tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post6850206498343042812..comments2024-03-18T16:01:13.871-07:00Comments on Haq's Musings: Seeing Osama Bin Laden's Death in Broader PerspectiveRiaz Haqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comBlogger71125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-85978541706655373612022-09-11T17:00:46.422-07:002022-09-11T17:00:46.422-07:00☀️👀
@zei_squirrel
today is the 21st anniversary o...<br />☀️👀<br />@zei_squirrel<br />today is the 21st anniversary of 9/11, and also of the entire media class losing their minds over Chomsky telling some uncomfortable truths about it<br /><br />https://twitter.com/zei_squirrel/status/1568885537045348356?s=20&t=SNq5rllCrYS-00uVUPXzNA<br /><br />--------------<br /><br /><br />☀️👀<br />@zei_squirrel<br />today is also the 49th anniversary of the first 9/11, a much worse act of state terror conveniently memory-holed by the Western media and political class because the US sponsored it: the fascist military coup against Chile's socialist government<br /><br />---------------------<br /><br /><br />☀️👀<br />@zei_squirrel<br />as the media class began the "War on Terror" propaganda, in November 2001 Chomsky was pointing out that the US is the world's leading terrorist state and that "it's a great error to describe terrorism as the weapon of the weak: it's a weapon of the strong, and always has been."<br /><br /><br />--------------<br /><br /><br />☀️👀<br />@zei_squirrel<br />right after 9/11 the first major part of the so-called "War on Terror" was the US empire's illegal invasion of Afghanistan under false pretenses, destroying the country and killing over 200.000 over the next 2 decades. The entire media class cheered it on<br /><br /><br />----------<br /><br /><br />☀️👀<br />@zei_squirrel<br />the next target of the "War on Terror" was Iraq, and here too the media class played a key role in manufacturing consent for the destruction of the country and the killing of over 1 million, which remains the greatest crime of the 21st century<br /><br />---------------<br /><br /><br />☀️👀<br />@zei_squirrel<br />despite the pervasive hysterical propaganda, there was also opposition to the "War on Terror" from ordinary people, most notably against the war on Iraq with the largest global demonstrations in history. Here is CorbRiaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-26930752104839648362022-08-01T16:56:12.738-07:002022-08-01T16:56:12.738-07:00#POTUS #Biden announces the killing of #AlQaeda le...#POTUS #Biden announces the killing of #AlQaeda leader #AymanZawahiri in a #drone strike on #Kabul, #Afghanistan. https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/biden-counter-terrorism-remarks-08-01-22/h_91118cd7f46e8a38683782b0df7e2ba3<br /><br />Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, who sources say was killed by a US drone strike, Zawahiri, had remained a visible international symbol of the group — 11 years after the US killed Osama bin Laden.<br /><br />At one point, he acted as bin Laden's personal physician.<br /><br />Zawahiri comes from a distinguished Egyptian family, according to the New York Times. He eventually helped to mastermind the deadliest terror attack on American soil, when hijackers turned US airliners into missiles.<br /><br />"Those 19 brothers who went out and gave their souls to Allah almighty, God almighty has granted them this victory we are enjoying now," al-Zawahiri said in a videotaped message released in April 2002.<br /><br />It was the first of many taunting messages the terrorist — who became al Qaeda's leader after US forces killed bin Laden in 2011 — would send out over the years, urging militants to continue the fight against America and chiding US leaders.<br /><br />Zawahiri was constantly on the move once the US-led invasion of Afghanistan began after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. At one point, he narrowly escaped a US onslaught in the rugged, mountainous Tora Bora region of Afghanistan, an attack that left his wife and children dead.<br /><br />He made his public debut as a Muslim militant when he was in prison for his involvement in the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.<br /><br />He spent three years in prison after Sadat's assassination and claimed he was tortured while in detention. After his release, he made his way to Pakistan, where he treated wounded mujahadeen fighters who fought against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.<br /><br />That was when he met bin Laden and found a common cause.<br /><br />"We are working with brother bin Laden," he said in announcing the merger of his terror group, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, with al Qaeda in May 1998. "We know him since more than 10 years now. We fought with him here in Afghanistan."<br /><br />Together, the two terror leaders signed a fatwa, or declaration: "The judgment to kill and fight Americans and their allies, whether civilians or military, is an obligation for every Muslim."<br /><br />The attacks against the United States and its facilities began weeks later, with the suicide bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 200 people and wounded more than 5,000 others. Zawahiri and bin Laden gloated after they escaped a US cruise missile attack in Afghanistan that had been launched in retaliation.<br /><br />Then, there was the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000, when suicide bombers on a dinghy detonated their boat, killing 17 American sailors and wounding 39 others.<br /><br />The culmination of Zawahiri's terror plotting came on September 11, 2001, when nearly 3,000 people were killed in the attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Center and Pentagon. A fourth hijacked airliner, headed for Washington, crashed in a Pennsylvania field after passengers fought back.<br /><br />Since then, Zawahiri raised his public profile, appearing on numerous video and audiotapes to urge Muslims to join the jihad against the United States and its allies. Some of his tapes were followed closely by terrorist attacks. In May 2003, for instance, almost simultaneous suicide bombings in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killed 23 people, including nine Americans, days after a tape thought to contain Zawahiri's voice was released.<br /><br />The US State Department had offered a reward of up to $25 million for information leading directly to his capture. A June 2021 United Nations report suggested he was located somewhere in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and that he may have been too frail to be featured in propaganda.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-44048749496840788932021-10-15T19:28:12.647-07:002021-10-15T19:28:12.647-07:00Book review: 'The Mirage' by Matt Ruff
ht...Book review: 'The Mirage' by Matt Ruff<br /><br />https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-xpm-2012-feb-12-la-ca-matt-ruff-20120212-story.html<br /><br />I found myself thinking about Dick and “The Man in the High Castle” as I read Matt Ruff’s “The Mirage,” which offers an alternative universe of its own. Here, it’s not World War II that’s turned on its head but the War on Terror, with a fundamentalist America — a collection of rogue states and small theocracies — as the antagonists against a secular Islamic democracy called the United Arab States.<br /><br />In such a world, 9/11 never happened; rather, it is 11/9, the mirror image, in which Christian terrorists “hijacked four commercial passenger jetliners … crash[ing] two of them into the Tigris and Euphrates World Trade Towers in downtown Baghdad, Iraq, and a third into the Arab Defense Ministry headquarters in the federal district of Riyadh. The fourth plane, which is believed to have been bound for either the Presidential Palace in Riyadh or, possibly, Mecca … crashed in Arabia’s Empty Quarter after its passengers attempted to retake control from the hijackers.” After these attacks, the UAS captures Denver, then launches a wider military campaign on the East Coast, establishing a “Green Zone” in the hostile environs of Washington, D.C.<br /><br /><br /><br />This is a terrific setup, using fiction to take events and tweak them, albeit recognizably. Yet for all the enthusiasm Ruff brings to his efforts, the illusion never feels completely real. Why? A couple of reasons, I think, beginning with the proximity of the narrative to recent experience.<br /><br />For me, the most effective alternate histories are the most organic, those that have an internal logic of their own. That’s what Dick did in “The Man in the High Castle” — or what William Gibson and Bruce Sterling did in “The Difference Engine,” Philip Roth in “The Plot Against America,” Michael Chabon in “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union” — to create a world that stands alongside the real one, while not depending on it, exactly, for all its context clues. Thus, while these novels feature historical players (Goebbels, Göring, or, in the case of Roth, Charles Lindbergh), they are not protagonists but more part of the social fabric.<br /><br />--------<br /><br />I can buy Saddam Hussein as a John Gotti-like master of the underworld; that’s not so far from what he was in life. But while it’s funny, shocking even, to imagine Osama bin Laden as the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he behaves in a manner more befitting a terrorist than an elected official — even in this mirror world. Then there’s LBJ, who, in these pages, survives to become an American Saddam, as well as David Koresh and Timothy McVeigh, both part of the American insurgency, a fragmented movement led by, among others, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. The idea, I suppose, is to use the alternate landscape of the novel to comment on the absurdities of our situation, but it’s never quite clear what all these people have to do with one another or how they ended up within the same sphere.<br /><br />-----------------<br /><br />To mitigate this, perhaps, Ruff creates his own form of chaos by evoking, à la Dick, a pathway back to the actual world. This takes the form of artifacts (a New York Times from Sept. 12, 2001, reporting a terrorist strike on Manhattan; Iraqi bank notes bearing Saddam’s image) that hint at the existence of a reality beyond that of the novel — another interesting idea but again one that isn’t fully developed, relying on coincidence, on supernatural phenomena to explain how the whole thing unfolds.<br /><br />I don’t want to give too much away, but in the end, this leaves the imagined world a flimsy simulacrum, with no particular integrity of its own. The same is true of the history Ruff creates, interweaving throughout the book a series of pages from the Wikipedia-like “Library of Alexandria” (“a user-edited reference source”) that seek to answer context questions yet never explain convincingly how a tolerant secular Arab union arose out of the Ottoman Empire or how the U.S. descended into tribal war.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-87314693608674927602020-03-17T11:54:33.420-07:002020-03-17T11:54:33.420-07:00Exclusive: #US #SpecialOps aviator reveals #BinLad...Exclusive: #US #SpecialOps aviator reveals #BinLaden mission details for the first time: #American Chinook helicopter on its way back from Abbottabad was engaged 3 times by a #Pakistani F-16. #Pakistan felt like “metropolis United States". #Afghanistan https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2020/03/17/legendary-special-operations-aviator-reveals-bin-laden-mission-details-for-the-first-time/#.XnEPs2l3HtU.twitter<br /><br />Crossing into Pakistan was emotional for everyone.<br /><br />“You know, it’s almost like there’s a road sign, ‘Stop, take a picture of Welcome to Pakistan.’ Even the crew members in the back, were like, ‘We’re in, right? Pakistan?’ And I’m like, ‘Yep’,” Englen said.<br /><br />The deeper they flew into Pakistan, the more it felt like “metropolis United States,” with power lines, towers, cultural lighting. The contrast was stark: they were in a completely different country, much more prosperous than Afghanistan.<br /><br />"You could see lights coming off and on,” said Englen. “You could tell that we are waking up Pakistan, because this is not normal. An aircraft flying at roughly 11:30 to midnight is not normal, because they (Pakistan military aircraft) don’t play at night as much as we do. In fact, at all, sometimes.”<br /><br />While the local populace was aware something was up (and began tweeting and calling 911), the special operations aviators weren’t getting indications that the Pakistani military or the Air Force was keen on what they were doing.<br /><br />“But, it’s paramilitary, so we just knew that eventually they would. We made it to the objective without really causing too much of a ruckus over the 911 calls. (But,) once we crashed the aircraft, within the first 30 seconds of the mission, then that’s when we really woke up that entire valley,” Englen said.<br /><br />Hearing “Black Hawk down” over the radio changed everything.<br /><br />Englen’s single Chinook raced across Abbottabad to pick up the ground force and air crew, arriving within 10 minutes of the call.<br /><br />As he landed under the mushroom cloud of the exploding Black Hawk, the flight lead and planner was pissed off.<br /><br />“I think crashing a helicopter on one of the most important missions of our generation, and later being asked by the director of the CIA (Leon Panetta), ‘Why the hell did you crash?’ I think that’s enough said,” Englen stated.<br /><br />“It was hotter than expected for the MH-60 crews, and it had more fuel than expected. And they’re throwing on more last minute ground force. So, that (Black Hawk) crew — that had the famous last words to my two MH-47 (Chinook) crews before leaving Jalalabad of, ‘Just get us gas, bitches’ — had miscalculated, and came into that courtyard and lost effective lift,” Englen explained.<br /><br />“Now, in retrospect, we could have done it with two Chinooks, the entirety. And more than likely — I don’t want to ever second-guess anybody —but in this condition, we would not have crashed, because we (the Chinooks) have the lift,” Englen said.<br /><br />On the objective, his crew chiefs on the ramp, hopped out do a head count.<br /><br />"They've got to get the headcount right, to make sure (we've) got the right amount of fuel. Plus, remember, we had people already on board, and this 800-gallon fuel tank inside. So there wasn't a whole lot of space (on board)," Englen explained.<br /><br />While they were loading up inside, the Chinook was vulnerable.<br /><br />“There’s nobody to protect us (the aircraft and crew) while we’re on the ground. Ever. When we’re on the ground, it’s just us,” he said. “So just hit the stop watch.”<br /><br />They were on the ground for probably a minute and a half. It sounds like nothing. But for special operations aviators of the 160th, that’s an eternity.<br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-63821820969627400622019-03-10T10:52:09.220-07:002019-03-10T10:52:09.220-07:00Fugitive #Taliban leader Mullah Omar lived short w...Fugitive #Taliban leader Mullah Omar lived short walk from #American base, died and buried in #Afghanistan in 2013 , book reveals https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/10/fugitive-taliban-leader-mullah-omar-lived-short-walk-from-us-base-book-claims?CMP=share_btn_tw<br /><br />The Taliban’s elusive one-eyed leader Mullah Omar lived within walking distance of US bases in Afghanistan for years, and American troops once even searched the house where he was hiding but failed to find a secret room built for him, a new biography claims.<br /><br />The account exposes an embarrassing failure of US intelligence, which put a $10m bounty on Omar’s head after the 9/11 attacks in the US. Officials repeatedly suggested that, like the al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, he was hiding in Pakistan and died there.<br /><br />It also upends the Taliban’s own account of their movement, revealing how Omar handed over practical control of the insurgency to his deputies in 2001, even though they claimed him as leader for the rest of his life, and for two years after his death in 2013.<br /><br />While statements issued in his name were scrutinised around the world, he was living as a virtual hermit, refusing visits from his family, filling notebooks with jottings in an invented language and occasionally hiding from US patrols in irrigation tunnels.<br /><br />Omar fell ill in 2013, coughing, vomiting, and eventually losing his appetite, but he refused any form of medical care. Omari offered to bring him a doctor or drive him to Pakistan, but Omar appeared resigned to his fate and died on 23 April.<br /><br />Omari buried him that night, and made a video to show to Omar’s son Yaqub and half-brother Abdul Manan. They had not seen Omar since 2001, but travelled to his hideout several days later and insisted on opening the grave to confirm it was him.<br /><br />They confirmed that it was Omar’s corpse buried in a simple grave in a remote corner of Zabul, but it would be two years before they admitted to their own fighters, and the rest of the world, that the one-eyed ascetic who once defined their movement had died.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-18809413211044943852017-11-13T07:40:22.466-08:002017-11-13T07:40:22.466-08:00Prince Charles: “I know there are so many complex ...Prince Charles: “I know there are so many complex issues, but how can there ever be an end to terrorism unless the causes are eliminated?” .....“Surely some US president has to have the courage to stand up and take on the Jewish lobby in the US? I must be naive, I suppose!”<br /><br />http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/prince-charles-blames-jews-middle-east-turmoil-1986-letter-a8050586.htmlRiaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-15570497504185727292017-09-21T09:45:53.778-07:002017-09-21T09:45:53.778-07:00Sen Bernie Sanders: The War on #Terror ‘Has Been a...Sen Bernie Sanders: The War on #Terror ‘Has Been a Disaster for the #American People’ #Terrorism http://thebea.st/2fk4FyL?source=twitter&via=desktop … via @thedailybeast<br /><br />Sanders’ biggest foreign policy speech yet will defend the Iran Deal, call out Putin, and blast the struggle against global jihadism as giving terrorists ‘exactly what they want.’<br /><br />Fresh from pulling the Democratic Party leftward on health care, Bernie Sanders wants to do the same on geopolitics. The independent socialist senator will use a Thursday speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri—where Winston Churchill gave his famous “Iron Curtain” address—to catalyze an intra-progressive debate on foreign-policy principles.<br />It’s a speech likely to make waves. Like U.K. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn before him, Sanders will call the war on terrorism a “disaster,” The Daily Beast has learned.<br />“The Global War on Terror has been a disaster for the American people and for American leadership,” Sanders will say Thursday in perhaps his biggest foreign-policy speech to date, according to an excerpt seen by The Daily Beast.<br /><br /><br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-448825140976418772017-09-11T20:17:46.953-07:002017-09-11T20:17:46.953-07:00Why al-Qaida is still strong 16 years after 9/11
S...Why al-Qaida is still strong 16 years after 9/11<br />September 10, 2017 8.40pm EDT<br />Much of the credit goes to al-Qaida’s extraordinary ability to both form alliances and sustain them over time and under pressure.<br /><br />http://theconversation.com/why-al-qaida-is-still-strong-16-years-after-9-11-83403?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=twitterbutton<br /><br /><br />In my forthcoming book “Alliances for Terror,” I examine why a small number of groups, such as al-Qaida and IS, emerge as desirable partners and succeed at developing alliance networks.<br /><br />Understanding terrorist alliances is critical because terrorist organizations with allies are more lethal, survive longer and are more apt to seek weapons of mass destruction. Though terrorist partnerships face numerous hurdles and severing al-Qaida’s alliances has been a U.S. objective for over a decade, the fact is that these counterterrorism efforts have failed.<br /><br />It was allies that enabled al-Qaida to survive the immediate aftermath of 9/11. The Afghan Taliban stood by al-Qaida after the attack, refusing to surrender bin Laden and thereby precipitating the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Fleeing, al-Qaida was able to turn to allies in Pakistan to hide its operatives and punish the Pakistani government for capitulating to U.S. pressure to crackdown on the group.<br /><br />It was alliances that helped al-Qaida continue to terrorize. In October 2002, for example, al-Qaida’s ally in Southeast Asia, Jemaah Islamiyah, struck a bar and a nightclub in Bali, killing more than 200 and injuring more than 200 more, to brutally commemorate the first anniversary of 9/11.<br /><br />And it was alliances that allowed al-Qaida to project viability. With the “prestige” that came with conducting 9/11, al-Qaida was able to forge more of them and indeed create affiliate alliances in which partners adopted its name and pledged allegiance to bin Laden.<br /><br />Al-Qaida’s first and most notorious affiliate alliance, al-Qaida in Iraq, was formed in 2004 with Jordanian jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Using the standing he accrued through his role in the insurgency in Iraq, Zarqawi then helped al-Qaida acquire its second affiliate in 2006, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. Then, in 2009, al-Qaida designated its branch in Yemen and Saudi Arabia as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. Its alliances spanned the Middle East and helped it to project power, despite the U.S. war on terrorism.<br /><br />While al-Qaida still sought affiliates, by 2010, it modified how its alliances work.<br /><br />Al-Qaida forged an alliance with al-Shabaab in Somalia, but did not publicly announce it or ask al-Shabaab to change its name. Bin Laden justified to al-Shabaab’s leader the shift to a less visible form of alliance as a way to prevent an increase in counterterrorism pressure or a loss of funds from the Arabian Peninsula. He privately expressed concerns that al-Qaida’s name “reduces the feeling of Muslims that we belong to them, and allows the enemies to claim deceptively that they are not at war with Islam.” Bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, saw the move as bin Laden capitulating to members of al-Qaida who worried about “inflating the size and the growth of al-Qaida.” After bin Laden’s death, Zawahiri publicly announced al-Qaida’s alliance with al-Shabaab, though al-Shabaab still did not adopt al-Qaida’s name.<br /><br />Though al-Qaida’s alliance arrangements have varied, these relationships have helped it to survive the loss of its founding leader in 2011 and the ascent of a far less capable leader. Zawahiri’s rise to the helm of the group was the consequence of an alliance, specifically between his original Egyptian group, al-Jihad, and al-Qaida. The alliance culminated in a merger in 2001, with Zawahiri becoming bin Laden’s deputy and successor.<br /><br />However, Zawahiri lacks bin Laden’s cachet or diplomatic savvy. He is a better deputy than a leader. His poor handling of the strife between jihadist group al-Nusra in Syria and its parent organization, the Islamic State in Iraq (previously al-Qaida in Iraq and now IS), led to the alliance rupture between al-Qaida and its affiliate in Iraq.<br /><br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-56831628206412523472017-09-08T20:15:44.427-07:002017-09-08T20:15:44.427-07:00Pakistan, Polio and the CIA
Jonathan Kennedy 8 Sep...Pakistan, Polio and the CIA<br />Jonathan Kennedy 8 September 2017<br /><br />https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2017/09/08/jonathan-kennedy/pakistan-polio-and-the-cia/<br /><br />By the mid-2000s, Pakistan had almost eradicated polio: there were only 28 cases in 2005, 1.4 per cent of the global total. But there have been 380 in the last three years, 81 per cent of polio cases worldwide. More than half of them were in the semi-autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of northwest Pakistan, where only 2 per cent of the population live.<br /><br />After the invasion of Afghanistan by American-led forces in 2001, many Taliban fighters relocated to the FATA, from where they launched cross-border attacks. The Pakistani army tried to bring the region under government control but the incursion aggrieved local communities, who joined forces with the militants. The CIA used drone strikes to support Pakistani military action from 2004 onwards. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, there have been 428 drone strikes, leading to between 2511 and 4020 fatalities.<br />Vaccination campaigns were suspected of being a smokescreen for collecting intelligence ahead of drone strikes. Organisations involved in the Pakistan Polio Eradication Initiative include the Pakistani state and US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Polio vaccinators visit the FATA every few months, walking from door-to-door, offering to vaccinate children, and recording who has been vaccinated. The data is collected for public health purposes, but you can see how it might be misconstrued as intelligence gathering.<br /><br />There have also been complaints that ‘billions of dollars’ are spent on vaccination campaigns when ‘polio infects one child in a million’, while malnutrition and diarrhoea receive far less attention from the international community despite causing much more suffering. Polio workers have been attacked and vaccination campaigns interrupted, reducing the number of children being immunised and leading to an increase in polio cases.<br /><br />Between 2004 and 2012, the numbers of drone strikes and polio cases corresponded closely. Until mid-2008, the US carried out a small number of drone strikes to assist Pakistani military operations and there were relatively few polio cases. From mid-2008, the number of drones strikes increased rapidly, peaking in 2010 at 128. The number of polio cases also rose markedly, reaching 198 cases the following year. Drone strikes were reduced after 2012 because of concerns they were destabilising Pakistan and generating anti-American sentiment. Polio also decreased rapidly between 2011 and 2012.<br /><br /><br />But it increased sharply from 2012, hitting 306 cases in 2014. Before the assassination of Osama bin Laden in May 2011, the CIA organised a fake hepatitis B vaccination campaign in Abbottabad in a failed attempt to obtain his relatives’ DNA. When the story broke a few months later, it seemed to vindicate people’s suspicions of the polio programmes in the FATA. ‘As long as drone strikes are not stopped in Waziristan,’ one militant leader declared, ‘there will be a ban on administering polio jabs’ because immunisation campaigns are ‘used to spy for America against the Mujahideen’. More than 3.5 million children went unvaccinated as a result of the boycott and associated disruption, in which several health workers were killed. Polio increased in Pakistan and further afield, as the virus spread to Afghanistan and the Middle East.<br /><br /><br />The CIA have conducted only a handful of drone strikes in Pakistan in recent years and polio is now at an all-time low. But the plan to eradicate the disease may face further setbacks. ‘We can no longer be silent,’ President Trump said last month, ‘about Pakistan’s safe havens for terrorist organisations, the Taliban and other groups that pose a threat to the region and beyond.’<br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-81408879755836078612015-10-18T08:23:41.297-07:002015-10-18T08:23:41.297-07:00More controversial is Hersh’s claim that Pakistan ...More controversial is Hersh’s claim that Pakistan knew in advance about the SEAL team raid and allowed it to proceed, even helped facilitate it. This is the starkest departure from the standard story as it was reported previously. ...<br /><br />Eleven days after the raid, an unbylined story appeared on GlobalPost, an American website specializing in foreign reporting. The dateline was Abbottabad; the story was headlined: ‘‘Bin Laden Raid: Neighbors Say Pakistan Knew.’’ A half-dozen people who lived near bin Laden’s compound told the reporter that plainclothes security personnel — ‘‘either Pakistani intelligence or military officers’’ — knocked on their doors a couple of hours before the raid and instructed them to turn the lights off and remain indoors until further notice. Some local people also told the reporter that they were directed not to speak to the media, especially the foreign media.<br /><br />When I contacted the chief executive of GlobalPost, Philip Balboni, he told me he considered trying to aggressively publicize this narrative when he first posted it. ‘‘[B]ut that would have required resources that we did not possess at the time, and the information against it was so overwhelming that even we had to wonder if our sources were right,’’ he wrote me in an email.<br /><br />Balboni put me in touch with the reporter, Aamir Latif, a 41-year-old Pakistani journalist. Latif, a former foreign correspondent for U.S. News and World Report, told me that he traveled to Abbottabad the day after bin Laden was killed and reported there for a couple of days. I asked him if he still believed that there was some level of Pakistani awareness of the raid. ‘‘Not awareness,’’ he answered instantly. ‘‘There was coordination and cooperation.’’<br /><br />Latif, who kept his name off the original post because of the sensitivity of the subject in Pakistan, said that people in the area told him that they heard the U.S. helicopters and that surely the Pakistani military had, too: ‘‘The whole country was awake, only the Pakistani Army was asleep? What does that suggest to you?’’ Gall has also written that bin Laden’s neighbors heard the explosions at the compound and contacted the local police, but that army commanders told the police to stand down and leave the response to the military. The SEALs were on the ground for 40 minutes, but the Pakistani Army didn’t arrive until after they had left.<br /><br />Gall’s best guess (and she emphasizes that it is just a guess) is that the United States alerted Pakistan to the bin Laden operation at the 11th hour. ‘‘I have no proof, but the more I think about it and the more I talk to Pakistani friends, the more I think it’s probably true that Kayani and Pasha were in on it,’’ Gall told me, referring to Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who was then the chief of the army staff, and Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, then the director general of the I.S.I. As for killing bin Laden, she said: ‘‘The scenario I imagine is that the Americans watched him and tracked him and never told the Pakistanis because they didn’t trust them, but when they decided to go ahead with the raid, I think they might have gone to Kayani and Pasha and said, ‘We’re going in, and don’t you dare shoot down our helicopters or else.’ ’’ (I should note that not every national-security reporter, including some at The Times, agrees with Gall about the likelihood of high-level Pakistani complicity in either harboring bin Laden or helping kill him.)<br /><br />Following Gall’s scenario to its logical conclusion, Pakistan would have faced an unappealing choice after the raid: acknowledge that it had cooperated and risk angering hard-liners for betraying bin Laden and abetting a U.S. military operation on Pakistani soil, or plead ignorance and incompetence.<br /><br />‘‘The Pakistanis often fall back on, ‘We were incompetent,’ ’’ Gall said. ‘‘They don’t want their countrymen to know what they’re playing at. They fear there will be a backlash.’’<br /><br />http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/magazine/what-do-we-really-know-about-osama-bin-ladens-death.html?smid=nytcore-iphone-share&smprod=nytcore-iphoneRiaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-18051013167974487472015-10-18T08:13:39.237-07:002015-10-18T08:13:39.237-07:00It’s hard to overstate the degree to which the kil...It’s hard to overstate the degree to which the killing of Osama bin Laden transformed American politics. From a purely practical standpoint, it enabled Obama to recast himself as a bold leader, as opposed to an overly cautious one, in advance of his 2012 re-election campaign. This had an undeniable impact on the outcome of that election. (‘‘Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive,’’ Joe Biden was fond of boasting on the campaign trail.) Strategically, the death of bin Laden allowed Obama to declare victory over Al Qaeda, giving him the cover he needed to begin phasing U.S. troops out of Afghanistan. And it almost single-handedly redeemed the C.I.A., turning a decade-long failure of intelligence into one of the greatest triumphs in the history of the agency.<br /><br />But bin Laden’s death had an even greater effect on the American psyche. Symbolically, it brought a badly wanted moment of moral clarity, of unambiguous American valor, to a murky war defined by ethical compromise and even at times by collective shame. It completed the historical arc of the 9/11 attacks. The ghastly image of collapsing towers that had been fixed in our collective minds for years was dislodged by one of Obama and his senior advisers huddled tensely around a table in the White House Situation Room, watching closely as justice was finally brought to the perpetrator.<br /><br />The first dramatic reconstruction of the raid itself — ‘‘Getting bin Laden: What Happened That Night in Abbottabad’’ — was written by a freelancer named Nicholas Schmidle and published in The New Yorker just three months after the operation. The son of a Marine general, Schmidle spent a couple of years in Pakistan and has written on counterterrorism for many publications, including this magazine. His New Yorker story was a cinematic account of military daring, sweeping but also granular in its detail, from the ‘‘metallic cough of rounds being chambered’’ inside the two Black Hawks as the SEALs approached the compound, to the mud that ‘‘sucked at their boots’’ when they hit the ground. One of the SEALs who shot bin Laden, Matt Bissonnette, added a more personal dimension to the story a year later in a best-selling book, ‘‘No Easy Day.’’ Bowden focused on Washington, taking readers inside the White House as the president navigated what would become a defining moment of his presidency. And then there was ‘‘Zero Dark Thirty,’’ which chronicled the often barbaric C.I.A. interrogations that the agency said helped lead the United States to bin Laden’s compound.<br /><br />It’s not that the truth about bin Laden’s death is unknowable; it’s that we don’t know it. And we can’t necessarily console ourselves with the hope that we will have more answers any time soon; to this day, the final volume of the C.I.A.’s official history of the Bay of Pigs remains classified. We don’t know what happened more than a half-century ago, much less in 2011.<br /><br />There are different ways to control a narrative. There’s the old-fashioned way: Classify documents that you don’t want seen and, as Gates said, ‘‘keep mum on the details.’’ But there’s also the more modern, social-media-savvy approach: Tell the story you want them to believe. Silence is one way to keep a secret. Talking is another. And they are not mutually exclusive.<br /><br />‘‘I love the notion that the government isn’t riddled with secrecy,’’ Hersh told me toward the end of our long day together. ‘‘Are you kidding me? They keep more secrets than you can possibly think. There’s stuff going on right now that I know about — amazing stuff that’s going on. I’ll write about it when I can. There’s stuff going out right now, amazing stuff in the Middle East. Are you kidding me? Of course there is. Of course there is.’’<br /><br />http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/magazine/what-do-we-really-know-about-osama-bin-ladens-death.html?smid=nytcore-iphone-share&smprod=nytcore-iphoneRiaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-36591580503509861742015-02-01T08:31:59.286-08:002015-02-01T08:31:59.286-08:00In Pakistan, despite the myth-making surrounding f...In Pakistan, despite the myth-making surrounding fundamentalism, the country is yet to develop a counter narrative to the anti-Western and pro-extremism agenda of militants. Following General Ziaul Haq's rule and Pakistan's involvement in the Afghan affairs, we are yet to turn the page on radicalism. Some accuse the madrassa culture for this, which has become a symbol of challenging the state through a parallel support system in the absence of robust national infrastructure. Others hint at the economic chasm between the haves and the have-nots, which is exploited by militants.<br /><br />In such a context, the army introduced Sabawoon in 2009, an institution located in Mingora, Swat, which aims to deradicalise juvenile militants between the ages of 12 and 17, in order to rehabilitate them as productive members of society. A key objective here was to assist the millions who were displaced during the army's operation that attempted to expel the Taliban from Swat in 2009. <br /><br />Sabawoon's underlying philosophy is to provide young people with a new chance at life. <br /><br />During Operation Rah-e-Rast, several juvenile militants were apprehended or surrendered. They have been provided with education, vocational training and psychological counselling, as well as courses in ethics, patriotism and religious instruction. Once these individuals complete their training, they are absorbed into relevant occupations. <br /><br />Sabawoon's most challenging task is to enable these young people to 'unlearn' what they have been taught about religion during their militancy training. Being captured at a young age by militants makes them sceptical to accepting an entirely contradictory doctrine at a later stage. <br /><br />The second measure of success for the centre is following up on graduates and ensuring that they do not revert to their previous lives. Sabawoon's emphasis on imparting a secular curriculum geared towards harnessing professional skills, in addition to providing religious knowledge is praiseworthy. Being a first-of-its-kind endeavour to combat the menace of extremism, it provides a unique kind of intervention for young potential suicide bombers. <br /><br />Through vocational training, it seeks to provide alternatives to bridge the poverty trap that is earmarked as a major the cause of extremism in the country. The question though is of scalability. In order to bring about transformation at a much wider level, it is vital to target juvenile militants across multiple geographical locations. The double-edged impact of madrassas is ubiquitous across the country, with young people systematically targeted across each province. <br /><br />Therefore Sabawoon, rather than representing a single institution, must begin to symbolise a paradigm shift in the way of thinking represented by Pakistan's bureaucracy, private sector and military, through to its grass roots level organisations, when strategising counterterrorism techniques.<br /><br />Secondly, when tackling root causes leading to the development of child soldiers and militants, the pitfall of 'madrassa closure' must be avoided, as it is likely to spark reactions among those who may view this as an anti-Islamic endeavour. <br /><br />Instead, both the public and private sectors must begin effectively implementing regulations for professional registration of these institutions, monitor their standards and content of curriculum and demand accountability for non-adherence. <br /><br />Whilst the Musharraf regime did attempt to undertake a madrassa reform plan, this was not successful. Following in Sabawoon's footsteps, other alternative interventions are the need of the hour. <br /><br />Institutionalising counterterrorism will ensure that these productive options remain available to vulnerable individuals beyond a particular regime or leader. <br /><br />In the lack of an effective deradicalisation framework for young militants (existing and potential), the country may witness another lost generation. <br /><br />http://www.timesofoman.com/Columns/2672/Pakistan-cannot-have-another-lost-generationRiaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-56184624136274134102014-10-13T22:11:13.249-07:002014-10-13T22:11:13.249-07:00Five scary Christopher Columbus quotes that let yo...Five scary Christopher Columbus quotes that let you celebrate the holiday the right way<br /><br />1. Conquest: the perfect chaser for expelling Muslims and Jews. You don’t have to be an academic to link Spain’s colonial expansion abroad with its inquisition at home. Columbus made the connection himself. Of course he saw this as a good thing, not a bad one– a killer combo, if you will. He wrote to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain... <br /><br />YOUR HIGHNESSES, as Catholic Christians and Princes who love the holy Christian faith, and the propagation of it, and who are enemies to the sect of Mahoma [Islam] and to all idolatries and heresies, resolved to send me, Cristóbal Colon, to the said parts of India to see the said princes … with a view that they might be converted to our holy faith …. Thus, after having turned out all the Jews from all your kingdoms and lordships … your Highnesses gave orders to me that with a sufficient fleet I should go to the said parts of India …. I shall forget sleep, and shall work at the business of navigation, so that the service is performed.<br />2. These Natives are so nice, we’d be crazy not to enslave them! This excerpt from Columbus’ diary describes the Arawak people who greeted him and his men:<br /><br />They … brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks’ bells. They willingly traded everything they owned… . They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features…. They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane… . They would make fine servants…. With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.<br />3. I was right about how easy that whole subjugation thing would be! In another letter to King Ferdinand, Columbus wrote <br /><br />As soon as I arrived in the Indies, in the first island which I found, I took some of the natives by force, in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts. And so it was that they soon understood us, and we them, either by speech or by signs, and they have been very serviceable. <br />4. Rape! Columbus was such a mensch, he would let his men do whatever they wanted with the natives they captured. One of his men and a childhood friend of Columbus, Michele da Cuneo, describes in a letter how he raped a native woman:<br /><br />While I was in the boat, I captured a very beautiful Carib woman, whom the said Lord Admiral gave to me. When I had taken her to my cabin she was naked—as was their custom. I was filled with a desire to take my pleasure with her and attempted to satisfy my desire. She was unwilling, and so treated me with her nails that I wished I had never begun. But—to cut a long story short—I then took a piece of rope and whipped her soundly, and she let forth such incredible screams that you would not have believed your ears. Eventually we came to such terms, I assure you, that you would have thought that she had been brought up in a school for whores.<br />5. Not so Christian. But the anecdote captured above was not some isolated incident of cruelty. Ironically, but in no way surprisingly, the Spanish who came to save the “heathens” from their idolatry, weren’t very Christ-like in their behavior. In his book The Devastation of the Indies. Bartolome de las Casas, the priest who accompanied Columbus on his conquest of Cuba, detailed the abuse and murder of the native population:<br /><br />5. Not so Christian. But the anecdote captured above was not some isolated incident of cruelty. Ironically, but in no way surprisingly, the Spanish who came to save the “heathens” from their idolatry, weren’t very Christ-like in their behavior. ..<br /><br />http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/10/five-scary-christopher-columbus-quotes-that-let-you-celebrate-the-holiday-the-right-wayRiaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-51560434322221683892014-03-21T22:11:39.796-07:002014-03-21T22:11:39.796-07:00CNN security analyst says no evidence to support N...CNN security analyst says no evidence to support NY TIMES's Carlotta Gall's claims about Pakistan knowingly hiding bin Laden<br /><br />The bin Laden story in the New York Times magazine is an extract from Gall's forthcoming book, "The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001-2014."<br />Gall makes two astonishing claims in her Times magazine piece.<br />The first claim: An unnamed Pakistani official told her, based on what he had in turn heard from an unnamed senior U.S. official that "the United States had direct evidence that the ISI chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, knew of bin Laden's presence in Abbottabad." ISI is Pakistan's powerful military intelligence agency.<br />The second claim: "The ISI actually ran a special desk assigned to handle bin Laden. It was operated independently, led by an officer who made his own decisions and did not report to a superior. He handled only one person: bin Laden...the top military bosses knew about it, I was told."<br />It is, of course, hard to prove negatives, but having spent around a year reporting intensively on the hunt for al Qaeda's leader for my 2012 book "Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for bin Laden From 9/11 to Abbottabad," I am convinced that there is no evidence that anyone in the Pakistani government, military or intelligence agencies knowingly sheltered bin Laden.<br /><br />How did I arrive at this conclusion?<br />On three reporting trips to Pakistan I spoke to senior officials in Pakistan's military and intelligence service. They all denied that they had secretly harbored bin Laden. OK, you are thinking: "But they would say that, wouldn't they?"<br />Well, what about the dozens of officials I spoke to in the U.S. intelligence community, Pentagon, State Department and the White House who also told me versions of "the Pakistanis had no idea that bin Laden was hiding in Abbottabad"?<br />During the course of reporting for my book I spoke on the record to, among others, John Brennan, now the CIA director and then President Obama's top counterterrorism adviser; then CIA Director Leon Panetta and his chief of staff, Jeremy Bash; then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Mike Mullen; then Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. James Cartwright; then director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Michael Leiter; then senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council, Nick Rasmussen; then head of policy at the Pentagon, Michele Flournoy; Michael Vickers, who was then the civilian overseer of Special Operations at the Pentagon; Tony Blinken, who is now the deputy national security adviser; and Denis McDonough, who held that position before Blinken.<br />These officials have collectively spent many decades working to destroy al Qaeda, and many are deeply suspicious of Pakistan for its continuing support for elements of the Taliban. But all of them told me in one form or another that Pakistani officials had no clue that bin Laden was living in Abbottabad.<br />Indeed, an early debate between senior national security officials at the White House, once CIA intelligence established that bin Laden could be hiding in Abbottabad, was whether to mount a joint U.S.-Pakistani raid on bin Laden's suspected hideout.<br />This plan was rejected because the officials were concerned that such a joint operation carried the risk that word would leak out about the bin Laden intelligence. This debate would have been moot if the Pakistanis already knew bin Laden was living in Abbottabad.<br />And, by the way, if the U.S. government had any evidence that the Pakistanis were knowingly sheltering bin Laden, as Gall claims, why cover this up?<br /><br />http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/21/opinion/bergen-bin-laden-new-york-times/Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-46387277857526828362014-03-20T21:21:03.427-07:002014-03-20T21:21:03.427-07:00Here's Carlotta Gall of New York Times talking...Here's Carlotta Gall of New York Times talking to <a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117074/osama-bin-ladens-hideout-and-pakistan-and-american-knowledge" rel="nofollow">"New Republic"</a> about her book "The Wrong Enemy: American in Afghanistan": <br /><br /><i>Carlotta Gall's blockbuster story in The New York Times Magazine this week claims that the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI) had knowledge of Osama Bin Laden's hiding place in Abbottabad. According to Gall, the ISI and Pakistan's military establishment also supported the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. The piece is an excerpt from her new book, The Wrong Enemy: American in Afghanistan, 2001-2014, which argues that the failing American mission in Afghanistan is largely the result of Pakistani duplicity, which has consisted of the country taking American aid dollars while still covertly supporting the Taliban and other extremist groups.<br /><br />Gall has reported extensively from Pakistan and Afghanistan for The New York Times, and is currently the newspaper's North Africa correspondent. We spoke by phone this week about the details of Pakistan's relationship to Bin Laden, the war in Afghanistan, and the long, depressing history of U.S.-Pakistan relations.<br /><br />Isaac Chotiner: What is the newest or biggest revelation about Bin Laden and his relationship with the ISI?<br /><br />Carlotta Gall: The ISI was actually running a special desk within the organization to handle Bin Laden, which meant hide him and talk to him. They knew he was there and protected him. That has never been said before by anyone. I only have one source but it’s very convincing source and it had to be said and put out there.<br /><br />IC: You took some criticism for the single source but there were two other interesting revelations. The first is that when you brought the issue of Pakistani knowledge up with American officials, who don’t want to criticize a nominal ally, they were sympathetic to what you had heard.<br /><br />CG: Yes.<br /><br />IC: And the second point, which I found the most convincing, was that Bin Laden was communicating with ISI assets, such as Hafiz Saeed, who is the head of a Pakistani extremist group. The point, I think, is that he wouldn’t be communicating with these people if he was concerned about the ISI finding him.<br /><br />CG: Yes, he was communicating with people that the ISI talks to and is in close touch with.<br /><br />IC: Do you have any sense of the substance of those communications, for example how much Bin Laden was revealing about where he was or what he was up to?<br /><br />CG: There was a cell phone in the compound that revealed numbers to other connections in Pakistan. There were letters between him and Mullah Omar and him and Hafiz Saeed, and those are two people very close to the ISI. It is inconceivable to anyone who follows all this that the ISI did not know he was corresponding with them.<br /><br />IC: But do you think he was communicating where he was?<br /><br />CG: We know from the Americans that his courier was going to Peshawar and talking to people and bringing black flash drives with news and email for Bin Laden.<br />---------<br />IC: You seem to be saying that we have made too many excuses for Pakistan, but what would full-on confrontation look like? That is very scary.<br /><br />CG: I hope I am not suggesting that. Some people think I have it in for Pakistan. I don’t. I think the right course is diplomacy and pulling out of Afghanistan but still supporting both those countries and trying to move them to a better place. More openness with their people is required. You have to run a better government with more democracy and more openness. You have to discuss this. They need civilians to come in and get a grip on the country.</i><br /><br />http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117074/osama-bin-ladens-hideout-and-pakistan-and-american-knowledgeRiaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-41837623350995592922014-03-19T08:35:53.370-07:002014-03-19T08:35:53.370-07:00Kathy Gannon of The Associated Press reported in S...Kathy Gannon of The Associated Press reported in September that militants from Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, were massing in the tribal areas to join the Taliban and train for an anticipated offensive into Afghanistan this year. In Punjab, mainstream religious parties and banned militant groups were openly recruiting hundreds of students for jihad, and groups of young men were being dispatched to Syria to wage jihad there. “They are the same jihadi groups; they are not 100 percent under control,” a former Pakistani legislator told me. “But still the military protects them.”...<br /><br />The haul of handwritten notes, letters, computer files and other information collected from Bin Laden’s house during the raid suggested otherwise, however. It revealed regular correspondence between Bin Laden and a string of militant leaders who must have known he was living in Pakistan, including Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a pro-Kashmiri group that has also been active in Afghanistan, and Mullah Omar of the Taliban. Saeed and Omar are two of the ISI’s most important and loyal militant leaders. Both are protected by the agency. Both cooperate closely with it, restraining their followers from attacking the Pakistani state and coordinating with Pakistan’s greater strategic plans. Any correspondence the two men had with Bin Laden would probably have been known to their ISI handlers.<br /><br />Bin Laden did not rely only on correspondence. He occasionally traveled to meet aides and fellow militants, one Pakistani security official told me. “Osama was moving around,” he said, adding that he heard so from jihadi sources. “You cannot run a movement without contact with people.” Bin Laden traveled in plain sight, his convoys always knowingly waved through any security checkpoints. <br /><br />http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/magazine/what-pakistan-knew-about-bin-laden.htmlRiaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-32630362300927211972013-04-09T10:06:19.315-07:002013-04-09T10:06:19.315-07:00Here are excerpts of NY Times summary of “The Way ...Here are excerpts of <a href="www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/magazine/raymond-davis-pakistan.html" rel="nofollow">NY Times</a> 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:<br /><br /><i>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.<br />-----------<br />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.<br />-----------<br />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.<br />-----------<br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />“It was the Americans!” he shouted to loud approvals. “It was Blackwater!” The cheers grew even louder. He saved the biggest applause line ...</i><br /><br />www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/magazine/raymond-davis-pakistan.html<br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-60609594330249878472013-01-24T16:00:01.986-08:002013-01-24T16:00:01.986-08:00Here's a report on John Kerry's response t...Here's a <a href="http://washingtonexaminer.com/john-kerry-pakistan-hasnt-gotten-enough-credit-for-the-killing-of-bin-laden/article/2519638#.UQHJQFdWIrc" rel="nofollow">report</a> on John Kerry's response to demand for cutting aid to Pakistan during his Senate confirmation hearing: <br /><br /><i>Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., opposed cutting foreign aid to Pakistan by arguing, among other things, that the Pakistanis haven’t gotten enough credit for their assistance in the operations that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden.<br /><br />Kerry was responding to Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who suggested that the United States demand that Pakistan release Dr. Shakeel Afridi, whom they arrested after he helped the United States find bin Laden. Kerry noted the logistical support Pakistan provides to the Aghanistan war before suggesting that Pakistan helped American forces get bin Laden.<br /><br />“Our folks were able to cooperate on the ground in Pakistan,” Kerry said during his first hearing about his nomination to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. “That’s one of the ways we were able to get Osama bin Laden. I don’t think the Pakistanis have frankly gotten credit, sufficiently, for the fact that they were helpful. It was their permissiveness in allowing our people to be there that helped us to be able to tie the knots that focused on that. To some degree — not exclusively, obviously, but to some degree.”<br /><br />Kerry also pointed out that the Pakistanis “have lost some 6000 people just in the last year in their efforts to go after terrorists.”<br /><br />Afridi was arrested after working as a CIA informant to help find bin Laden, who was living in a compound in Abbottobad, Pakistan, before Navy Seals killed him. He told Fox News that he has been tortured for helping with the operation.<br /><br />“I tried to argue that America was Pakistan’s biggest supporter – billions and billions of dollars in aid, social and military assistance — but all they said was, ‘These are our worst enemies. You helped our enemies,’” Afridi said, describing the response he got from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence.<br /><br />The State Department has called for his release. “We believe that the prosecution and conviction of Dr. Afridi sends the wrong message about the importance of our shared interest in taking down one of the world’s most notorious terrorists,” a spokesperson told Fox.<br /><br />The U.S. military didn’t tell Pakistan that the raid would take place due to fears that they would warn bin Laden. “It was decided that any effort to work with the Pakistanis could jeopardize the mission,” then-CIA director Leon Panetta said in May 2011. “They might alert the targets.”<br /><br />Pakistan reportedly granted China access to the stealth helicopter that crashed during the bin Laden raid.</i><br /><br />http://washingtonexaminer.com/john-kerry-pakistan-hasnt-gotten-enough-credit-for-the-killing-of-bin-laden/article/2519638#.UQHJQFdWIrcRiaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-9898322302103531402013-01-01T10:01:36.307-08:002013-01-01T10:01:36.307-08:00Here's an ET Op Ed by Yousuf Nazar on Pak fore...Here's an <a href="http://tribune.com.pk/story/486998/economic-prowess-in-a-non-polar-world-pakistan-needs-a-fresh-foreign-policy/" rel="nofollow">ET Op Ed</a> by Yousuf Nazar on Pak foreign policy imperatives:<br /><br /><i>Now, as the US prepares to unwind its costly misadventure in Afghanistan, which failed to defeat the Talibans, Pakistan must seize the initiative to help shape the events to the maximum possible extent it can. The immediate near-term goal has to be the attainment of peace and stability in Afghanistan which faces an uncertain future and possibly civil war. This cannot be achieved by working with the US alone. Regional powers particularly China, Russia, India, and Iran have a natural stake in a peaceful Afghanistan. None of them has ever been comfortable with Pakistan’s close relationship with the Talibans. While China and Russia have been basically happy to let the US fight the Talibans, India and Iran have provided hundreds of millions of dollars to Afghanistan since 2002. Although it may be a bitter pill to swallow, peace is not possible without the Talibans. But it is also inconceivable without the participation of the non-Taliban groups and support of the regional powers. Pakistan may have the greatest leverage with the Talibans but that is not enough to secure peace. Actually, the war has hurt Pakistan so much, it would be wise to engage even India in a multilateral peace effort. Pakistan’s establishment should treat it as a lesser evil compared to the confused policies and hostile attitude of the US military establishment. Ultimately, durable peace in the region would rest more on Indo-Pak relations than the so-called AfPak or US with its diminishing influence, although it would remain the biggest military power for decades. But for now, it is on the retreat.<br /><br />More importantly, at a broader and strategic level, Pakistan must redefine security to include energy, water, and economic security. Pakistan has pushed itself into a corner where the West considers it relevant mainly because it is a politically unstable nuclear power in a troubled region. It does not figure much in the US Middle East policy, which is focused on nuclear non-proliferation, energy security, Israel, and preventing Iran from building a nuclear bomb. Pakistan needs to have friendly ties with Iran which is not only an important neighbor but a potential source of energy having one of the five largest hydrocarbon reserves in the world. Although the proposed Pak-Iran gas pipeline has been a sore point in Pak-US relations, Pakistan’s Middle East policy should focus on its energy needs with strictly a neutral stance vis-à-vis the dangerous and destabilising regional rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Pakistan cannot afford to be a battle ground of proxy conflicts and must do all it can to prevent that.<br /><br />South Asia is one of the least developed regions in the world and conflicts have held it back from realising its full potential. Pakistan needs friendly relations with India to access a big market but also to find a peaceful solution for its water needs because armed conflict is just not an option. Paradoxically, it is not the alliance with the US but the recent estrangement (perhaps a blessing in disguise) that has led the military establishment to support normalisation process with India.</i><br /><br />http://tribune.com.pk/story/486998/economic-prowess-in-a-non-polar-world-pakistan-needs-a-fresh-foreign-policy/Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-70467922986063602802012-05-31T22:25:32.437-07:002012-05-31T22:25:32.437-07:00Here's a Counterpunch Op Ed on Obama's snu...Here's a <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/05/31/pakistan-pays-the-price-for-its-defiance/" rel="nofollow">Counterpunch Op Ed</a> on Obama's snub for Zardari & Pakistan at Chicago's NATO summit:<br /><br /><i>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.<br /><br />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.<br />-----------<br />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.</i><br /><br />http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/05/31/pakistan-pays-the-price-for-its-defiance/Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-74374486616081466272012-05-31T22:18:59.278-07:002012-05-31T22:18:59.278-07:00Here are NY Times editorial excerpts on Obama'...Here are <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/31/opinion/too-much-power-for-a-president.html" rel="nofollow">NY Times</a> editorial excerpts on Obama's kill list:<br /><br /><i>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?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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. <br /><br />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.<br /><br />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. </i><br /><br />http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/31/opinion/too-much-power-for-a-president.htmlRiaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-29150123439579957902011-12-10T09:40:11.971-08:002011-12-10T09:40:11.971-08:00Here's Tech Lahore blogger analysis of what Ir...Here's <a href="http://www.techlahore.com/2011/12/10/what-can-iran-learn-from-the-us-rq-170-stealth-drone/" rel="nofollow">Tech Lahore</a> blogger analysis of what Iran can learn from the US RQ-170 it has captured:<br /><br /><i>1. Airframe and low-observable design: While this is by no means the most important piece of information that can be gleaned from this drone, being in possession of a confirmed LO platform does allow someone to analyze it completely and replicate it. As far as the physical elements of design which contribute to stealth go, Iran should be able to get 100% of that information simply by observing, measuring and modeling this aircraft.<br /><br />2. Materials: Reverse engineering many materials is entirely possible by studying their chemical composition. For example, RAM coatings....<br /><br />3. Propulsion: There are two elements here; first, the engine itself, and second the techniques used to reduce the engine’s heat/sound signature. Let me tackle the first one here. I don’t know how advanced the power plant in the RQ-170 is, but reverse engineering a complex jet engine may not be possible in a short timeframe....<br /><br />4. Techniques used for signature reduction: The RQ-170 design will likely employ numerous techniques to reduce the heat (IR) signature emanating from the engine or other active sources in the aircraft. It would also likely use techniques to reduce audio signature. Iran can definitely get a lot of value by studying the design, materials used and techniques employed to achieve this signature reduction. The Iranians have their own stealth project, the “Sofre Mahi”. This analysis could help them advance that stealth fighter development effort.<br /><br />5. The actual audio signature of the RQ-170: This speaks more to detecting the presence of aircraft like the RQ-170 in future. For example, does the engine of the ’170 give off a particular “whine”, i.e. does it have a distinct audio signature? Depending on whether this is a high frequency, it could be possible to deploy audio sensors particularly tuned to listen for this pitch as a means for detection.<br /><br />6. The all-aspect radar signature of the RQ-170: No design is perfect. There may be certain aspects which produce a higher signature than others. Now that Iran can study the full response profile of an RQ-170, it may learn more about how to detect these aircraft in future using radar configurations.<br /><br />7. The cameras: This would be a huge asset for the Iranians in two ways. First, they will now know the exact capabilities of this surveillance platform in terms of resolution, light spectrum performance and numerous other aspects. This means they could plan on how to evade such surveillance. ....<br /><br />8. The transceivers: There will be numerous transceivers on board and each of these will give the Iranians lots of information that can be used to develop cyber warfare capabilities to neutralize US drones, and also the means to eavesdrop on US communications. For example, the satellite transponder will tell the Iranians exactly which frequencies are used by US drones for sat link-up. Could the Iranians deploy balloon-based transmitters that “jam” or “spoof” these frequencies and deploy these over their own country, thus making it difficult for these drones to have a clean sat linkup? ...<br /><br />9. The algorithms: This is a tough one. One line of thought says that it would be impossible to extract any “code” from this platform. Perhaps. But another line of thinking says that the processors and controllers employed in military projects are not much different to those available commercially. Yes, they have much higher tolerances and quality standards, but a lot of the basic technology is the same. ...<br /><br />10. Encryption: This would apply both to the radio/satellite transceiver links as well as to any data or code stored on the RQ-170s own systems. ......</i><br /><br />http://www.techlahore.com/2011/12/10/what-can-iran-learn-from-the-us-rq-170-stealth-drone/Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-49913598205233830562011-12-04T22:49:16.424-08:002011-12-04T22:49:16.424-08:00Here's a Washington Post story on tensions wit...Here's a <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-breach-with-pakistan-shows-imbalance-between-diplomatic-security-goals/2011/12/03/gIQAd2DsTO_story_1.html" rel="nofollow">Washington Post</a> story on tensions within Obama admin on relations with Pakistan:<br /><br /><i>Nonstop crises between the United States and Pakistan this year have fueled tensions within the Obama administration over what kind of relationship the two countries should have and who should be in charge of it.<br /><br />The State Department has long smarted over the preeminence of military and intelligence priorities, which seems to leave diplomacy in a distant third place. The result, diplomats say, is that there is little goodwill to cushion blows such as the U.S. airstrike last month that left two dozen Pakistani soldiers dead along the Afghanistan border.<br /><br />More than a week after the attack, President Obama called Pakistan’s president on Sunday to say that the deaths were “regrettable,” stopping short of an apology that many in Pakistan have called for.<br /><br />The airstrike has cast a shadow over a major diplomatic gathering Monday in Bonn, Germany, that the administration hoped would help facilitate plans to wind down the Afghanistan war. Pakistan has said that it will not attend the meeting, which brings together more than 100 countries and international organizations and whose agenda includes regional and Afghan development and peace talks with the Taliban.<br /><br />Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who will lead the U.S. delegation, unsuccessfully appealed for a change of heart in a telephone call Saturday to Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.<br /><br />The U.S.-Pakistan breach has also set back Obama administration attempts to improve the brittle relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Afghan President Hamid Karzai told Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine on the eve of the Bonn meeting that he thought Kabul’s closest neighbor was trying to sabotage the possibility of peace negotiations.<br />-----------<br />Until his retirement in September, Adm. Mike Mullen, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was the most public face of the bilateral relationship. Mullen’s trips to Pakistan for face-to-face meetings with Pakistan’s army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, were far more frequent than Clinton’s visits with the civilian authorities.<br /><br />When an exasperated Mullen publicly accused Pakistan’s military of supporting Afghan insurgent groups in congressional testimony just before leaving office, some State Department officials said they felt blindsided.<br /><br />On a subsequent visit to Pakistan in October, Clinton insisted on leading a delegation that included CIA Director David H. Petraeus and Mullen’s replacement, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey.<br /><br />But the State Department’s efforts to assert at least the appearance of control over U.S. policy are regularly undermined by a steady stream of congressional visitors to Pakistan who “all want to visit Kayani,” an administration official said. “They don’t want to talk to their civilian counterparts” in Pakistan’s Parliament, “and they only want to stay a few hours,” the official said.<br /><br />Retired Maj. Gen. Mahmud Ali Durrani, a former national security adviser to Gilani and Pakistani ambassador to the United States, agreed with that reality and the impression it leaves in Pakistan. “You look at the visitors from Washington,” Durrani said. “They would go and spend time with the president, then most of the serious discussions they had with the army chief.”<br /><br />“In my view,” he said, “there is one and only one issue” between Pakistan and the United States, “and that is counterterrorism. And that is in the lap of the security establishment. So that, in itself, is a problem.”</i><br /><br />http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-breach-with-pakistan-shows-imbalance-between-diplomatic-security-goals/2011/12/03/gIQAd2DsTO_story_1.htmlRiaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-2263238322555621312011-12-04T18:34:01.763-08:002011-12-04T18:34:01.763-08:00Here's WSJ excerpts on Iran shooting down Amer...Here's <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204770404577078160095550518.html" rel="nofollow">WSJ excerpts</a> on Iran shooting down American stealth drone RQ-170 Sentinel also used in bin Laden raid in Pakistan:<br /><br /><i>WASHINGTON—Iran said on Sunday that it shot down a U.S. stealth drone near the country's eastern border, but U.S. officials in Afghanistan said the craft could instead be an unmanned reconnaissance plane that veered off course and crashed last week.<br /><br />Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted a military official who said Tehran had downed an RQ-170 Sentinel, the U.S. Air Force's stealth drone.<br /><br />U.S. and NATO officials wouldn't say what kind of American drone had disappeared, but U.S. officials said there was no indication that the aircraft had been shot down by the Iranians. One American official said the drone likely suffered from a mechanical failure.<br /><br />American officials said they believe that after the remote pilots lost control of the aircraft, the drone crashed in an unknown location.<br /><br />On Sunday afternoon, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's command in Afghanistan said the Iranians may have been referring to an unmanned craft lost while flying a mission over western Afghanistan "late last week."<br />---------------<br />The RQ-170 Sentinel was the type of stealth drone used to conduct surveillance on the compound used by Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, before the May raid by Navy SEAL commandos that killed the al Qaeda leader.<br />-----------<br />Defense analysts have speculated in the past that the Sentinel, built by Lockheed Martin Corp., was based in Afghanistan not just to conduct secret missions into Pakistan but also for surveillance of Iranian military sites.<br /><br />The stealth drone was originally part of the Air Force's classified fleet and its existence was officially denied.<br /><br />But the service now makes available a fact sheet about the aircraft.<br /><br />The drone is a wing-shaped aircraft, like the stealth bomber, a design that is supposed to make it less visible to radar.<br /><br />The number of Sentinels that the Air Force operates remains a closely guarded secret.<br /><br />The "RQ" designation is used for unarmed drones, such as the RQ-4 Global Hawk. But some analysts have said the U.S. might try to arm the airframe at some point in the future.<br /><br />Iran claims to have its own fleet of unarmed drones, but U.S. officials question Tehran's ability to conduct even short-range reconnaissance with unmanned aircraft.</i><br /><br />http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204770404577078160095550518.htmlRiaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-42200196944424296792011-12-03T21:28:05.876-08:002011-12-03T21:28:05.876-08:00Here are some excerpts from Mansoor Ijaz's Op ...Here are some excerpts from Mansoor Ijaz's Op Ed in latest issue of <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/12/04/an-insider-analysis-of-pakistan-s-memogate.html" rel="nofollow">Newsweek</a>:<br /><br /><i>I have a history of involvement in back-channel diplomacy, particularly between the governments of Pakistan and India on the subject of Kashmir and nuclear proliferation, but it is still important to ask why, in this instance, Haqqani chose to come to me. Perhaps because he had tried other interlocutors to deliver the same message and had been refused. Perhaps because the basis of his request—an alleged coup plot—was only a concocted threat and he needed someone who couldn’t verify the postulation in the short time frame required by the ambassador for action. What I am certain of is that Haqqani believed I was the most plausibly deniable back channel he could use. He knew I was disliked by many in Islamabad’s power circles for my strong anti-establishment views. Haqqani also knew I had the connections to get the message quickly and quietly to Mullen. He knew I maintained friendships with former CIA director James Woolsey, former U.S. national-security adviser Gen. James L. Jones, Reagan “Star Wars” commander Lt. Gen. James Abrahamson, and others.<br />--------------<br />A few days before the Mullen denial was posted on Foreign Policy’s blog, The Cable, Haqqani changed his BlackBerry handset for the third time since May. Maybe he hoped that changing PINs would erase his damning conversations from my handset. Unfortunately for him, they remain preserved—now in a bank vault—in exactly their original form on my original device as he and I exchanged them. The constant changing of handsets raised the disturbing specter that Haqqani had persuaded his friends in the U.S. intelligence community to assist him in “scrubbing” his BlackBerry records because my disclosures were not just about to lose him his job, but could potentially uncover sensitive matters of U.S. national interest as well. After all, I was not the only entry on Haqqani’s BlackBerry contact list. Other BlackBerry chats could prove highly embarrassing or prove complicity and culpability if they were made public by Supreme Court action in Pakistan.<br />------------------<br />Haqqani made just one critical mistake—seconding me into his scheme. I dislike the brinksmanship and heavy-handed role that Pakistan’s military and intelligence organizations have played throughout the nation’s history, and have said so over and over again. Democracy cannot exist in a police state managed by a thuggish intelligence agency. But I dislike even more feudal civilian cabals that feign love for democracy only to orchestrate their grandiose schemes on important security issues through abuses of power that simply cannot be tolerated in an open society.<br /><br />Pakistan is much stronger as a result of the disclosures that have arisen after the memorandum became the unintended focus of global media attention. Its frenetic, even chaotic media did their jobs well. Some suffered threats. Yet Pakistani reporters toughed it out. They saw a smokescreen and decided to disperse it. It is this hunger for transparency that the people of Pakistan will now use to choose leaders who serve only the people, not themselves.<br /><br />Pakistan’s military men may not allow civilian supremacy just yet, but a serious transition seems to be underway to at least make civilian institutions strong enough to coexist on an even footing with the Army in the intermediate term. One day, those civilian institutions may indeed be strong enough to protect Pakistan’s truest national interests: not Kashmir, Afghanistan, and nuclear bombs, but the availability of education, the expansion of trade ties, and the provision of energy to a frustrated nation eager to find prosperity.</i><br /><br />http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/12/04/an-insider-analysis-of-pakistan-s-memogate.htmlRiaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.com