The Pakistan Update

His medical colleagues at Jamrud Hospital in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber tribal agency suspected he was having an extramarital affair. When they asked Dr. Shakeel Afridi, the hospital’s chief surgeon, why he was absent so often last spring, he replied curtly that he had “business” to attend to in Abbottabad. The mystery only grew when one doctor accused Afridi of having taken a half-dozen World Health Organization cooler boxes without authorization. The containers are for keeping vaccines fresh during inoculation campaigns, and yet no immunization drives were underway in Abbottabad—or the Khyber agency either, for that matter.

In fact, Afridi wasn’t cheating on his wife—he was in the thick of the hunt for Osama bin Laden. At the request of the CIA, which had reason to think the al Qaeda leader was holed up in a high-walled compound in Abbottabad, the doctor had mounted a fake hepatitis-immunization program. Having spearheaded several polio-immunization drives over the years, Afridi knew how to stage the campaign convincingly. Renting a house near the compound, he hired a local nurse who thought the drive was genuine. The idea was for her to visit the compound and get a blood sample from at least one of the children who lived there. If the kids in the compound were bin Laden’s, DNA from the sample would tell the Americans they were on the right track.

The nurse got in, a knowledgeable Pakistani official tells Newsweek. He can’t say if she was able to get the DNA sample, but the ruse evidently paid off. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta recently acknowledged that Afridi’s efforts were “very helpful” in the run-up to the US raid that killed bin Laden last May. Now, however, Afridi is in a world of trouble. Three weeks after the raid, Pakistani intelligence officers arrested him. His Pakistani-born wife (an American citizen) and children have vanished from the family’s Peshawar home. A special government commission has recommended that he be charged with “conspiracy against the state of Pakistan and high treason” for taking part in a foreign intelligence operation. If tried and convicted, the doctor could theoretically be hanged.

The anonymous Pakistani official is sympathetic to Afridi’s plight, saying he “was not a proper CIA spy.” Unfortunately, the official says, the Pakistani media have trumpeted the case. “If his name had not appeared so prominently in the media, perhaps a way could have been found to let him go,” the official says. But Afridi may never again be out of danger—not even if Pakistan somehow decides to free him and send him and his family to America. A physician who knows him well worries that Afridi will always be a marked man. “I know some people would make a kebab of his body if they found him,” he says.

One question persists: why didn’t the CIA whisk Afridi and his family out of the country before Pakistan’s intelligence agencies discovered his role? “Letting him hang out to dry like this is not going to help the CIA to recruit oth-er Pakistanis,” says a Western diplomat in Islamabad, declining to be quoted by name. Still, Afridi may bear some responsibility himself. The agency looks after its own, a former high-level CIA officer argues. “I do not believe they left him high and dry,” says the officer, who tracked al Qaeda in Central Asia after 2001. “Our core value is taking care of those who support us.” Afridi may not have understood the risk, the officer suggests: “I’ve seen it before, where you have a guy at a very high-risk situation, and you offer help and they turn it down. They misread the situation.” It’s easy to do. Just ask Afridi’s old colleagues.

Originally appeared in the newsweek.

Tags: Abbottabad, Al Qaeda, CIA, Khyber, leon panetta, Osama Bin Laden, US raid

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The death of a senior al Qaeda leader in a US drone strike in Pakistan’s tribal badlands, the first strike in almost two months, signalled that the US-Pakistan intelligence partnership is still in operation despite political tensions.

The Jan 10 strike – and its follow-up two days later – were joint operations, a Pakistani security source based in the tribal areas told Reuters.

They made use of Pakistani “spotters” on the ground and demonstrated a level of coordination that both sides have sought to downplay since tensions erupted in January 2011 with the killing of two Pakistanis by a CIA contractor in Lahore.

“Our working relationship is a bit different from our political relationship,” the source told Reuters, requesting anonymity. “It’s more productive.”

US and Pakistani sources told that the target of the Jan 10 attack was Aslam Awan, a Pakistani national from Abbottabad, the town where Osama bin Laden was killed last May by a US commando team.

They said he was targeted in a strike by a US-operated drone directed at what news reports said was a compound near the town of Miranshah in the border province of North Waziristan.

That strike broke an undeclared eight-week hiatus in attacks by the armed, unmanned drones that patrol the tribal areas and are a key weapon in US President Barack Obama’s counter-terrorism strategy.

The sources described Awan, also known by the nom-de-guerre Abdullah Khorasani, as a significant figure in the remaining core leadership of al Qaeda, which US officials say has been sharply reduced by the drone campaign. Most of the drone attacks are conducted as part of a clandestine CIA operation.

The Pakistani source, who helped target Awan, could not confirm that he was killed, but the US official said he was. European officials said Awan had spent time in London and had ties to British extremists before returning to Pakistan.

The source, who says he runs a network of spotters primarily in North and South Waziristan, described for the first time how US-Pakistani cooperation on strikes works, with his Pakistani agents keeping close tabs on suspected militants and building a pattern of their movements and associations.

“We run a network of human intelligence sources,” he said. “Separately, we monitor their cell and satellite phones.

“Thirdly, we run joint monitoring operations with our US and UK friends,” he added, noting that cooperation with British intelligence was also extensive.

Pakistani and US intelligence officers, using their own sources, hash out a joint “priority of targets lists” in regular face-to-face meetings, he said.

“Al Qaeda is our top priority,” he said.

He declined to say where the meetings take place.

Once a target is identified and “marked,” his network coordinates with drone operators on the US side. He said the United States bases drones outside Kabul, likely at Bagram airfield about 25 miles (40 km) north of the capital.

From spotting to firing a missile “hardly takes about two to three hours”, he said.

Drone strikes a sore point with Pakistan

It was impossible to verify the source’s claims and American experts, who decline to discuss the drone programme, say the Pakistanis’ cooperation has been less helpful in the past.

US officials have complained that when information on drone strikes was shared with the Pakistanis beforehand, the targets were often tipped off, allowing them to escape.

Drone strikes have been a sore point with the public and Pakistani politicians, who describe them as violations of sovereignty that produce unacceptable civilian casualties.

The last strike before January had been on Nov 16, 10 days before 24 Pakistani soldiers were killed in what Nato says was an inadvertent cross-border attack on a Pakistani border post.

That incident sent US-Pakistan relations into the deepest crisis since Islamabad joined the US-led war on militancy following the Sept 11, 2001 attacks. On Thursday, Pakistani foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar said ties were “on hold” while Pakistan completes a review of the alliance.

The United States sees Pakistan as critical to its efforts to wind down the war in Afghanistan, where US-led Nato forces are battling a Taliban insurgency.

Some US and Pakistani officials say that both sides are trying to improve ties. As part of this process, a US official said, it is possible that some permanent changes could be made in the drone programme which could slow the pace of attacks.

The security source said very few innocent people had been killed in the strikes. When a militant takes shelter in a house or compound which is then bombed, “the ones who are harbouring him, they are equally responsible”, he said.

“When they stay at a host house, they (the hosts) obviously have sympathies for these guys.”

He denied that Pakistan helped target civilians.

“If … others say innocents have been targeted, it’s not true,” he said. “We never target civilians or innocents.”

The New America Foundation policy institute says that of 283 reported strikes from 2004 to Nov 16, 2011, between 1,717 and 2,680 people were killed. Between 293 and 471 were thought to be civilians – approximately 17 percent of those killed.

The Brookings Institution, however, says civilian deaths are high, reporting in 2009 that “for every militant killed, 10 or more civilians also died.” Pakistan’s interior minister, Rehman Malik, also said in April 2011 that “the majority of victims are innocent civilians”.

Still, despite its public stance, Pakistan has quietly supported the drone programme since Obama ramped up air strikes when he took office in 2009 and even asked for more flights.

According to a US State Department cable published by anti-secrecy organisation WikiLeaks, Pakistan’s chief of army staff General Ashfaq Kayani in February 2008 asked Admiral William J. Fallon, then-commander of US Central Command, for increased surveillance and round-the-clock drone coverage over North and South Waziristan.

The security source said Pakistan’s powerful spy agency, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, also was supportive of the strikes, albeit privately.

Tags: admiral William J. Fallon, Al Qaeda, Drone Attacks, General Ashfaq Kayani, ISI, Pak US relations

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By Amir Mir

Despite claiming to be a non-violent group whose sole objective is to recommence the Islamic way of life by re-establishing caliphate, those questioning Brigadier Ali Khan of Pakistan Army for his links to Hizbul Tehrir, believe the latter had a violent agenda to overthrow the government in Islamabad and remove the military leadership, for their pro-US stance, through a coup it wanted to stage with the help of its moles in the armed forces.

Investigations being conducted by the authorities following the arrest of Brigadier Ali Khan and several other officers of the Pakistan Army for their links with Hizbul Tehrir have revealed that the leadership of the banned group had actually marked Pakistan as a base from which it wanted to spread Islamic rule across the world. Hizbul Tehrir has managed to maintain its presence in Pakistan despite being outlawed by the Musharraf regime following the July 7, 2007 London subway suicide bombings, conducted by four British nationals of Pakistani origin who were reportedly indoctrinated in London by extremists belonging to militant groups like Al-Mohajiroun and Hizbul Tehrir. Asif Mohammed Hanif, the terrorist who blew himself up in a cafe in Tel Aviv on April 29, 2003, and his accomplice and would-be bomber, Omar Khan Sharif, were British-born Muslims affiliated with HT. The group recruits members from the urban, educated and professional segments of the society and is also known to have spread its influence in the military ranks in recent years.

The Pakistani intelligence sleuths who are responsible for monitoring the HT activities believe that the group might be working in tandem with al-Qaeda under the garb of pan-Islamism. They reminded that 35 members of Hizbul Tehrir were arrested from a house in Islamabad, which was being used to plan a coup plot to overthrow the government and replace it by Caliphate, as envisaged by the group’s founder Umar Bakri. Hardly a few weeks before these arrests were made, the Pakistan chapter of the HT talked about spilling blood to stage an Islamic revolution in Pakistan. At the same time, Tayyab Muqeem, a key Hizbul leader in London, had declared that many HT activists had been sent to Pakistan to bring about Shariah “by force”. He had further claimed that the Hizbul had converted four Pakistani army officers during their training at Sandhurst in England.

However, despite being declared a banned organization in Pakistan after all these developments, the HT members can be seen at various key mosques on Fridays in Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi, distributing volatile literature propagating the revival of the Caliphate. Apart from organizing underground meetings and seminars, the HT has used text messages on cell phones and social networking sites to spread its message. An open letter dated June 3, 2011, addressed to the “sincere officers” of the Pakistani armed forces, and posted on the website of the Pakistan chapter of the Hizbul Tehrir (www.hizb-pakistan.com), called for removal of the “traitors” amongst the civilian and military leadership of the country for their alliance with the United States. The letter stated: “The need of the time is the Khilafah (the Caliphate) to gather the Ummah (the Muslim community) as the single most resourceful state in the world. Whilst you look upon the humiliation of the Muslims, their misery and despair, the Ummah looks upon you as sincere officers of the most powerful armed forces across the globe that can make Pakistan the starting point for Khilafah.”

The contention of the Pakistan chapter of the Hizbul Tehrir is that the current rulers of Pakistan, civilian as well as khaki, are agents of the United States, and their only agenda is to protect the American interests. The group further propagates that the American and the Pakistani governments are responsible for the killing of innocent men, women and children in drone attacks and military operations which are being conducted in the name of the war on terror.

According to media reports, the Pakistan branch of HT was established in December 2000 when a group of British youth of Pakistani descent, headed by Imtiaz Malik and guided by British-Pakistanis Dr Abdul Wajid in Lahore and Dr Abdul Basit Shaikh in Karachi among others decided to use Pakistan as the base camp for their movement to re-establish Islamic Caliphate. While Imtiaz Malik, a British-born Pakistani is considered to be the underground leader of the Hizbul Tehrir in Pakistan, his deputy, Naveed Butt, a graduate of University of Illinois in the United States, remains the most vocal leader of the group in Pakistan. Butt is assisted by two youngsters, Imran Yousafzai and Shahzad Sheikh.

According to an October 2010 study report compiled by Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS) and titled “Hizbul Tehrir in Pakistan: Discourse and Impact”, far from being deterred, the Hizbul Tehrir has continued its efforts to infiltrate into high echelons of the Pakistan Army and the elite of the Pakistani society. The report quoted Shahzad Sheikh, a Hizbul spokesman of Karachi, as saying that the group had been persuading the Pakistan Army to stage a bloodless coup in the country to overthrow the government in Islamabad. Interestingly, in a bid to effectively promote its agenda, the HT clandestinely enlisted some Pakistan Army officers, who were receiving training at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (RMAS), commonly known as Sandhurst, an elite British training academy. But these officers were arrested in 2003 after their links with the HT were discovered by the Musharraf regime.

This article originally appeared in The News

Tags: Al Qaeda, Al-Mohajiroun, Brigadier Ali Khan, General Musharraf, Hizbul Tehrir, london subway bombing, pakistani intelligence

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by Wajid Ali Syed

The relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan has almost always been termed as crucial. It has also been characterized as complicated because of the mistrust on both sides. The question is, why is there so much suspicion? Is it just because of the difference of interests, that the U.S. wants to do one thing while Pakistan another or is it more than that? So far, the reports that have surfaced suggest the latter. The difference of opinion of the people running the war on terror — on both sides — has resulted in a tumultuous relationship.

Even if the U.S. and Pakistan were on the same page on how best to combat terrorism, conflicting and false interpretations of history don’t help. Pakistanis do try to twist the facts in their own favor to boost hatred against the United States. Their reason is primarily based on America’s decision to abandon Pakistan after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan. They are now not ready to budge. This can easily be overcome if the U.S. comes clean about all their operations against the militants. They need to share their plans with their allies, especially Pakistani politicans and the people, instead of dealing solely with the military and carrying out covert operations. Did Pakistan agree with the U.S. to use drone strikes or not? If there was an agreement — verbal or written — the U.S. should share that information. This one point can help the U.S. gain trust and would go a long way towards eliminating biases and mistrust over the use of drones.

Americans need to know truth about this war too. They need to understand why Pakistan is an ally and how it can help the U.S. negotiate with the Afghan Taliban. This could only happen once the big shots in Washington jettison their version of the war story and keep their facts straight.

Here’s an example. Richard Clarke — a long time security expert who served four presidents and was the chief counter-terrorism advisor for the National Security Council was on Bill Maher’s show blatantly accusing Pakistan of creating the Afghan Taliban to fight India.

If someone like Clarke, who has been the decision maker on security issues, is way off the mark, then the outcome of this war could be disastrous.

The Taliban in Afghanistan was an indigenous movement formed to counter the Northern Alliance. The Taliban movement was primarily made up of Pashtun tribesmen, the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan. Their purpose was to counter the Northern Alliance’s corrupt government. In 1994 and 1995, the Pakistan government was tasked by the U.S. to support the Taliban to restore law and order in Afghanistan and facilitate the construction of UNOCAL’s oil and gas pipeline projects.

The U.S. once again used the Taliban and Pakistan government in its favor just like it used the mujahideen. And like before, things got out of hand. Al- Qaeda became enemies of the U.S. The Taliban eventually backed al-Qaeda, which went on to terrorize the world.

The Taliban government proceeded to impose their brutal interpretation of sharia law on the country. Initially, the U.S. supported the Taliban, hoping they would restore order to a country ravaged by the war against the Soviets.

After 9/11, the U.S. wasted 10 years, billions of dollars and thousands of lives. It blamed the Pakistan army for supporting the Afghan Taliban while at the same time attempting to secretly strike a deal with the Taliban. Either you blame and squabble or join hands and find a solution. Like the expression goes, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

In the meantime, the U.S. also supported former members of the Northern Alliance and warlords without considering that there cannot be peace in Afghanistan until the Pashtun Afghans get their fair share to rule the country. Even now, a large number of Afghan police and army trained by the U.S. and NATO forces are made up of non-Pashtuns. If the Pashtuns get their way and are included in such projects, discrimination does not let them survive for long. The Pashtuns complain that the Northern Alliance has monopolized important ministry positions, governorships, and embassy postings abroad.

Years later, the U.S. is back to square one, without having learned the lesson that there is no military solution to Afghanistan and Pakistan problem.

The U.S. needs to gain the trust of the people of Pakistan. It needs to realize that Pakistan’s army is not the same as Pakistan. The U.S. needs to ally with the politicians and support democratic institutions instead of men in uniform. The best way to wash off the mistrust is to engage the population and invest in education rather than in arm deals. The Saudis build schools that children can attend for free. The result? In many cases, extremist madrassahs become the only educational option. Why not invest in teaching children how to read?

It needs to negotiate and cut deals with the same Taliban back in Afghanistan. The efforts to achieve peace will be in vain until the U.S. considers Pakistan’s position, keeps its facts straight, brings the truth out in the open and accepts its share of blame. The solution to the Afghan problem cannot be reached until all the facts are understood and all the parties involved are on board.

This article originally appeared in the Huffington Post

Tags: Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, drones, Extremism, northern alliance, pakistani politician, Pashtun, Richard Clarke, Soviet Union, Taliban, US Pakistan relations

Posted in Afghanistan, Blog | 2,549 Comments »

By Anjum Rasheed

American Senator John Kerry came to Pakistan, talked to the Pakistani leaders, resolved a serious crisis, eased tensions between the two countries, restored the mutual relations to normality, and went back to his homeland in a week’s time. The main reason behind this crisis, tension and standoff was a resolution, passed by the parliament against the US special forces’ covert operation in Abbottabad on May 2, in which the al-Qaeda chief, Osama bin Laden, was killed. The resolution had warned that all supplies to the US-led Nato forces in Afghanistan through Pakistan would be stopped if the United States carried out another Abbottabad-like attack or continued the drone strikes in Pakistan. However, it seems the John Kerry visit has rendered at least this part of the consensus resolution ineffective. John Kerry also assured Pakistan that his country had no plans to attack the atomic and strategic weapons of its ally in the war on terror. The sources, well aware of the developments, revealed that the Obama administration would take some legal and formal steps in the next a few days that would show that there was no danger to the atomic and strategic assets of Pakistan from the US.

In a joint statement, the Pakistani leadership and Senator John Kerry announced that Islamabad and Washington would make a joint move in the future if any credible information is received about the presence of a high-value target in Pakistan. This sentence, it is believed, is going to work wonders as far as changing the public opinion is concerned. Now, we will have to accept the responsibility for all future drone strikes, warplanes’ bombardment and the armed forces offensive against the militants in Pakistan. Now it would really be very difficult for the Pakistani leaders to issue statements against the drone strikes and condemn such actions.

Earlier, these leaders used to issue statements against the drone and other US attacks to pacify the public sentiments, despite their covert consent to such attacks. And now this face-saving facility would not be available to these leaders. By signing the joint declaration, Pakistan’s civilian and military leadership has forsaken their right to develop a public opinion of their choice. It is feared the new development would create various difficulties for the Pakistani leadership to tackle the issues, arising out of the war against terrorism in the region.

On the other hand, there is a great possibility of a total change in the public opinion in Pakistan if our leadership adopts an uncompromising and bold stance on providing complete support to the US in the war on terror, and making this war its own war against the terrorists.

However, an utterance in the joint declaration, that “the US and Pakistan will launch a joint action against any high-value targets in future” is not very clear and still needs explanation as far as its manifestations are concerned. Pakistan’s former foreign minister Sartaj Aziz says this sentence does not permit the US forces at all to launch a direct offensive in Pakistani territories. It means that the US would only provide information and credible intelligence and the Pakistani forces would carry out action on the ground. The other option would be that Pakistan would provide information and intelligence to the US forces, who would launch drone strikes to kill the militants. And if the US wanted to launch any drone strikes inside Pakistan, it would inform Islamabad in advance.

There is another interpretation also. Former ambassador and an expert on foreign affairs Khalid Mehmood finds the sentence very clear. This sentence means “No more lies”, the analyst believes. The people would be told about all developments very clearly, as we are entering the decisive phase of the war against terrorism, adds Khalid Mehmood. Hopefully, the minute details of this sentence would be finalized between the US and Pakistan, and there would remain minimum confusion over the issue.

Originally appeared in “The News” Pakistan.

Tags: Al Qaeda, Khalid Mehmood, NATO, Senator John Kerry, Terrorism, US, US Pakistan relations

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by Wajid Ali Syed

You can’t fool all of the people all of the time. At some point reality catches up to you.

Just like it did in Pakistan over the past week.

During the six years that Osama bin Laden was “hiding” in his compound in Pakistan, experts compiled research, wrote reports and articles and convened panels at think tanks to convince the United States that the ISI — Pakistan’s infamous intelligence agency — has been playing a double game. But the ISI and the Pakistan army continued to benefit from the largesse of American aid and official gratitude for their assistance in the war on terror.

In an old interview, Pervez Musharraf, who was the Chief of the Army and head of the state from 1999 to 2008, said he wanted bin Laden captured anywhere in the world but Pakistan. At around the same time Benizar Bhutto accused Musharraf of hiding terrorists and said that bin Laden could be in the basement of the President’s house in Islamabad. As the world now knows, the world’s most wanted terrorist was a block away from the army garrison. The swaggering confidence of his hosts had to turn into unfathomable embarrassment.

This incident is not the first time the Pakistan Army has made claims that strained credulity. When A.Q. Khan was caught operating a nuclear bazaar that trafficked information to the world’s most notorious regimes, the official Army line was that it had no knowledge of his activities.

Because of arrogance, or overconfidence, the Army chose to overlook the fact that the US had been after bin Laden with force and determination years before 9/11. In mid-August of 1998, the then-Pakistan Army Chief General Jahangir Karamat met his American counterpart, General Joseph Ralston. At the dinner table, General Ralston informed General Karamat that in few minutes some sixty Tomahawk cruise missiles would be entering Pakistan’s airspace to hit a location in Afghanistan where bin Laden was believed to be operating training camps. Obviously, General Karamat was shocked.

The next time the US infiltrated Pakistani air space, it was General Kayani’s turn to be shocked. Only now the destination was different and the mission was a success.

But killing bin Laden does not mean that al Qaeda has been destroyed. It’s not solely a terrorist organization. It facilitates and funds other terrorist groups. According to American journalist and author Mary Ann Weaver, al Qaeda is like a clearinghouse from which other groups obtain funds, training, and logistical support. These other groups exist from Egypt to Algeria, from Yemen to Somalia, from Saudi Arabia to the Philippines and, of course, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Probably for this reason al Qaeda does not face a leadership crisis, as such. Interestingly enough, the next two frontrunners to take charge of al Qaeda could be residing deep in Pakistan.

Evidence shows that before settling in Abbottabad, bin Laden was seen in North Waziristan in the Tirah valley, then in Balochistan for a short time (probably meeting with the Quetta shura). Months after, he was spotted near Meran Shah with none other than Ayman al Zawahari. Later, al Zawahari was seen with Jalaluddin Haqqani, the head of the Taliban in North Waziristan.

Balochistan’s Quetta Shura and North Waziristan still stand out as al Qaeda and Taliban hideouts. Now that the US has embarrassed the Pakistan Army and its intelligence network for being unaware of the presence of the world’s most wanted terrorist in their own backyard, American officials should keep up the pressure and demand the capture of all terrorist group members and especially their leaders. In a grim yet darkly amusing example of the militants’ ability to survive and thrive, in 2002 Taliban leader Mullah Omar escaped the US Army on a motorbike.

The official Pakistani response to bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan doesn’t hold water. But even if we give the Pakistan Army the benefit of the doubt for not knowing where bin Laden was, it has been an open secret that Jalaluddin Haqqani and Mullah Omar reside somewhere deep in Pakistan. The army does know about Mullah Omar and Haqqani, and the US has been asking it to take action.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Senator John Kerry are still on board, claiming that the US needs access to the Afghanistan supply routes via Pakistan. This official excuse to continue sending aid is that the ISI has been an invaluable ally in helping the US root out terrorists. Now the Pakistan Army should make a grand gesture if it wants to be taken seriously as a partner.

Meanwhile, the US should attach some strings to the aid it lavishes on Pakistan. The Pakistan Army has always been a powerbroker in the country, not answerable to anyone. It’s been said that Pakistan is not a country with an army, but an army with a country.

The US was treated to a dose of the Army’s determination to keep a grip on foreign cash during fuss kicked up over the Kerry Lugar bill, a measure that would provide $7.5 billion in non-military aid over a five year period to help the civilian government provide essential services to the population. The Urdu press went berserk, turning the proposal into a dark conspiracy aimed at undermining Pakistani sovereignty. The army exploited the outrage, carving out a good chunk out of the funds. Apart from foreign military aid, the army gets a lion’s share from the national budget without any accountability, funds that could otherwise be used to pay for education and infrastructure.

So, now that the Pakistan Army has been caught red handed eagerly accepting money to fight terrorism while claiming not to know that the world’s most notorious terrorist was living within a stone’s throw of that same army’s training academy, perhaps it’s time for the US to focus on supporting the country’s fragile political government and demand better results and more candor from the military.

This article originally appeared in the Huffington Post

Tags: 9/11, A.Q. Khan, Abbottabad, Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, algeria, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Balochistan, Benazir Bhutto, double game, Egypt, Featured, General Ashfaq Kayani, General Joseph Ralston, Hillary Clinton, ISI, Jahangir Karamat, Jalaluddin Haqqani, John Kerry, Kerry Lugar Bill, Mullah Omar, North Waziristan, Osama Bin Laden, Pakistan, Pakistan Army, Pervez Musharraf, philippines, Quetta Shura, Saudi Arabia, somalia, urdu media, yemen

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By Wajid Ali Syed

Bin Ladin is dead. Again. In the last ten years he has been reported “killed” at least four times. The only difference this time was that the President of the United States announced the death of the number one terrorist in the world. Above all, this time he was killed not in Tora Bora, not Karra Kurrum, but Abbottabad – close to an army garrison in Pakistan. As expected, his killing has raised questions, and more questions, and still more questions every time a new statement is added to the swirl of fact and myth that is turning the bin Laden raid into the stuff of legend.

Basically, a foreign national has been killed by another foreign army. (more…)

Tags: Abottabad, Al Qaeda, Army, CIA, Featured, ISI, Islamabad, Islamic groups, Obama, Osama Bin Laden, Pakistan, Taliban, US

Posted in Afghanistan, Around, Blog, India | 1,466 Comments »

by Christopher Dickey

Osama bin Laden’s cave turned out to be a mansion. The desolate mountains where he was hiding proved, in the end, to be the pleasant little hill town of Abbottabad, only 30 miles from the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. He’s been holed up, and on Sunday was at last gunned down, in the biggest house around. He lived with relatives and an entourage behind high walls topped with barbed wire, in a community that’s also home to several Pakistani army units. A military academy is just a few hundred yards down the road.

“There aren’t that many six-foot-plus Arabs walking around that town,” says M.J. Gohel of the Asia-Pacific Foundation in London. “Even if you buy a donkey there it creates a stir. So how could the Pakistani military not know about it?”

We shouldn’t be surprised. Several of the top Al Qaeda bad guys now at Guantánamo were captured deep inside Pakistani territory. And more often than not, they’d been living quite comfortably. “They’re not being caught in some haystack on the border,” Gohel told me back in 2004. Abu Zubaydah, Al Qaeda’s gatekeeper for new recruits and a planner of terrorist operations, got nailed in Faisalabad in 2002; Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the operational mastermind of 9/11, was dragged out of bed in the garrison city of Rawalpindi in 2003; Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, since convicted by a U.S. court for his role in the 1998 bombing of American embassies in Africa and now serving a life sentence in the United States, was grabbed in Gujrat in 2004. In fact, this is not news to U.S. intelligence officials. The overt and covert war along Pakistan’s northwest frontier is important for Afghanistan and American soldiers there. Some mid-level Al Qaeda commanders reportedly have been killed by drone attacks there. But for years, American analysts have suspected that Bin Laden enjoyed the same kind of comforts as his colleagues had had deep in Pakistan’s cities thanks to protection from parts of the Pakistani government and its Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, the infamous ISI. American operatives privately voiced suspicions that Bin Laden’s protectors either sympathized with him or saw him as the ultimate bargaining chip, or both.

So the covert operation closing in on Bin Laden at Abbottabad gained momentum over the last few months, even as the public friction between Washington and Islamabad grew more intense. In January, when two men allegedly tried to rob CIA operative Raymond Davis, he shot them dead—and got arrested by the Pakistanis for murder. Davis was freed in March after a lot of diplomatic maneuvering and payments to the families of the deceased, who pardoned Davis “in accordance with Pakistani law,” according to the White House. But as that case unraveled, it exposed the presence of hundreds of CIA personnel and contractors operating on Pakistani turf. And they weren’t just helping target Hellfire missiles near the Afghan frontier. Davis ran into trouble when he was gathering intelligence in Lahore on the other side of the country.

Last month, when Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen visited Pakistan, he spoke out publicly and with surprising force about America’s problems with the ISI. The specific issue he mentioned was the Pakistani intelligence organization’s “longstanding relationship” with the so-called Haqqani network, which works alongside the Taliban “supporting, funding, training fighters that are killing Americans and killing coalition partners” in Afghanistan. “I have a sacred obligation to do all I can to make sure that doesn’t happen,” said Mullen. “So that’s at the core—it’s not the only thing—but that’s at the core that I think is the most difficult part of the relationship.” Not the only thing indeed.

In President Barack Obama’s carefully phrased description of the “targeted operation” that killed Bin Laden he says cooperation with Pakistan “helped lead us to Bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding,” but it’s apparent “the small team of Americans” who killed him and took away his body were on their own.

Over the long run, the wars that Bin Laden did so much to begin on September 11, 2001, will not end unless some sort of understanding is reached with Pakistan’s government, its military and its intelligence service. “Going forward, it is essential that Pakistan continue to join us in the fight against Al Qaeda and its affiliates,” said Obama. But for its own geopolitical—and purely political—reasons Pakistan is likely to continue being as much part of the problem as part of the solution. At least after the Abbottabad shootout, it’s clear the administration isn’t kidding itself. When it got a shot at Bin Laden, it took it. No dithering. No dilatory diplomacy. Secrecy was maintained. The Pakistanis were cut out. And justice was done.

Christopher Dickey is the Paris bureau chief and Middle East editor for Newsweek Magazine and The Daily Beast.

Tags: Abbottabad, Abu Zubaydah, Admiral Mike Mullen, Afghanistan, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, Al Qaeda, Asia-Pacific Foundation, Barack Obama, Faisalabad, Featured, Guantánamo, Gujrat, haqqani network, Hellfire missiles, ISI, Islamabad, khalid sheikh mohammed, Lahore, M.J. Gohel, Osama Bin Laden, Pakistan, Pakistan Army, Rawalpindi, Raymond Davis, Taliban

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by Bruce Reidel

Osama bin Laden’s death is a severe blow to al Qaeda–but not its end. His death answers some key questions about the terror cell and Pakistan, but leaves some even more perplexing ones still open.

First, congratulations to President Obama and the CIA. From the very start of his administration he ordered an intense focus on al Qaeda and its leader. The trail had long gone cold due largely to the diversion of critical resources to Iraq back in 2002 and 2003. Obama rightly promised to focus on Pakistan, the center of the global jihad and the most dangerous country in the world, and his efforts have now paid off.

Many had questioned whether bin Laden was still alive almost ten years after 9/11. But there was never really any doubt. By eluding justice after his first attacks on America in 1998, bin Laden created a mystique of invulnerability. He remained not just a symbol of al Qaeda’s continuing threat but a real leader, issuing strategic direction and propaganda.

His death weakens al Qaeda’s cohesion and its image of being beyond the reach of America. It comes after two years of intense pressure on the group and its allies in Pakistan and Afghanistan from American drones in the skies as well as NATO boots on the ground in Afghanistan. Key lieutenants like his operational commander in Afghanistan, a fellow Saudi named Abdul Ghani, have been tracked down and killed just this spring. The pressure was designed to weaken al Qaeda’s operational tempo, disrupting its routines. The strategy has worked. Presumably his hideout deep in Pakistan also contained clues and data that will help further dismantle al Qaeda’s core.

But the terror cell has always known bin Laden was at risk and it has devolved much authority to his deputy, the Egyptian Ayman Zawahiri, and to others. Zawahiri has been the public face of al Qaeda for years. Just this year he has released five audio messages focused on the Arab spring (he put out only four in all of last year). Bin Laden in contrast was silent about the wave of revolutions in Arabia. The New Mexico born Yemeni Anwar Awlaki has emerged as another operational and propaganda hub with his on line English language magazine Inspire and his al Qaeda Yemen cell has tried to attack Detroit and Chicago already. We can expect effusive memorials from them to their fallen “martyr.”

And we should expect the threat of more al Qaeda attacks to remain real. This weekend, several terrorists linked to al Qaeda were arrested for plotting an attack in Germany. Last week, the group’s Maghreb affiliate struck in Morocco, killing Western tourists.

Obama was right to call his Pakistani counterpart, Asif Ali Zardari, to thank him for help in the chase. Zardari’s wife Benazir Bhutto was murdered by al Qaeda in 2007; the death of the country’s most popular and capable leader was perhaps the group’s biggest triumph since 9/11. Pakistan has yet to recover from her demise. Al Qaeda has been focused like a laser beam on Pakistan for the last decade. It rightly judges Pakistan to be both uniquely vulnerable in the Islamic world to jihadism and equipped with the ultimate strategic prize, the fastest growing nuclear arsenal in the world. With allies like the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba, al Qaeda will remain a threat to Pakistan’s nascent democracy and to peace in the Indian subcontinent.

Obama should schedule an early Zardari visit to Washington and his own visit later this year to Pakistan to signal our support for democratic forces there. We also now know what many long suspected: that Bin Laden was not hiding in Pakistan’s tribal wastelands, but rather in its heartland. He was killed in Abbotabad, the home town of Pakistan’s first military dictator, Ayub Khan, just thirty miles from the capital Islamabad. This raises the question: who helped him all these years hide in-country? He was not alone in al Qaeda in hiding out in Pakistan’s towns and cities. Khalid Shaykh Muhammad and Abu Zubayda, two key al Qaeda operatives, were caught in Pakistan’s urban centers. Mullah Omar, bin Laden’s Afghan Taliban partner (and the man he swore loyalty to even in the last few years) has long been thought to be hiding in Pakistan’s mega- port of Karachi. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has often publicly said she suspected some in the Pakistani establishment knew where to find bin Laden. She raised the right question. It remains a good one.

Al Qaeda long ago became more than a terror group. It is an idea, the concept of global jihad against America. It has an elaborate narrative to justify murder. But Bin Laden was caught off guard by the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions this winter and the wave of turmoil that has followed them. These popular uprisings challenged his whole worldview that terror and jihad were the only way to free Islam of its dictators and of what he called “Crusader-Zionist oppression.” The triumph of freedom in Tahrir Square was a blow to al Qaeda—a sign that aside from in Pakistan and Yemen, the group seemed increasingly marginalized. NATO is now fighting to free Libya, not to occupy it. Whether al Qaeda can adapt to the new Arab renaissance is an open question. Bin Laden won’t be able to answer it. Can his heirs?

Bruce Riedel, a former longtime CIA officer, is a senior fellow in the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution. At Obama’s request, he chaired the strategic review of policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2009.

Tags: 9/11, Abbotabad, Abdul Ghani, Abu Zubayda, Al Qaeda, Anwar Awlaki, Ayman Zawahiri, Ayub Khan, Benazir assassination, Benazir Bhutto, CIA, drones, Featured, Hillary Clinton, Islamabad, Jihad, karachi, Khalid Shaykh Muhammad, Lashkar e Taiba, Mullah Omar, NATO, Obama, Pakistan, President Asif Ali Zardari, Taliban

Posted in Afghanistan, Blog, News | 1,021 Comments »

By Alex Rodriguez

Pakistan on Friday pulled out of upcoming talks with the U.S. on the war in Afghanistan, a move meant to convey Islamabad’s anger over an American drone missile strike that it says killed a gathering of civilians along the Afghan border.

The U.S. and Pakistan disagree on who was killed in the strike Thursday in North Waziristan, a volatile tribal region that serves as a stronghold for an array of militant groups, including Al Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban and the Haqqani network, a wing of the Afghan Taliban that regularly attacks U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan.

The U.S. said it struck a compound where militants were meeting. But Pakistani authorities insisted that among the 45 reported dead were tribal elders and other civilians meeting to discuss an ownership dispute over a mine.

The dispute comes at a particularly sensitive time in U.S.-Pakistan relations, when Pakistanis are seething over the release Wednesday of a CIA contractor charged with murdering two motorcyclists in the eastern city of Lahore in late January.

At small protests organized by Islamist parties in Islamabad, Lahore and other cities, demonstrators angrily denounced President Asif Ali Zardari’s government for allowing Raymond Davis to go free. His release was made possible by a “blood money” agreement sanctioned by Pakistani law and negotiated by Islamabad and Washington that allows the accused to pay financial compensation to the victims’ families in exchange for their forgiveness.

In announcing that Pakistan would not take part in talks with Afghanistan and the U.S. scheduled for Brussels on March 26, Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir told U.S. Ambassador Cameron Munter that such drone strikes “constituted a flagrant violation of humanitarian norms and law,” according to a statement by the Foreign Ministry.

Drone strikes are a crucial component in Washington’s strategy against Islamic militant groups hiding out in Pakistan’s largely ungoverned tribal areas, and experts say they have been successful in degrading Al Qaeda and the Taliban’s ability to launch attacks.

Pakistan has maintained a policy of publicly condemning the drone strikes while tacitly allowing them to take place. In some instances, the strikes are carried out with the help of Pakistani intelligence-gathering.

This story originally appeared in the L.A. Times

Tags: Afghan Taliban, Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, cameron munter, CIA, Drone Attacks, haqqani network, NATO, North Waziristan, Pakistan, Pakistani Taliban, Salman Bashir

Posted in Afghanistan, Around, Blog, News | 1,532 Comments »