| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"nkdatta8839" |
| Date: |
09 Jul 2004 09:31:23 AM |
| Object: |
Pakistan's Dictator: An Unreliable Ally |
[General Musharraf is not an apocalyptic zealot like Osama bin Laden,
an erratic recluse like North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, or a public
vilifier of America, like Iran's ruling clerics. But neither is he a
convinced or convincing ally in the struggle against radical Islamic
terrorism, nuclear weapons proliferation and destructive dictatorship]
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/09/opinion/09FRI2.html
New York Times
July 9, 2004
EDITORIAL
Pakistan Without Illusions
Pakistan's military dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has done such a
good job of repackaging himself as a vital American ally against
radical Islamic terrorism that it is easy to forget how alarming
Washington rightly found so many of General Musharraf's policies not
very long ago. He crushed Pakistani democracy, was, at the least,
recklessly indifferent to safeguards against the proliferation of
nuclear weapons and supported the Taliban and the terrorist groups
active in Indian-ruled areas of Kashmir.
General Musharraf publicly broke with the Taliban almost three years
ago, but there has been inadequate progress on many of the other
issues, and Pakistan has recently appeared to be backsliding on the
Taliban.
Many of the biggest dangers America faces over the next few decades
are present in General Musharraf's Pakistan, starting with the way
arbitrary dictatorships like his have become dangerous pressure
cookers of discontent across the Muslim world. Ever since he seized
power in a 1999 coup, General Musharraf has promised an early return
to electoral democracy. Almost five years later, he still shows no
inclination to share or yield power eventually, and he still derives
his authority solely from control of the Army. Leading civilian
politicians remain banned. Even the powerless prime minister named to
add a veneer of electoral legitimacy to military rule was fired last
month for proving insufficiently docile.
The spread of nuclear weapons to a lengthening list of erratic and
belligerent countries rightly terrifies Americans. Now we know that
the man who helped develop nuclear weapons for Pakistan, Abdul Qadeer
Khan, was the international godfather of rogue nuclear programs,
helping countries like Iran, Libya and North Korea acquire nuclear
bomb technology and materials. Earlier this year, under strong
American pressure, Pakistan questioned and then pardoned Dr. Khan.
This questioning yielded important clues about several countries'
secret nuclear efforts. But there is no way of knowing for sure how
high Dr. Khan's protection went and whether his nuclear arms bazaar is
now truly closed.
Pakistan's relationship to radical Islamic terrorism remains
dangerously ambiguous. Historically, military leaders, including
General Musharraf, openly used the Taliban and terrorist groups in
Kashmir to advance Pakistan's strategic objectives. That is now
supposed to have stopped. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks
in the United States, General Musharraf broke ties with the Taliban
government and let Washington use bases on Pakistani soil to support
the invasion of Afghanistan. Recently, he sent Pakistan's Army into
the tribal territories bordering Afghanistan, in a not tremendously
successful effort to hunt down Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters. But
General Musharraf still lets Taliban leaders operate and recruit
elsewhere on that border.
This year, General Musharraf promised to end the infiltration of
insurgents from Pakistani territory into the Indian-ruled part of
Kashmir. He seems to be keeping his word, but he has not taken on the
groups that train and arm these militants.
General Musharraf is not an apocalyptic zealot like Osama bin Laden,
an erratic recluse like North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, or a public
vilifier of America, like Iran's ruling clerics. But neither is he a
convinced or convincing ally in the struggle against radical Islamic
terrorism, nuclear weapons proliferation and destructive dictatorship.
.
|
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| User: "nkdatta8839" |
|
| Title: Re: Pakistan's Dictator: An Unreliable Ally |
28 Jul 2004 10:43:59 AM |
|
|
[There is evidence of foreign intelligence backing for the 9/11
hijackers]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1266317,00.html
The Guardian
Thursday July 22, 2004
The Pakistan connection
By Michael Meacher
Omar Sheikh, a British-born Islamist militant, is waiting to be hanged
in Pakistan for a murder he almost certainly didn't commit - of the
Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002. Both the US
government and Pearl's wife have since acknowledged that Sheikh was
not responsible. Yet the Pakistani government is refusing to try other
suspects newly implicated in Pearl's kidnap and murder for fear the
evidence they produce in court might acquit Sheikh and reveal too
much.
Significantly, Sheikh is also the man who, on the instructions of
General Mahmoud Ahmed, the then head of Pakistan's Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI), wired $100,000 before the 9/11 attacks to Mohammed
Atta, the lead hijacker. It is extraordinary that neither Ahmed nor
Sheikh have been charged and brought to trial on this count. Why not?
Ahmed, the paymaster for the hijackers, was actually in Washington on
9/11, and had a series of pre-9/11 top-level meetings in the White
House, the Pentagon, the national security council, and with George
Tenet, then head of the CIA, and Marc Grossman, the under-secretary of
state for political affairs. When Ahmed was exposed by the Wall Street
Journal as having sent the money to the hijackers, he was forced to
"retire" by President Pervez Musharraf. Why hasn't the US demanded
that he be questioned and tried in court?
Another person who must know a great deal about what led up to 9/11 is
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, allegedly arrested in Rawalpindi on March 1
2003. A joint Senate-House intelligence select committee inquiry in
July 2003 stated: "KSM appears to be one of Bin Laden's most trusted
lieutenants and was active in recruiting people to travel outside
Afghanistan, including to the US, on behalf of Bin Laden." According
to the report, the clear implication was that they would be engaged in
planning terrorist-related activities.
The report was sent from the CIA to the FBI, but neither agency
apparently recognised the significance of a Bin Laden lieutenant
sending terrorists to the US and asking them to establish contacts
with colleagues already there. Yet the New York Times has since noted
that "American officials said that KSM, once al-Qaida's top
operational commander, personally executed Daniel Pearl ... but he was
unlikely to be accused of the crime in an American criminal court
because of the risk of divulging classified information". Indeed, he
may never be brought to trial.
A fourth witness is Sibel Edmonds. She is a 33-year-old
Turkish-American former FBI translator of intelligence, fluent in
Farsi, the language spoken mainly in Iran and Afghanistan, who had
top-secret security clearance. She tried to blow the whistle on the
cover-up of intelligence that names some of the culprits who
orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, but is now under two gagging orders
that forbid her from testifying in court or mentioning the names of
the people or the countries involved. She has been quoted as saying:
"My translations of the 9/11 intercepts included [terrorist] money
laundering, detailed and date-specific information ... if they were to
do real investigations, we would see several significant high-level
criminal prosecutions in this country [the US] ... and believe me,
they will do everything to cover this up".
Furthermore, the trial in the US of Zacharias Moussaoui (allegedly the
20th hijacker) is in danger of collapse apparently because of "the
CIA's reluctance to allow key lieutenants of Osama bin Laden to
testify at the trial". Two of the alleged conspirators have already
been set free in Germany for the same reason.
The FBI, illegally, continues to refuse the to release of their agent
Robert Wright's 500-page manuscript Fatal Betrayals of the
Intelligence Mission, and has even refused to turn the manuscript over
to Senator Shelby, vice-chairman of the joint intelligence committee
charged with investigating America's 9/11 intelligence failures. And
the US government still refuses to declassify 28 secret pages of a
recent report on 9/11.
It has been rumoured that Pearl was especially interested in any role
played by the US in training or backing the ISI. Daniel Ellsberg, the
former US defence department whistleblower who has accompanied Edmonds
in court, has stated: "It seems to me quite plausible that Pakistan
was quite involved in this ... To say Pakistan is, to me, to say CIA
because ... it's hard to say that the ISI knew something that the CIA
had no knowledge of." Ahmed's close relations with the CIA would seem
to confirm this. For years the CIA used the ISI as a conduit to pump
billions of dollars into militant Islamist groups in Afghanistan, both
before and after the Soviet invasion of 1979.
W ith CIA backing, the ISI has developed, since the early 1980s, into
a parallel structure, a state within a state, with staff and informers
estimated by some at 150,000. It wields enormous power over all
aspects of government. The case of Ahmed confirms that parts of the
ISI directly supported and financed al-Qaida, and it has long been
established that the ISI has acted as go-between in intelligence
operations on behalf of the CIA.
Senator Bob Graham, chairman of the Senate select committee on
intelligence, has said: "I think there is very compelling evidence
that at least some of the terrorists were assisted, not just in
financing ... by a sovereign foreign government." In that context,
Horst Ehmke, former coordinator of the West German secret services,
observed: "Terrorists could not have carried out such an operation
with four hijacked planes without the support of a secret service."
That might give meaning to the reaction on 9/11 of Richard Clarke, the
White House counter-terrorism chief, when he saw the passenger lists
later on the day itself: "I was stunned ... that there were al-Qaida
operatives on board using names that the FBI knew were al-Qaida." It
was just that, as Dale Watson, head of counter-terrorism at the FBI
told him, the "CIA forgot to tell us about them".
================================================================================
[General Musharraf is not an apocalyptic zealot like Osama bin Laden,
an erratic recluse like North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, or a public
vilifier of America, like Iran's ruling clerics. But neither is he a
convinced or convincing ally in the struggle against radical Islamic
terrorism, nuclear weapons proliferation and destructive dictatorship]
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/09/opinion/09FRI2.html
New York Times
July 9, 2004
EDITORIAL
Pakistan Without Illusions
Pakistan's military dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has done such a
good job of repackaging himself as a vital American ally against
radical Islamic terrorism that it is easy to forget how alarming
Washington rightly found so many of General Musharraf's policies not
very long ago. He crushed Pakistani democracy, was, at the least,
recklessly indifferent to safeguards against the proliferation of
nuclear weapons and supported the Taliban and the terrorist groups
active in Indian-ruled areas of Kashmir.
General Musharraf publicly broke with the Taliban almost three years
ago, but there has been inadequate progress on many of the other
issues, and Pakistan has recently appeared to be backsliding on the
Taliban.
Many of the biggest dangers America faces over the next few decades
are present in General Musharraf's Pakistan, starting with the way
arbitrary dictatorships like his have become dangerous pressure
cookers of discontent across the Muslim world. Ever since he seized
power in a 1999 coup, General Musharraf has promised an early return
to electoral democracy. Almost five years later, he still shows no
inclination to share or yield power eventually, and he still derives
his authority solely from control of the Army. Leading civilian
politicians remain banned. Even the powerless prime minister named to
add a veneer of electoral legitimacy to military rule was fired last
month for proving insufficiently docile.
The spread of nuclear weapons to a lengthening list of erratic and
belligerent countries rightly terrifies Americans. Now we know that
the man who helped develop nuclear weapons for Pakistan, Abdul Qadeer
Khan, was the international godfather of rogue nuclear programs,
helping countries like Iran, Libya and North Korea acquire nuclear
bomb technology and materials. Earlier this year, under strong
American pressure, Pakistan questioned and then pardoned Dr. Khan.
This questioning yielded important clues about several countries'
secret nuclear efforts. But there is no way of knowing for sure how
high Dr. Khan's protection went and whether his nuclear arms bazaar is
now truly closed.
Pakistan's relationship to radical Islamic terrorism remains
dangerously ambiguous. Historically, military leaders, including
General Musharraf, openly used the Taliban and terrorist groups in
Kashmir to advance Pakistan's strategic objectives. That is now
supposed to have stopped. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks
in the United States, General Musharraf broke ties with the Taliban
government and let Washington use bases on Pakistani soil to support
the invasion of Afghanistan. Recently, he sent Pakistan's Army into
the tribal territories bordering Afghanistan, in a not tremendously
successful effort to hunt down Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters. But
General Musharraf still lets Taliban leaders operate and recruit
elsewhere on that border.
This year, General Musharraf promised to end the infiltration of
insurgents from Pakistani territory into the Indian-ruled part of
Kashmir. He seems to be keeping his word, but he has not taken on the
groups that train and arm these militants.
General Musharraf is not an apocalyptic zealot like Osama bin Laden,
an erratic recluse like North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, or a public
vilifier of America, like Iran's ruling clerics. But neither is he a
convinced or convincing ally in the struggle against radical Islamic
terrorism, nuclear weapons proliferation and destructive dictatorship.
.
|
|
|
|
| User: "nkdatta8839" |
|
| Title: Re: Pakistan's Dictator: An Unreliable Ally |
27 Jul 2004 12:23:35 PM |
|
|
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_27-7-2004_pg3_1
The Daily Times, Lahore, Pakistan
Tuesday, July 27, 2004
EDITORIAL
Saudi-Pak cooperation against terrorism and the problem of
Salafi-Wahhabism
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have apparently decided to cooperate with
each other in eradicating terrorism. .....
...... Like the 1980s when Pakistan had a brigade-plus strength of
troops based in Saudi Arabia, primarily for the security of the House
of Saud, this ‘cooperation' too seems geared towards getting Pakistani
forces to operate within Saudi Arabia against an internal threat to
the monarchy. The only difference this time round is the fact that
Pakistan itself is also threatened by radical Salafi extremism and
therefore can use a direct linkage with the Saudi intelligence
agencies to operate more effectively within its own territory. So
there is a big element of mutual support in this venture. .....
...... Much of what we are witnessing today in terms of the radical
Salafi threat is the doing of the House of Saud itself. Before any of
the radicals came online and began to threaten Saudi Arabia and the
rest of the world, it was the Saudi monarchy that upheld — and still
does — the banner of Wahhabism. Somewhat arbitrarily and wrongly, the
monarchy decided that Wahhabi conservatism could never result in a
radical expression. This was not to be because the Puritanism of the
creed was essentially pegged to evangelicalism. When it mated with the
radical elements of the Muslim Brotherhood, the conservative Wahhabism
gave birth to radical Salafism. This Salafism was tempered in the
jihadi fires of Afghanistan and spread through the global networks of
the Islamist International that came to fight in Afghanistan.
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, both, were heavily involved with these
radicals ..... are now reaping what they had sowed in the ‘80s. The
religious establishment that the Saudi monarchy allowed to operate and
the ultra-orthodoxy that seeped into the political and social fabric
of the kingdom have all contributed to the process. Nothing manifests
it better than the life and status of clerics like Sheikh Abdul-Aziz
bin Baz. It was Bin Baz' student Juhema Ibn Saif Al Utaiba, who, along
with his followers, attacked and captured the Ka'aba in 1980. This was
not a coincidence but an inevitable result of the Wahhabi orthodoxy
meshing with radical Islam and producing the explosive mix of
Salafism. Even so, the monarchy kept funding Wahhabi causes throughout
the Muslim world and even among Muslim communities in the rest of the
world. Its response to the emerging threats was to bribe the radical
elements by giving them more money on the one hand and seeking
‘protective services' from countries like Pakistan and the United
States on the other hand. Ironically, this element of seeking US
protection and being a close US ally while propounding Wahhabism at
home proved the biggest contradiction in the end. Saddam Hussain's
invasion of Kuwait was just the event that gave a fillip to the
situation.
We do not see many signs that the Saudi monarchy, while being alive to
the danger of radical Salafism, is in the process of doing anything
substantial to strike at the roots of this phenomenon. Its
conservatism — political and social — stays much as it was. There are
hints at reform but the deeds don't match the words. The system
remains closed both politically and socially. True, unbridled glasnost
at this stage could backfire on the kingdom. It is also true however
that some measures need to be taken to let off steam. At this juncture
it would perhaps be a better bet to begin with social opening up and
follow through on it with controlled ventilation on the political
side.
States like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, if they are really serious
about cleaning the silt they have gathered over the years through
their ill-thought policies, need to take substantial steps, not merely
mouth platitudes, to stem the tide. This advice we have been giving
Islamabad for a long time. And this is the medicine we are obliged to
prescribe for Riyadh. To eradicate terrorism, first do away with the
contradiction that has informed the system.
================================================================================
[General Musharraf is not an apocalyptic zealot like Osama bin Laden,
an erratic recluse like North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, or a public
vilifier of America, like Iran's ruling clerics. But neither is he a
convinced or convincing ally in the struggle against radical Islamic
terrorism, nuclear weapons proliferation and destructive dictatorship]
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/09/opinion/09FRI2.html
New York Times
July 9, 2004
EDITORIAL
Pakistan Without Illusions
Pakistan's military dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has done such a
good job of repackaging himself as a vital American ally against
radical Islamic terrorism that it is easy to forget how alarming
Washington rightly found so many of General Musharraf's policies not
very long ago. He crushed Pakistani democracy, was, at the least,
recklessly indifferent to safeguards against the proliferation of
nuclear weapons and supported the Taliban and the terrorist groups
active in Indian-ruled areas of Kashmir.
General Musharraf publicly broke with the Taliban almost three years
ago, but there has been inadequate progress on many of the other
issues, and Pakistan has recently appeared to be backsliding on the
Taliban.
Many of the biggest dangers America faces over the next few decades
are present in General Musharraf's Pakistan, starting with the way
arbitrary dictatorships like his have become dangerous pressure
cookers of discontent across the Muslim world. Ever since he seized
power in a 1999 coup, General Musharraf has promised an early return
to electoral democracy. Almost five years later, he still shows no
inclination to share or yield power eventually, and he still derives
his authority solely from control of the Army. Leading civilian
politicians remain banned. Even the powerless prime minister named to
add a veneer of electoral legitimacy to military rule was fired last
month for proving insufficiently docile.
The spread of nuclear weapons to a lengthening list of erratic and
belligerent countries rightly terrifies Americans. Now we know that
the man who helped develop nuclear weapons for Pakistan, Abdul Qadeer
Khan, was the international godfather of rogue nuclear programs,
helping countries like Iran, Libya and North Korea acquire nuclear
bomb technology and materials. Earlier this year, under strong
American pressure, Pakistan questioned and then pardoned Dr. Khan.
This questioning yielded important clues about several countries'
secret nuclear efforts. But there is no way of knowing for sure how
high Dr. Khan's protection went and whether his nuclear arms bazaar is
now truly closed.
Pakistan's relationship to radical Islamic terrorism remains
dangerously ambiguous. Historically, military leaders, including
General Musharraf, openly used the Taliban and terrorist groups in
Kashmir to advance Pakistan's strategic objectives. That is now
supposed to have stopped. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks
in the United States, General Musharraf broke ties with the Taliban
government and let Washington use bases on Pakistani soil to support
the invasion of Afghanistan. Recently, he sent Pakistan's Army into
the tribal territories bordering Afghanistan, in a not tremendously
successful effort to hunt down Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters. But
General Musharraf still lets Taliban leaders operate and recruit
elsewhere on that border.
This year, General Musharraf promised to end the infiltration of
insurgents from Pakistani territory into the Indian-ruled part of
Kashmir. He seems to be keeping his word, but he has not taken on the
groups that train and arm these militants.
General Musharraf is not an apocalyptic zealot like Osama bin Laden,
an erratic recluse like North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, or a public
vilifier of America, like Iran's ruling clerics. But neither is he a
convinced or convincing ally in the struggle against radical Islamic
terrorism, nuclear weapons proliferation and destructive dictatorship.
.
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|
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| User: "nkdatta8839" |
|
| Title: Re: Pakistan's Dictator: An Unreliable Ally |
04 Aug 2004 03:31:05 PM |
|
|
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/04/international/asia/04afgh.html
NY Times
August 4, 2004
Pakistan Allows Taliban to Train, a Detained Fighter Says
By CARLOTTA GALL
KABUL, Afghanistan, Aug. 3 - For months Afghan and American officials
have complained that even while Pakistan cooperates in the fight
against Al Qaeda, militant Islamic groups there are training fighters
and sending them into Afghanistan to attack American and Afghan
forces.
Pakistani officials have rejected the allegations, saying they are
unaware of any such training camps. Now the Afghan government has
produced a young Pakistani, captured fighting with the Taliban in
southern Afghanistan three months ago, whose story would seem to back
its complaints about Pakistan. .....
...... It is an open secret in Pakistan that groups supporting
separatism in Kashmir have not stopped their activities, despite
official declarations, and have continued to train men and infiltrate
them into Indian Kashmir. Deputy Secretary of State Richard L.
Armitage said during a visit to the region last month that Pakistan
had not dismantled all the camps used to train militants for Kashmir.
And while he praised Pakistan for its efforts against Al Qaeda, he
urged the country to do more to stop Taliban militants carrying out
attacks from Pakistan.
Mr. Sohail is not the first Pakistani to be captured fighting
alongside the Taliban and other militants in Afghanistan over the past
two years. On at least one occasion, Pakistanis who were captured in a
joint American-Afghan military operation last year were handed back to
Pakistan. But he is the first made available for an interview by the
Afghan government. Intelligence officials said they found on him a
Jamiat-ul-Ansar membership card and a list of phone numbers of
high-level party officials. .....
...... Zalmay M. Khalilzad, the American ambassador to Afghanistan, has
stated publicly that Pakistan has not done nearly enough to stop the
Taliban and other militants from using Pakistan's border areas as
operational and recruiting bases.
In a speech in Washington in April, he warned that if Pakistan did not
do the job on its side of the border, American forces would have to do
the job themselves.
A Western diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity in an interview
last month in Kabul said: "When you talk about Taliban, it's like fish
in a barrel in Pakistan. They train, they rest there. They get
support."
Western diplomats in Kabul and Pakistani political analysts have said
that Pakistan has continued to allow the Taliban to operate to retain
influence in Afghanistan. Pakistan supported the Taliban in the 1990's
as a way to create an area where Pakistani forces could retreat to the
west if war erupted with its the country's longtime rival and neighbor
to the east, India. Pakistan has also long tried to maintain influence
over Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, the Pashtuns, because of its
wariness of its own Pashtun minority in the border areas. .....
...... Pakistani government officials have made statements that they do
not see the Taliban as a threat to Pakistan. They have also, at times,
said the Taliban have a legitimate political grievance in Afghanistan.
......
.
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| User: "nkdatta8839" |
|
| Title: Re: Pakistan's Dictator: An Unreliable Ally |
26 Aug 2004 06:39:12 PM |
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http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_25-8-2004_pg7_9
The Daily Times, Lahore, Pakistan
Friday, August 27, 2004
Pakistan serving as Taliban sanctuary
By Khalid Hasan
WASHINGTON: Pakistan is serving as a sanctuary for Afghan militants,
Western diplomats in Kabul were quoted by the New York Times on
Tuesday as saying.
The diplomats were said to have been dismissive of President Pervez
Musharraf's assurance to visiting Afghan leader Hamid Karzai that his
country would not allow Islamic militants to disrupt the Afghan
election from Pakistani soil. "They are training, financing and
organising these operations on Pakistani soil," said a Western
diplomat in Kabul, the Afghan capital. "There is evidence from people
who have been picked up in Afghanistan that they were being trained in
Pakistan."
Three senior diplomats, the newspaper said, who all asked not to be
named, said they were speaking now because Western intelligence
agencies had concluded that the Taliban were planning major attacks to
disrupt Afghanistan's first presidential election scheduled for
October 9, including spectacular attacks in Kabul, the capital. They
called on Pakistani officials to rein in Taliban operations
immediately. "If these attacks do take place, the responsibility will
be shared," one diplomat warned, referring to Pakistan. "Our process
is being attacked from the territory of Pakistan. That is the
responsibility of Pakistan." The blunt comments about Pakistan appear
to be the first public step in an effort to press Pakistan regarding
the Taliban ahead of the Afghan election, the newspaper observed.
According to the report filed by NYT correspondent David Rhode from
Islamabad, the diplomats in Kabul said Taliban operations in Pakistan,
particularly in Balochistan province, appeared to be so extensive that
Pakistan's military intelligence service, Inter-Services Intelligence,
which has a sprawling network along the Afghan border and across
Pakistan, must be aware of it. They added that the security situation
in Afghanistan's south and east was not going to improve unless
Pakistan dealt with the Taliban inside its borders.
The report said Pakistani officials dismissed the allegations and said
their forces were doing all they could to apprehend Taliban members.
In a telephone interview to the New York Times, Major General Shaukat
Sultan, chief military spokesman, said the Taliban were thriving
inside Afghanistan, not Pakistan. "This is totally absurd," he said of
the charges.
The report said at the centre of the debate lies the question of
General Pervez Musharraf's "true intentions and his control over his
intelligence leaders." It quoted a senior military officer in
Washington as saying that "Musharraf does not have complete control
over everybody. But he's trying methodically to do what he can. When
he kicks over a rock and the cockroaches scurry, he tries to kill
them." Other officials argue that it is difficult for General
Musharraf to control the isolated tribal areas that lie along the
border because of alliances that have built up between the tribesmen
there and the Taliban. Still others argue that he is playing a "double
game" with the United States. He hopes to keep the Taliban alive to
influence events in Afghanistan, particularly if the United States
should capture Osama Bin Laden and abandon the region. "They (the
Pakistanis) think we don't have the staying power to stay here
indefinitely," said one Western diplomat in Kabul. "There will be
another play for Afghanistan, and they would like to have some
horses."
.
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| User: "John Flogger" |
|
| Title: INDIAN Spy at US Northrop Grumman Facility |
28 Aug 2004 02:19:27 PM |
|
|
The morality and work ethics of these Indians can be judged by the
fact that this ***** is using paid Northrop Grumman time to promote
anti-Pakistan propoganda from his employers computer network. Such
shady characters should face corporate wrath and intelligence
investigation. The IP details of this message is provided below.
Readers are encouraged to report this culprit to Northrop Grumman.
OrgName: Northrop Grumman Corp.
OrgID: NGC-1
Address: Data Systems and Services Division
Address: 1111 Stewart Ave.
City: Bethpage
StateProv: NY
PostalCode: 11714-3582
Country: US
NetRange: 157.127.0.0 - 157.127.255.255
CIDR: 157.127.0.0/16
NetName: NORTHROP-UVS
NetHandle: NET-157-127-0-0-1
Parent: NET-157-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Assignment
NameServer: SUNDOWN.NORTHGRUM.COM
NameServer: NGEDNS.NORTHGRUM.COM
Comment:
RegDate: 1992-01-02
Updated: 1995-08-17
TechHandle: JW3847-ARIN
TechName: Wald, Jerry
TechPhone: +1-310-332-4539
TechEmail:
nkdatta8839@bigmailbox.net (nkdatta8839) wrote in message news:<c62ede76.0408261539.1de1ac0f@posting.google.com>...
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_25-8-2004_pg7_9
The Daily Times, Lahore, Pakistan
Friday, August 27, 2004
Pakistan serving as Taliban sanctuary
By Khalid Hasan
WASHINGTON: Pakistan is serving as a sanctuary for Afghan militants,
Western diplomats in Kabul were quoted by the New York Times on
Tuesday as saying.
The diplomats were said to have been dismissive of President Pervez
Musharraf's assurance to visiting Afghan leader Hamid Karzai that his
country would not allow Islamic militants to disrupt the Afghan
election from Pakistani soil. "They are training, financing and
organising these operations on Pakistani soil," said a Western
diplomat in Kabul, the Afghan capital. "There is evidence from people
who have been picked up in Afghanistan that they were being trained in
Pakistan."
Three senior diplomats, the newspaper said, who all asked not to be
named, said they were speaking now because Western intelligence
agencies had concluded that the Taliban were planning major attacks to
disrupt Afghanistan's first presidential election scheduled for
October 9, including spectacular attacks in Kabul, the capital. They
called on Pakistani officials to rein in Taliban operations
immediately. "If these attacks do take place, the responsibility will
be shared," one diplomat warned, referring to Pakistan. "Our process
is being attacked from the territory of Pakistan. That is the
responsibility of Pakistan." The blunt comments about Pakistan appear
to be the first public step in an effort to press Pakistan regarding
the Taliban ahead of the Afghan election, the newspaper observed.
According to the report filed by NYT correspondent David Rhode from
Islamabad, the diplomats in Kabul said Taliban operations in Pakistan,
particularly in Balochistan province, appeared to be so extensive that
Pakistan's military intelligence service, Inter-Services Intelligence,
which has a sprawling network along the Afghan border and across
Pakistan, must be aware of it. They added that the security situation
in Afghanistan's south and east was not going to improve unless
Pakistan dealt with the Taliban inside its borders.
The report said Pakistani officials dismissed the allegations and said
their forces were doing all they could to apprehend Taliban members.
In a telephone interview to the New York Times, Major General Shaukat
Sultan, chief military spokesman, said the Taliban were thriving
inside Afghanistan, not Pakistan. "This is totally absurd," he said of
the charges.
The report said at the centre of the debate lies the question of
General Pervez Musharraf's "true intentions and his control over his
intelligence leaders." It quoted a senior military officer in
Washington as saying that "Musharraf does not have complete control
over everybody. But he's trying methodically to do what he can. When
he kicks over a rock and the cockroaches scurry, he tries to kill
them." Other officials argue that it is difficult for General
Musharraf to control the isolated tribal areas that lie along the
border because of alliances that have built up between the tribesmen
there and the Taliban. Still others argue that he is playing a "double
game" with the United States. He hopes to keep the Taliban alive to
influence events in Afghanistan, particularly if the United States
should capture Osama Bin Laden and abandon the region. "They (the
Pakistanis) think we don't have the staying power to stay here
indefinitely," said one Western diplomat in Kabul. "There will be
another play for Afghanistan, and they would like to have some
horses."
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| User: "nkdatta8839" |
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| Title: Re: Pakistan's Dictator: An Unreliable Ally |
04 Aug 2004 09:58:15 AM |
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20040801-102017-2643r.htm
The Washington Times
August 02, 2004
Real terror culprit
By Arnaud de Borchgrave
...... Former Pakistani intelligence officers knew beforehand all about
the September 11 attacks.
They even advised Osama bin Laden and his cohorts how to attack
key targets in the United States with hijacked civilian aircraft. And
bin Laden has been undergoing periodic dialysis treatment in a
military hospital in Peshawar, capital of Pakistan's Northwest
Frontier Province adjacent to the Afghan border. .....
......The information came to the commission's attention in a
confidential report from Pakistan as its own report was coming off the
presses. The information was supplied with the understanding the
unimpeachable source would remain anonymous.
Pakistan still denies President Pervez Musharraf knew anything
about the activities of A.Q. Khan, the country's top nuclear engineer
who had spent the last 10 years building and running a one-stop global
Wall-Mart for "rogue" nations. North Korea, Iran and Libya shopped for
nuclear weapons at Mr. Khan's underground black market. Pakistan has
also denied the allegations by a leading Pakistani in the confidential
addendum to the September 11 commission report.
After U.S. and British intelligence painstakingly pieced together
Mr. Khan's global nuclear proliferation endeavors, Deputy Secretary of
State Rich Armitage was assigned last fall to convey the devastating
news to Mr. Musharraf. Mr. Khan, a national icon for giving Pakistan
its nuclear arsenal, was not arrested. Instead, Mr. Musharraf pardoned
him in exchange for an abject apology on national television in
English. No one in Pakistan believed Mr. Musharraf's claim he was
totally in the dark about Mr. Khan's operation. Prior to seizing power
in 1999, Mr. Musharraf was — and still is — Army chief of staff. For
the past five years, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence chief has
reported directly to Mr. Musharraf.
Osama bin Laden's principal Pakistani adviser before September 11,
2001, was retired Gen. Hamid Gul, a former ISI chief who, since the
2001 attacks, is "strategic adviser" to the coalition of six
politico-religious parties that governs two of Pakistan's four
provinces. Known as MMA, the coalition also occupies 20 percent of the
seats in the federal assembly in Islamabad.
Hours after September 11, Gen. Gul publicly accused Israel's
Mossad of fomenting the plot. Later, he said the U.S. Air Force must
have been in on it since no warplanes were scrambled to shoot down the
hijacked airliners.
Gen. Gul spent two weeks in Afghanistan immediately before
September 11. He denied meeting bin Laden on that trip, but has always
said he was an "admirer" of the al Qaeda leader. However, he did meet
several times with Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban leader.
Since September 11, hardly a week goes by without Gen. Gul
denouncing the United States in both the Urdu and English-language
media.
In a conversation with this reporter in October 2001, Gen. Gul
forecast a future Islamist nuclear power that would form a greater
Islamic state with a fundamentalist Saudi Arabia after the monarchy
falls.
Gen. Gul worked closely with the CIA during the Soviet occupation
of Afghanistan when he was ISI chief. He was "mildly" fundamentalist
in those days, he explained after September 11, and indifferent to the
United States. But he became passionately anti-American after the
United States turned its back on Afghanistan following the 1989 Soviet
withdrawal, and began punishing Pakistan with economic and military
sanctions for its secret nuclear buildup.
A ranking CIA official, speaking anonymously, said the agency
considered Gen. Gul "the most dangerous man" in Pakistan. A senior
Pakistani political leader, also on condition of anonymity, said, "I
have reason to believe Hamid Gul was Osama bin Laden's master
planner."
The report received by the September 11 commission from the
anonymous, well-connected Pakistani source, said: "The core issue of
instability and violence in South Asia is the character, activities
and persistence of the militarized Islamist fundamentalist state in
Pakistan. No cure for this canker can be arrived at through any
strategy of negotiations, support and financial aid to the military
regime, or by a 'regulated' transition to 'democracy.' "
The confidential report continued: "The imprints of every major
act of international Islamist terrorism invariably passes through
Pakistan, right from September 11 — where virtually all the
participants had trained, resided or met in, coordinated with, or
received funding from or through Pakistan — to major acts of terrorism
across South Asia and Southeast Asia, as well as major networks of
terror that have been discovered in Europe.
"Pakistan has harvested an enormous price for its apparent
'cooperation' with the U.S., and in this it has combined deception and
blackmail — including nuclear blackmail — to secure a continuous
stream of concessions. Its conduct is little different from that of
North Korea, which has in the past chosen the nuclear path to secure
incremental aid from Western donors. A pattern of sustained nuclear
blackmail has consistently been at the heart of Pakistan's case for
concessions, aid and a heightened threshold of international tolerance
for its sponsorship and support of Islamist terrorism.
"To understand how this works, it is useful to conceive of
Pakistan's ISI as a state acting as terrorist traffickers, complaining
that, if it does not receive the extraordinary dispensations and
indulgences that it seeks, it will, in effect, 'implode,' and in the
process do extraordinary harm.
"Part of the threat of this 'explosion' is also the specter of the
transfer of its nuclear arsenal and capabilities to more intransigent
and irrational elements of the Islamist far right in Pakistan, who
would not be amenable to the logic that its present rulers — whose
interests in terrorism are strategic, and consequently, subject to
considerations of strategic advantage — are willing to listen to. ...
"It is crucial to note that if the Islamist terrorist groups gain
access to nuclear devices, ISI will almost certainly be the source.
.... At least six Pakistani scientists connected with the country's
nuclear program were in contact with al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden with
the thorough instructions of ISI.
"Pakistan has projected the electoral victory of the
fundamentalist and pro-Taliban, pro-al Qaeda Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal
(MMA) in the November elections as 'proof' the military is the only
'barrier' against the country passing into the hands of the
extremists. The fact, however, is that the elections were widely
rigged, and this was a fact acknowledged by the European Union
observers, as well as by some of the MMA's constituents themselves.
The MMA victory was, in fact, substantially engineered by the
Musharraf regime, as are the various anti-U.S. 'mass demonstrations'
around the country.
"Pakistan has made a big case out of the fact that some of the
top-line leadership of al Qaeda has been arrested in the country with
the 'cooperation' of the Pakistani security forces and intelligence.
However, the fact is that each such arrest only took place after the
FBI and U.S. investigators had effectively gathered evidence to force
Pakistani collaboration, but little of this evidence had come from
Pakistani intelligence agencies. Indeed, ISI has consistently sought
to deny the presence of al Qaeda elements in Pakistan, and to mislead
U.S. investigators. ... This deception has been at the very highest
level, and Musharraf himself, for instance, initially insisted he was
'certain' bin Laden was dead. ...
"ISI has been actively facilitating the relocation of the al Qaeda
from Afghanistan to Pakistan, and the conspiracy of substantial
segments of serving Army and intelligence officers is visible. ..."
"The Pakistan army consistently denies giving the militants
anything more than moral, diplomatic and political support. The
reality is quite different. ISI issues money and directions to
militant groups, specially the Arab hijackers of September 11 from al
Qaeda. ISI was fully involved in devising and helping the entire
affair. And that is why people like Hamid Gul and others very quickly
stated the propaganda that CIA and Mossad did it. ... "
"The dilemma for Musharraf is that many of his army officers are
still deeply sympathetic to al Qaeda, Taliban militants and the
Kashmir cause.... Many retired and present ISI officers retain close
links to al Qaeda militants hiding in various state-sponsored places
in Pakistan and Kashmir as well as leaders from the defeated Taliban
regime. They regard the fight against Americans and Jews and Indians
in different parts of the world as legitimate jihad."
The report also says, "According to a senior tribal leader in
Peshawar, bin Laden, who suffers from renal deficiency, has been
periodically undergoing dialysis in a Peshawar military hospital with
the knowledge and approval of ISI if not of Gen. Pervez Musharraf
himself." .....
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