9 U.S. troops reported killed in Afghanistan

[Vijay Reddy]

After 9/11, there were conflicting views on the ISI. Read biographies and the books by Bob Woodward. At the end of the day older Generals and diplomats with nostalgia for the Pakistani role in the Cold War decided that - "You know what, these guys betrayed us but we also left them aside after the Russians were driven out. so we'll give them one last chance." In addition, the ISI chief Mahmud Ahmed was in DC and talking to Porter Goss as 9/11 was happening and he made sure that Pakistan was contrite and promised all help without conditions.

 

Bottomline - Pakistan got a pass because of its "mea culpa" and a promise to not go down the same path again.

 

Looks like that is changing now. This is an interview with the Pakistani Defence Minister just hours ago:

 

http://www.geo.tv/7-30-2008/21695.htm

 

Bush expresses concerns over ISI’s alleged role: Ahmed Mukhtar

 

Updated at: 2307 PST, Wednesday, July 30, 2008

 

WASHINGTON: Pakistan’s Minister of Defence, Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar, Wednesday said that US President George W. Bush had expressed concerns over the role of Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency, the ISI.

 

In an exclusive interview with Geo News, Mukhtar said President Bush had expressed reservations on the role of “elements at some level in the ISI.”

 

Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar said a number of significant matters came under discussion during the meeting with President Bush.

 

“President Bush had complained that actionable intelligence shared with Pakistan got leaked much before its due time,” he said adding that President Bush also questioned as to “who is in control of ISI.”

 

Read this message as - Pakistan got a pass after 9/11 and for whatever reason the tight leash on the ISI slackened over time. Now Americans are on to the double dealing at the highest level.

[Sardaukar]

Nations do not have friends, they have interests.

 

That govern all actions by nations, basicly, and someone in US Gov. decided that ISI might be more useful in that time than detrimental.

 

Nobody really knows how the scales balance, I think.

[Vijay Reddy]

Sardaukar,

 

Journalist Steve Coll, now with the New Yorker, wrote one of the best books on the Afghan-Pakistan link leading up to 9/11. It's titled "Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001"

 

I highly recommend it for anyone trying to get the context of US-Pakistan especially CIA-ISI relations. Coll's book is not partisan nor blames any one country or group of people for the intel failure leading up to 9/11.

 

Anyway, Ghost Wars narrates some interesting series of interpersonal relations between the American, Pakistani and Saudi spooks and officials. You get a sense that some in the CIA who spent time in Pakistan went native and fully bought the ISI kool-aid. I'd put people like former bureau chief Milt Bearden in this category. Others however were always uncomfortable and suspicious of the ISI. Peter Tomsen and some key diplomats come to mind. They were always duking it out internally with the former mostly winning and shielding the ISI and Pakistan from tough actions.

 

For instance, when the Indian Airlines jet was hijacked from Nepal to Kandahar, US spooks monitoring the area for Bin Laden noticed that the airline hijackers were received by the head ISI man and his team in Kandahar. But before they whisked off the hijackers and released captives to Pakistan, the ISI entourage detoured to a known Bin Laden hangout. It later turned out that Bin Laden and several of his key lieutenants hosted a "victory" dinner for the freed jihadists and their ISI mentors.

 

Anyway, one of the freed terrorists went on to create Jaish-e-Mohammed with ISI's backing. Another guy released by India in return for hostages was Omar Sheikh, the killer of journalist Daniel Pearl. Sheikh's ISI "handler" and mentor was Pakistan Army Brigadier Ejaz Shah who went on to become Musharraf's internal intelligence chief, overseeing all FBI/CIA terror related activities inside Pakistan. You can see that the people CIA dealt with as "Pakistani partners" were themselves neck deep in ties with Al Qaeda. Those ties allowed them to both catch key figures when the pressure was on and also shield the biggies when the pressure eased.

 

Anyway, the point I'm making here is that some in the CIA used to be satisfied when Pakistani help resulted in the occasional killing of a key Arab Al Qaeda figure. What they failed to notice or ask is how come all these Arabs keep coming to Pakistan find a nurturing environment? The reason is that the ISI has created this vast jihadist infrastructure which is sort of like an online portal for jihadists. Novices come there to learn from masterminds and some of them go on to become masterminds themselves. You could be a Chechen with expertise in rigging IEDs and go to Pakistan to teach those skills while looking out for anyone who might be willing to fight in Chechnya. Pretty soon these relationships subsume individual causes like Iraq or Kashmir and you end up with an army of stone cold killers who are just looking for the next big opportunity to kill infidels.

 

What we are seeing now is a shift in the balance of opinion against the ISI within the US intel and security circles. For a few years they could show progress by catching a big fish every few months. That's not going to cut it anymore.

[Old Tanker]

Nations do not have friends, they have interests.

 

That govern all actions by nations, basicly, and someone in US Gov. decided that ISI might be more useful in that time than detrimental.

 

Nobody really knows how the scales balance, I think.

 

 

That is not all that cut and dry .

 

Some nations have friends because of public sympathy . Sympathy can be considered interests but it blurs the interest/friend definition.

 

The closeness between the people of Canada and the U.S. is an example. As many Americans tend to be pro-Churchill just as many are in rapture over the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. A Mountie being present at any event in the U.S. is a guaranteed public pleaser. That has nothing to do with national interest but more to do with awe and respect.

Sometimes the pols on both sides of the border can attempt to rattle the relationship but it has endured well since 1867.

[Vijay Reddy]

Old Tanker,

 

You are right on point. As an example in this case, when he was CENTCOM chief Gen. Anthony Zinni struck up a close friendship with Musharraf. His memoirs reveal to the extent to which he pulled favors for Pakistan in the years leading up to 9/11. Similarly, as long as Milt Bearden's proteges were in the CIA South Asia circles, they always protected Pakistan for the fear of losing relationships. It took 9/11 for all that to shake loose.

[Jeff]

Under the chutzpah category, Pakistan complains to Afghanistan about terrorism. Here's an idea, STOP SENDING YOUR JIHADIS TO AFGHANISTAN TO BLOW THINGS UP!

 

Bomb targets Pakistani consulate in Afghanistan

By FISNIK ABRASHI, Associated Press Writer

Thu Jul 31, 9:18 AM ET

 

An explosives-rigged bicycle detonated outside a Pakistani consulate in western Afghanistan on Thursday, wounding two people at the gates of the building, officials said.

 

Pakistan's government, which has had tense relations with Afghanistan, was quick to remind the Afghan government of its duty to protect diplomatic offices. "We hope that Government of Afghanistan will take its responsibility seriously," a statement from Pakistan's foreign ministry said.

 

The Afghan government said in a statement that it also "strongly condemned the blast."

 

The explosives detonated outside the gates of the consulate in the city of Herat, said Naeem Khan, spokesman for the Pakistani Embassy in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

 

He said a policeman was wounded. Mir Ahmad, a police official in Herat, said two people were hurt — a police guard and a woman.

 

No one was injured inside the consulate, Khan said. Pakistan has four consulates in Afghanistan, he said.

 

Afghanistan is battling a raging Taliban-led insurgency, but much of the violence has occurred in the south and the east of the country, although the west has not been immune.

 

The growing instability in the country has strained relations with Pakistan, which Afghan officials contend is not doing enough to crack down on militants who hide out on its side of the border in the east.

 

Afghan-Pakistan relations hit a new low after a huge bombing outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul on July 7. Indian and Afghan officials say their information indicates Pakistani involvement in the attack, which killed some 60 people.

 

In other violence, Taliban militants killed Bacha Khan, a tribal elder, and his two sons, and wounded his wife in Arghandab district of the southern Kandahar province, said district chief Zemarai Khan.

 

The militants kidnapped seven other elders during the Wednesday raid, Khan said.

 

Arghandab is seen as a strategic location that is key to controlling access to Kandahar city, the main hub of southern Afghanistan and the Taliban's former stronghold.

 

Insurgents have overrun the district, which is located 8 miles north of the city, at least twice this year, only to be pushed back by Afghan and foreign troops.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080731/ap_on_re_as/afghanistan

[Vijay Reddy]

I'm 99% sure that this "attack" was probably done by Pakistanis themselves. I mean, they called the Ambassador to protest in a matter of an hour after the attack. Color me skeptical.

 

The ISI hardliners are getting desperate. Before they go into a fetal position, I bet that they will try to do the one thing that unites all Pakistanis - a conflict with India.

 

I'm betting that by this Fall, the Pakistani proxies in India, not just in Kashmir, will raise the carnage to such an extent that India is forced to at least threaten to retaliate. That way, the Pakistan military can say war on terror is not important when we have a mortal threat from India.

 

A poster on Bharat Rakshak called it a 14-step Pakistani Dictator Cycle. The last few steps always involve a provocation and escalation with India.

[Josh]

The ISI hardliners are getting desperate. Before they go into a fetal position, I bet that they will try to do the one thing that unites all Pakistanis - a conflict with India.

 

I'm betting that by this Fall, the Pakistani proxies in India, not just in Kashmir, will raise the carnage to such an extent that India is forced to at least threaten to retaliate. That way, the Pakistan military can say war on terror is not important when we have a mortal threat from India.

 

Too what extent are the tribal regions of Pak loyal to the central government? If the Pak army fell to India, would they care? I highly suspect they don't directly fear the Indians given their successes with the Pakistani Army, who, one imagines, at least have a shorter logistical tail then any Indian forces. If 'Pakistan' fell but avoided the tribals, which would seem likely anyway, how would Wazirestan et al feel about it? Massively threatened by India or just short an antagonist in the form of minor opposition from frontier forces?

[Tim the Tank Nut]

I can't see Pakistan pushing India too far this time because they are out of friends to turn to for help.

It would suprise me if the US went to bat for Pakistan and tried to get India to back down given that any provocation at this point will come from Pakistan and not India.

[Vijay Reddy]

US need not bat for Pakistan. They have nukes and they know that guarantees them safety from a total defeat.

 

The Kargil War of 1999 and the 2002-03 crisis was supposed to have led to an understanding on both sides as to how far things can be pushed within the nuclear umbrella. In Kargil, Pakistan realized that it cannot use nukes as a cover to launch offensive territory grabbing operations. In 2002-03, India realized that a threat of a conventional war will NOT force Pakistan to completely give up its use of jihadist proxies against India.

 

We had about 5 years of status quo but it is possible that some hardline Pakistanis think they know more about Indian redlines now. My hunch is that India will try to be way more patient now for one simple reason. India is on the cusp of getting its wish to enter the nuclear club as a weapons state, leaving Pakistan behind. At this moment, the last thing India wants would be for the world to see India as on the same level as Pakistan.

 

We have already had a direct attack on Indian interests in Afghanistan and two major serial bomb attacks including one in the IT hub of Bangalore. Another big attack and the government will be forced to do something. Especially since elections are just months away.

[crazyinsane105]

Al-Qaeda hails 'revival' in Afghanistan

By Michael Scheuer

 

Pakistan's GEO News TV correspondent Najeeb Ahmed interviewed al-Qaeda's operations commander in Afghanistan, Mustafa Abu-al-Yazid (aka Shaykh Sa'id), at an undisclosed location in Afghanistan on July 21.

 

Abu-Yazid's performance was a strongly confident one, notable for its contrast with the grim presentation he made in March regarding the status of the Islamist insurgency in Afghanistan.

 

Abu-Yazid, a native of Egypt, once again emphasized al-Qaeda's lessons-learned capability - this in regard to excessive Muslim casualties in attacks by al-Qaeda and its allies - and described

 

 

 

the increasingly positive situation the mujahideen face in Afghanistan. Other media reporting shows Abu-Yazid's optimism is understandable: both the growing numbers of non-Afghan Muslim fighters entering Afghanistan and the July 25-26 terrorist strikes in India - which will increase Pakistan-India tensions - contribute to the insurgency's brightening prospects.

 

A grim outlook in March

Abu-Yazid's speech in March amounted to a warning to the mujahideen and their supporters. Abu-Yazid then claimed that Muslims had yet to fully awake from the long slumber that has made them a people grown "distant from the religion [with] which God has blessed [them]". As a result, he said, "fools among the Muslims" still valued nationalism over faith, obeyed apostate rulers who have abandoned Islam, and followed the guidance of clerics who are the "Sultan's scholars" or who have recanted pro-jihad views.

 

In March, Abu-Yazid was particularly strident in questioning the manliness of Muslim men because not enough of them were coming to fight in Afghanistan: "Today, the jihad arena is missing its men and calling upon its heroes," he said in a manner suggesting weakness in the insurgency.

 

"Don't God and Islam have a right to be defended by the young and the old? Say to those who have dignity, wherever they are: you will despair if you do not respond. The infidel people have come here to fight you for the sake of their false religion and they are killed and wounded for the sake of hell ... We direct a special call to the specialized people like doctors and electronic engineers, due to their urgent need by the mujahideen. The battle needs a combination of experiences and efforts. We call on the fathers and mothers not to become a barrier between their children and paradise and to present their children for the sake of God. Our religion is more precious than ourselves, and encouraging children [to fight] and sacrificing them for the sake of God is a clear sign of piety and righteousness."

 

July's days of optimism

The Abu-Yazid interviewed by Najeeb Ahmed on July 21 is a man much changed from March. Instead of issuing a statement via al-Qaeda's media arm, al-Sahab, al-Yazid and al-Qaeda were confident enough of their security to bring Ahmed to a personal interview in Afghanistan near "the Khost area" of southeast Afghanistan.

 

There, Ahmed was greeted not just by al-Yazid and his bodyguards, but also by "dozens of his Arab colleagues". Al-Qaeda clearly intended the interview to show Muslims that al-Qaeda and the Taliban are operating fairly freely in southeastern Afghanistan.

 

In talking to Ahmed, Abu-Yazid was intent on emphasizing that al-Qaeda remains a force to be reckoned with. He denounced as "a mere lie and allegation" the claims by "people in Pakistan" (as Ahmed described them) that al-Qaeda is an agent of US policy. Osama Bin Laden, Abu Ubaydah al-Banshiri and Abu Hafs al-Masri built al-Qaeda, Abu-Yazid said, "With the purpose of establishing a global center for the mujahideen who had converged on Afghanistan [to fight the Soviets] from all over the world." Having been so obviously successful in this regard, al-Yazid advised Muslims to ignore "baseless statements" by Western and official Muslim media and believe the mujahideen's reports and statements.

 

Abu-Yazid also stressed that al-Qaeda's position has not changed - it will remain at war with the United States until American policies in the Muslim world change. America, he reminded Muslims, "is the leader of the infidels in this age ... [and] is holding the flag of the cross today". America also backs Israel's "usurpation and occupation of the Palestinian Muslims' territory", and is intent on establishing "one or another [military] base in all Muslim territories".

 

Abu-Yazid added that, more than ever before, al-Qaeda and its allies would make no distinction between the US government and ordinary Americans - both would be attacked and killed until US policies change. "Both of them [are] acting as the enemies of Islam, and are in a state of war against the Muslim community," al-Yazid argued. "After all, it is these people [Americans] who choose governments through their votes and it is they who voted [President George W] Bush to power for the second term, although they were well aware of his hostile agenda against Islam." He said there "may be a few such wise people among the American nation who may be displeased with these activities", and advised that it is "obligatory upon them that they should not vote for such tyrannical governments".

 

Regarding Iraq and Afghanistan, Abu-Yazid repeated none of the bleak views he expressed in March. When Ahmed cited US claims that it had "overcome the fighters" in both places, Abu-Yazid said - based on long personal experience in an insurgency's alternating periods of intense combat and prolonged lulls - that Washington made similar false assertions about Iraq in 2004 and other times and its current claims were also false and a "weird gimmickry and mockery of the American peoples' wisdom".

 

In Afghanistan, al-Yazid claimed that the mujahideen were growing in number and are taking the initiative from the US-led coalition: "Their defeat in Afghanistan is even more clear and evident," the al-Qaeda Afghanistan chief claimed.

 

A message to Denmark

Abu-Yazid used al-Qaeda's recent attack on the Danish Embassy in Islamabad to underscore that al-Qaeda's leaders understood many Muslims disapprove of the large number of Muslims being killed in attacks by the organization and its allies. He did not give an inch on the need to kill Muslims working for apostate Muslim or Western regimes: "It is a shame even to call such people [the Pakistani guards at the Danish Embassy] Pakistanis or Muslims." Abu-Yazid claimed that al-Qaeda and its allies are taking stringent measures to ensure their strikes do not kill innocent Muslims and that Western reports to the contrary were propaganda:

 

Let me also make it clear that I have come to learn that media have carried a report that most of the people killed in the attack on the Danish Embassy were common innocent Muslims. I would like to clarify that this report is absolutely incorrect and the enemies of Islam have publicized it to undermine the value of this deed ... Comrades who saw the Danish Embassy building, praise be to God, carried out inspection of the target in great detail and with great caution.

 

They knew very well on which day the embassy expedited its internal affairs and had no common people visiting them for visas or other requirements. So such a time was chosen for action on which no common Muslims would be present around the embassy ... Here, we would also like to emphasize fully the point that in every operation of this kind [suicide attacks], we try our best to choose a target that is miles away from the Muslim community. On many occasions, we abandoned our [planned] activities because Muslims were present around the target. [GEO News TV, July 22].

 

In these words, Abu-Yazid essentially apologized to the umma (Islamic community) for excessive Muslim casualties in al-Qaeda attacks. In this, his remarks follow similar expressions of regret by bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, al-Qaeda's military commander in Iraq.

 

Western officials and media often identify such words as a sign of weakness, but in the Islamic world repentance is a necessary step toward redemption. The penitent words of al-Yazid and the others - if true - foreshadow more attacks on Westerners and Western facilities in many areas of the world, particularly in places where the Muslim population is not large or in areas that some Muslims would deem to be under Western occupation, such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.

 

In addition, a change in course by al-Qaeda that yields fewer Muslim casualties would knock the pins out from under the organization's Muslim and Western critics who condemn the un-Islamic nature of attacks that kill Muslims.

 

Media second Abu-Yazid's optimism

Even as Abu-Yazid spoke, media reports suggested he had the right to be optimistic on two scores: growing insurgent manpower and Islamabad's eroding commitment to battle Afghan and Pakistani insurgents.

 

As long ago as The Jamestown Foundation's December 2007 conference "The al-Qaeda Triangle: Pakistan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia", there have been reports that increasing numbers of non-Afghan Muslims were coming to Afghanistan to join the Taliban-led insurgency. At the conference, Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid explained that the population of Chechens, Uzbeks and other Central Asian Muslims in Pakistan's tribal regions had increased from fewer than 1,000 in 2001 to about 5,000 in late 2007 (though he did not provide any evidence for the presence of Chechens in Afghanistan).

 

In recent weeks, Pakistani, Arab and Western journalists have reported that non-Afghan Muslims - including Muslims from Europe and North America - were "flocking" to Afghanistan, in part because some were relocating from Iraq, but mostly because there is a widespread perception among Islamists that the West is on the ropes in Afghanistan.

 

Abu-Yazid, for example, said in his interview with GEO-TV that the suicide bomber that attacked the Danish Embassy had arrived from Saudi Arabia, though Saudi officials said the man was not an Arab and was not a Saudi citizen. The Pakistani media have reported that Islamabad believes there are now 8,000 foreign fighters in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of northwest Pakistan.

 

On July 25-26, terrorist attacks occurred in India that probably will redound to the benefit of the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan. On July 25, seven bombs were detonated within minutes of each other in Bangalore, India - the hub of the country's information technology industry - killing two and wounding eight. The following day, at least 17 bombs were detonated within minutes of each other in Gujarat state city of Ahmedabad, killing 45 and wounding over 160 others.

 

Even before the debris was cleared, Indian officials and media were blaming the attacks on terrorists sponsored by Pakistan. Responding to the attacks in Ahmedabad, for example, Gujarat chief minister Narenda Modi claimed that a foreign country - read: Pakistan - was probably behind the bombings and one of India's leading national security commentators published an article entitled, "Another step in [Pakistan's] ISI-sponsored Indianization of jihad".

 

Conclusion

The attacks almost certainly will lead to heightened military tensions between India and Pakistan; indeed, Pakistani and Indian artillery batteries engaged in a 13-hour duel along the Line of Control in Kashmir on July 29, violating a 2003 ceasefire agreement. This reality will, in turn, motivate Pakistan's General Staff to request that regular army units be held back from operations in the FATA until it is certain they will not be needed on the Pakistan-India border. The new and fragile civilian government in Islamabad is likely to concur with such a request - especially if New Delhi does any saber-rattling - and thereby reduce Pakistani pressure on the Taliban and its allies.

 

Abu-Yazid's optimism is another signal of the ongoing revitalization of the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan, an insurgency now grown to the point, in size and geographic dispersion, that the two additional US brigades promised by presidential candidates Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain are likely to make little or no difference.

 

The Afghan situation, moreover, is certain to get worse before additional US or North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops arrive because of the growing anger of Pakistanis over US air strikes in the FATA and the growing unity and anti-US/NATO attitudes being fomented among the Pashtun tribes on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border by those air attacks.

 

Michael Scheuer served in the CIA for 22 years before resigning in 2004. He served as the chief of the bin Laden Unit at the Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999. He is the once anonymous author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror; his most recent book is Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq. Dr Scheuer is a senior fellow with The Jamestown Foundation.

[JimC]

Under the chutzpah category, Pakistan complains to Afghanistan about terrorism. Here's an idea, STOP SENDING YOUR JIHADIS TO AFGHANISTAN TO BLOW THINGS UP!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080731/ap_on_re_as/afghanistan

That's like asking Afghans to stop sending their drugs into and through Pakistan. Not that simple to do. The Paks are fearful of a repeat of Bangladesh in their Pashtun areas, thus the deals and half hearted operations. I think the Afghans still claim the Paki Pashtun areas as their own.

[crazyinsane105]

That's like asking Afghans to stop sending their drugs into and through Pakistan. Not that simple to do. The Paks are fearful of a repeat of Bangladesh in their Pashtun areas, thus the deals and half hearted operations. I think the Afghans still claim the Paki Pashtun areas as their own.

 

THEY DO. And that is by far the biggest source of tension between Afghanistan and Pakistan...

[Vijay Reddy]

That's like asking Afghans to stop sending their drugs into and through Pakistan. Not that simple to do.

 

Nonsense. Pakistan can shut down Taliban operations in Kandahar and Helmand in a matter of days if it chooses to do so. Those operations are controlled by the Quetta Shura, whose commanders, including Mullah Omar live comfortably within a 5 mile radius of the Pakistan Army X Corps Headquarters. Heck whenever the pressure gets hard to handle the Paks are able to grab a Quetta Shura guy pretty much on demand.

 

BTW, one of the biggest drug trafficking medium is the Pakistan Army's National Logistics Cell Truck Fleet. More than a handful of Pakistani Generals, Judges and Police Chiefs have become multi millionaires thanks to the trade. So it's not as if the Pakistani military wants to shut down the drug trade. I remember a hearing on Pakistan at the US Congress where the returning US Ambassador to Islamabad testified on the record that the ISI's involvement in the drug trade as "substantial."

 

You cannot conflate a weak and barely existent Afghan ability to enforce national order to an organized and deliberate Pakistani campaign to support and send Taliban terrorists across the border. One is a matter of a failing state and the other is a matter of policy.

[Tim the Tank Nut]

One good thing about the jihadis willingness to fight and talk about their success in putting US led coalition forces "on the ropes" is that we are killing a good percentage of them every time they take a swing at us and if there was ever a group that just needs killing its them.

 

It's ironic that the US forces are pushing Muslim Extremists out of Iraq and they are retreating to Afghanistan and the terrorist enablers in the media and the general public can spin that as a victory of some sort...

[JimC]

Nonsense. Pakistan can shut down Taliban operations in Kandahar and Helmand in a matter of days if it chooses to do so.

I don't think it's that cut and dry. It never is. We've all seen the paks getting bogged down in the tribal areas even when their operations had some teeth. It'll take at least 5-10 years before they have enough trained manpower and equipment for doing proper CI. And that's a conservative estimate.

 

And Afghanistan today is practically a narco-state and it's not all because of weak government. We can't blame the paks if we ourselves look the other way in A'tan.

 

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/24/news/27afghant.php

Is Afghanistan a narco-state?

By Thomas Schweich

Published: July 24, 2008

 

On March 1, 2006, I met Hamid Karzai for the first time. It was a clear, crisp day in Kabul. The Afghan president joined President and Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Ambassador Ronald Neumann to dedicate the new United States Embassy. He thanked the American people for all they had done for Afghanistan. I was a senior counternarcotics official recently arrived in a country that supplied 90 percent of the world's heroin. I took to heart Karzai's strong statements against the Afghan drug trade. That was my first mistake.

 

Over the next two years I would discover how deeply the Afghan government was involved in protecting the opium trade — by shielding it from American-designed policies. While it is true that Karzai's Taliban enemies finance themselves from the drug trade, so do many of his supporters. At the same time, some of our NATO allies have resisted the anti-opium offensive, as has our own Defense Department, which tends to see counternarcotics as other people's business to be settled once the war-fighting is over. The trouble is that the fighting is unlikely to end as long as the Taliban can finance themselves through drugs — and as long as the Kabul government is dependent on opium to sustain its own hold on power.

Edited July 31, 2008 by JimC

[Vijay Reddy]

I don't think it's that cut and dry. It never is. We've all seen the paks getting bogged down in the tribal areas even when their operations had some teeth. It'll take at least 5-10 years before they have enough trained manpower and equipment for doing proper CI. And that's a conservative estimate.[/url]

 

With all due respect sir, you need to understand the details here. Let me make it simple for you. The "Taliban" fighting in Afghanistan form several distinct groups, each of which is controlled by a "shura" or a leadership council.

 

1. The headquarters of the Taliban branch fighting in Helmand and Kandahar is in Quetta

 

2. Quetta is the capital of Baluchistan, one of Pakistan's four provinces.

 

3. Quetta is NOT in the tribal areas and has more Pakistani soldiers per capita than most other Pakistani cities. Quetta is the home base of the Pakistan Army's X Corps.

 

4. Pentagon funded RAND reports and current and former NATO commanders have gone on the record as saying that the Quetta shura lives in safe houses in the urban areas of the city.

 

Now who are the other groups? The insurgents crossing over from the Pakistani FATA (tribal areas) are part of the Miranshah Shura or the Haqqani faction, with a sprinkling of Gulbuddin Hikmetyar's Hizb-i-Islami group. The Miranshah shura, led by Baitullah Mehsud, controls the Waziristan areas, the Haqqanis control the areas farther north from Bajaur all the way to Chitral. Hikmetyar's men operate around Peshawar.

 

It is easy to say "tribal areas are mountainous and have a hard terrain" to bamboozle novices, which is what Musharraf did for years, all while the Quetta shura was wreaking havoc. I challenge you to talk to any commander or journalist covering the Helmand/Kandahar area and they will all tell you that the command and control of the enemy is in a small concentrated urban/semi-urban area around Quetta.

 

Do the Pakistanis need equipment and CI training to operate in the FATA? Sure. But all they need is a high-level decision to stop playing both sides to wrap up the Quetta shura. That would be an act of good faith.

 

Edit - To remove typos and also to change language to remove offensive tone

Edited July 31, 2008 by Vijay Reddy

[Yish]

http://www.battlefieldtourist.com/content/

 

Some details on the build-up to the attack, as well as a picture of the area where the vehichle patrol base was located (circled):

 

The position seems like all sorts of a tactical nightmare, adjacent to buildings, dense foliage and controlled by fire from the nearby mountainside.

It was abandoned for a good reason.

[JimC]

*snip*

I don't think I mentioned quetta shura or whatever anywhere in my post, nor did I ever say that the paks aren't colluding with various taliban groups. What I did say is that their army is not equipped to handle a large scale insurgency involving all the taliban in pakistan, whether they are in quetta or the tribal areas. And that's one of the reasons why you won't see them going after the haqqani network, since that will have it's consequences, just like going after mehsud had it's consequences.

 

It would be an improvement if they could commit to roll up even one of the taliban networks and leadership and actually get it done. Even if they have the will, I'm not convinced they have the ability to do this.

[Vijay Reddy]

I don't think I mentioned quetta shura or whatever anywhere in my post, nor did I ever say that the paks aren't colluding with various taliban groups. What I did say is that their army is not equipped to handle a large scale insurgency involving all the taliban in pakistan, whether they are in quetta or the tribal areas. And that's one of the reasons why you won't see them going after the haqqani network, since that will have it's consequences, just like going after mehsud had it's consequences.

 

It would be an improvement if they could commit to roll up even one of the taliban networks and leadership and actually get it done. Even if they have the will, I'm not convinced they have the ability to do this.

 

You are simply not reading what I've posted or chosen to ignore it. Very well, let me try again.

 

It takes but a handful of cops to march into the few safehouses around Quetta and arrest the four or five Quetta shura commanders. The only major consequence of this would be that the Pakistanis would lose their ability to wreak terror in Kandahar and Helmand. Again, Quetta is not in a mountain or filled with caves. It is a dusty big city not unlike many Iraqi cities.

 

Pakistanis have arrested key Quetta commanders when pressed. None of them had any major consequences for the nation.

 

If a country does not have the ability to arrest a handful of men, then is it a country?

[Vijay Reddy]

Meanwhile, hot off the presses.

 

Pakistanis Aided Attack in Kabul, U.S. Officials Say

 

By MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT

 

WASHINGTON — American intelligence agencies have concluded that members of Pakistan’s powerful spy service helped plan the deadly July 7 bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to United States government officials.

 

The conclusion was based on intercepted communications between Pakistani intelligence officers and militants who carried out the attack, the officials said, providing the clearest evidence to date that Pakistani intelligence officers are actively undermining American efforts to combat militants in the region.

 

The American officials also said there was new information showing that members of the Pakistani intelligence service were increasingly providing militants with details about the American campaign against them, in some cases allowing militants to avoid American missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

 

Concerns about the role played by Pakistani intelligence not only has strained relations between the United States and Pakistan, a longtime ally, but also has fanned tensions between Pakistan and its archrival, India. Within days of the bombings, Indian officials accused the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, of helping to orchestrate the attack in Kabul, which killed 54, including an Indian defense attaché.

 

This week, Pakistani troops clashed with Indian forces in the contested region of Kashmir, threatening to fray an uneasy cease-fire that has held since November 2003.

 

The New York Times reported this week that a top Central Intelligence Agency official traveled to Pakistan this month to confront senior Pakistani officials with information about support provided by members of the ISI to militant groups. It had not been known that American intelligence agencies concluded that elements of Pakistani intelligence provided direct support for the attack in Kabul.

 

American officials said that the communications were intercepted before the July 7 bombing, and that the C.I.A. emissary, Stephen R. Kappes, the agency’s deputy director, had been ordered to Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, even before the attack. The intercepts were not detailed enough to warn of any specific attack.

 

The government officials were guarded in describing the new evidence and would not say specifically what kind of assistance the ISI officers provided to the militants. They said that the ISI officers had not been renegades, indicating that their actions might have been authorized by superiors.

 

“It confirmed some suspicions that I think were widely held,” one State Department official with knowledge of Afghanistan issues said of the intercepted communications. “It was sort of this ‘aha’ moment. There was a sense that there was finally direct proof.”

 

The information linking the ISI to the bombing of the Indian Embassy was described in interviews by several American officials with knowledge of the intelligence. Some of the officials expressed anger that elements of Pakistan’s government seemed to be directly aiding violence in Afghanistan that had included attacks on American troops.

 

Some American officials have begun to suggest that Pakistan is no longer a fully reliable American partner and to advocate some unilateral American action against militants based in the tribal areas.

 

The ISI has long maintained ties to militant groups in the tribal areas, in part to court allies it can use to contain Afghanistan’s power. In recent years, Pakistan’s government has also been concerned about India’s growing influence inside Afghanistan, including New Delhi’s close ties to the government of Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president.

 

American officials say they believe that the embassy attack was probably carried out by members of a network led by Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani, whose alliance with Al Qaeda and its affiliates has allowed the terrorist network to rebuild in the tribal areas.

 

American and Pakistani officials have now acknowledged that President Bush on Monday confronted Pakistan’s prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, about the divided loyalties of the ISI.

 

Pakistan’s defense minister, Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar, told a Pakistani television network on Wednesday that Mr. Bush asked senior Pakistani officials this week, “ ‘Who is in control of ISI?’ ” and asked about leaked information that tipped militants to surveillance efforts by Western intelligence services.

 

Pakistan’s new civilian government is wrestling with these very issues, and there is concern in Washington that the civilian leaders will be unable to end a longstanding relationship between members of the ISI and militants associated with Al Qaeda.

 

Spokesmen for the White House and the C.I.A. declined to comment for this article. Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, did not return a call seeking comment.

 

Further underscoring the tension between Pakistan and its Western allies, Britain’s senior military officer said in Washington on Thursday that an American and British program to help train Pakistan’s Frontier Corps in the tribal areas had been delayed while Pakistan’s military and civilian officials sorted out details about the program’s goals.

 

Britain and the United States had each offered to send about two dozen military trainers to Pakistan later this summer to train Pakistani Army officers who in turn would instruct the Frontier Corps paramilitary forces.

 

But the British officer, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, said the program had been temporarily delayed. “We don’t yet have a firm start date,” he told a small group of reporters. “We’re ready to go.”

 

The bombing of the Indian Embassy helped to set off a new deterioration in relations between India and Pakistan.

 

This week, Indian and Pakistani soldiers fired at each other across the Kashmir frontier for more than 12 hours overnight Monday, in what the Indian Army called the most serious violation of a five-year-old cease-fire agreement. The nightlong battle came after one Indian soldier and four Pakistanis were killed along the border between sections of Kashmir that are controlled by India and by Pakistan.

 

Indian officials say they are equally worried about what is happening on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border because they say the insurgents who are facing off with India in Kashmir and those who target Afghanistan are related and can keep both borders burning at the same time.

 

India and Afghanistan share close political, cultural and economic ties, and India maintains an active intelligence network in Afghanistan, all of which has drawn suspicion from Pakistani officials.

 

When asked Thursday about whether the ISI and Pakistani military remained loyal to the country’s civilian government, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sidestepped the question. “That’s probably something the government of Pakistan ought to speak to,” Admiral Mullen told reporters at the Pentagon.

 

Jalaluddin Haqqani, the militia commander, battled Soviet troops during the 1980s and has had a long and complicated relationship with the C.I.A. He was among a group of fighters who received arms and millions of dollars from the C.I.A. during that period, but his allegiance with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda during the following decade led the United States to sever the relationship.

 

Mr. Haqqani and his sons now run a network that Western intelligence services say they believe is responsible for a campaign of violence throughout Afghanistan, including the Indian Embassy bombing and an attack on the Serena Hotel in Kabul earlier this year.

 

David Rohde contributed reporting from New York, and Somini Sengupta from New Delhi.

[crazyinsane105]

You are simply not reading what I've posted or chosen to ignore it. Very well, let me try again.

 

It takes but a handful of cops to march into the few safehouses around Quetta and arrest the four or five Quetta shura commanders. The only major consequence of this would be that the Pakistanis would lose their ability to wreak terror in Kandahar and Helmand. Again, Quetta is not in a mountain or filled with caves. It is a dusty big city not unlike many Iraqi cities.

 

And I think you're conveniently forgetting the fact how tens of thousands of tribesman all over the NWFP will be enraged at the Pakistani government were that to happen. What do you suppose the Pakistani military should do if it is faced with a full blown rebellion all over NWFP and not just limited to FATA, Swat, and Waziristan? You don't have a clue as to how much respect many tribes all over NWFP will give their blood for those Pashtuns who fought against the Soviets (Hektamayar for example). It also doesn't help that 25% of the Pakistani military is composed of Pashtuns....you get where I am going, right?

 

If you honestly think the Pakistani government (past, current, or future) is simply going to attack with the risk of getting a full blown civil war started within Pakistan just so it can make life a little bit easier for NATO, then there's really nothing more to say here. You think Afghanistan is bad right now? Afghanistan has the potential of making an F.U. like Iraq look like candy land if you really want to inflame such tensions in Pakistan.

 

You unfortunately have it ingrained in your head that with more firepower, Afghanistan is winnable. Give me a break dude, when was the last time in Afghanistan's history when that was the case? And even in Iraq's case, more firepower didn't help. It wasn't until the US started to negotiate with the Iraqi insurgents did things finally change. That should give a BIG clue as to what NATO should be doing right now...

Edited August 1, 2008 by crazyinsane105

[JimC]

You are simply not reading what I've posted or chosen to ignore it. Very well, let me try again.

 

It takes but a handful of cops to march into the few safehouses around Quetta and arrest the four or five Quetta shura commanders. The only major consequence of this would be that the Pakistanis would lose their ability to wreak terror in Kandahar and Helmand. Again, Quetta is not in a mountain or filled with caves. It is a dusty big city not unlike many Iraqi cities.

 

Pakistanis have arrested key Quetta commanders when pressed. None of them had any major consequences for the nation.

 

If a country does not have the ability to arrest a handful of men, then is it a country?

Pakistan arrested those people it knew it could arrest (arabs, afghans etc.) because those people had no large scale support among it's tribes. In fact some of the taliban leaders it arrested had a falling out with the taliban leadership and were given up by them to pakistan. And I think it is you who needs to read my post again. No where have I said that risk of backlash is the only reason for ISI support for the taliban, but it's still a big reason.

 

Do I agree with their support of the taliban factions? No. Am I surprised or shocked that they would still maintain links with taliban? Hell no. Anyway, that's all I have to say about this, I don't want to get in the middle of some good paki bashing by an Indian.

[Vijay Reddy]

JimC,

 

I know some Americans cannot get out of the IndiaPakistan IndiaPakistan IndiaPakistan thinking seven years after 9/11. But this is not about India vs Pakistan. This is about a group of people being able to plan another major attack years after they pulled off the big one, all because Pakistani rulers cannot and will not give up their terrorist supporting policies.

 

But then again, all you will see is IndiaPakistan IndiaPakistan IndiaPakistan. Suit yourself. You cannot wake up people who are pretending to be asleep.

[Vijay Reddy]

From The Times (London).

 

Gillani, on his first official US visit since being elected in February, was left in no doubt that the Bush administration had lost patience with the ISI’s alleged double game.

 

Bush warned that if one more attack in Afghanistan or elsewhere were traced back to Pakistan, he would have to take “serious action”.

 

Gillani also met Michael Hayden, director of the CIA, who confronted him with a dossier on ISI support for the Taliban. The key evidence concerned last month’s bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul, which killed 54 people, including the military attaché.

 

An intercepted telephone conversation apparently revealed that ISI agents masterminded the operation. The United States also claimed to have arrested an ISI officer inside Afghanistan.

 

Yesterday ministers said they had left Washington reeling from what they described as a “grilling” and shocked at “the trust deficit” between Pakistan and its most important backer.

 

“They were very hot on the ISI,” said a member of the Pakistan delegation. “Very hot. When we asked them for more information, Bush laughed and said, ‘When we share information with your guys, the bad guys always run away’.”