Spearhead Analysis: Elections held hostage

By Nida Afaque
SPEARHEAD RESEARCH

As elections draw near, the political climate within Pakistan has turned sober. Contesting parties are working industriously to widen their voter base, the Election Commission is overworked with verifying candidates’ credibility and the interim government is struggling to contain the country’s affairs until the next government is ready to take charge. But there is another kind of force, one that is becoming more elusive than ever, which is busy opposing efforts to a peaceful democratic transition.

These anti-state forces have been involved in harmful activities for quite long. Pakistan has had to pay the price of these terrorist elements through money, blood and an overall loss of security. Since the beginning of this year, the weekly death toll averages 175, with most violence concentrated in Karachi, Baluchistan, KPK and FATA. Various religious extremists like Jundullah, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) and most commonly, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) have been found responsible for the attacks on senior politicians and government and security buildings across the country. Other civil separatist movements like the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) have targeted government officials and security personnel.

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Taliban claim training 1,000 bombers at secret camps

By: Zia Khan

Pakistani Taliban have claimed that they are running three secret camps in South and North Waziristan tribal regions close to the Afghan border to train potential suicide bombers with their total strength exceeding 1,000.

“We have three facilities exclusively for fidayeen (suicide bombers). Each one has more than 350 men being trained in it,” a purported spokesperson for the little-known Fidayeen-e-Islam Group of the Taliban, told The Express Tribune from a secret location in North Waziristan.

The man, who identified himself as Shakirullah Shakir, added that the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) led by Hakimullah Mehsud had recently separated the operations of suicide bombers from the overall activities of the group.

“Fidayeen-e-Islam is a part of the overall chain of command of the TTP but it works separately and has its own structures,” Shakir said but gave little details of the working relationship between the mainstream Taliban leadership and the group handling suicide bombers.

The claim came on the heels of a statement by an alleged teenage suicide bomber who was arrested by the police at the Sakhi Hassan shrine in Dera Ghazi Khan after the vest he was wearing went off only partially, injuring him.

Omar told journalists later at a hospital that he was trained at a camp run by the Taliban with more than 300 people learning how to become the most lethal weapon.

Though there was no way to confirm the claim independently, Shakir said Omar was trained at one of three camps at Mirali town of North Waziristan and what he told the media about the number of under-training bombers was true.

“We own both Omer and his words,” the spokesperson added.

Shakir said one of the biggest camps was in Mirali in the North Waziristan, an agency security and intelligence officials believe was under the control of pro-Pakistan militant groups. He didn’t disclose the locations of two other facilities.

Of the more than 1,000 potential bombers, Shakirullah claimed, a few dozen had already been sent to hit their targets across Pakistan.

He did not say what their targets were but another Taliban associate said the most prominent personalities the terror network now wanted to hit were politicians, some selected people from the media and individuals working with civil society organisations.

Almost a week ago, a spokesperson for the Taliban, Ihsanullah Ihsan, told the Associated Press news agency that both governor and chief minister of Balochistan province were on the hit list of the group.

He did not explain why they were being specifically targeted.

Why the ISI has played a silent spectator to the CIA/Black Water operations?

By Yousuf Nazar

I have suspected for long that the United States has been conducting false flag operations in Pakistan through covert operatives. I wrote on my blog on January 10, 2008, Could CIA be conducting Operation Gladio in Pakistan?

False flag operations are covert operations designed to deceive the public in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities. The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors; that is, flying the flag of a country other than one’s own. False flag operations are not limited to war and counter-insurgency operations, and can be used in peace-time. Operation Gladio was a covert operations project conducted by the UK and UK intelligence during the 1960s in Europe and involved massacres and bombing conducted by the covert operatives of these agencies with the objective of blaming them on the communist Soviet Union and discrediting it.

On December 11, 2009, the Guardian published a story, “Blackwater operating at CIA Pakistan base”, which said:

“the US contractor Blackwater was operating in Pakistan at a secret CIA airfield used for launching drone attacks, according to a former US official, despite repeated government denials that the company is in the country.The official, who had direct knowledge of the operation, said that employees with Blackwater, now renamed Xe Services, patrol the area round the Shamsi airbase in Baluchistan province.He also confirmed that Blackwater employees help to load laser-guided Hellfire missiles on to CIA-operated drones,”

On September 16, 2010, noted investigative journalist Wayne Madsen published an article in the Online Journal titled, ” Blackwater/Xe cells conducting false flag terrorist attacks in Pakistan.” The author of the Wasden Report (who formerly worked for the US Navy and the State Department) claimed that he has learned from a deep background source that Xe Services, the company formerly known as Blackwater, has been conducting false flag terrorist attacks in Pakistan that are later blamed on “Pakistani Taliban” and noted that only recently did the US State Department designate the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) as terrorist organization.

On March 17, 2011, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published an uncharacteristically candid and realistic article, “Perfidious America” declaring that the [Raymond] Davis case has knocked Washington off the moral high ground in Pakistan. It is probably for the first time that a pro-establishment American paper such as the WSJ acknowledged that ‘suspicions of Pakistanis about the US operations in Pakistan have a basis in reality’ noting that in his book “Obama’s Wars,” Bob Woodward revealed the existence of a secret 3,000-strong army of paramilitary Afghan fighters created by the CIA to target Taliban and al Qaeda commanders inside Pakistan through “false flag attacks.” Recall that the Wikileaks had revealed that President Zardari had told Richard Halbrooke that he suspected that the US was destabilizing Pakistan through the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan.

Former Indian Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar in an article published by the AsiaTimes (February 15, 2011) pointed out that “the heart of the matter is that Pakistan has been wondering for a long time who it is who could be instigating the so-called “Pakistani Taliban” to inflict such bloody wounds on the Pakistani military and weaken and incrementally destabilize the Pakistani state” and concluded that Davis can most certainly provide the proverbial “missing link” to Pakistan to connect several dots on an intriguing chessboard. Ambassador Bhadrakumar had also noted that that Davis’ detention sent alarm bells ringing all the way to the White House and the US was apprehensive that the Davis case had the potential to shake up the very foundations of its alliance with Pakistan.

So the most important question to come out of the Raymond Davis, as I wrote in the Express Tribune on February 28, 2011, is not whether he killed in self-defense or not, whether the ISI manipulated the media or not, whether he was an accredited diplomat or not, whether he enjoyed diplomatic or consular immunity or not, or whether he was spy or a CIA contractor.

The most critical question is what hundreds of CIA agents (according to scores of reports including those carried by top US papers recently) are doing in Pakistan, and why they were provided cover by an embassy whose facilities are being upgraded by a massive spending program exceeding one billion dollars, according to official US documents, as either the ISI looked the other way or was sleeping.

Going further, given the dirty and murky CIA-ISI deal that resulted in the release of Raymond Davis, the most important question seems to be why the civilian and military leaders of Pakistan have kept silent, at the least, and therefore have been complicit in the false flag operations against the state and the people of Pakistan despite the fact that the head of the state had expressed his suspicions that the CIA was behind some the terrorist attacks. The nation and the super-patriots that our TV anchors are ought to tell General Kayani that issuing press statement condemning drone attacks can no longer fool the people. The masses may be silent and may feel helpless for now but the time will come when they will ask loudly, why did you co-operate with the Americans when you knew they were upto no good?

Davis Arrest Throws US Undercover Campaign in Pakistan into Disarray

This Can’t Be Happening

By Dave Lindorff

The ongoing case of Raymond Davis, the CIA contractor facing murder charges in Lahore for the execution-style slaying of two apparent agents of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, is apparently leading to a roll-back of America’s espionage and Special Operations activities in Pakistan.

A few days ago, Pakistan’s Interior Department, which is reportedly conducting a careful review of the hundreds of private contractors who flooded into Pakistan over the last two years, many with “diplomatic passports,” and many others, like Davis, linked to shady “security” firms, arrested an American security contractor named Aaron DeHaven, a Virginia native who claims to work for a company called Catalyst Services LLC.

The Catalyst Services LLC website describes the company, with offices in Afghanistan, Dubai, the US and Pakistan, as having experience in “logistics, operations, security and finance,” and as having a staff led by “individuals who have been involved in some of the most significant events of the last 20 years,” including “the break-up of the Soviet Union, the US effort in Somalia, and the Global War on Terror.”

DeHaven is being held on a 14-day remand, charged with overstaying his visa and with living in an unauthorized area.

Meanwhile, the English-language Express Tribune in Pakistan reports that according to ISI sources, 30 “suspected US operatives” in Pakistan have “suspended” their operations in the country, while 12 have fled the country.

The paper quotes the Pakistan Foreign Office as saying that 851 Americans claiming diplomatic immunity are currently in Pakistan, 297 of whom are “not working in any diplomatic capacity.” The paper says that the country’s Interior Department claims that 414 of the total are “non-diplomats.” The majority of these American operatives, the paper says, are located in Islamabad (where the US is building a huge fortress-like embassy reminiscent of the one in Baghdad), with the others in Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar. Most are suspected of being involved in covert missions that report to the US Joint Special Operations Command, with many suspected of being active-duty Special Forces personnel from the Army’s Delta Force. (The website of the JSOC says its responsibility is “synchronizing Department of Defense plans against global terrorist networks and, as directed, conducting global operations.”)

As I reported earlier, both Pakistani and Indian news organizations are claiming, based upon intelligence sources, that Davis was involved in not just intelligence work, but in orchestrating terrorist activity by both the Pakistani Taliban and the terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which has been linked to both the assassination of Benezir Bhutto and the capture and beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Multiple calls to members of both groups were found by police on some of the cell phones found on Davis and in his car when he was arrested in Lahore.

It is unclear how far the blow-up in Pakistan over the exposure of America’s role in stirring up unrest in that country will go. Clearly, the ISI and the Pakistani military have long had their own complicated relationship with the Pakistani Taliban, and much of the current anger in both the ISI and the military has to do with the US being found to be working behind their backs, including in its contact with those groups.

But things have been complicated too by mounting public outrage over Davis’s brazen slaughter of the two Pakistanis, who reportedly were tailing him because of concerns about the nature of his activities, and who reportedly were both shot in the back. This public outrage has been further stoked by both a subsequent suicide by the 18-year-old bride of one of the victims, and by the death of an innocent bystander mowed down by a second vehicle carrying several more US contractors which sped to Davis in response to his call for assistance following the shooting. That vehicle, after running down the bystander, raced to sanctuary at the US Consulate. The men in the car, never identified by the consulate, were spirited out of the country by the US so they could avoid arrest.

Further complicating matters for the US, the province of Punjab, of which Lahore is the capital, is run by the opposition party, headed by former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif. Sharif, who still has presidential aspirations, has no incentive at all to make things easy for the country’s ruling party by letting Davis go. Indeed, with public opinion running almost 100% in favor of trying Davis for murder, Sharif can only gain by insisting that the court system have the final say.

Pakistan’s central government, led by President Asif Ali Zardari, clearly wants to put the Davis incident behind it by having him declared to have diplomatic immunity. Foreign Officials allege that Zardari pressured the Foreign Office in early February to backdate a letter identifying Davis as being a “member of staff” of the US Embassy in Islamabad, which would have afforded him such immunity from prosecution. But the country’s foreign minister at that time, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, reportedly refused, saying, “On the basis of the official record and the advice given to me by the technocrats and experts of the Foreign Office, I could not certify him (Raymond Davis) as a diplomat. The kind of by blanket immunity Washington is pressing for Davis, is not endorsed by the official record of the Foreign Ministry.”

He has subsequently been ousted and replaced by Zardari.

The reality is that the US, which as required, on Jan. 25 submitted to the Foreign Office its annual list of those employees of the US Embassy whom it classified as “diplomats” warranting diplomatic immunity. The list had 48 names on it, and did not include Davis. Only after Davis’s Jan. 27 shooting of the two Pakistani motorcyclists, on Jan. 28, did the US submit a “revised” list, to which Davis’s name had been appended.

The US initially said Davis was an employee of the Lahore Consulate, and Davis himself told arresting police officers that he was a contractor working out of the Lahore Consulate, a role that would not afford him any diplomatic immunity, as consular workers, under the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations only receive immunity for their “official duties,” and in any case lose even that limited immunity in the case of “grave crimes.”

His current legal problems, and the public demand that he be tried (and then hanged) for the killings, has definitely led to a reduction in US undercover operations in Pakistan, and to a pullback of at least some of the Special Forces personnel operating there. It will take considerable finesse for the US and the Zardari government to put the the relationship back together-if the Pakistani military and the ISI even want to restore it-finesse that the US has not been very good at displaying.

So far, in fact, the US response to Davis’s arrest has been to bluntly and publicly threaten Pakistan with a loss of foreign and military aid-a threat that seems empty given the American need for Pakistani assistance in supplying its military in Afghanistan, and its need for at lease covert permission to continue sending Predator and Reaper drones across the border to attack Taliban suspects in the tribal border areas. US bluster, and some clumsy efforts to forge records that would purport to show Davis had diplomatic immunity-all widely exposed in the Pakistani media-have only served to further stoke public outrage.

Meanwhile, local authorities in Lahore at the prison where Davis is being held, are so worried that the US may try to have him killed to prevent him from spilling the beans about his activities-for example explaining why the camera he was carrying held photographs of Pakistani military installations as well as of mosques, madrassas and other schools-that they have reportedly posted special guards (unarmed as an added precaution) around his cell, and have been monitoring his food. Davis was reportedly even denied a box of chocolates sent by the US Consulate in Lahore, for fear it might have been laced with poison.

British forces need material, moral and strategic support

It is vital that the military prevent the Taliban taking control in Afghanistan, says former commander Richard Kemp

Colonel Richard Kemp

Taliban fighters in a madrasa near Kundoz. If they resumed control, international terrorist training and planning would return to Afghanistan, says Colonel Richard Kemp. Photograph: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad for the Guardian

On taking office the new defence secretary, Liam Fox, immediately made clear that our troops are fighting and dying in Afghanistan “so that the people of Britain and our global interests are not threatened”. A security rather than a humanitarian mission: “We are not in Afghanistan for the sake of the education policy.”

Fox’s unbending purpose in Afghanistan is absolutely right (although economic, social and political development are vital components underpinning the counter-insurgency campaign there). There are plenty of other peoples around the globe who would no doubt benefit from British intervention to rid them of human rights abuse and economic hardship, but whose regimes do not present any direct threat to our security and therefore do not warrant the sacrifice – so far – of 300 British military lives.

But success in Afghanistan should also save the people there from the brutal oppression of the Taliban. I was commander of British forces back in 2003. My interpreter, Hamid, an elderly and learned citizen of Kabul, had endured years under the Taliban heel, and would visibly flinch whenever their name was so much as mentioned.

The miserable lives of the millions who live just over the border in north-west Pakistan give us a glimpse of the horrors that would confront the people of Afghanistan if the extremists were allowed to return.

Between 2004 and last year the Pakistani Taliban, originally a separate entity from their Afghan cousins, took over, progressively expanding their iron grip on this 250-mile stretch of border. They killed, attacked, tortured and intimidated tribal elders, government officials, soldiers, rival politicians, doctors, teachers, aid workers and human rights activists. Banning long-established local government, they blew up meetings of elders using suicide attacks and fire-bombings, and established Taliban tribunals to administer the unilaterally imposed sharia law.

The tribunals order public executions – by shooting or beheading – for offences such as theft. People are beaten and their heads are shaved for listening to music, watching television, trimming beards or failing to pray at the mosque five times a day. Barber shops, hospitals, mosques and government buildings have been destroyed.

The Taliban violently compel women to stay at home if they are not fully veiled and insist they be accompanied by a male relative if they go outside. Women suspected of prostitution are killed. Females may not be photographed, denying them the ability to obtain official identity cards or register for benefits and relief services, such as food, shelter or medical treatment, and effectively removing them from government records.

The Taliban do not permit girls to go to school, and have blown up or torched hundreds of schools, depriving tens of thousands of boys and girls of any education.

All of these activities continue today, and have been extensively documented in a recent report by Amnesty International.

Some people dispute Fox’s assertions about the threat to our country’s security that would follow if we left Afghanistan before we achieved our objectives. They argue that a Taliban resurgent in Afghanistan would neither pose a threat to us nor be foolish enough again to harbour al-Qaida terrorists intent on attacking the west.

Again, the Pakistani Taliban’s activities are instructive. Despite strikes against them by the government of Pakistan and US forces, since 2005 the Taliban in north-west Pakistan have co-ordinated activities with the Afghan Taliban, launching cross-border operations against Nato and Afghan forces. They give refuge and support to the Haqqani terrorist network and to Mullah Omar, chief of the Afghan Taliban.

Osama bin Laden and his senior leaders, as well as al-Qaida terrorists and affiliated groups, such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, live and operate in these areas. Attacks against the west have been planned and training of international terrorists is conducted under Taliban dispensation. Sound familiar?

Of course, it does. And should we again permit the Taliban to control Afghanistan, there can be no doubt that they too would allow international terrorist training and planning to resume – exactly as before. Just as chillingly, they would return the Pakistani Taliban’s favours, providing support and shelter for them and for al-Qaida and associated extremists intent on bringing down the government of Pakistan and taking control of a nuclear-armed state.

With much more hard fighting before the job is done, we have not seen the last British soldier killed in Afghanistan.

The government must give our troops every shred of material support necessary to achieve their objectives and to minimise further casualties. But our brave fighting men and women also need our wholehearted moral support as they continue to put their lives on the line to prevent these nightmare scenarios becoming reality. It is not good enough to support them though. We must also support the vital cause they are fighting for.

Colonel Richard Kemp, of the Royal Anglian Regiment, was commander of British forces in Afghanistan in 2003. His book, Attack State Red, is an account of the 2007 campaign by the Royal Anglian Regiment in Afghanistan.

Army major arrested for links to NY bomb plot

AFP

WP report says major met Shahzad in Islamabad and had phone contact with him

WASHINGTON: An army major has been arrested in connection with the failed bombing earlier this month in New York’s Times Square, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

New York City Police Department Counter Terrorism Unit officers patrol in Times Square on May 5. A Pakistani army major has been arrested in connection with the failed bombing earlier this month in New York’s Times Square, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

If the report, which quoted Pakistani law enforcement sources, is confirmed, it would the first time someone in Pakistan’s military establishment implicated in the botched car bombing plot.

TIMES SQUARE BOMB HOAX, ISRAELI INTEL GROUP SHOWS ITS HAND

ISRAELIS BLAME TALIBAN GROUP, ONE THEY HAVE BEEN WORKING WITH FOR YEARS

By Gordon Duff

Times Squares Bomb Hoax

Who would have believed it? Only days after a warning of an Israeli “false flag” bombing against the US “in the works” a massive car bomb is discovered in Time Square! Better yet, though no intelligence organization in the world could discover anyone claiming responsibility for this embarrassing failure, SITE Intelligence, a group rumored as the “voice of the Mossad” has placed the blame on the Pakistani Taliban.

Pakistani Taliban ready for Osama’s plan

By Syed Saleem Shahzad

ISLAMABAD - After a successful series of meetings in Washington last week, the United States and Pakistan have deepened their strategic relationship aimed at broad-based military cooperation for an American victory in Afghanistan. A dialogue process has also been set up with a handpicked team of the Hezb-e-Islami Afghanistan (HIA), the second-largest force in the Pashtun-dominated south of Afghanistan after the Taliban.

United States President Barack Obama flew to Afghanistan at the weekend in a surprise visit to impress on President Hamid Karzai that effective political policy is needed to reinforce the military campaign against the Taliban-led insurgency this summer.

Three Heroines of Pakistan

by Imran H. Khan

Pakistan has been blessed with many amazing women whose stories have been largely untold. Shahla Haeri wrote about some of them involved in the social sphere in her book “No Shame for the Sun“. OPEN’s chapters have also held conferences and forums highlighting the role of Pakistani American women in the US. In the recent years three Pakistani women have defied all odds and achieved remarkable success in achieving some of the highest goals typically associated with men. These achievements are specially significant taking into account their economic and geographic origins.

Maria Toor: Pakistani Woman Squash champion from South Waziristan

Maria is the Pakistan Woman Squash champion and Seventy Second in the World. What is remarkable is that she comes from WANA South Waziristan, the home of Pakistani Taleban. Her parents are from a poor background and she did not even pick up a squash racket till the age of twelve. Her meteoric rise in squash is amazing as she has achieved this with little to no resources. In listening to her in the attached video you can get a sense of her passion for the game and the hurdles she had to overcome in order to get there. The other thing that struck me was her confidence in achieving pretty much what she put her mind to, including appearing in a Hollywood movie. With little to no education she has still found the time to learn English and appears comfortable in front of the camera.

Saira Amin: First female Sword of Honor Winner and Fighter Pilot from Peshawer

Saira not only graduated from one of the most rigorous air force academies in 2006, but also won the most coveted Sword of Honor. To achieve this you need to be the most outstanding cadet in all of the three areas of flying, academics and general military training. She belonged to only the second group of females to be inducted into the PAF. She had to outclass all her male colleagues in physically grueling training that included para jumping.

She has established that in a extremely male dominated domain of jet fighter pilots of one of the most demanding of air forces, a female can not only participate but even dominate.

The video below shows female fighter pilots converting into flying fighters of PAF.

Naseem Akhter: Fastest Woman in South Asia from Korangi.

Naseem Akhter caught the fancy of all of Pakistan when she beat Pramila Priyadarshan, the Sri Lankan favorite to win the gold medal in South Asian games in 2010. She hails from a poor family from Korangi area of Karachi. Her dedication to achieve her goal was captured in her statement that she gave after the event.

“I had forgotten the world for six months and trained really very, very hard under my coach Maqsood Ahmed to achieve this. It is a great moment for me to have brought glory to the country in my event.”

To grasp the real significance of her story you have to watch the video below and see and hear the pride of her family.

What really struck me in the photo below is that she was wearing loose clothes and yet was only a second and half behind the fastest woman on the planet, Florence Griffith-Joyner. I can only wonder that with some training and more streamlined clothes what she can possibly achieve.

The theme that runs common in all the three stories is that none of these ladies let any excuse come between them and their goals. They managed the challenges with a supportive family structure. They exhibit all the same qualities that are needed to be a successful entrepreneur. They had to raise money, market their talents, fight the naysayers and excel in what they did with single minded focus.

To all these women, “Afreen” .

PAKISTAN’S IMRAN KHAN: LOOKING FOR “AMERICA” IN THE STRANGEST PLACES

IMRAN NEEDS A TEAM OF GOOD ADVISORS

Gordon Duff

Traveling around Pakistan is a challenge for an American nowadays. It’s not the highways. It isn’t even that our second vehicle was “armed to the teeth” as we weaved through traffic and up and down superhighways and dusty back roads. The difficulty is the landscape itself, a land, at times, very American in appearance and yet strange and wondrous too. It was the similarities that scared us.

We were there as Americans for a series of lectures and meetings to discuss economics and regional politics at universities and “think tanks.” Pakistan, a country of poverty and wealth, a nation threatened like no other was much like looking in a mirror, perhaps a mirror into America’s future.

A couple of nights ago, author and economist Jeff Gates and I along with Editor Raja Mujtaba of Opinion Maker, the controversial open forum where academics, military leaders and political dissidents from that region fight it out daily on the internet, met with Pakistani political leader, Imran Khan.

Meeting Khan was important to us because he is the only political figure in Pakistan that is widely respected in Afghanistan, a nation that could, potentially, bog American down for years in a bizarre and indefinable combination of “counter-terrorism” and traditional tribal warfare. Only Khan is respected on both sides of the border, Khan and General Aslam Beg, former Army Chief of Staff in Pakistan.

That there is suspicion between Pakistan and Afghanistan is an understatement. Millions of Afghanis and Pakistanis are, not only ethnically identical, but members of the same tribes, even families. Today, up to 4 million refugees from Afghanistan live in Pakistan’s tribal areas. These refugees combined with elements of a Pakistani Taliban have created a drain on Pakistan’s resources, a breeding ground for religious extremism and provided safe havens for Taliban sects that are clearly extremist, terrorist and criminal in nature.

With as many as 50 million people considering themselves “Taliban,” most non-extremist, differentiating between good and bad “Taliban” has been difficult and, in the case of American efforts, something approached with questionable intent.

Not that many years ago, the United States and Pakistan trained and armed the Mujahedeen, both Afghan and foreign fighters to overthrow Soviet dominance in Afghanistan. A generation later, our failure to demilitarize and rehabilitate these elements and the region has led to untold instability, world terrorism and a war against Pakistan supported by terrorist elements aided by massive funding and sophisticated weaponry and training whose origin can be traced with little difficulty to India and Israel.

Man or legend.

If a man describes “controversy” it is Imran Khan. Few people define the hopes of Islamic moderates as does Khan. This “Khan’s” empire, a “superstar” athlete of the cricket world, a sport unknown to most Americans, consists of that huge portion of the world our maps used to color pink, the regions we used to call the British Empire, a region covering 40% of the globe. When the British conquered the world they took their most beloved sport with them, cricket.

What if an American baseball pitcher won 30 games a year with an ERA of 2.0 and batted .400? Then surround him with controversy, a Muslim with a Jewish ex-wife, looks and charm and a reputed “way with the ladies” that keeps the tabloids stalking him and, oh, I forgot to mention this, make him the head of a political party. You will now begin to understand the enigma of Imran Khan

It gets worse.

He is Pashtun, one of the same ethnic group Americans know as the Taliban, a group well out of the mainstream in Pakistani politics. In a country ruled by the “Europeanized” Punjabi and Sindh, a Pashtu political leader makes Barak Hussein Obama seem “mainstream.”

It gets worse till.

Khan is not only a controversial celebrity, but an outspoken reformer fighting government corruption. Khan is a friend of Americans but strong enemy of American influence in Pakistan and very critical for the west for its mistrust of Islam. He believes the west doesn’t know the difference between a Taliban extremist and a moderate Sufi cleric but can pick out a Methodist from a Lutheran in seconds.

Imagine an American sports hero who is an Oxford trained economist, sponsored the nation’s largest cancer center and is now building a university for those who would never otherwise see a higher education.

We had to meet this guy.

His political offices were moderate. We had visited political parties in Pakistan that looked more like Ivy League campuses. Khan’s party was used furniture, peeling paint and the sound of work, footsteps up and down stairs and a lot of noise. It was an election night in Rawalpindi. A seat in the national assembly was up for grabs and charges of election fraud had charged the air.

I almost felt I was back in America. For the office of a man whose very mention that I planned to meet him had a flight attendant asking for my autograph, it was unexpected. Khan wasn’t a dilettante or elitist, he is a fighter, capable of holding his own in any political arena. The language was easy to understand. He believed what he said and knew what he was talking about.

We weren’t used to that.

If you ignored the TV crews outside, you noticed a few things. There were no lights, power had been cut, a result of terrorism’s costs to Pakistan. Khan had a small rechargeable lantern on his desk; he turned it so we could find out way and had us sit down. It was clear that we hadn’t entered the corridors of power. This was something else entirely.

We had walked in on a crusade for political accountability and reform. If this were America, it would have been that “third party” we all dream of but never get.

Not what we expected.

When Khan called President Musharraf “George Bush’s poodle” and threatened protests when Bush visited Pakistan in 2006, he was placed under house arrest. When Musharraf declared a “national emergency” in 2007, Khan called for his immediate arrest and execution for treason. Khan was jailed for this, went on a hunger strike and was released.

You can’t help but love a guy like that!

Khan wasn’t a tabloid playboy, though he looked the part, that and more, nor was he much like anything we have seen in America in many years. Khan believed what he said and could more than hold his own on any subject from economics to foreign policy, depth, clarity and understanding, not only of economic theory but someone with solutions, not just “sound bites” but solid programs, economic reform, political justice.

All of this was steeped in a passion, a drive you could feel across the room. It was electric. Mostly, however, I could feel his frustration. Reforming politics is impossible, certainly in America, at the best of times. Pakistan is beset by enemies on all sides, terror attacks are daily across the country and the threats are far worse than debt and unemployment. People are fighting for their lives.
Interview turned around.

Khan asked us about everything. I was grilled about American veterans, how they were treated, how their families suffered during multiple deployments how much Americans sacrificed in a war he believes is being handled without adequate understanding of the factors involved and the solutions available.

Khan wanted to know everything about America, as we saw it, opinions on the war, 9/11 and why Americans believed what the press told them about Pakistan and moderate Islam. His point, of course, is that extremism in Pakistan’s tribal areas was the result, as it had been in Afghanistan, of lack of education.

The aftermath of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union had forgotten to rebuild the battleground of that war, Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan where the millions of refugees had settled, areas now subject to poverty and extremism as the “war on terror” had virtually collapsed Pakistan’s economy and destroyed much of its infrastructure, more than any western nation had imagined or bothered to look into.

Few European or American schools have soldiers, armoured personnel carriers and “TSA level” security at their children’s schools.

What we saw.

Pakistan’s current president, Zardari, may actually be less popular than “W” after either Katrina or the infamous “Bush financial crash” when real estimates of approval entered the single digit range. Being an “unsuccessful politician” in Pakistan and hated by “party line” newspapers is a clear sign of personal integrity.

Zardari actually passed a law making it a crime to tell jokes about him. This must be hard on a lot of people. Pakistan is a country of folks who know humor. Sometimes it is all that keeps them alive.

Meeting an honest politician, one willing to tell Bush, Israel or anyone else exactly how he feels, to the point of doing jail time for it is a bit of a shock. You could ask Khan something and he would simply tell you what he thinks, tell you the truth. Combining this with being educated, devoutly religious and with an established history for charity work and paying the price for standing up for what is right, even at great personal cost, Imran Khan is an enigma.

How would Americans view Khan?

Jeff and I looked at each other the second we left the door. Jeff remembering his years as Chief Counsel for Senate Finance hit on it immediately: “We could get this guy elected President of the United States in a flat minute.”

Thinking back at the last 40 years, there was nobody who could stand up to this guy, media, debate, programs, especially if women were voting.
What would Americans really do?

Khan would be crucified by the press. He would demand an end to corruption, end foreign influence in Washington, Israel, China, India, Saudi Arabia, everyone. The wars would end, we would begin addressing the root causes of terrorism, defense spending would plummet, and America would start working again.

He would be dead in a week.

Why think about a guy from Pakistan?

The information revolution has made the world small. Imran Khan is “out there,” YouTube, the internet, not so much in America but people know him. He isn’t perfect like some Americans, you know the ones we are talking about, all “goodness and light” on the outside and underneath it all, corruption, addiction, a life of failure reinvented by money, power and foreign lobbyists.

America is at war and Pakistan is the front lines. When you talk terrorism, Pakistan is the victim, not the US. They get it from every side, American papers, Islamic extremists along with India/Israel and games some of us can only imagine or talk of in whispers as “conspiracy theory.” When a school is blown up in Pakistan, the list of potential suspects often has some names that would surprise many Americans.

With a world in the hands of folks like Bush or Obama, Gordon Brown or Tony Blair and the EU folks, Merkel and Sarrdoozie of France, anything with signs of human life and intelligence is always welcome. Italy’s prime minister spends more money on lesbian prostitutes than an American senator can steal in a lifetime. Imran Khan is a saint in comparison

Gordon Duff is a Marine Vietnam veteran, grunt and 100% disabled vet. He has been a UN Diplomat, defense contractor and is a widely published expert on military and defense issues. He is active in the financial industry and is a specialist on global trade. Gordon Duff acts as political and economic advisor to a number of governments in Africa and the Middle East.

Down, But Not Out

Bruce Riedel, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Saban Center for Middle East Policy
Aysha Chowdhry, Research Analyst/Publications Manager, Foreign Policy, U.S. Relations with the Islamic World

Reports that Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, has died from wounds inflicted in a CIA drone attack are welcome if true. But his demise is unlikely to significantly disrupt the Taliban’s operations. Since its birth just a few years ago the Pakistani Taliban has rapidly developed and matured into a formidable terror network reaching across the country. There may be some confusion at the top in replacing Hakimullah, but it will not deal the terror gang a mortal blow.

Pakistan Taliban commander Hakimullah Mehsud is seen with his arm around Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud during a news conference in South Waziristan.

Hakimullah took control of the group just last August when his predecessor Baitullah Mehsud was killed in another CIA strike. For Americans Hakimullah’s infamy was assured by his role in sending a Jordanian triple agent into a CIA forward operating base in Afghanistan on December 30, 2009. Al Khurasani, as he is known in his al-Qaeda nom de guerre, blew up the base, killing more CIA officers in one attack than any terrorist since an attack in Beirut in 1983.

For Pakistanis, the Taliban has been even more devastating. According to a Pakistani think tank, over 25,000 Pakistanis were killed or wounded in terror-related violence last year. Around 5,000 were killed or wounded in suicide bombings linked to the Taliban. The Pakistani army’s two offensives against the Taliban, first in the Swat valley last summer and then in south Waziristan this fall, have so stretched the army’s resources that it told Secretary of Defense Bob Gates last month that it will not be able to conduct another large-scale offensive against the Taliban for at least six and probably twelve months.

The Taliban has expanded far beyond its roots in the tribal areas of the Afghan border in just a few years. It has conducted attacks from Kashmir in the north to Karachi in the south. It still recruits most effectively in the Pashtun tribes, but it has also developed extensive support in the Punjabi heart of the nation. It has demonstrated an uncanny ability to strike deep inside some of the most fortified secure zones of the country, including Rawalpindi, the nations’ military capital.

The group has also moved ever closer towards al-Qaeda. Khurasani’s attack was trumpeted in an al-Qaeda statement days after he struck, with the terror group saying his martyrdom was retaliation for CIA missions that had killed Baitullah and two al-Qaeda leaders. Hakimullah appeared in a video with Khurasni to underscore their close alliance.

The Taliban’s goal is to disrupt Pakistani society so as to make the country ungovernable, hoping that chaos will lead to a jihadist takeover. Their immediate objective appears to be to destabilize the country’s largest port, Karachi, by provoking ethnic and sectarian violence between the city’s various communities. Violence in Karachi directly threatens the NATO mission in Afghanistan as well, since more than three quarters of NATO’s supplies arrive via Karachi.

So Mehsud’s passing is merely a battle victory. Although his death may temporarily offset the momentum of the Pakistani Taliban, make no mistake, there are a hundred more Mehsud’s waiting in the shadows. The war is far from being decided.

Pakistan army has broken the back of TTP

U.S.Central Command chief Gen David Petraeus lauding the Pakistan Army successes in Malakand and South Waziristan regions said that Pakistani Taliban are no longer in possession of the tools of terror that they once had in their eastern South Waziristan stronghold.

“Well, I don’t know that you would characterize it as having defeated the TTP and/or the other elements that are associated with the Pakistani Taliban. But they have certainly set them back very considerably,” he answered while speaking at a US Think Tank when asked if Pakistan has completely defeated the militant movement.

Gen. Petraeus told a gathering of experts at the Institute for the Study of War that it is important that Pakistan’s vital anti-terror strides are recognized.

The Centcom leader noted with appreciation that the Pakistani army has cleared and held Swat Valley, Swat District, the Malakand Division of Northwest Frontier Province and has conducted important operations in Bajaur, Mohmand, and Khyber in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

“And then most recently, of course, about three or four months ago, launched an important operation in eastern South Waziristan, the tribal areas controlled by the extremist element that was led by the former Baitullah Mehsud, who was killed in the Fata last year, a very important action. And that has put considerable pressure on, again, the Pakistani Taliban and some of its affiliates.”

In his appraisal, Petraeus noted a strong public backing for Pakistan’s anti-militant operations that emerged following the Taliban’s challenge to writ of the government in Swat valley.

“It has been, I think, of enormous importance that we recognize this important development because until about ten months ago, I think there was generally an assertion by a number in Pakistan that the Pakistani military was being coerced into fighting the U.S. War on Terror,” he said, according to a transcript of the discussion available Tuesday.

He also acknowledged the fact that in dealing with the massive task of clearing and holding an area in the mountainous region and then rebuilding the conflict-hit areas, the available resources remain limited.

“The Pakistani Army and the Frontier Corps have carried out really quite impressive counter-insurgency operations. There are certainly limitations in the resources available to them. There are limitations in the governmental agencies and resources that they can bring to the rebuilding effort because, of course, it’s not just clear and leave, it’s clear, hold, and build, and even transition. And again, the Pakistani military’s approach has been quite impressive.

“So I think all in all, they have shown quite a facility for carrying out these operations, a recognition that you have to hang onto what you fought to clear. You know, the act of taking over that area of eastern South Waziristan, where there was so much infrastructure that contained explosives, IED factories, car bomb factories, and arms and ammunition storage sites, and planning locations, training facilities, all the rest of that-that’s not in their hands now, in TTP’s hands.’

At the same time, the general remarked that the Pakistani fight against militancy is work in progress and additional pressure on other organizations will be helpful to the overall effort.

“So this has been a very significant development, but again, very much a work in progress, to be sure.”

Pakistan Crisis and Social Statistics

by Juan Cole

Readers have written me asking what I think of the rash of almost apocalyptic pronouncements on the security situation in Pakistan issuing from the New York Times, The Telegraph, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in recent days.

And Stephen Walt also is asking why there are such varying assessments of Pakistan’s security prospects. He suggests that one problem is the difficulty of predicting a revolutionary situation. But Pakistan just had a revolution against the military dictatorship! The polling, the behavior in the voting booth, the history of political geography, aren’t these data relevant to the issue? Why does no one instance them?

As I have said before, although the rise of the Pakistani Taliban in the Pushtun areas and in some districts of Punjab is worrisome, the cosmic level of concern being expressed makes no sense to me. Some 55 percent of Pakistanis are Punjabi, and with the exception of some northern hardscrabble areas, I can’t see any evidence that the vast majority of them has the slightest interest in Talibanism. Most are religious traditionalists, Sufis, Shiites, Sufi-Shiites, or urban modernists. At the federal level, they mainly voted in February 2008 for the Pakistan People’s Party or the Muslim League, neither of them fundamentalist. The issue that excercised them most powerfully recently was the need to reinstate the civilian Supreme Court justices dismissed by a military dictatorship, who preside over a largely secular legal system.

Another major province is Sindh, with nearly 50 mn. of Pakistan’s 165 mn. population. It is divided between Urdu-speakers and the largely rural Sindhis who are religious traditionalists, many of the anti-Taliban Barelvi school. They voted overwhelmingly for the centrist, mostly secular Pakistan People’s Party in the recent parliamentary elections. Then there are the Urdu-speakers originally from India who mostly live in Karachi and a few other cities. In the past couple of decades the Urdu-speakers have tended to vote for the secular MQM party.

Residents of Sindh and Punjab constitute some 85% of Pakistan’s population, and while these provinces have some Muslim extremists, they are a small fringe there.

Pakistan has a professional bureaucracy. It has doubled its literacy rate in the past three decades. Rural electrification has increased enormously. The urban middle class has doubled since 2000. Economic growth in recent years has been 6 and 7 percent a year, which is very impressive. The country has many, many problems, but it is hardly the Somalia some observers seem to imagine.

Opinion polling shows that even before the rounds of violence of the past two years, most Pakistanis rejected Muslim radicalism and violence. The stock of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda plummeted after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

The Pakistani Taliban are largely a phenomenon of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas west of the North-West Frontier Province, and of a few districts within the NWFP itself. These are largely Pushtun ethnically. The NYT’s breathless observation that there are Taliban a hundred miles from Islamabad doesn’t actually tell us very much, since Islamabad is geographically close to the Pushtun regions without that implying that Pushtuns dominate or could dominate it. It is like saying that Lynchburg, Va., is close to Washington DC and thereby implying that Jerry Falwell’s movement is about to take over the latter.

The Pakistani Taliban amount to a few thousand fighters who lack tanks, armored vehicles, and an air force.

The Pakistani military is the world’s sixth largest, with 550,000 active duty troops and is well equipped and well-trained. It in the past has acquitted itself well against India, a country ten times Pakistan’s size population-wise. It is the backbone of the country, and has excellent command and control, never having suffered an internal mutiny of any significance.

So what is being alleged? That some rural Pushtun tribesmen turned Taliban are about to sweep into Islamabad and overthrow the government of Pakistan? Frankly ridiculous. Wouldn’t the government bring some tank formations up from the Indian border and stop them?

Or is it being alleged that the Pakistani army won’t fight the Taliban? But then explain the long and destructive Bajaur campaign.

Or is the fear that some junior officers in the army are more or less Taliban and that they might make a coup? But the Pakistani military has typically sought a US alliance after every coup it has made. Who would support Talibanized officers? Not China, not the US, the major patrons of Islamabad.

If that is the fear, in any case, then the US should strengthen the civilian, elected government, which was installed against US wishes by a popular movement during the past two years. The officers should be strictly instructed that they are to stay in their barracks.

What I see is a Washington that is uncomfortable with anything like democracy and civilian rule in Pakistan; which seems not to realize that the Pakistani Taliban are a small, poorly armed fringe of Pushtuns, who are a minority; and I suspect US policy-makers of secretly desiring to find some pretext for removing Pakistan’s nuclear capacity.

All the talk about the Pakistani government falling within 6 months, or of a Taliban takeover, flies in the face of everything we know about the character of Pakistani politics and institutions during the past two years.

My guess is that the alarmism is also being promoted from within Pakistan by Pervez Musharraf, who wants to make another military coup; and by civilian politicians in Islamabad, who want to extract more money from the US to fight the Taliban that they are secretly also bribing to attack Afghanistan.

Advice to Obama: Pakistan is being configured for you in ways that benefit some narrow sectional interests. Caveat emptor.

—

Update: In answer to some comments below. First of all, the Pakistani military is not “unable” to stop the Taliban in the North-West Frontier Province. The Zardari government is just not desirous of alienating the Pushtuns by being heavy-handed. They only sent in 250 special ops troops to deal with Buner, which is a very light touch for an army with lots of artillery, tanks and fighter jets.

Pakistan now is not like Russia in 1917. Its two main political parties are of old standing, have contested many elections, have millions of supporters and canvassers. The main threat to the PPP government is parliamentary– that it will be unseated by the Muslim League if it fails a vote of no contest and there are new elections.

All the military coups in Pakistan have been made from the top by the army chief of staff. Therefore Gen. Ashfaq Kayani is the man to watch. He was Benazir Bhutto’s army secretary and has ties to the Pakistan People’s Party. Not a Talib.

The hype about Pakistan is very sinister and mysterious and makes no sense to someone who actually knows the country.

Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute

An astonishing case of intelligence failure

Greg Mathews

Instead of trying to see what one is looking at there will be no real lessons learnt from the stupefying attack at Khosht, Afghanistan on December 30, 2009 at the secret CIA Station. The response from US, apart from ‘frantically’ concealing a major, MAJOR case of embarrassment under a wad of conspiracy theories doggedly attempting to embolden “World’s most powerful intelligence organization” by using, ‘yet again’ the much disposable hand of ISI, Pakistani intelligence services – all in a desperate attempt to tuck away CIA’s own inadequacies.

Renowned think tanks like Stratfor are churning out stories that link the attack to the ISI, all from the grapevine and speaking of speculation pulled out of nowhere else but ‘widespread rumors’ mostly concocted inside a conspicuous coterie of ISI bashers that cannot be missed out, needless to say, for obvious reasons. Yet these ‘rumors’ are failing horribly from dressing the unreserved embarrassment of CIA’s spectacular intelligence failure that enabled the Taliban to inflict the heaviest loss to a leading US spy agency in the past 26 years!

What Stratfor shouldn’t have missed out on is the magnitude of animosity among Muslims against the US that compelled a Jordanian medical doctor of Palestinian origin with a Turkish wife to team up with other Arab nationals from Al-Qaeda and seek help from Afghan and Pakistani Taliban under the umbrella of Al Qaeda to make this attack possible. It shows the growing frustration and disgust from the US policies and explains for growing Islamic militancy transcending borders and joining hands to fight what they perceive as a common enemy.

Read Complete Article : http://gregmathews.livejournal.com/393.html

Image of the Beast

By Peter Chamberlin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About the content:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ahmed Shah Mahsoud.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

peter.chamberlin@hotmail.com