Tacstrat Analysis: The Haqqani question

Tacstrat Analysis

Many analysts have taken up various positions on the subject of the United States, Pakistan and the controversial Haqqani Network. Tough calls have demanded that Pakistan be declared a rogue state, all aid suspended to the country and sanctions imposed. Others digress and say sanctions on Pakistan did not really work. Not only did Pakistan successfully test its nuclear capabilities, the economic toll of the sanctions nearly led to the breaking up of the small state. Unemployment rose exponentially, political tensions led to the overthrow of a democratic government and resulted in a military leadership that ruled over the country for another 9 years. Setting aside the age-old debate on whether sanctions really do work, one must accept the fact that sanctions, in Pakistan’s case, are not a pragmatic option.

As recently as March 1, the United States government has flexed its muscle over the Iran-Pakistan pipeline deal and implied, with strong undertones, that Pakistan should avoid any activity that would invite sanctions. Realistically speaking, the United States in unlikely to impose any such sanctions, over Iran OR the Haqqani Network.

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Pakistan in 2012: A year in review

The year 2012 was no less tumultuous for Pakistan than any other year. Starting from the Supreme Court and former premier Gilani at loggerheads to the return of Tahirul Qadri’s (untimely) arrival on the political scene, Pakistan has seen a healthy share of ups and downs this year. NATO supply routes were resumed, terrorism continued, Metro Bus project was initiated – it is difficult to remember when one event ended and the other began. For the purpose of simplification and to refresh the previous year, Spearhead Research put together a year in review, a compilation of all important news Pakistan saw.

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Pak will not share US helicopter wreckage with China: Haqqani

Pakistan said Wednesday it would not share the wreckage of a US helicopter used in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden with China, after speculation that the aircraft contained secret technology.

“Pakistan is not going to share any technology, and I don’t think our friends in China have shown any interest in doing so,” Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States Husain Haqqani told CNN in an interview.

Photographs of the wrecked helicopter, which malfunctioned during the raid and was deliberately blown up, fueled speculation among experts and enthusiasts that new features had been added to it to reduce noise or foil radar detection.

Some even postulated that the helicopter, which officials say was a Blackhawk, was actually an entirely new kind of “stealth” aircraft, with technology that could fall into the hands of Pakistan’s ally China.

Defense analysts, however, have said that although the wrecked aircraft appears to be a modified Blackhawk, the technology in question is not shrouded in secrecy and Pakistan and China would gain little from the remains.

Tensions between the United States and its ally Pakistan have run high since bin Laden, the mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks and the world’s most wanted man, was found living in a garrison town near Islamabad.

Haqqani insisted, however, that the two countries were still “in close contact” and were trying to “get to the bottom of things.”

“The United States and Pakistan, at the government-to-government level, the intelligence-to-intelligence level and military-to-military level, are in close contact,” he said.

“We are not in the business of denial or contradiction right now. We are trying to get to the bottom of things, understand the intelligence and work together,” he added.

“At the same time, we continue to be concerned about unilateral actions and would prefer if the United States works with Pakistan instead of making Pakistan look like the bad guy, he added.

US report urges duty-free access for Pakistan

ZoneAsia-Pk

The United States should offer duty-free access to its markets for Pakistani exports, a new report says, declaring that trade might succeed where aid has not in developing a vibrant economy and stable partner.

The report by a study group convened by the Center for Global Development, an independent think tank, was sharply critical of Washington’s attempts to stabilize Pakistan with billions in economic aid, saying they were not delivering the desired results.

“The United States is way off course in Pakistan,” said Nancy Birdsall, the center’s president and report’s lead author.

US officials and lawmakers are reviewing ties with Pakistan after the discovery of Osama bin Laden in a town about 50 km (30 miles) from the capital raised fresh doubts about Pakistan’s reliability as an ally against militancy.

But the report said US assistance to Pakistan should be mended instead of ended, with duty-free trade benefits added for at least five years to create a boost for Pakistan with “very little harm to workers in the United States.”

The proposal is a politically dicey one, however. Less sweeping proposals for increasing Pakistan’s access to US markets have foundered in Congress in the recent past.

A bill sought by President Barack Obama to offer trade advantages in border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan stalled in the last session of Congress amid concerns about labor provisions and the impact on the US textile industry. Textile and apparel industries account for much of Pakistan’s economy.

“The American textile lobby is a very powerful special interest,” said Sallie James, a trade analyst at the Cato Institute. “There is good reason to believe that the textile lobby would launch a strong lobbying campaign to keep this (duty-free access for Pakistani goods) from going through.”

Robert Mosbacher Jr., former president of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and a member of the group that produced the report, said Obama’s leadership is needed.

“There’s no question in my mind that they (the administration) know how important this is to Pakistan.

Pakistanis have been asking us to help them with this for years,” Mosbacher told Reuters.

Representative Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat who co-sponsored the previous bill on trade advantages for border areas of Pakistan, told Reuters he intended to try again with new legislation in Congress but the timing was uncertain.

“I’m very open to expanding the products as well as the territory” of Pakistan that would be granted duty-free status under the legislation, Van Hollen said. But the administration would probably need to work with the US textile industry to “get everyone on board.”

Problems with the US Aid Program

In 2009 Congress passed and Obama signed a law authorizing a tripling of nonmilitary assistance to Pakistan, to a total of $7.5 billion over five years. The president said economic aid to the hard-pressed country was important because extremism could not be fought “with bullets or bombs alone”.

The aid program was named after its sponsors, Senators John Kerry and Richard Lugar, and Representative Howard Berman.

But administration of the program has been neither coherent nor transparent, the report found. It was hard to find out how money had been spent, and no one person seemed in charge.

“No one is sure what the United States is trying to accomplish. Because of a debilitating lack of transparency in the aid program, no one is even sure what the United States is doing,” it said.

An official at the US Agency for International Development said Washington had given Pakistan $1.7 billion in civilian aid since the Kerry-Lugar-Berman bill was passed.

This included a program that helped save the winter wheat crop, “averting a food crisis for millions of Pakistanis after the devastating floods of 2010,” the official told Reuters, responding to the report’s criticisms.

The official said USAID had avoided a “rush to spend” in Pakistan, to assure programs are monitored. The report warned against disbursing civilian aid in a hurry.

Analyst Edward Gresser of the GlobalWorks Foundation said Congress should consider fully opening US markets to Pakistan’s exports, because current US trade policy is at odds with its aid policy.

With $350 million a year in US tariffs levied on imports from Pakistan, “Pakistan is taking it on the chin,” he said.

Pakistan wants to cut CIA drone strikes, personnel

The Pakistani government would like the CIA’s aggressive drone campaign “suspended” and only resumed under “new rules” and “formalized terms,” according to a Pakistani military official familiar with discussions between the two nations.
Only then, in the instances where there was “compelling evidence” that a militant “high value target” had been located and that the operation was jointly coordinated between Pakistan and the United States, would the Pakistani government sanction a drone strike in the future, the official said.

The Pakistani official pointed out that there have been more than 100 reported CIA drone strikes in Pakistan in 2010 — a record number — yet almost no one killed in these strikes were “high value targets,” such as leaders in al-Qaeda or allied militant groups. Instead, the official said, the vast majority of the victims of the strikes have been militant foot soldiers or civilians.

According to an independent count of the drone strikes maintained by the New America Foundation, there were 118 U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan in 2010 killing somewhere between 600 and 1,000 people.

Only a dozen of the victims of the 2010 drone strikes in Pakistan were described as militant leaders in reliable, independent press accounts.

The Pakistani official says that the fact that drone strikes are overwhelmingly not killing militant leaders is “infuriating the masses” in Pakistan.

Indeed, public opinion polling shows that nine out of 10 Pakistanis have an unfavorable view of the drone strikes.

Relations between the CIA and Pakistan’s military intelligence agency, known by its initials ISI, became “strained” says the Pakistani official, following the incident when CIA contractor Raymond Davis shot and killed two men in Lahore, Pakistan, in late January.

On March 17 — the day after Davis had been released from a Pakistani jail following the payment of more than $2 million in “blood money” to the two victims’ families — a CIA drone strike killed as many as 45 people in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

After the attack, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the powerful army chief of staff and effectively the key driver of Pakistan’s foreign policy, made a rare public rebuke of the drone strike, saying that “peaceful citizens” were “carelessly and callously targeted” and that the strike was “unjustified and intolerable.”

According to the Pakistani official, the March 17 drone strike “pissed off everybody” and was seen as an example of the “extreme arrogance” of the U.S. government, and helped precipitate the visit to Washington on Monday of Gen.l Ahmad Shuja Pasha, the head of ISI, for talks with CIA Director Leon Panetta.

In addition to a significant reduction in the drone program, the Pakistani government also wants CIA “covert operations” in Pakistan that are unsanctioned by the host government to cease, citing Davis as an example of such a rouge operator.

The Pakistani official said “we haven’t discussed specific numbers” of CIA personnel we would like to leave Pakistan — where the agency maintains one of its largest overseas stations — but the official said they do know that Davis did not act alone, and there are “too many others” like him in the country.

Pakistan and US in patch-up efforts

Pakistan said on Thursday it was ready to work with the United States on its concerns about the fight against militancy, but cautioned it against making Pakistan a scapegoat for its failures in Afghanistan.

The statement indicated that Islamabad was willing to come out of the latest denouement in relations with Washington that started with last month’s drone attack on a tribal jirga in North Waziristan and forced Pakistan to pull out of March 26 trilateral ministerial meeting with the US and Afghanistan.

At her weekly briefing, Foreign Office spokesperson Tehmina Janjua rejected the White House assessment of Pakistan’s counter-insurgency operations and said that divergences on combating militancy in the region warranted purposeful Pak-US-Afghanistan engagement to deal with the challenges in the conflict.

“There is undoubtedly recognition of the need for genuine and honest engagement between Afghanistan, Pakistan and the US to overcome what are perceived to be common challenges and shared goals,” the spokesperson said, adding that Pakistan would be engaging with the US on these issues.

Underlining the need for Pakistan, US and Afghanistan to engage with each other at both bilateral and trilateral levels, Ms Janjua noted that the three countries needed to be “on the same page to ensure peace and stability in Afghanistan”.

While indicating that a Pak-US rapprochement was in the works, the spokesperson placed special emphasis on keeping Pakistan’s national interest “foremost”.

“We are building our bilateral relations with the US on principles of equality, respect, partnership, mutual interest and mutual trust.”

Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir is likely to travel to Washington later this month to discuss contentious matters that have strained the relationship.

The military and intelligence leadership of both countries is also engaging separately to discuss problems in their cooperation that was always taken as the foundation of Pak-US ties.

It was, however, quite evident that Pakistani leadership was displeased with the White House report submitted to Congress earlier this week, which made a bleak appraisal of Pakistan’s progress in its fight against Taliban insurgents in tribal areas and had said that it (Pakistan) lacked a sound strategy to fight militancy.

The report had further alleged that Pakistan’s poor planning for ‘hold’ and ‘build’ stages of its military operations was enabling militants to make a comeback in areas from where they had been driven out.

The US, in an effort to complement Pakistan’s counter-insurgency operations, is said to have provided billions of dollars in the shape of military training, hardware and civilian aid programmes and has been particularly vexed over poor results.

Ms Janjua rejected this perception and said: “Pakistan has a clear strategy in dealing with these and other issues and in doing so will solely be guided by Pakistan’s national interest.

“I would like to emphatically state that we do not entirely share the US assessment,” she said, adding that references related to Pakistan in the report were “unwarranted”.

Pakistan, she noted, was itself capable of evaluating its strengths and weaknesses in the fight against militants and the strategy being pursued by coalition forces in Afghanistan.

US ‘blocks’ aid over Raymond Davis issue

The United States has finally resorted to punitive measures against Pakistan after Islamabad’s failure to comply with Washington’s covert and overt but pressing demand for the release of Raymond Davis, accused of killing two Pakistani youths in Lahore. The revelation came after the US House of Representatives recently nodded to a Republicans-backed resolution calling for the suspension of economic aid to Pakistan as it was not complying with Washington’s demand for the immediate release of Davis. The resolution is, reportedly, awaiting approval of the American Congress scheduled to reassemble by end of this month.

Official sources in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs told Pakistan Today that the US disbursements of military and civilian aid to Pakistan under the Coalition Support Fund (CSF) and Kerry-Lugar aid package were “practically blocked” at present. “A high-level American delegation visited and pointed out to Pakistan that if it did not release Davis, the US will block the funding,” an official of the Economic Affairs Division (EAD) told Pakistan Today. If true, the suspension of US aid and assistance would fall heavily on the country’s economic managers who have repeatedly been calling upon their strategic partners in Washington to ensure a ‘timely’ reimbursement of war expenses to Pakistan under CSF.

Drawing U.S. Crowds With Anti-Islam Message

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

FORT WORTH – Brigitte Gabriel bounced to the stage at a Tea Partyconvention last fall. She greeted the crowd with a loud Texas “Yee-HAW,” then launched into the same gripping personal story she has told in hundreds of churches, synagogues and conference rooms across the United States:

Brigitte Gabriel spoke to a Tea Party event in September. She says her views were shaped while growing up in Lebanon.

As a child growing up a Maronite Christian in war-torn southern Lebanon in the 1970s, Ms. Gabriel said, she had been left lying injured in rubble after Muslims mercilessly bombed her village. She found refuge in Israel and then moved to the United States, only to find that the Islamic radicals who had terrorized her in Lebanon, she said, were now bent on taking over America.

“America has been infiltrated on all levels by radicals who wish to harm America,” she said. “They have infiltrated us at the C.I.A., at the F.B.I., at the Pentagon, at the State Department. They are being radicalized in radical mosques in our cities and communities within the United States.”

Through her books, media appearances and speeches, and her organization, ACT! for America, Ms. Gabriel has become one of the most visible personalities on a circuit of self-appointed terrorism detectors who warn that Muslims pose an enormous danger within United States borders.

Representative Peter T. King, Republican of Long Island, will conduct hearings Thursday in Washington on a similar theme: that the United States is infiltrated by Muslim radicals. Mr. King was the first guest last month on a new cable television show that Ms. Gabriel co-hosts with Guy Rodgers, the executive director of ACT! and a Republican consultant who helped build the Christian Coalition, once the most potent political organization on the Christian right.

Ms. Gabriel, 46, who uses a pseudonym, casts her organization as a nonpartisan, nonreligious national security group. Yet the organization draws on three rather religious and partisan streams in American politics: evangelical Christian conservatives, hard-line defenders of Israel (both Jews and Christians) and Tea Party Republicans.

She presents a portrait of Islam so thoroughly bent on destruction and domination that it is unrecognizable to those who study or practice the religion. She has found a receptive audience among Americans who are legitimately worried about the spread of terrorism.

But some of those who work in counterterrorism say that speakers like Ms. Gabriel are spreading distortion and fear, and are doing the country a disservice by failing to make distinctions between Muslims who are potentially dangerous and those who are not.

Brian Fishman, a research fellow at both the New America Foundation in Washington, and the Combating Terrorism Center at the United States Military Academy at West Point, said, “When you’ve got folks who are looking for the worst in Islam and are promoting that as the entire religion of 1.5 or 1.6 billion people, then you only empower the real extremists.”

Ms. Gabriel is only one voice in a growing circuit that includes counter-Islam speakers likePamela Geller, Robert Spencer and Walid Shoebat. What distinguishes Ms. Gabriel from her counterparts is that she has built a national grass-roots organization in the last three years that has already engaged in dozens of battles over the place of Islam in the United States. ACT! for America claims 155,000 members in 500 chapters across the country. To build her organization, Ms. Gabriel has enlisted Mr. Rodgers, who had worked behind the scenes for the Christian Coalition’s leaders, Ralph Reed and the television evangelist Pat Robertson. (Ms. Gabriel herself was once an anchor for Mr. Robertson’s Christian television network in the Middle East).

As national field director, Mr. Rodgers planted and tended Christian Coalition chapters across the country, and is now using some of the same strategies as executive director of ACT! Among those tactics is creating “nonpartisan voter guides” that rank candidates’ responses and votes on issues important to the group.

Just as with the Christian Coalition’s voter guides, the candidates whose positions most often align with ACT!’s are usually Republicans. Mr. Rodgers previously served as campaign manager for Patrick J. Buchanan’s presidential run in 1996, and as a consultant for John McCain in 2008.

Ms. Gabriel and Mr. Rodgers declined to be interviewed in person or over the telephone, but agreed to respond to questions by e-mail. They permitted interviews with only their national field director and two chapter leaders they selected, though half a dozen other interviews were conducted with chapter leaders before they were told not to talk.

Ms. Gabriel says she is motivated not by fear or hatred of Islam, but by her love for her adopted country.

“I lost Lebanon, my country of birth, to radical Islam,” she wrote. “I do not want to lose my adopted country America.”

She insists that she is singling out only “radical Islam” or Muslim “extremists” – not the vast majority of Muslims or their faith. And yet, in her speeches and her two books, she leaves the opposite impression. She puts it most simply in the 2008 introduction to her first book, “Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America.”

“In the Muslim world, extreme is mainstream,” she wrote. She said that there is a “cancer” infecting the world, and said: “The cancer is called Islamofacism. This ideology is coming out of one source: The Koran.”

In what ACT! is calling “Open a Koran” day this September, the group plans to put up 750 tables in front of post offices, libraries, churches and synagogues and hand out leaflets selectively highlighting verses that appear to advocate violence, slavery and subjugation of women.

In the last year, the group played a key role in passing a constitutional amendment in Oklahoma banning the use of Shariah, a body of Islamic law derived from the Koran and from the Muslim prophet Muhammad’s teachings, sayings and acts. Most Muslims draw selectively on its tenets – in the same way that people of other faiths pick and choose from their sacred texts.

But group members and their allies have succeeded in popularizing the notion that American Muslims are just biding their time until they gain the power to revoke the Constitution and impose Shariah law in the United States.

“We can’t let Shariah law take hold,” said Susan Watts, who leads a large chapter in Houston.

ACT! members are challenging high school textbooks and college courses that they deem too sympathetic to Islam. A group leader in Eugene, Ore., signed up to teach a community college course on Islam, but it was canceled when a Muslim group exposed his blog postings denouncing Islam and denying the scope of the Holocaust.

A chapter in Colorado recently featured a guest speaker on “How to minister to Muslims,” and “Conversion success stories.” Mr. Rodgers said in a written response that ACT! does not encourage such activities.

Ms. Gabriel’s approach and her power appear rooted in her childhood trauma in the civil war in southern Lebanon. The war was a chaotic stew in which ever-shifting alliances of clan-based militias made up of Christian, Shiite, Sunni, Palestinian and Druse made war on one other, often with the backing of other countries. But in the rendering Ms. Gabriel shares with her American audiences, it was black and white. As her father explained to her, “The Muslims bombed us because we are Christians. They want us dead because they hate us.” (The refrain became the title of her first book.)

She moved to Israel in her early 20s to work for Middle East Television. Ms. Gabriel often mentions in lectures that she was an anchor for the network, but does not reveal that Middle East Television was then run by Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network to spread his politically conservative, Pentecostal faith in the Middle East.

On air as a reporter, Ms. Gabriel used the name Nour Saman. She married an American co-worker and in 1989 moved to the United States. They started a film and television production company, which says it has produced programs on terrorism for “Good Morning America” and “Primetime.”

She said she uses a pseudonym, voted on by her organization’s board, because she has received death threats.

Ms. Gabriel has given hundreds of lectures, including to the Heritage Foundation and the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Va. Her salary from two organizations she founded, American Congress for Truth and ACT! for America, was $178,411 in 2009. And the group’s combined income was $1.6 million.

In Fort Worth, Ms. Gabriel spent nearly an hour after her speech signing books and posing for pictures with gushing fans.

“She really opened up my eyes about Islam,” said Natalie Rix Cresson, a composer, clutching a signed copy of Ms. Gabriel’s book. “I didn’t realize it was so infiltrated in the schools, everywhere.”

Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Lebanon.

CIA Spy Captured Giving Nuclear Bomb To Terrorists

While all eyes in the West are currently trained on the ongoing revolution taking place in Egypt, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) is warning that the situation on the sub-continent has turned “grave” as it appears open warfare is about to break out between Pakistan and the United States.

Fueling this crisis, that the SVR warns in their report has the potential to ignite a total Global War, was the apprehension by Pakistan of a 36-year-old American named Raymond Allen Davis (photo), whom the US claims is one of their diplomats, but Pakistani Intelligence Services (ISI) claim is a spy for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Davis was captured by Pakistani police after he shot and killed two men in the eastern city of Lahore on January 27th that the US claims were trying to rob him.

Pakistan, however, says that the two men Davis killed were ISI agents sent to follow him after it was discovered he had been making contact with al Qaeda after his cell phone was tracked to the Waziristan tribal area bordering Afghanistan where the Pakistani Taliban and a dozen other militant groups have forged a safe haven and former CIA agent Tim Osman (also known as Osama bin Laden) is believed to be in hiding.

Of the actual gunfight itself we can read as reported by the Time News Service which, in part, says:

“The scene could have been scripted in a Hollywood action thriller: For two hours at the end of last month in Lahore, U.S. diplomat Raymond Davis was closely pursued by two visibly armed men on a motorbike. He noticed them tailing him from a restaurant to an ATM, and through the crowded streets of Pakistan’s second [largest] city. They were close by when, in a crowded intersection, Davis produced his own handgun and fired seven shots.

The diplomat was apparently a crack shot, and all seven bullets found their mark, killing his two pursuers. Davis then called for back-up, and a four-wheel-drive vehicle raced onto the scene, striking a Pakistani bystander who was killed by the impact. But the people in the vehicle, whose identities remain unknown, escaped from the scene having failed to retrieve Davis, who was later arrested nearby.”

The combat skills exhibited by Davis, along with documentation taken from him after his arrest, prove, according to this report, his being a member of the feared American Task Force 373 (TF373) black operations unit currently operating in the Afghan War Theater and Pakistani tribal areas comprised of US Military Special Forces Soldiers, CIA spies and freelance mercenaries.

Further information about Davis discovered by the Times of India includes:

“According to records from the Pentagon, Davis is a former Special Forces soldier who left the army in August 2003 after 10 years of service. A Virginia native, he served with infantry divisions prior to joining the 3rd Special Forces Group in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. In 1994, he was part of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Macedonia. His record includes several awards and medals, including for good conduct.

Public records also show Davis runs a company with his wife registered in Las Vegas called Hyperion Protective Services, though it was not immediately clear whether the company has had many contracts with the U.S. government.”

Since Davis’s capture the US has exerted extraordinary pressure upon Pakistan to release him, including the American Ambassador warning President Asif Ali Zardari to release him “or else” and the cancellation of all talks between these two nuclear powered Nations.

Today, according to this SVR report, this most critical of situations became even worse when a Pakistani judge refused to bow to American pressure and ordered a further 14-day detention of Davis, and which sparked an immediate threat from US National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, who told Pakistani envoy Hussain Haqqani that the Obama administration will “kick him out of the US”, close American consulates in Pakistan and cancel President Zardari’s upcoming visit to Washington if their CIA spy wasn’t released immediately.

Fearing that the conflict over Davis may lead to open warfare, the Pakistanis were quick to let the Americans know they would not come out any conflict unscathed with their firing yesterday of their new Hatf-VII nuclear cruise missile (also called Babur after the 16th-century Muslim ruler who founded the Mughal Empire) that Major General Athar Abbas said “…can carry strategic and conventional warheads, has stealth capabilities, is a low-flying, terrain-hugging missile with high manoeuvrability, pinpoint accuracy and radar avoidance features”.

The United States Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) further reported yesterday that Pakistan appears to be building a fourth military nuclear reactor, signaling its determination to produce more plutonium for atomic weapons.

Most ominous in this SVR report, though, is Pakistan’s ISI stating that top-secret CIA documents found in Davis’s possession point to his, and/or TF373, providing to al Qaeda terrorists “nuclear fissile material” and “biological agents” they claim are to be used against the United States itself in order to ignite an all-out war in order to reestablish the West’s hegemony over a Global economy that is warned is just months away from collapse.

Not known to the masses of the American people is that the $20 Trillion they have spent on their longest wars in history has bankrupted their Nation to such an extent that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) called yesterday for replacement of the US Dollar as the World’s reserve currency.

More crucially that the American people are ignoring is the fact that their own government has unleashed against them a 21st Century update to the dreaded US Military “Operation Northwoods” campaign of terror designed to enrage them to accepting war as their main way of life.

Operation Northwoods was a series of false-flag operation proposals that originated within the United States government in 1962. The proposals called for the CIA, or other operatives, to commit acts of terrorism in US cities and elsewhere. These acts of terrorism were to be blamed on Cuba in order to create public support for a war against that nation, which had recently become communist under Fidel Castro. One part of Operation Northwoods was to “develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington.”

Operation Northwoods proposals included hijackings and bombings followed by the introduction of phony evidence that would implicate the Cuban government. It stated:

“The desired resultant from the execution of this plan would be to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government of Cuba and to develop an international image of a Cuban threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere.”

Several other proposals were included within Operation Northwoods, including real or simulated actions against various US military and civilian targets. The plan was drafted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, signed by Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer and sent to the Secretary of Defense. Although part of the US government’s Cuban Project anti-communist initiative, Operation Northwoods was never officially accepted and the proposals included in the plan were never executed.

James Bamford summarizes Northwoods as follows:

“Operation Northwoods, which had the written approval of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war.”

Though Operation Northwoods had the “approval” of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, it did not have the approval of their boss, President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963), but who barely one year after his outright rejection of this monstrous plan to kill thousands of innocent Americans was gunned down as an example to any future US leader what would happen to them if they dared go against the wishes of the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC).

Today, as the US Department of Homeland Security has just issued a grim warning that the threat of terror strike on America is at a higher level than it has been since September 11, 2001, and the WikiLeaks release of secret US government cables reveals that al Qaeda is on the brink of using a nuclear bomb, a new President stands between his people and the CIA warmongers with the only question being will he protect them like Kennedy did?

The answer to that question, sadly, appears to be “no” as new information recently obtained by US journalists show that not only has Obama failed to discipline those CIA officers who have led the United States to near total collapse, he has promoted them in numbers never before seen in history.

Delegation in India Seeks Deals, Not Outsourcing

By: VIKAS BAJAJ and HEATHER TIMMONS

Nearly two years ago, President Obama rankled many people here when he said that American tax law unfairly benefited companies that created jobs in Bangalore and punished companies that hired in Buffalo.

On Tuesday, however, the president’s commerce secretary offered a friendlier message: Let’s do business. In his second stop during a weeklong tour of India, the secretary, Gary Locke, said he wanted to help American companies sell planes, tractors and power equipment to create jobs in the United States while also helping to develop India.

“What we seek is really two-way, mutually beneficial trade,” Mr. Locke said in an interview. He added that the trade should create jobs in both the United States and in India.

Mr. Locke’s visit is part of a year-old initiative by the Obama administration to double exports by 2015 to bolster a still-struggling American economy. In the case of India, the administration has also cast the effort as a way to improve economic relations with an important ally and one of the fastest-growing countries in the world.

The United States is not alone in pursuing such a strategy. Other countries, like China, Russia, France and Britain, have been sending trade missions to India.

Acknowledging that many American companies have not looked outward to bolster their businesses, Mr. Locke said in an interview that he hoped to use his “trade mission” to India, and three other countries later this year, to help businesses exploit opportunities abroad.

“Only 1 percent of U.S. companies export, and of that 1 percent, 58 percent export to only one country, typically Canada or Mexico,” he said. “And yet 95 percent of the world’s consumers live outside the borders of the United States. So, if U.S. companies want to grow and expand, not only do they have to focus on the domestic market, but they have to look at the 95 percent of customers outside.”

As part of its charm offensive, the Obama administration recently removed nine Indian aerospace and defense companies from a list of restricted entities that cannot be sold certain technologies that have military uses. Mr. Locke is accompanied by representatives from 24 businesses, including Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Westinghouse, some of whom are hoping to win business as a result of the change in policy.

Trade between the United States and India was growing even before the administration’s recent efforts to focus on this economic relationship.

Total trade in goods and services jumped nearly 20 percent, to $54 billion in the first nine months of 2010. Later this week, India will host a biennial air show in Bangalore where American companies will try to win multibillion-dollar contracts from the Indian Air Force and civilian airlines. They will, however, face stiff competition from European and Russian companies.

Boeing had hoped to sell in India 10 cargo planes for $5 billion during Mr. Obama’s visit in November, but the deal is still not finished. Last month, however, Boeing’s European rival, Airbus, won a large order from IndiGo, a fast-growing Indian low-cost airline that plans to start flying international routes in August. IndiGo ordered 180 planes that have a list price of $15.6 billion. Deliveries are to start in 2015.

Mr. Locke is not the only American official trying to solicit business in India. Individual American states have also sent representatives to coincide with Mr. Locke’s visit. As state governments weigh painful budget cuts and grapple with lingering unemployment, some officials say that increasing exports to India and encouraging investment from its expanding companies is crucial.

“We’re not doing it to get ahead, we’re doing it to not be left behind,” said North Carolina’s secretary of commerce, J. Keith Crisco, who was in New Delhi this week with dozens of executives from his state.

This is the first trade delegation North Carolina has sent to India, Mr. Crisco said, though the state sent people to China and Brazil last year.

“Yes, we are catching up in India,” he said, adding that he expected some announcements of deals related to the trip in coming weeks.

New York State has gone even further. It set up an office in New Delhi last year and is organizing a series of investment conferences in New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore this spring, aimed at Indian companies who want to expand to the United States or work as partners with a New York company.

The office is led by Kaviraj Singh, a Delhi lawyer who has lived and worked in New York. He said he planned to use the office to tie New York businesses “into a network that will make you feel as though you’ve always been here.”

Shireen Mazari Launches A Workshop To Explain New Threats To Pakistan’s Nuclear Policy

There is a strange silence in the Pakistani capital on new US-mounted nuclear pressures, but Pakistani diplomats and nuclear experts are speaking up where the Pakistani state is silent.

GULPARI NAZISH MEHSUD
WWW.PAKNATIONALISTS.COM

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan-There are new pressures on Pakistan to limit its ability to maintain a credible nuclear deterrence. These pressures are coming from the Conference on Disarmament, or CD as it is known, that opens today in Geneva. The United States is working on two tracks. One is to induct India into the Nuclear Suppliers Group and end the last barrier that stops India from procuring nuclear technology and material in the open market. And two, use international treaties to force Pakistan to freeze Pakistani nukes at their current size and potential.

While US officials use public diplomacy to send messages through Radio Pakistan and other arms of the pro-US government in Islamabad claiming Washington has no interest in targeting the Pakistani nuclear program, US actions speak louder about the actual US policy toward Pakistan’s strategic capabilities.

The Pakistani government is maintaining a strange silence on the new pressures on its nuclear capabilities. Other departments of the government that shape Pakistan’s nuclear policy, like the Nuclear Command Authority, are also silent apparently in deference to the incumbent government.

To break this silence, a Pakistani nuclear expert Dr. Shireen Mazari took the initiative to sensitize the Pakistani media about the new developments in Geneva. She organized a one-day closed-door briefing for senior Pakistani journalists. Over eight hours, participants were briefed about the new pressures on Pakistani diplomacy on the country’s nuclear program. The workshop covered Pakistan’s position on a new treaty, called FMCT, that would stop Islamabad from developing material needed to build nuclear weapons, a treaty that Islamabad is resisting for the time being. Participants also went through the evidence-based record of India in nuclear proliferation which belies Washington’s claims that India has a clean proliferation record.

But Dr. Mazari is not alone. Ambassador Zamir Akram has told CD that Pakistan does not accept the US-led tilt in favor of India on nuclear technology. In Islamabad, an eminent former top diplomat of Pakistan, former foreign minister Mr. Inam-ul-Haq, joined in conducting the workshop. Strategic Technology Resource, which organized the workshop and is headed by Dr. Mazari, plans to offer Pakistani legislators similar exposure to position them to understand government policy.

The diplomatic correspondent of The News Mariana Baabar wrote an excellent report on the workshop and on Pakistan’s diplomatic efforts in Geneva. The report is reproduced below:

Pakistan Not Interested In Disarmament Conference

By Mariana Baabar

As the Conference on Disarmament (CD), the world’s sole multilateral forum for disarmament negotiations, holds the first public plenary of its 2011 session on Tuesday (January 25) at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, how well informed is the civilian government, political parties, parliamentarians and the civil society in Pakistan?

Traditionally, it is the National Command Authority (NCA), a military dominated and controlled organisation set up by Pervez Musharraf, which is responsible for ‘policy formulation and the exercise of employment and development control over all strategic nuclear forces and strategic organisations’.

There is neither any interest nor debate on strategic matters in our nuclear state. The last time loud public voices were heard in support to test a nuclear device, completely drowning out those who were against the nuclear test.

Normally, mere statements are issued by the ISPR, NCA and the Foreign Office, while some experts do respond to queries of journalists. Worse, this highly complex and specialised field remains in the domain of the military, though heading it is the prime minister and a clutch of federal ministers, who are quite satisfied with their symbolic presence and have never opted to inform the parliament on Pakistan’s position.

To change this mindset and allow transparency and space for debate, the Strategic Technology Resource (STR), a recently set up organisation, held a one day workshop, ‘Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and Beyond’, to familiarise journalists on co-related issues like CTBT, FMCT and other issues.

It’s CEO Dr Shireen Mazari and former Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Inamul Haq who explained why 2011 would be a difficult year for Pakistan when pressure will be increased specially wtih regard to FMCT.

The speakers underlined fears that like in the past, the United States could take the FMCT out of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to the United Nations, as it became frustrated with its present slow pace.

The NCA’s stand on FMCT is that ‘Pakistan’s position will be determined by its national security interests and the objectives of strategic stability in South Asia. Selective and discriminatory measures that perpetuate regional instability, in any form and manner, derogate from the objectives of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation and; therefore, cannot be accepted or endorsed. Pakistan will not support any approach or measure that is prejudicial to its legitimate national security interests’.

Mazari called for the policymakers to take a consistent stand on issues unlike in the past. She also said today’s environment called for Pakistan’s specific thinking on strategic issues and not necessarily linked to India as had been the norm.

“I will like our media to be aware and knowledgeable enough to respond to the debate in the international media on these issues, specially when it pertains to Pakistan, instead of dutifully publishing western reports,” she added.

A media kit was distributed which contained interesting facts and figures. Included were authentic reports on India’s proliferation record, Japan’s nuclear doublespeak, a letter written by Pakistan’s permanent representative in Vienna to member states of IAEA and copies of statements delivered by Ambassador Zamir Akram at a past Conference on Disarmament.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will address the conference on Wednesday. According to the UN, like in previous years, the items on the agenda of the conference in 2011 will be cessation of the nuclear arms race and nuclear disarmament; prevention of nuclear war, including all related matters; prevention of an arms race in outer space; effective international arrangements to assure non-nuclear weapon states against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons; new types of weapons of mass destruction and new systems of such weapons, radiological weapons; comprehensive programme of disarmament; transparency in armaments; and consideration and adoption of the annual report and any other report, as appropriate, to the General Assembly of the United Nations.

U.S. Is Not Trying to Contain China, Clinton Says

The United States is not bent on containing China, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday, but the Obama administration is cultivating other allies across Asia to help it manage Beijing’s increasingly bold projection of military and economic power.

In a closely watched address delivered four days before President Hu Jintao’s scheduled state visit to Washington, Mrs. Clinton sought to balance tensions over China’s military buildup and disagreements over North Korea with the administration’s desire to work with Beijing on issues like climate change.

“Distrust lingers on both sides,” she said in her speech at the State Department.

Mrs. Clinton said that while the United States-China relationship was critically important, “there is no such thing as a G-2,” the phrase popularized by analysts who argue that Washington and Beijing, widely seen as the economic superpowers of today and tomorrow, should steer the world.

She also delivered a polite criticism of China’s human rights record that was more detailed than she had previously offered as secretary of state, citing the persecution of the pro-democracy group Charter 08 and the imprisonment of Liu Xiaobo, the political activist who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize but whose family was blocked from attending the prize ceremony in Norway last month.

“The longer China represses freedoms,” she said, “the longer that Nobel Prize winners’ empty chairs in Oslo will remain a symbol of a great nation’s unrealized potential and unfulfilled promise.”

Mrs. Clinton’s speech – on the heels of an economic address by Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and a visit to Beijing by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates – sets the stage for what some analysts say is the most important visit by a Chinese leader to the United States in years.

While Mr. Geithner and Mr. Gates tackled two clear irritants in the relationship – China’s undervalued currency and the increasingly defiant People’s Liberation Army – Mrs. Clinton confronted a broader set of strategic tensions, including China’s testy relations with its neighbors and its reluctance to bear down on a belligerent North Korea.

“Some in the region and some here at home see China’s growth as a threat that will lead either to cold war-style conflict or American decline,” she said. “And some in China worry that the United States is bent on containing their rise and constraining their growth – a view that is stoking a new streak of assertive Chinese nationalism. We reject those views.”

Nevertheless, Mrs. Clinton spoke at length about the administration’s work to reinforce ties with cold war allies like Japan and South Korea, to restore long-neglected relationships with countries in Southeast Asia and to court emerging powers like India.

Last July, Mrs. Clinton infuriated Chinese officials when she thrust the United States into a long-running dispute between China and its neighbors over control of some small, strategically important islands in the South China Sea. The United States, analysts said, put a spotlight on China’s bullying behavior.

“We are working to firmly embed our relationship with China within a broader regional framework, because it is inseparable from the Asia-Pacific’s web of security alliances,” she said.

To experts on China in the audience, the message was unmistakable.

“She’s saying, ‘We’re still trying to have a reciprocal relationship, but if it doesn’t work, we’re hedging our bets,’ ” said Orville Schell, who heads the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society.

Mrs. Clinton said that China had cooperated in imposing international sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program. And she said China was finally starting to help the United States try to restrain North Korea’s behavior after the torpedoing of a South Korean warship and a deadly artillery raid.

“We fear, and have discussed this in depth with our Chinese friends, that failure to respond clearly to the sinking of a South Korea military vessel would embolden North Korea to continue on a dangerous course,” she said.

Mrs. Clinton also reinforced points made by Mr. Geithner and Mr. Gates. She said that China needed to let its currency rise more rapidly to ease the trade imbalance with the United States. And she contended that the Chinese military should be open to more extensive ties with the Pentagon to ease American concerns about its motives.

For all that, Mrs. Clinton was clearly not trying to provoke China. She spoke of global challenges, like climate change and development, in which Beijing and Washington should work together.

Mrs. Clinton’s speech inaugurated a lecture series dedicated to Richard C. Holbrooke, the hard-charging diplomat who died last month. Early in his career, he served as assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, the youngest holder of that post to date.

Noting that Mr. Holbrooke had played a role in the normalization of diplomatic relations with China in 1979, Mrs. Clinton said that the relationship between the two nations had “arrived at a critical juncture.”

“It is clear that we cannot paper over the difference between our countries; nor should we try to do so,” she said. “But the future of our relationship can be strong if we each meet our responsibilities as great nations.”

Pakistanis under the radar: US seeks access to traveller data

The United States has sought access to the records of all passengers flying from Pakistan’s airports in a proposal which Washington believes will help prevent terror suspects reaching its soil.

The proposed plan also includes the deployment of US homeland security officials at Pakistan’s airports for enhanced scrutiny of passengers travelling to America.

A senior Foreign Office official disclosed that Washington had been pushing Pakistan for months to give it access to the Passenger Name Record (PNR) – a travel record of passengers used by airlines and travel agency databases.

“Initially, they had asked for the record of all the passengers travelling outside Pakistan,” the official said. “We resisted that idea and now they are asking for the record of passengers who travel to the US from Pakistan,” he told The Express Tribune on condition of anonymity.

He said the US was also pushing the government to let its homeland security officials be stationed at Pakistan’s airports to stop any suspects from travelling to the US.

Washington believes this step would ensure Pakistani passengers have a ‘trouble-free’ journey.

Pakistan is among a number of countries whose nationals have to undergo rigorous security checks at US airports.

“The US government thinks allowing its officials to be deployed at Pakistan’s airports will stop this type of mistreatment,” said another official, who is privy to the discussions between the two countries on the subject.

“But we believe this idea is highly intrusive,” the official added.

If the proposal is accepted, it could not only compromise the privacy of the individuals but also ‘jeopardize’ the national security, he said.

Pakistan and the US have been closely cooperating with each other to eliminate terror threats emanating from this part of the world, yet there are ‘red lines’ which the government cannot think of crossing over, the official said.

Getting Ahead in India Means Getting Out

By VIR SINGH

NEW DELHI – Parth Vaishnav can’t wait to graduate, but he doesn’t think very much of the bachelor’s degree he will receive from the University of Mumbai next summer. And he believes employers won’t value it, either.

Indian students listened to President Obama at St. Xavier’s College in Mumbai in November. More Indians are looking abroad for educational opportunities.

He is applying to engineering schools in the United States, which he has been told offer the flexibility, diverse courses and hands-on experience he seeks.

“Basically, all of us in my class, we were pretty disappointed with our systems,” Mr. Vaishnav said. “In the last three years, we have learned absolutely nothing. Everything was pretty theoretical. Courses in the U.S. offer practical experience. In India, as far as the syllabus goes, you have absolutely no flexibility.”

Mr. Vaishnav is among a rising number of students in India’s rapidly expanding younger population who want, and can pay for, a better education. Yet they know that in a country where thousands apply for each spot at a handful of top universities, the chances of this happening are remote. These students say a good foreign degree will get them a better job and a better life. And if the potential return on investment appears worthwhile, they will put their money on it.

In interviews with students around India recently, most said they wanted to strengthen their credentials outside of the country and voiced hope for growth in India after returning. They also spoke of the usual fears and concerns of students headed overseas.

“One thing that is common across students going to any country is, ‘Look, I am making this investment, what are my returns?”‘ said Ruchika Castelino, the head of Indian operations of Study Overseas, a company that advises students. “That’s such a huge question that students have. Then everything else follows: ‘Where shall I go, what is the kind of course, job placements, etc.’ “

She estimates that the number of Indian students going overseas annually has doubled in the past six years, reaching more than 200,000.

For those students who have made the decision to head overseas, several issues must be addressed. For Shivanika Gyani, finding a way to pay more than $150,000 for a two-year master’s in business administration is not the biggest challenge. The first hurdle, she said, is getting into a top American business school, which means scoring well on the Graduate Management Admission Test, or G.M.A.T.

“For the U.S., I need to break into the 700s to get in to a good school,” she said, referring to a grading system in which 800 is the maximum. “These days I don’t socialize at all, and I talk to people only if they want to discuss G.M.A.T. and business schools.”

Why did she choose the United States? “If I go to America, there is more chance of my network being more global because more people from around the world go to America,” said Ms. Gyani, 29, who worked at a head-hunting company in Mumbai after college.

She has looked at some programs in Europe, but feels it is “not really the best place to go right now, because employment opportunities are limited and you have to learn the language if you want to work.” The location and courses offered by the London Business School are attractive, but Ms. Gyani has one big problem with Britain: “The weather depresses me. It’s a huge factor. I had a long chat with someone. He said: ‘Keep weather as a consideration. Your cost of living will go up in a cold place.”‘

Shivam Arora, a high school senior in Mumbai, has the same problem when he considers living in Canada. Even though he has been told that the country offers scholarships to students like him who are enrolled in the International Baccalaureate program, he is planning to apply to Canadian colleges mainly “as a backup.”

For students where money is more of an issue, they cannot be choosy. For many of them, one-year programs at British universities are a big draw. Vishal Gill, a supply-chain specialist at Tata Motors, said a two-year business degree at a well-regarded Indian institution costs about $34,800. For the same money, or less, if he considers the cost of a yearlong program at the Indian School of Business, he can spend a year studying at a good British university. And he can choose courses that focus on his specialization. “Why not go abroad, compete on a global platform and pay less?” he said.

After completing his degree, Mr. Gill would also like to work overseas. He is familiar with Singapore because one of his employer’s suppliers is there. “It is a country where all of the big corporates have situated,” he said. “No racism is there. It is a good place to be in.”

But even if his plans to go overseas don’t work out, he is confident Tata Motors will reward him. “After doing my master’s, they will give me a salary hike,” he said. “For sure.”

That’s what Saurabh Parihar, an electronics engineer, has heard from his cousins who work at global companies in India. He says that in the past 5 to 10 years, raises for workers who return with degrees earned overseas have made even conservative families less reluctant to send children abroad. His father, a government employee in the northern town of Jodhpur, will have to get a loan to send him to a year of graduate studies in Britain. But Mr. Parihar is “somewhat confident” that a British degree will allow him to repay the loan.

“All you need is that initial break,” said Deepak Krishnakumar, an engineering student who is applying to doctoral programs in America. “That you get there.” A student at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, he said there were now many more jobs in research and development.

Rajeev Varma, who is earning a master’s degree in organic chemistry in Mumbai, agreed. “The pharma companies in India are coming back like anything,” he said. “It’s booming. Even if there’s a financial crunch, pharma companies are never at a loss.”

He said science students who go overseas get opportunities not widely available in India, like working with researchers from the leading companies in the world.

“If you work with good international labs, you get very good opportunities,” he said. “You get very good exposure.”

“Exposure” is a word that came up in nearly all of the interviews, no matter what a student was studying.

For Mr. Vaishnav, the engineering student in Mumbai, exposure is more than a buzzword. He saw his classmate transform completely after transferring to a Canadian university and benefiting from the academics there.

“He has learned 10 times as much in the last three years, even though he’s a year behind,” he said. As part of his engineering degree, the friend built an electronic drum set and a sprinkler system for farms. “He has enjoyed everything.”

India’s Envoy Miss Shankar Frisked At US Airport On Terror Suspicion

• Pulled from an airport line and patted down; second Indian official to face stringent US checks after ex-India president
• Indian minister Krishna covered up on the story for five days to avoid issuing a statement critical of US

India’s ambassador to US Ms. Meera Shankar

The humiliation faced by India’s ambassador at a US airport is linked to recent events when Indian citizens linked to the Indian government were found engaged in suspicious activities related to terrorism and nuclear espionage, including on US soil.

SPECIAL REPORT | Thursday | 9 December 2010
WWW.PAKNATIONALISTS.COM

WASHINGTON, DC-Reports are emerging of an ugly incident involving India’s ambassador to Washington Miss Meera Shankar last week.

Ambassador Shankar was at the Jackson-Evers International Airport in Mississippi, returning to Washington after a local university event.

According to one report, she was about to board a flight when airport security pulled her away from a line to a room where a female officer patted her down. US airport officials brushed aside Indian demands she be exempted from this treatment because she is an ambassador.

“This is unacceptable to India and we are going to take it up with the US government and I hope things could be resolved so that such unpleasant incidents do not recur,” External Affairs Minister SM Krishna told reporters in Delhi.

Interestingly, the incident took place on 4 December but Minister Krishna and the Indian Ministry of External Affairs kept it under wraps for fear of damaging US-India relations. Krishna was forced to issue a comment today after the story leaked.

She has become the second senior Indian official to be frisked at an airport security line and checked on suspicions related to terrorism or nuclear espionage. In July 2009, former Indian president APJA Kalam was forced to take off his shoes and submit to US checks before boarding a flight to the United States.

‘Suspicious Indians’

US homeland security officials have been concerned at a pattern over the past decade where private or government-employed Indian citizens have been stopped at US airports for indulging in terrorism-related activities, nuclear espionage or export of sensitive technology.

In August, Vijay Kumar, an Indian who introduced himself as a filmmaker, was stopped at a Houston airport and jailed for five days because agents found him hiding a gun and carrying Muslim jihadi material. When asked why an Indian Hindu would be carrying Muslim literature and a gun, the Indian failed to give a reasonable answer. He said he made films on what he called ‘Islamic terrorism’ and was invited by an extremist Hindu organization to deliver a lecture.

Hindu activists have recently been indicted in India for involvement in terror incidents designed to create backlash against Muslim populations or create misunderstandings between US and Pakistan.

‘Nuclear Espionage’

US officials have also been concerned about Indian diplomats involved in nuclear espionage in the United States. While no major incidents have surfaced as in the case of Washington’s other ally, Israel, Indian diplomats have been found in the past facilitating front companies in the export of sensitive technology to India.

According to US security experts, Indian diplomats are under observation despite the cozy ties between Washington and New Delhi.

Two Indian companies, Sabero Organics Chemical and the Sandhya Organics Chemical, were sanctioned by the Bush administration in 2005 for involvement in nuclear technology export to Iran.

Two senior Indian nuclear scientists, YSR Prasad and C. Surender, the former heads of the state-run Nuclear Corporation of India, were also blacklisted by the US government for similar reasons.

These issues are a matter of concern for US officials but are intentionally kept low in US government’s overt and covert public diplomacy and media outreach efforts, which are more focused on countries such as Russia, China and Pakistan.