obama, you would deign to look down from your lofty post and say a few words of comfort to little Fatima and the dozens of others like her.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/05/31/pakistan-pays-the-price-for-its-defiance/
Here's Asia Times Op Ed by Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar on Chinese & Russian envoys' visits to Pakistan:
The back-to-back visits to Pakistan this week by China's Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi and the Russian president's special envoy for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, are rich in political symbolism and strategic content.
The consultations came at a time when Pakistan is reeling under pressure from the United States, the future of Afghanistan remains complicated and regional security is in flux.
The timing of the consultations will draw attention - since they were sandwiched between the summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Chicago on May 20-21 and the forthcoming summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Beijing on June 6-7. Afghanistan is a burning issue for both international groupings.
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Yang underscored that China will unwaveringly pursue the policy of further strengthening its friendship with Pakistan and is willing to work together to deepen practical cooperation and strengthen the strategic coordination and elevate the partnership to new heights.
Xinhua news agency reported that China and Pakistan have agreed to "strengthen multilateral coordination and to safeguard the common interests of both sides." The reference seems to be to Pakistan's role in the SCO, whose forthcoming summit in Beijing will be attended by Zardari.
While Yang's official visit had a broad-ranging agenda, Kabulov's consultations were focused and purposive. He came to Islamabad primarily to discuss the situation in Afghanistan and the forthcoming visit to Pakistan by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Kabulov is Moscow's ace diplomatic troubleshooter on Afghanistan. The Pakistani accounts quoted him as saying to Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani that "enormous commonalities" existed between Russia and Pakistan on regional issues and bilateral cooperation. Clearly, the reference is to the situation surrounding the Afghan problem, where both Russia and Pakistan have been seeking a bigger role while the US selectively engages them for specific roles.
Putin's visit to Pakistan, which is expected "soon", will be the first by a Russian head of state in the six-decade long history of relations between the two countries. It will consolidate the remarkable makeover in the two countries' relations in the past two to three years.
The fact that Putin picked Pakistan to be one of his first visits abroad after taking over as president in the Kremlin itself testifies to the "mood swing" in the geopolitics of the region. Many trends need to be factored in here.
Russia is gearing up to play an effective role in world affairs. Its assertive stance on Syria and Iran can be expected to extend to Pakistan and Central Asia. Russia kept its participation over the NATO summit on a low-key and saw to it that none of the Central Asian leaders who were invited - from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan - attended either. Meanwhile, Moscow also hosted a summit of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Putin is undertaking visits to Belarus, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan during the week ahead and is virtually launching his Eurasian project.
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The utter failure of the US strategy in Afghanistan stands exposed in terms of its exceptionalism and the stark absence of a regional consensus. Yang and Kabulov could and should have been the US's best allies in urging Pakistan to work with the international community for an enduring peace in Afghanistan. The paradox is that even in the prevailing situation of high volatility in the US's relations with Russia and China they might well have done that, but without Washington's bidding.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/NF02Df03.html
Here's a NY Times blog on lomg term damage caused by CIA's fake vaccination scheme:
Meanwhile, the far more lasting fallout of Afridi’s activities on health campaigns in Pakistan is going unnoticed. Afridi really is a doctor, but rather than dispense vaccinations against hepatitis B, as he was claiming, he was taking DNA samples in the hope of locating Bin Laden. Yet the diplomatic hullabaloo is drowning out any discussion of his severe breach of medical ethics and the adverse impact his actions will have on vaccination programs, particularly polio eradication drives, in Pakistan.
Many Pakistanis, especially those in the tribal areas and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, have long been suspicious of polio vaccinations. They fear that these are a ploy to sterilize Muslims even though they are carried out by government health workers and local NGOs (albeit with international funding). Rumors along these lines, coupled with inadequate health care and persistent insecurity, mean that up to 200,000 children in Pakistan have already missed their polio vaccinations in the past two years. Some 198 cases of polio were reported in Pakistan in 2011, the highest number for any country in the world and up from 144 cases in 2010. This year, 16 cases have already been reported, primarily from the tribal areas.
For years, health workers have tried to prove that various misgivings about vaccination drives are groundless. But the Afridi affair will only confirm Pakistanis’ worst fears, namely that these campaigns are a cover used by the U.S. government to take advantage of the local population, and it will significantly damage the credibility of similar health initiatives.
In 2009, I met residents of the tribal areas fleeing military operations in their villages for refugee camps near Peshawar. At every opportunity, women asked me whether the vaccinations on offer were safe or if they were “American weapons.” I can only imagine how much worse their perceptions of vaccinations are after hearing about Afridi’s phony program.
If the Pakistani authorities had to convict Afridi for anything, it should have been for breaching the Hippocratic Oath. That they didn’t is yet more proof of just how low health features on Pakistan’s list of national priorities, especially compared with security.
http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/pakistani-doctors-work-for-the-cia-undermines-vaccinations-campaigns-everywhere/
Here's NY Times story about Salong Pass as choke point on northern supply routes for NATO:
Nowhere is the impact of Pakistan’s ban on NATO truck traffic more visible than here at the top of the Hindu Kush, on one of the only alternative overland routes for supply convoys to reach Kabul and the rest of the country.
For 20 miles north and south of the old Soviet-built tunnel at Salang Pass, thousands of trucks are idled beside the road, waiting for a turn to get through its perilous, one-and-a-half-mile length.
This is the only passable route for heavy truck traffic bringing NATO supplies in from the Central Asian republics to the north, as they now must come.
There are other roads, but they are often single-lane dirt tracks through even higher mountain passes, or they are frequently subject to ambushes by insurgents and bandits. So a tunnel built to handle 1,000 vehicles a day, and until the Pakistani boycott against NATO in November handling 2,000, now tries — and often fails — to let 10,000 vehicles through, alternating northbound and southbound truck traffic every other day.
“It’s only a matter of time until there’s a catastrophe,” said Lt. Gen. Mohammad Rajab, the head of maintenance for the Salang Pass. “One hundred percent certain, there will be a disaster, and when there is, it’s not a disaster for Afghanistan alone, but for the whole international community that uses this road.” He said 90 percent of the traffic now was trailer and tanker trucks carrying NATO supplies.
The tunnel near the top of this 12,000-foot pass is so narrow — no more than 20 feet across at the base, and less toward the top — that the heavily laden trucks often jam as they try to pass one another, lodging in tightly against the sloping, rough-hewn walls. The trucks have to be winched apart and dragged out by heavy equipment.
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A tanker driver named Mohammadullah, hauling fuel for a NATO contractor, was eight days out of Kabul and still climbing. He said the drivers often ran out of food and were forced to pay exorbitant prices to vendors who drove up with supplies. He expected the round trip would take him most of a month.
“I’d rather be driving to Kandahar,” he said. Trucks need to have armed guards because of insurgents on that route, he said, “but I’d rather do that than all this waiting.”
The much-shorter Pakistani routes, from seaports like Karachi on better roads, were closed to protest the deaths of 24 Pakistani soldiers in an American airstrike. But Pakistan has expressed willingness to reopen the frontier: for a fee of thousands of dollars per truck, compared with $250 previously. “We’re not about to get gouged in the price,” Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said on ABC’s “This Week.”
The Salang Pass tunnel, built in 1964 by the Soviets and never completely finished (it lacks amenities like interior surfacing of the walls and an escape tunnel), has a tragic history. Nine hundred Russians and Afghans reportedly died of asphyxiation in the tunnel in 1982 when a military convoy was trapped inside by an accident or an explosion.
Two years ago, huge avalanches at the southern mouth of the tunnel killed at least 64 people, buried alive in cars and buses.
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The only remotely viable alternative route, General Rajab said, is over the Shibar Pass, farther west. It involves a three-day detour, which could be an improvement over Salang these days. However, the military would have to work at improving security on that route, he said — when he recently detoured trucks that way, they were looted before reaching the pass.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/world/asia/us-pakistan-dispute-chokes-an-afghan-supply-route.html
Israeli foreign minister cites US precedent for refusing Turkey apology, according to Jerusalem Post:
f the US adamantly refuses to apologize to Pakistan for the accidental killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers last November, Israel certainly need not say sorry to Turkey for the Mavi Marmara deaths, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said Monday.
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“The Pakistanis asked the US to apologize, and the Americans said ‘no way,’” Liberman said in reference to the November incident where US forces accidentally fired on two Pakistani border posts.
The US has since expressed regret for the incident, something Israel has also said it was willing to do regarding the killing of nine Turks on the May 2010 flotilla that aimed to break the blockade of Gaza.
“So when they come to us and pressure us to apologize over the Marmara, because of this or that constraint, sometimes even to best friends you must say ‘no.’ Otherwise, no one will respect you,” Liberman declared.
Liberman said the commandos who boarded the Mavi Marmara and clashed with those on the ship were clearly exercising their rights of self defense. The Turkish pressure on Israel to apologize now is to “deter us from using the legitimate right for self defense,” he said....
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Michele Flournoy, who served as the third top official in the Pentagon before stepping down earlier this year, said last week at an Institute for National Security Studies conference in Tel Aviv that it was very important for “Israel to repair its relationship with Turkey.”
Flournoy, who played a key role in shaping US President Barack Obama’s national security policy, hinted that Israel should apologize, saying Turkey was one of the strongest and most influential voices in the region, remained a close and valued NATO ally for the United States, and shared “our interest in preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear weapon state.”
While acknowledging that “she understands that past events have made concrete steps towards reconciliation quite difficult,” Flournoy said “if there is ever a time for Israel to rise above past differences and recriminations with Turkey, now is that time.
“Israel must act more strategically, and I think there is tremendous opportunity to rebuild its partnership with Turkey and with other partners where it can. This is really important at a time of such [regional] uncertainty.”
The Wall Street Journal reported in May that during discussions last December in Washington over whether it should apologize to the Pakistanis, Flournoy suggested language whereby the US would apologize for the “unintentional and tragic” deaths, but would not accept full responsibility. According to the paper, she argued that the “US risked the issue festering.”
No US apology has yet been forthcoming, and The Wall Street Journal quoted a senior administration official as wondering how Washington could apologize to a country that was providing, at least through some parts of its government, tacit support to those attacking US troops.
“This isn’t about politics,” the official is quoted as saying. “This is about the message that would send to our troops and that is what no one in the military or the White House could countenance.”
http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=272656
Here's a CNN report on the impact of CIA's fake vaccination scheme on polio eradication in Pakistan:
Pakistan is causing particular consternation among health officials who say their efforts to vaccinate more children are being frustrated by the CIA's use of a fake vaccination program last year to gather intelligence on Osama bin Laden.
In a letter to CIA director General David Petraeus in February, InterAction, which represents nearly 200 U.S.- based non-government organizations, expressed "deep concern" about the fake campaign.
"Among other factors, international public health officials point to the distrust of vaccines and immunization campaigns as contributing to the lack of progress in eradicating the disease in Pakistan," it said.
"This distrust is only increasing in light of reports about the CIA campaign," it added.
Bin Laden was killed in a raid by U.S. Navy SEALs in May 2011 at a heavily fortified compound in Abbottabad, in northeastern Pakistan.
Local news reports linked Pakistani doctor Shakeel Afridi to the U.S. intelligence operation, alleging he tried to gain access to bin Laden's compound through the fake vaccination scheme.
Pakistan recently sentenced Afridi to 33 years in jail for providing financial and medical assistance to the now defunct militant group Lashkar-e-Islam.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/06/world/asia/pakistan-polio-vaccination/index.html
Here's an excerpt of a Reuters' blog on "US War in FATA":
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is using increasingly forthright terms to describe the spillover of the war in Afghanistan into Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in its campaign of drone strikes. “We are fighting a war in the FATA, we are fighting a war against terrorism,” he said during a visit to India. The idea that the United States is at war inside Pakistan, albeit in its tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, is not new. But the use of language is significant, requiring as Spencer Ackerman noted at Danger Room, “a war-weary (US) public to get used to fighting what’s effectively a third war in a decade, even if this one relies far more on remote controlled robots than ground troops”.
Panetta’s choice of words (and venue for delivering them) may not go down too well with Pakistani authorities in Islamabad/Rawalpindi. It is not particularly promising for the people of FATA either, who find themselves caught in the middle of a shadow war between the United States and Pakistan. But in one respect, it is not necessarily a bad thing. Rarely has the United States fought a war in a place about which it knows so little. If Panetta’s comments force people to learn about FATA, it might even lift us out of what until now has been a polemical debate between supporters and opponents of drone strikes, with little attention paid to the voices of people who actually live there.
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This week I unearthed a book I had borrowed in order to return it – a 1938 edition of the British ”Handbooks for the Indian Army” dealing with “Pathans”. Coming from a generation who grew up learning to be ashamed of colonialism, I expected it to appal me. What I found was a tract which was sympathetic and respectful. It cautioned against using stereotypes about the Pathans, as the British used to call the Pashtun. It admired their history and poetry, commended them as soldiers; noted their respect for democracy and justice and insisted on paying attention quickly to their grievances. Avoiding the trap of
thinking that all people of FATA are the same, it described in detail the different tribes – their lifestyles often influenced by availability of arable land. The British liked to study and classify their imperial subjects all the better to control them - rather as a collector pins rare butterflies to a wall – so let’s not get carried away with the supposed benevolence.
But consider what it said about the need for political reform. “Pathans have often been stimatized as combining some of the worst traits of human character,” it noted, when describing their violent lifestyle and endless blood feuds. “But it is difficult to perceive in what other manner the tribesman is to protect himself, and his property and family, unless there is a complete social change of the conditions under which he lives; and as long as there is no settled government, and the principle of might being right prevails, this cannot occur.”
Remember that was 1938 and the British had already acknowledged the need for “settled government” even if they did not implement it. By now, one would have thought we would have become more aware. If nothing else, in the long years since the Sept 11 attacks on New York and Washington we might have studied the region where the United States is, as Panetta said, “at war”. Yet we know less about FATA now than the British did more than 70 years ago. These are the “tribal badlands”, the terms of their isolation defined by us rather than them, a place we choose not to know. Rather than knowledge we have polemics on drones. What have we become?
http://blogs.reuters.com/pakistan/2012/06/07/fata-is-not-a-country-in-africa/
Here's a TOI story on declining violence in Pakistan:
According to the data collated by Pakistan Body Count, an organisation that maintains a 'news-report based database' of suicide and drone attacks carried out in the country, the number of incidents as well as causalities, have witnessed a steep decline compared to 2009 and 2010 - the peak years in terms of causalities. The incidents which failed to reach even double digits in the five years spanning between 2002- 2006 suddenly spiked to 57 in 2007. The bombings claimed over 800 lives in that year. They went unchecked for the next two years and reached a peak in 2009 when 90 suicide bombings claimed over thousand lives.
Although the number of incidents started declining in 2010 but the number of fatalities increased. In 2011 there were 44 blasts killing 625 people- nearly half of the 2009 figures. By March 2012, when the data was last updated, there were only 16 such blasts which took 119 lives.
Figures
Year Total Blasts Killed Injured
2002 2 27 91
2003 2 65 115
2004 8 82 399
2005 4 83 230
2006 9 161 230
2007 57 842 2008
2008 61 940 2426
2009 90 1090 3462
2010 58 1153 2954
2011 44 625 1386
2012 16 119 254
Source: Pakistan Body Count
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/pakistan/Suicide-attacks-declining-in-Pakistan/articleshow/14065049.cms
http://pakistanbodycount.org/
Here's a piece by Noam Chomsky titled "Somebody Else's Atrocity":
In his penetrating study “Ideal Illusions: How the U.S. Government Co-Opted Human Rights,” international affairs scholar James Peck observes, “In the history of human rights, the worst atrocities are always committed by somebody else, never us”—whoever “us” is.
Almost any moment in history yields innumerable illustrations. Let’s keep to the past few weeks.
On May 10, the Summer Olympics were inaugurated at the Greek birthplace of the ancient games. A few days before, virtually unnoticed, the government of Vietnam addressed a letter to the International Olympic Committee expressing the “profound concerns of the Government and people of Viet Nam about the decision of IOC to accept the Dow Chemical Company as a global partner sponsoring the Olympic Movement.”
Dow provided the chemicals that Washington used from 1961 onward to destroy crops and forests in South Vietnam, drenching the country with Agent Orange.
These poisons contain dioxin, one of the most lethal carcinogens known, affecting millions of Vietnamese and many U.S. soldiers. To this day in Vietnam, aborted fetuses and deformed infants are very likely the effects of these crimes—though, in light of Washington’s refusal to investigate, we have only the studies of Vietnamese scientists and independent analysts.
Joining the Vietnamese appeal against Dow are the government of India, the Indian Olympic Association, and the survivors of the horrendous 1984 Bhopal gas leak, one of history’s worst industrial disasters, which killed thousands and injured more than half a million.
Union Carbide, the corporation responsible for the disaster, was taken over by Dow, for whom the matter is of no slight concern. In February, Wikileaks revealed that Dow hired the U.S. private investigative agency Stratfor to monitor activists seeking compensation for the victims and prosecution of those responsible.
Another major crime with very serious persisting effects is the Marine assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujah in November 2004.
Women and children were permitted to escape if they could. After several weeks of bombing, the attack opened with a carefully planned war crime: Invasion of the Fallujah General Hospital, where patients and staff were ordered to the floor, their hands tied. Soon the bonds were loosened; the compound was secure.
The official justification was that the hospital was reporting civilian casualties, and therefore was considered a propaganda weapon.
Much of the city was left in “smoking ruins,” the press reported while the Marines sought out insurgents in their “warrens.” The invaders barred entry to the Red Crescent relief organization. Absent an official inquiry, the scale of the crimes is unknown.
If the Fallujah events are reminiscent of the events that took place in the Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica, now again in the news with the genocide trial of Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic, there’s a good reason. An honest comparison would be instructive, but there’s no fear of that: One is an atrocity, the other not, by definition.
As in Vietnam, independent investigators are reporting long-term effects of the Fallujah assault.
Medical researchers have found dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukemia, even higher than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Uranium levels in hair and soil samples are far beyond comparable cases.
One of the rare investigators from the invading countries is Dr. Kypros Nicolaides, director of the fetal-medicine research center at London’s King’s College Hospital. “I’m sure the Americans used weapons that caused these deformities,” Nicolaides says.
The lingering effects of a vastly greater nonatrocity were reported last month by U.S. law professor James Anaya, the U.N. rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples.....
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/13328/somebody_elses_atrocities
Here's a Daily Times report on US aid to Pakistan:
United States Agency for International Development (USAID) disbursed to Pakistan over $2.6 billion in economic, energy, health, education and infrastructure projects under Kerry-Lugar-Berman (KLB) Bill.
“The main emphasis of USAID assistance was on energy production, economic growth, agriculture improvement, education, health and infrastructure projects in the country,” USAID Acting Country Director Karen Freeman told newsmen Friday after function at National Institute of Health here.
“US wants prosperous, secure, stable Pakistan with improvement in all basic needs of life available to people at grassroots level. All USAID funded projects are on track,” she said adding besides producing 400 megawatts (MW) through new projects, assistance is being provided for improving existing energy projects.
She said US government through USAID provided assistance to help strengthen energy sector, enhance economic and educational opportunities available to Pakistanis, improve health care services and meet critical infrastructure needs in remote mountain areas. It also provided substantial relief, recovery assistance, such as when floods devastated the country in year 2010.
Earlier, addressing certificate distribution ceremony of disease control and prevention program, she said outbreak of infection diseases, malaria, tuberculosis, hepatitis threaten well being of entire society. Doctors training will improve their skill to face this challenge. Strong disease surveillance, analysis, control systems are imperative so that infectious diseases are stopped.
Freeman said 31 Pakistani medical officials completed four week training from intensive US funded training program in basic epidemiology designed to strengthen detection, surveillance, analysis of infectious disease at district, provincial level. Program seeks to improve public health, disease control by building capacity in epidemiology, public health surveillance and response, public health laboratories, information systems for disease surveillance. USAID provided $6.78 million for this program since year 2006.
Since inception USAID health program trained 11,000 health care providers, provided 126 ambulances, upgraded 89 community healthcare facilities. In 2010 USAID helped restore 150 schools, trained over 600 teachers in Malakand. USAID offered training in finance to 19,000 women business owners in Punjab, Sindh provinces in 2010. As part of flood relief efforts USAID established 190 mobile health clinics, helped provide safe drinking water to over 1.5 million people daily.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2012\06\16\story_16-6-2012_pg5_10
Here's a German review by Dr. Ludwing Watzal of a book titled "Pakistan: The US, Geopolitics and Grand Strategies":
The killing of Osama Bin Laden highlighted the already shattered relationship between the American and Pakistani governments. This incursion, the illegal drone war and other encroachments upon the Pakistan’s sovereignty by the US have brought the “special” relationship to square one. Yet, “the post 9/11 US-Pakistan relationship is not as special it is often portrayed as being. It reflects a complex combination of the phenomena of the war on terror, regional alliances and geopolitical realities, and Indian-Pakistani arch rivalries.” The skillful balancing of this political mélange is seen by the US and its Western cronies as a double game. Despite its close relationship with China and its difficult political and geopolitical maneuvering, Pakistan is still perceived as a key Western ally.
The book’s editors, Usama Butt, director of the Institute of Islamic Sociopolitical and Strategic Affair (IISA), and Julian Schofield, deputy director of the Centre d’études des politoques étrangères et de sécurité (CEPES) at the Université du Québec in Montréal, have gathered leading scholars from Pakistan and some Western countries. Even a scholar from the American Enterprise Institute, a neo-conservative think tank, is on board.
The book is divided into two parts: The first one deals exclusively with Pakistan-US relations; the second part discusses Pakistan´s foreign relations with other states. Pakistan’s domestic setting is as complex as its geopolitical situation and cannot be reduced to the decade of the “war on terror” or solely explained by its complicated relation to India. Both sections of the book are based on the paradigm that the country’s foreign policy should not be defined by the war on terror. Beside the US, Pakistan’s staunchest allies are Saudi Arabia and China, and the relations with Iran and Afghanistan are also excellent.
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The book leaves the reader with the strong impression that the US Empire is not sensitive enough to the regional interests of its “ally” Pakistan, let alone of other actors. US President Obama’s drone war that causes many more deaths among civilians than among alleged terrorists infuriates the Pakistani people and contributes to the instability of the country. The global war on terror has badly affected the central Asian region. It serves only the hegemonic interests of the US and is directed against China and Russia.
Unfortunately, some authors use the phrase “global war on terror” to describe the havoc that is caused by the US Empire in the region. However, this terminology is a language construction. First, it is not a “war” and secondly, the operations going under this heading are not directed against “terrorists” but aim at US hegemony. The current discussions in the US show that the “drone war” and President Obama’s “hit list” are seen by some pundits as “state terrorism”. Unfortunately, the authors do not render these issues problematic.
http://www.international.to/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6306:pakistan-the-us-geopolitics-and-grand-strategies&catid=66:oped&Itemid=151
Here's a NY Times report on CIA's ruse hurting anti-polio campaign in Pakistan:
In Pakistan, where polio has never been eliminated, the C.I.A.’s decision to send a vaccination team into the Bin Laden compound to gather information and DNA samples clearly hurt the national polio drive. The question is: How badly?
After the ruse by Dr. Shakil Afridi was revealed by a British newspaper a year ago, angry villagers, especially in the lawless tribal areas on the Afghan border, chased off legitimate vaccinators, accusing them of being spies.
And then, late last month, Taliban commanders in two districts banned polio vaccination teams, saying they could not operate until the United States ended its drone strikes. One cited Dr. Afridi, who is serving a 33-year sentence imposed by a tribal court, as an example of how the C.I.A. could use the campaign to cover espionage.
“It was a setback, no doubt,” conceded Dr. Elias Durry, the World Health Organization’s polio coordinator for Pakistan. “But unless it spreads or is a very longtime affair, the program is not going to be seriously affected.”
He and other leaders of the global war on polio say they have recovered from worse setbacks. The two districts, North and South Waziristan, are in sparsely populated mountains where transmission is less intense than in urban slums. Only about 278,000 children under age 5 — the vaccine target population — live there. By contrast, in northern Nigeria, where polio is being beaten after years of public resistance to the vaccine campaign, children number in the millions.
Also, Dr. Durry said, vaccinators reached 225,000 Waziristan youngsters in early June, before the ban. All will need several doses to be fully protected, but each dose buys time.
And, said Dr. Bruce Aylward, the W.H.O.’s chief of polio eradication, vaccination teams are posted at highway checkpoints, train stations and bus stations. They give drops to all the children they find.
The truth probably won’t emerge until the summer spike of polio cases tapers off in the fall. The virus likes hot weather, and the summer monsoons flood the sewage-choked gutters where it lurks.
Paralyzed children may also be found in neighboring countries with better surveillance, as they have been before just over the China and Tajikistan borders. Genetic testing will show whether the strains are Pakistan-based.
---
Local anger was at its height last July, when The Guardian exposed the C.I.A. connection. It was confirmed by Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta in January. Public outrage flared again in May after Dr. Afridi was sentenced. A coalition of aid groups protested to David Petraeus, the director of Central Intelligence.
“There could hardly have been a more stupid venture, and there was bound to be a backlash, especially for polio,” said Dr. Zulfiqar A. Bhutta, a vaccine specialist at Aga Khan University in Pakistan.
Dr. Bhutta, who also heads the government’s research ethics committee, said both Dr. Afridi and the C.I.A. could be “sued or worse.” To establish their credibility, Dr. Afridi’s teams vaccinated whole neighborhoods in Abbottabad without permission.
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Victory gets tantalizingly close, and then recedes, forcing health authorities to appeal for another $1 billion, as they did recently in Geneva.
Nigeria had only 62 cases last year; Pakistan had 198. For every known case, there are about 200 carriers with no symptoms, experts believe. Thus far in Pakistan this year, only 22 confirmed cases have been found. But the virus is still in sewage samples, meaning people are still shedding it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/10/health/cia-vaccine-ruse-in-pakistan-may-have-harmed-polio-fight.html
^^^^^
Year Total Blasts Killed Injured
2002 2 27 91
2003 2 65 115
2004 8 82 399
2005 4 83 230
2006 9 161 230
2007 57 842 2008
2008 61 940 2426
2009 90 1090 3462
2010 58 1153 2954
2011 44 625 1386
2012 16 119 254
_____
This is ONLY suicide attacks as far as terrorist fatalities go.
For a total body count of ALL terrorist attacks, use this link:
http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/pakistan/database/casualties.htm
^^RH: The US Congress and the Obama administration are incensed by the 33-year prison term handed to Dr. Shakil Afridi accused by Pakistan of spying for the CIA.....
....the US demands are still hypocritical if one looks at the prison sentences handed out by US courts to Israeli Mossad agent Jonathan Pollard....
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A) You cannot convict someone for spying unless they have transferred classied or restricted information. Transfer of unrestricted information is not considered "spying" under the law.
Dr. Afridi did NOT transfer any classified or restricted information to the CIA. He did not betray any National secrets.
Therefore, he cannot be convicted of spying.
How do I know this? See (B)
B) Dr. Afridi could NOT be convicted of spying because he did was not legally "spying". So instead they convicted him of "supporting Lashkar-i-Islam" after embracing an “ideology based on hatred” that "sought to overthrow the Government of Pakistan"
http://alturl.com/kbqid
Obviously, this was a show trial in a Kangaroo court. Dr. Afridi was not locked up for spying or harming the National Interest of Pakistan, but for making the Army/ISI look foolish and incompetent.
This is not the "law taking its own course" withing "an independent judiciary" as Bilawal has been falsely saying to the Western Media. This was a act of revenge by the Army/ISI and had nothing to do with the law.
HWJ: "This is not the "law taking its own course" withing "an independent judiciary" as Bilawal has been falsely saying to the Western Media. This was a act of revenge by the Army/ISI and had nothing to do with the law. "
Bilawal is absolutely right.
Afridi is already challenging his conviction and the courts will decide his fate.
In my view, Afridi is guilty of multiple counts of being a foreign agent in the same way that Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai was in the eyes of the US. Fai transferred no "restricted" US info to Pakistan...he was merely a Washington lobbyist for Kashmiri freedom seekers who was allegedly paid by the ISI...the same way that Afridi was paid by the CIA.
In addition, Afrdi and his CIA handlers have done incalculable harm to the polio vaccination campaign designed to save many millions of children.
The fact is that CIA has screwed up big time first by organizing the bogus polio campaign which is badly hurting the genuine polio campaign in Pakistan and then abandoning Afridi by failing to evacuate him before he got caught.
And now the CIA officials are worried it sends the wrong message to their other "assets" in Pakistan and elsewhere that they'll be on their own if they get caught.
Here's a Dawn story on polio eradication in Pakistan:
LAHORE, Jan 26: A World Health Organization (WHO) official says this is for the first time in the public health history of Pakistan that the country is on the track to get rid of poliovirus type 3 (P3), one of the two globally continuing strains of the wild poliovirus, in April.
Last time, a P3 case was reported on April 14, 2012 and it would be a great breakthrough in the fight against polio if the virus is not found in any part of the country till April 14 this year.
India is gearing up to be declared polio free by 2014. The WHO has already removed India from the list of polio endemic countries.
“We believe that Pakistan is on the right track to become free of poliovirus type P3, as the last P3 case was reported in the Bara Tehsil in Khyber Agency in the second week of April 2012, whereas all recent sewage samples show no active transmission of the P3 strain across the country,” Dr Elias Durry, head of the Polio Eradication Initiative at WHO Pakistan, told Dawn.
According to the WHO, type 2 strain of the poliovirus (P2) has been eradicated globally since 1999.
About eradication of the P3 strain throughout the world, Dr Durry says Nigeria reported 19 cases of the P3 strain and the most recent case was reported in November. He says that recent security-related incidents disrupted national polio campaigns. “Though there is more than 70 per cent decrease in polio cases in Pakistan, no corner of the country can be considered polio free until the poliovirus is eradicated throughout the country,” says the WHO official.
“Pakistan successfully brought down the number of cases by 71 per cent in 2012 compared to 2011. All provinces except Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have brought down the number of cases from 66 per cent to 95 per cent,” says the official.
Dr Durry says last year Balochistan brought down the number of polio cases by 95 per cent, Sindh by 88 per cent, Punjab by 78 per cent and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) by 66 per cent. “The most promising sign for Pakistan during the last year was a massive decrease in the number of polio cases during the high transmission season,” he said.
He said the last polio case of 2012 was reported on Nov 30 and a small number of samples from last year was still pending with the polio virology lab for evaluation. “Most likely, Pakistan is going to close its tally of 2012 polio cases at 58,” Dr Durry said.
The official says that all sewage samples collected from cities of Punjab in recent weeks were found negative. He says: “Most samples collected from Peshawar, Gadap Town in Karachi and Hyderabad produced positive results in the past, but they showed negative results now.”
http://dawn.com/2013/01/27/pakistan-close-to-getting-rid-of-a-polio-virus-who/
Here's NY Times blog post by Huma Yusuf on conspiracy theories in Pakistan:
As the security situation in Pakistan continues to deteriorate, trading conspiracy theories has become the new national pastime. Nothing is more popular on the airwaves, at dinner parties or around tea stalls than to speculate, especially about American activities on Pakistani soil.
According to many Pakistanis, the C.I.A. used a mysterious technology to cause the devastating floods that affected 20 million people in 2010. Washington had the teenage champion for girls’ education, Malala Yousafzai, shot as part of a campaign to demonize the Pakistani Taliban and win public support for American drone strikes against them. The terrorists who strike Pakistani targets are non-Muslim “foreign agents.” Osama bin Laden was an American operative.
The Pakistani penchant for conspiracy theories results from decades of military rule, during which the army controlled the media and the shadowy Inter-Services Intelligence agency controlled much of everything else. The lack of transparency and scarcity of information during subsequent democratic rule has further fueled rumors.
Mostly, however, conspiracy theories persist because many turn out to be true.
A few years ago, Pakistan’s independent media denounced the presence in Pakistan of C.I.A. agents and private security firms like Blackwater. While U.S. and Pakistani government officials denied any such infiltration, private television channels broadcast footage of the homes of Westerners, allegedly Blackwater agents. One right-wing newspaper, The Nation, even named one Wall Street Journal correspondent as a C.I.A. spy, forcing him to leave the country.
For a time liberal Pakistanis condemned this as a witch hunt and decried poor journalistic ethics. But soon the international media disclosed that Blackwater was in fact operating in Pakistan at an airbase in Baluchistan used by the C.I.A.
Then it was revealed that the American citizen who shot and killed two Pakistanis in Lahore in January 2011 — an American diplomat, the U.S. government claimed initially — turned out to be a C.I.A. agent, just as many conspiracy theorists had surmised.
And what about those U.S. drone strikes targeting militants in Pakistan’s tribal belt? It turns out those suspicious Pakistanis were right to imagine that their own government was complicit. That became clear when, in November 2011, to protest a NATO airstrike that killed Pakistani soldiers near the border with Afghanistan, the Pakistani government ordered the C.I.A. to leave the Shamsi airbase in Baluchistan, from where the drone attacks were being launched.
Other rumors concern India, Pakistan’s long-time rival. Zaid Hamid, a jihadist-turned-policy analyst, alleges that the Indian spy agency R.A.W. funds and arms the Pakistani Taliban. Some Pakistani officials accuse New Delhi of facilitating the separatist insurgency in Baluchistan.
This paranoia was confirmed this week by Chuck Hagel, the new U.S. secretary of defense. A video clip from 2011 that circulated during his confirmation hearings shows Hagel claiming that India uses Afghanistan as a “second front” against Pakistan and “has over the years financed problems for Pakistan on that side of the border.”
The allegation outraged the Indian government and undermined liberal Pakistanis who believe India wants a stable Pakistan and support improved bilateral ties. Meanwhile, of course, it validated those conspiracy mongers who have long warned that India wants to culturally subsume, colonize or destroy Pakistan.
http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/the-truthers-of-pakistan/
Here are excerpts of NY Times summary of “The Way of the Knife: The C.I.A., a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth” by Mark Mazzetti:
More than two years later, the Raymond Davis episode has been largely forgotten in the United States. It was immediately overshadowed by the dramatic raid months later that killed Osama bin Laden — consigned to a footnote in the doleful narrative of America’s relationship with Pakistan. But dozens of interviews conducted over several months, with government officials and intelligence officers in Pakistan and in the United States, tell a different story: that the real unraveling of the relationship was set off by the flurry of bullets Davis unleashed on the afternoon of Jan. 27, 2011, and exacerbated by a series of misguided decisions in the days and weeks that followed. In Pakistan, it is the Davis affair, more than the Bin Laden raid, that is still discussed in the country’s crowded bazaars and corridors of power.
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Back in Washington, Ambassador Haqqani was summoned to C.I.A. headquarters on Feb. 21 and taken into Panetta’s spacious office overlooking the agency’s campus in Langley, Va. Sitting around a large conference table, Panetta asked Haqqani for his help securing Davis’s release. “If you’re going to send a Jason Bourne character to Pakistan, he should have the skills of a Jason Bourne to get away,” Haqqani shot back, according to one person who attended the meeting.
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Munter said he believed that the C.I.A. was being reckless and that his position as ambassador was becoming untenable. His relationship with the C.I.A. station chief in Islamabad, already strained because of their disagreements over the handling of the Davis case, deteriorated even further when Munter demanded that the C.I.A. give him the chance to call off specific missile strikes. During one screaming match between the two men, Munter tried to make sure the station chief knew who was in charge, only to be reminded of who really held the power in Pakistan.
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On the streets and in the markets of Pakistan, Raymond Davis remains the boogeyman, an American killer lurking in the subconscious of a deeply insecure nation. On a steamy summer night last summer, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed — the head of Lashkar-e-Taiba and the reason Davis and his team were sent to Lahore in the first place — stood on the back of a flatbed truck and spoke to thousands of cheering supporters less than a mile from Pakistan’s Parliament building in Islamabad. A $10 million American bounty still hung over Saeed’s head, part of a broader squeeze on Lashkar-e-Taiba’s finances. But there he was, out in the open and whipping the crowd into a fury with a pledge to “rid Pakistan of American slavery.” The rally was the culmination of a march from Lahore to Islamabad that Saeed ordered to protest American involvement in the country. The night before the march reached the capital, six Pakistani troops were killed by gunmen riding motorcycles not far from where the marchers were spending the night, leading to speculation that Saeed had ordered the attack.
But Saeed insisted that night that he was not to blame for the deaths. The killers were foreigners, he told the crowd, a group of assassins with a secret agenda to destabilize Pakistan and steal its nuclear arsenal. With a dramatic flourish, he said he knew exactly who had killed the men.
“It was the Americans!” he shouted to loud approvals. “It was Blackwater!” The cheers grew even louder. He saved the biggest applause line ...
www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/magazine/raymond-davis-pakistan.html
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