Why Pakistan will not mount new attacks on militants
Jan 22, 2010 News & Events, Pakistan, pakistan politics
With its announcement that it will launch no new offensives against the Taliban in 2010, Pakistan’s army appears to have opened a new innings in its favourite game with the West, says the BBC’s Syed Shoaib Hasan in Islamabad.
For the United States, the statement by the Pakistan army could not have come at a worse time.
Its main intelligence agency, the CIA, is still coming to terms with the death of seven personnel in a suicide attack in Afghanistan by an al-Qaeda “double agent”.
That attack, the worst suffered by the agency in four decades, was apparently planned and carried out by Taliban militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
Under pressure from the US, the Pakistan army launched an operation there in the main Taliban stronghold of South Waziristan in November 2009.
The army has since been able to secure that territory and push out the militants.
While some have been captured, most senior Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders have fled the region.
Intelligence officials say they have now taken refuge either in other nearby tribal regions or the neighbouring Balochistan province.
Mission impossible
Top US officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have been calling for the military to go after the militants in these regions.
All this comes at a time when Pakistan’s government is already under a great deal of domestic criticism.
This is mainly due to increased missile strikes by the US targeting Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders in the tribal areas.
These have turned a sometimes ambivalent tribal population against the Pakistan military.
Analysts say the tribesmen see the strikes, which have claimed more lives of civilians than of militants, as contiguous with the military operation.
But US officials have continued to press for more action, painting doomsday scenarios for Pakistan.
The latest such warning comes from US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who said in India that al-Qaeda was planning to carry out attacks to provoke war with Pakistan.
But the Pakistan military appears to have its own views on the subject, and their say is likely to count the most.
Tags: Al qaida, Black Water, cia, Millitants, Pak Army, Pakistan, Raw, war on terror, Waziristan
Yemen’s Most Wanted
Jan 11, 2010 Uncategorized
Rap sheet: As leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), Wuhayshi has proven to be both a skilled politician and an innovative, often brutal, adversary. Once Osama bin Laden’s secretary, Wuhayshi is a member of the younger and more radical generation of Yemen’s al Qaeda cadres. In 2006, he broke out of a maximum-security prison, along with 22 other militants, in Yemen’s capital city of Sanaa. In January 2009, he spearheaded the unification of al Qaeda’s Yemeni and Saudi branches under his control.
Rap sheet: Awlaki is ethnically Yemeni, but actually hails from New Mexico. As an imam, he preached in mosques throughout the United States, including in San Diego; Fort Collins, Colorado; and Washington, D.C. (While in San Diego, he was also arrested for soliciting prostitutes.) Technologically savvy, he also has a reputation as an “e-imam,” having created a popular website where he doled out advice and posted “sermons” to spread his radical views.
Rap sheet: Shehri, a Saudi, was captured in December 2001 in Pakistan, where he claimed to be providing humanitarian relief for Muslim refugees. He was subsequently transferred to the Guantánamo Bay detention facility, where the U.S. charges against him included “participat[ing] in military operations against the United States and its coalition partners,” as well as plotting to assassinate an unnamed writer.
Rap sheet: Raymi has been associated with al Qaeda in Yemen since well before the creation of AQAP, previously serving as deputy to Wuhayshi for its predecessor group al Qaeda in Yemen. In February 2006, he escaped prison as part of the same jailbreak that freed Wuhayshi. On June 21, 2007, Raymi released the audio statement that announced the formal re-establishment of al Qaeda in Yemen with Wuhayshi at its head. He has successfully evaded authorities ever since, most recently escaping a raid designed to capture him in the southern Abyan province last December.
Rap sheet: The Sanaa-born Mujali hails from a family of al Qaeda members: His younger brothers Arif and Yahya are also active in terrorist circles. Hizam Mujali was stopped at a checkpoint in 2003 and, while resisting arrest, shot and killed a Yemeni police officer. He was also part of the infamous 2006 prison break. However, he eventually turned himself back in to the Yemeni government, striking a deal that would allow him to keep his freedom on the condition that he did not rejoin al Qaeda. That condition appears to have recently been broken: The government targeted him in a raid it launched in Arhab Province this past December. Although they captured his brother Arif, Hizam managed to escape.
Tags: afghanistan, Al qaida, Black Water, cia, iran, Pakistan, terrorist, USA, war on terror, yemen
Order Out of Chaos: CIA, Blackwater Responsible for Bombings, Assassinations in Pakistan
Nov 16, 2009 News & Events, Pakistan, pakistan politics
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
November 16, 2009
Newspapers in Pakistan have accused the United States of using Blackwater and other agencies to conduct bombings and targeted assassinations in the country, according to MEMRI translations. MEMRI is a neocon propaganda outfit with connections to Israeli intelligence.
“Evidence of the private U.S. security firm Blackwater’s involvement in the targeted killings of high-ranking Pakistani military officials has been found,” reports Haftroza Al-Qalam, a Pakistan weekly published in Urdu, one of the two official languages of Pakistan. “According to a report in the Urdu-language magazine Haftroza Al-Qalam, the recent killings of Pakistani military officials represent an old method used by Blackwater in Iraq and South American countries.”
Journalist Jeremy Scahill reported on the CIA-Blackwater assassination program in August, 2009. See the second part of the report.
Pakistan media and other sources have reported on a Blackwater presence in Pakistan since 2008. “The notorious US security firm Blackwater has reportedly established a presence in the restive tribal belt on the Afghan borders to help the FBI and CIA track down Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants allegedly hiding there and protect USAID projects,” Aamir Latif reported for IslamOnline.
USAID is a a documented CIA front. The fact USAID is essentially a CIA dummy corporation was largely confirmed when the CIA released its ‘Family Jewels’ documents in 2007.
On Saturday, The Daily News in Pakistan reported that Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (described as the main Taliban militant umbrella group in Pakistan) blamed recent bombings in the country on the ISI (Pakistan’s intelligence agency), the Awami National Party, the Pakistan People’s Party and Blackwater. “All these killings by the infamous Blackwater are aimed at maligning the Taliban,” TTP spokesman Azam Tariq told the Daily Times. “The TTP does not believe in killing of innocent citizens, and we will hold those who are doing this accountable.”
In August of this year, The New York Times reported on a Blackwater assassination program. “The Central Intelligence Agency in 2004 hired outside contractors from the private security contractor Blackwater USA as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda, according to current and former government officials,” Mark Mazzetti reported.
The CIA’s highly compartmentalized covert program was not reported to Congress. “According to current and former government officials, former Vice President Dick Cheney told C.I.A. officers in 2002 that the spy agency did not need to inform Congress because the agency already had legal authority to kill Qaeda leaders.”
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein said the CIA broke the law by failing to notify Congress about the secret assassination program. Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair, however, said the CIA did not violate the law when it failed to inform lawmakers about the program.
Beginning in 2002, the CIA conducted numerous strikes against al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan using unmanned aerial vehicles like the MQ-1 Predator and the larger MQ-9 Reaper. The Obama administration not only continued the strikes but dramatically increased the pace.
Journalist and author Douglas Valentine says the CIA program in Iraq constituted a “new Phoenix Program.” The original Phoenix program was used in Vietnam to assassinate communist leaders and terrorize the population into submission. In Iraq, according to Valentine (who references journalist Seymour Hersh), the CIA’s assassination program was used “not just Ba’ath Party members, but anyone who gets their name on the CIA’s blacklist of political and ideological enemies.”
“The recent bomb explosions in Pakistan are of the same nature previously conducted by Blackwater in Iraq,” Haftroza Al-Qalam reports. “The same people are involved in all the terror attacks, including the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the explosions in Peshawar.”
Pakistan’s former chief of army staff, General Mirza Aslam Beg, told the Tehran Times in September that he believes Blackwater was directly involved in the assassinations of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto and former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. Beg said former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf had given Blackwater the green light to carry out terrorist operations in the cities of Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Peshawar, and Quetta.
“Beg stated that the former Pakistani prime minister was killed in an international conspiracy because she had decided to back out of the deal through which she had returned to the country after nine years in exile,” the Times reported.
Self-made billionaire and business tycoon Hariri was assassinated on February 14, 2005, when his motorcade was bombed in Beirut. Seymour Hersh has accused Cheney of being involved in the Hariri assassination. After the assassination of Hariri, the U.S. accused Syria, although conclusive evidence has never been presented proving Syrian involvement in the murder.
During the election, Obama declared his intention of striking Pakistan if elected. “If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will,” Obama said. He said he would be willing to attack inside Pakistan with or without approval from the Pakistani government.
Obama’s Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, indicated during her Senate confirmation hearing that the new administration would “not relent in holding Pakistan to account for any shortfalls in the continuing battle against extremists,” The Washington Post reported in January.
The “extremists” in Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan, the Taliban and al-Qaeda, were created by the CIA and the ISI.
“Obama has made it clear that his administration’s response to the growth of insurgent Afghan forces and the worsening security situation facing the US and its puppet regime in Afghanistan, as well as the growing strength of anti-US and anti-government insurgents in Pakistan, is an expansion of American military violence both in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The White House and the military are treating both countries as part of a single military theater,” Barry Grey noted in February.
Obama has escalated the “protracted political chaos” in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Chaos is designed to create a political vacuum and allow the U.S. to dominate the region.
Rockefeller minion Zbigniew Brzezinski admitted as much in his book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives. “To put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together,” Brzezinski wrote.
CIA bombing campaigns and assassinations, conducted by the mercenary group Blackwater (Now Xe Services), are part of an effort to keep the “barbarians from coming together” and create a situation requiring a continuation and expansion of the contrived global war on terrorism.
Tags: afghanistan, Al qaida, Assassinations, Blackwater, cia, moosad, Pakistan, war on terror, XE
‘We are prepared for a long war’
Nov 4, 2009 News & Events, Pakistan, pakistan politics
PESHAWAR: A Taliban spokesman denied Tuesday that Pakistan army has won a series of battlefield victories in its offensive in tribal South Waziristan, saying the militants are drawing government soldiers into a trap.
‘We are prepared for a long war,’ Azam Tariq told an Associated Press reporter by telephone.
‘The areas we are withdrawing from, and the ones the army is claiming to have won, are being vacated by us as part of a strategy. The strategy is to let the army get in a trap, and then fight a long war.’
Tariq also denied army claims that hundreds of militants have been killed, saying only 11 have died so far.
In mid-October, the Pakistani government launched an offensive in the South Waziristan tribal region, viewed as the main stronghold in the country of both the Taliban and al-Qaida.
The military says it has pressed deep into Taliban territory and captured some Taliban strongholds. The offensive has drawn retaliatory militant attacks across Pakistan.
A few hours after Tariq’s claim, the army announced that 21 militants had been killed in the past 24 hours in South Waziristan and that government forces were continuing to press into Taliban territory. It said in a statement that one government soldier had died in the past day.
Much of the fighting was in Sararogha, a Taliban base where militant leaders have long operated openly, occasionally even using it for news conferences. The army said it killed 16 fighters there as it tried to clear the town of militants.
What is actually happening, though, is impossible to confirm.
Pakistan has effectively sealed off the tribal areas, semiautonomous regions where the central government in Islamabad has long had only minimal authority. —AP
Tags: Al qaida, Azam Tariq, Pak Army, Pakistan, Sararogha, South Waziristan, Swat, taliban, war on terror, Waziristan
Fake Al Qaeda Actors
Oct 19, 2009 News & Events, afghan war
Tags: afghanistan, Afghans, Al qaida, war, war on terror
Al-Qaeda has shifted bases to Pakistan
Aug 18, 2009 News & Events, Pakistan, pakistan politics
PHOENIX: US President Barack Obama says Al-Qaeda and its allies have shifted their bases from Afghanistan to the remote, tribal areas of Pakistan.
The US President said that terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan cannot be eradicated in a short time span.
Speaking at the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention in Phoenix, Arizona, Obama said that the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan would enable Al-Qaeda to plan similar attacks to that of 9/11.
He reiterated that the war on terror is necessary for the defence of the people.
According to the US president the perpetrators of 9/11 are planning more attacks and if left unchecked the Taliban insurgency will mean the creation of larger safe havens from which Al-Qaeda could plot to kill more Americans.
‘As I said when I announced this strategy, there will be more difficult days ahead. The insurgency in Afghanistan didn’t just happen overnight, and we won’t defeat it overnight. This will not be quick. This will not be easy.’
‘But we must never forget: This is not a war of choice; this is a war of necessity.’
‘Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which Al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defence of our people,’ said the US president.
Mysterious ‘chip’ is CIA’s latest weapon against Al-Qaida
Jun 3, 2009 News & Events, Pakistan
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 31
But a deadly war of wits is already under way in the region, where tribesmen say the US is using advanced technology and old-fashioned cash to target the enemy.
Over the last 18 months the US has launched more than 50 drone attacks, mostly in south and north Waziristan. US officials claim nine of the top 20 al-Qaida figures have been killed.
That success is reportedly in part thanks to the mysterious electronic devices, dubbed “chips” or “pathrai” (the Pashto word for a metal device), which have become a source of fear, intrigue and fascination.
“Everyone is talking about it,” said Taj Muhammad Wazir, a student from south Waziristan. “People are scared that if a pathrai comes into your house, a drone will attack it.”
According to residents and Taliban propaganda, the CIA pays tribesmen to plant the electronic devices near farmhouses sheltering al-Qaida and Taliban commanders.
Hours or days later, a drone, guided by the signal from the chip, destroys the building with a salvo of missiles. “There are body parts everywhere,” said Wazir, who witnessed the aftermath of a strike.
Until now the drone strikes were the only threat to militants in Waziristan, where the Pakistani army had, in effect, abandoned the fight.
But now, emboldened by a successful campaign to drive militants out of Swat, a region about 80 miles from Islamabad, the army is preparing to regain lost ground in the more remote tribal belt.
It will be a much tougher campaign than in Swat, with the army pitched against a formidable, battle-hardened opponent. Yesterday Taliban fighters ambushed a military position in what could be a prelude to much more intense combat.
For the US military, drones have proved to be an effective weapon against al-Qaida targets, and they are becoming increasingly accurate.
On 1 January a drone-fired missile killed Usama al-Kimi, a Kenyan militant who orchestrated last year’s Marriott hotel bombing in Islamabad, a senior official with Pakistan’s ISI spy agency said.
It is a high-tech assassination operation for one of the world’s most remote areas.
The pilotless aircraft, Predators or more sophisticated Reapers, take off from a base in Baluchistan province.
But they are guided by a joystick-wielding operator half a world away, at a US air force base 35 miles north of Las Vegas.
Barack Obama has approved the drone campaign, which is cheap and limits the danger posed to US troops. But the strikes have many unintended victims. A Pakistani newspaper estimated that 700 people had been killed since 2006, most of them civilians, as a result of drone attacks.
For the tribesmen who plant the microchips and get it wrong, the consequences can be terrible. Last month the Taliban issued a video confession by Habib ur Rehman, 19. “They money was good,” he said in a quavering voice, describing how he was paid 20,000 rupees (£166) to drop microchips hidden in a cigarette wrapper at the home of a target.
Rehman said his handler promised thousands of pounds if the strike was successful, and protection if he was caught. The end of the video showed Rehman being shot dead with three other alleged spies. Residents say such executions – there have been at least 100 – indicate how much the drone strikes have worried the Taliban.
In Wana, the capital of south Waziristan, foreign fighters are shunning the bazaars and shops, and locals are shunning the fighters. “Before, the common people used to sit with the militants,” said Wazir. “Now they are also afraid.
Paranoid militant commanders are closely monitoring cross-border traffic with Afghanistan, from where they suspect the chip-carrying CIA spies are coming, said Imtiaz Wazir, a resident of Spin Wam village in north Waziristan. “If I go to Afghanistan without any purpose, the militants come to ask why,” he said.
A local transporter named Haji Hamid who gave the wrong answer, he said, was found shot dead two months ago, his legs and fingers broken.
The drone strikes are despised across Pakistan, where politicians including President Asif Ali Zardari denounce them as a breach of sovereignty. But behind the scenes his government is quietly colluding with Washington.
A former CIA officer who served in Waziristan in 2006 said that small American teams comprising CIA agents, radio experts and special forces soldiers are stationed inside Pakistani military bases across the tribal belt.
From there, the CIA recruits a network of paid, and sometimes unwitting, informers – known as “cut-outs” – to help identify targets, he added. In most cases they are poor local men.
Ironically, support for the drone strikes is strongest in the frontier, especially among embattled security officials. “They are very precise, very effective, and the Taliban and al-Qaida dread them,” said the provincial police chief, Malik Naveed Khan, with undisguised admiration. The strikes have caused friction between the US and the ISI, which would like America to give it control over the new technology. “The problem with the Americans is that the only instrument up their sleeve is the hammer, and they see everything as a nail,” said a senior official.
The ISI resents the US for failing to target Mehsud, whose deputy claimed for last week’s Lahore attack that killed at least 24 people, including an ISI colonel.
But as the army prepares to attack South Waziristan, with broad public support, the warlord’s luck may be running out. Authorities in North West Frontier Province are preparing for up to 500,000 refugees, added to 2.5 million displaced by operations in Swat.
Mehsud faces other challenges, too. Rival militant groups, with army support, are challenging his dominance in South Waziristan.
And he faces the ever-present danger that some visitor could drop a “pathrai” at his doorstep, and bring an American drone with it.
• This article was amended on Monday 1 June 2009. The original located the tribal belt in the east, and a drone reference appeared contradictory. This has been corrected
Tags: Al qaida, Baithullah Massod, CIA Chip, Pakistan
Obama is same as Bush, says al-Qaida chief
Apr 21, 2009 Articles
Osama bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, says president’s recent outreach to Arab world is attempt to fool Muslims
www.guardian.co.uk, Middle East editor
Monday 20 April 2009 16.32 BST
Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida’s second-in-command, has urged Muslims not to be fooled by Barack Obama’s policies – which he insisted were no different from those of George Bush.
“America came to us with a new face, with which it is trying to fool us,” Osama bin Laden’s deputy said in a video message posted on a Jihadi website. “He is calling for change, but he aims to change us so that we abandon our religion and rights.
“It is America that is still killing Muslims in Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan. It is America that steals their fortunes, occupies their land, and supports the thieving, corrupt, and traitor rulers in their countries. And consequently, the problem is not over. Rather, it is likely to deteriorate and escalate.”
Zawahiri, an Egyptian doctor, issues statements far more frequently than Bin Laden, and terrorism analysts say he often seems to be reflecting al-Qaida’s preoccupations. Last November he described the new US president as a “house negro”.
His latest remarks come as Obama wins plaudits for attempting to reach out to Muslim and Arab opinion, using diplomacy and economic assistance in his bid to counter the Taliban in Afghanistan as well as increasing US troop strengths.
In Turkey last month he insisted that the US was not “at war” with Islam. He has also announced a timetable for the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq and signalled that he will work urgently to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“What Obama is seeking to do by increasing US forces in Afghanistan and continuing to bomb Pakistan will only add more fuel to the fire and expose your soldiers to more killings and injuries,” Zawahiri said. He also warned the Obama administration against any co-operation with Iran in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The 40-minute speech, produced by al-Sahab, al-Qaida’s media arm, was made to mark last month’s sixth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq and 30 years of peace between Egypt and Israel.
Zawahiri also warned the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas against caving in to pressure from Egypt and the western-backed Palestinian government of President Mahmoud Abbas to recognise Israel, and called on Palestinians to target Israelis and their allies abroad.
“If circumstances were difficult in one place they are easier in other places. Our enemies, crusaders and Jews, are scattered everywhere,” he said.
Egypt has been negotiating a truce between Israel and Hamas, which controls Gaza, following the Israeli offensive in December and January.
Terrorism experts have recently noted an increasing emphasis in al-Qaida statements on the Palestinian issue, which had not previously featured prominently in the organisation’s discourse.
Bin Laden suggested in a tape released last month that fighters should establish a strong base in Iraq, move into Jordan and force their way into Israel from there.
Tags: Al qaida, war on terror
