Pakistan holding up some US visas

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan has held up visas for U.S. diplomats, military service members and others, apparently because of hostility within the country toward the expansion of U.S. operations in Pakistan, a senior U.S. diplomat said Wednesday.
American diplomats have also been stopped repeatedly at Pakistani checkpoints as part of what U.S. officials say is a wider focus on foreigners working in Pakistan. The U.S. cars are searched, although diplomats are told to open the trunk but to refuse access to the passenger compartment.
The U.S. diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe sensitive interaction between the two countries, said that the visa clampdown seems to be a reaction to widespread anti-American sentiment, even though many of the affected workers would be doing jobs that bring aid and other help to Pakistan.
The official said the reaction is probably temporary and that the U.S. does not plan to do more than press Pakistani authorities to relent.
The U.S. embassy is already large and expanding, with plans to go from about 500 employees to more than 800 over the next 18 months. Most of the growth is related to the expansion of U.S. aid to Pakistan, some of which comes with requirements for accounting and oversight that have rankled Pakistanis.
The official said that at the embassy, several employees have gone home for Christmas leave and will be unable to return because the Pakistani authorities have not expended their visas. In all, 135 visa extensions have been denied, the official said. Other visa applications have been rejected outright, but U.S. authorities have not collected data on how many.
The official said Pakistani authorities have not provided a comprehensive response to American complaints, and that several ministries are involved. That allows Pakistani authorities to spread the blame, the official said.
The official said that among those whose visas were held up are mechanics who tend to a fleet of U.S. helicopters that supports Pakistani military operations in the frontier areas.
The helicopters stopped flying when there were insufficient mechanics to maintain them, the official said. Some visas were approved after Pakistani authorities inquired about the grounded helicopters.
In October, President Barack Obama signed into law a $7.5 billion aid package for Pakistan. Pakistan’s military criticized the aid as American meddling in the country’s internal affairs.
The measure provides $1.5 billion annually over five years for economic and social programs and comes as Pakistan faces a string of violent militant attacks and bombings as its military orchestrates an offensive into the Taliban heartland.
The law is the Obama administration’s attempt to strengthen the weak civilian government in Islamabad and encourage its fight against Taliban and al-Qaida militants operating along the border with Afghanistan, where the United States is fighting an eight-year war.
The stability of a nuclear-armed Pakistan is deemed crucial to U.S.-led efforts to battle extremists in South Asia.
The White House said the law, which was passed unanimously by Congress, is “the tangible manifestation of broad support for Pakistan in the U.S.”
The legislation requires the secretary of state to report to Congress every six months on whether Pakistan’s civilian government maintains effective control over the military’s budgets, chain of command and top promotions.
The White House said the requirements are “accountability measures” placed on the United States to ensure that the aid directly benefits the Pakistani people. It said that the law does not seek to micromanage Pakistani military or civilian affairs, “including the promotion of Pakistani military officers or the internal operations of the Pakistani military.”

Courtesy : PKKH ..
www.pakistankakhudahafiz.wordpress.com

Blackwater’s Secret War in Pakistan‏

JEREMY SCAHILL
November 23, 2009


At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, “snatch and grabs” of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan, an investigation by The Nation has found. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help run a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus.

The source, who has worked on covert US military programs for years, including in Afghanistan and Pakistan, has direct knowledge of Blackwater’s involvement. He spoke to The Nationon condition of anonymity because the program is classified. The source said that the program is so “compartmentalized” that senior figures within the Obama administration and the US military chain of command may not be aware of its existence.

The White House did not return calls or email messages seeking comment for this story. Capt. John Kirby, the spokesperson for Adm. Michael Mullen, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told The Nation, “We do not discuss current operations one way or the other, regardless of their nature.” A defense official, on background, specifically denied that Blackwater performs work on drone strikes or intelligence for JSOC in Pakistan. “We don’t have any contracts to do that work for us. We don’t contract that kind of work out, period,” the official said. “There has not been, and is not now, contracts between JSOC and that organization for these types of services.” The previously unreported program, the military intelligence source said, is distinct from the CIA assassination program that the agency’s director, Leon Panetta, announced he had canceled in June 2009. “This is a parallel operation to the CIA,” said the source. “They are two separate beasts.” The program puts Blackwater at the epicenter of a US military operation within the borders of a nation against which the United States has not declared war–knowledge that could further strain the already tense relations between the United States and Pakistan. In 2006, the United States and Pakistan struck a deal that authorized JSOC to enter Pakistan to hunt Osama bin Laden with the understanding that Pakistan would deny it had given permission.

Officially, the United States is not supposed to have any active military operations in the country. Blackwater, which recently changed its name to Xe Services and US Training Center, denies the company is operating in Pakistan. “Xe Services has only one employee in Pakistan performing construction oversight for the U.S. Government,” Blackwater spokesperson Mark Corallo said in a statement to The Nation, adding that the company has “no other operations of any kind in Pakistan.”

A former senior executive at Blackwater confirmed the military intelligence source’s claim that the company is working in Pakistan for the CIA and JSOC, the premier counterterrorism and covert operations force within the military. He said that Blackwater is also working for the Pakistani government on a subcontract with an Islamabad-based security firm that puts US Blackwater operatives on the ground with Pakistani forces in counter-terrorism operations, including house raids and border interdictions, in the North-West Frontier Province and elsewhere in Pakistan. This arrangement, the former executive said, allows the Pakistani government to utilize former US Special Operations forces who now work for Blackwater while denying an official US military presence in the country. He also confirmed that Blackwater has a facility in Karachi and has personnel deployed elsewhere in Pakistan. The former executive spoke on condition of anonymity.

His account and that of the military intelligence source were borne out by a US military source who has knowledge of Special Forces actions in Pakistan and Afghanistan. When asked about Blackwater’s covert work for JSOC in Pakistan, this source, who also asked for anonymity, told The Nation, “From my information that I have, that is absolutely correct,” adding, “There’s no question that’s occurring.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me because we’ve outsourced nearly everything,” said Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff from 2002 to 2005, when told of Blackwater’s role in Pakistan. Wilkerson said that during his time in the Bush administration, he saw the beginnings of Blackwater’s involvement with the sensitive operations of the military and CIA. “Part of this, of course, is an attempt to get around the constraints the Congress has placed on DoD. If you don’t have sufficient soldiers to do it, you hire civilians to do it. I mean, it’s that simple. It would not surprise me.”

The Counterterrorism Tag Team in Karachi

The covert JSOC program with Blackwater in Pakistan dates back to at least 2007, according to the military intelligence source. The current head of JSOC is Vice Adm. William McRaven, who took over the post from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who headed JSOC from 2003 to 2008 before being named the top US commander in Afghanistan. Blackwater’s presence in Pakistan is “not really visible, and that’s why nobody has cracked down on it,” said the source. Blackwater’s operations in Pakistan, he said, are not done through State Department contracts or publicly identified Defense contracts. “It’s Blackwater via JSOC, and it’s a classified no-bid [contract] approved on a rolling basis.” The main JSOC/Blackwater facility in Karachi, according to the source, is nondescript: three trailers with various generators, satellite phones and computer systems are used as a makeshift operations center. “It’s a very rudimentary operation,” says the source. “I would compare it to [CIA] outposts in Kurdistan or any of the Special Forces outposts. It’s very bare bones, and that’s the point.”

Blackwater’s work for JSOC in Karachi is coordinated out of a Task Force based at Bagram Air Base in neighboring Afghanistan, according to the military intelligence source. While JSOC technically runs the operations in Karachi, he said, it is largely staffed by former US special operations soldiers working for a division of Blackwater, once known as Blackwater SELECT, and intelligence analysts working for a Blackwater affiliate, Total Intelligence Solutions (TIS), which is owned by Blackwater’s founder, Erik Prince. The military source said that the name Blackwater SELECT may have been changed recently. Total Intelligence, which is run out of an office on the ninth floor of a building in the Ballston area of Arlington, Virginia, is staffed by former analysts and operatives from the CIA, DIA, FBI and other agencies. It is modeled after the CIA’s counterterrorism center. In Karachi, TIS runs a “media-scouring/open-source network,” according to the source. Until recently, Total Intelligence was run by two former top CIA officials, Cofer Black and Robert Richer, both of whom have left the company. In Pakistan, Blackwater is not using either its original name or its new moniker, Xe Services, according to the former Blackwater executive.

“They are running most of their work through TIS because the other two [names] have such a stain on them,” he said. Corallo, the Blackwater spokesperson, denied that TIS or any other division or affiliate of Blackwater has any personnel in Pakistan.

The US military intelligence source said that Blackwater’s classified contracts keep getting renewed at the request of JSOC. Blackwater, he said, is already so deeply entrenched that it has become a staple of the US military operations in Pakistan. According to the former Blackwater executive, “The politics that go with the brand of BW is somewhat set aside because what you’re doing is really one military guy to another.” Blackwater’s first known contract with the CIA for operations in Afghanistan was awarded in 2002 and was for work along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

One of the concerns raised by the military intelligence source is that some Blackwater personnel are being given rolling security clearances above their approved clearances. Using Alternative Compartmentalized Control Measures (ACCMs), he said, the Blackwater personnel are granted clearance to a Special Access Program, the bureaucratic term used to describe highly classified “black” operations. “With an ACCM, the security manager can grant access to you to be exposed to and operate within compartmentalized programs far above ’secret’–even though you have no business doing so,” said the source. It allows Blackwater personnel that “do not have the requisite security clearance or do not hold a security clearance whatsoever to participate in classified operations by virtue of trust,” he added. “Think of it as an ultra-exclusive level above top secret. That’s exactly what it is: a circle of love.” Blackwater, therefore, has access to “all source” reports that are culled in part from JSOC units in the field. “That’s how a lot of things over the years have been conducted with contractors,” said the source. “We have contractors that regularly see things that top policy-makers don’t unless they ask.”

According to the source, Blackwater has effectively marketed itself as a company whose operatives have “conducted lethal direct action missions and now, for a price, you can have your own planning cell. JSOC just ate that up,” he said, adding, “They have a sizable force in Pakistan–not for any nefarious purpose if you really want to look at it that way–but to support a legitimate contract that’s classified for JSOC.” Blackwater’s Pakistan JSOC contracts are secret and are therefore shielded from public oversight, he said. The source is not sure when the arrangement with JSOC began, but he says that a spin-off of Blackwater SELECT “was issued a no-bid contract for support to shooters for a JSOC Task Force and they kept extending it.” Some of the Blackwater personnel, he said, work undercover as aid workers. “Nobody even gives them a second thought.”

The military intelligence source said that the Blackwater/JSOC Karachi operation is referred to as “Qatar cubed,” in reference to the US forward operating base in Qatar that served as the hub for the planning and implementation of the US invasion of Iraq. “This is supposed to be the brave new world,” he says. “This is the Jamestown of the new millennium and it’s meant to be a lily pad. You can jump off to Uzbekistan, you can jump back over the border, you can jump sideways, you can jump northwest. It’s strategically located so that they can get their people wherever they have to without having to wrangle with the military chain of command in Afghanistan, which is convoluted. They don’t have to deal with that because they’re operating under a classified mandate.”

In addition to planning drone strikes and operations against suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban forces in Pakistan for both JSOC and the CIA, the Blackwater team in Karachi also helps plan missions for JSOC inside Uzbekistan against the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, according to the military intelligence source. Blackwater does not actually carry out the operations, he said, which are executed on the ground by JSOC forces. “That piqued my curiosity and really worries me because I don’t know if you noticed but I was never told we are at war with Uzbekistan,” he said. “So, did I miss something, did Rumsfeld come back into power?”

Pakistan’s Military Contracting Maze
Blackwater, according to the military intelligence source, is not doing the actual killing as part of its work in Pakistan. “The SELECT personnel are not going into places with private aircraft and going after targets,” he said. “It’s not like Blackwater SELECT people are running around assassinating people.” Instead, US Special Forces teams carry out the plans developed in part by Blackwater. The military intelligence source drew a distinction between the Blackwater operatives who work for the State Department, which he calls “Blackwater Vanilla,” and the seasoned Special Forces veterans who work on the JSOC program. “Good or bad, there’s a small number of people who know how to pull off an operation like that. That’s probably a good thing,” said the source. “It’s the Blackwater SELECT people that have and continue to plan these types of operations because they’re the only people that know how and they went where the money was. It’s not trigger-happy fucks, like some of the PSD [Personal Security Detail] guys. These are not people that believe that Barack Obama is a socialist, these are not people that kill innocent civilians. They’re very good at what they do.”

The former Blackwater executive, when asked for confirmation that Blackwater forces were not actively killing people in Pakistan, said, “that’s not entirely accurate.” While he concurred with the military intelligence source’s description of the JSOC and CIA programs, he pointed to another role Blackwater is allegedly playing in Pakistan, not for the US government but for Islamabad. According to the executive, Blackwater works on a subcontract for Kestral Logistics, a powerful Pakistani firm, which specializes in military logistical support, private security and intelligence consulting. It is staffed with former high-ranking Pakistani army and government officials. While Kestral’s main offices are in Pakistan, it also has branches in several other countries.

A spokesperson for the US State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC), which is responsible for issuing licenses to US corporations to provide defense-related services to foreign governments or entities, would neither confirm nor deny for The Nation that Blackwater has a license to work in Pakistan or to work with Kestral. “We cannot help you,” said department spokesperson David McKeeby after checking with the relevant DDTC officials. “You’ll have to contact the companies directly.” Blackwater’s Corallo said the company has “no operations of any kind” in Pakistan other than the one employee working for the DoD. Kestral did not respond to inquiries from The Nation.

According to federal lobbying records, Kestral recently hired former Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roger Noriega, who served in that post from 2003 to 2005, to lobby the US government, including the State Department, USAID and Congress, on foreign affairs issues “regarding [Kestral's] capabilities to carry out activities of interest to the United States.” Noriega was hired through his firm, Vision Americas, which he runs with Christina Rocca, a former CIA operations official who served as assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs from 2001 to 2006 and was deeply involved in shaping US policy toward Pakistan. In October 2009, Kestral paid Vision Americas $15,000 and paid a Vision Americas-affiliated firm, Firecreek Ltd., an equal amount to lobby on defense and foreign policy issues.

For years, Kestral has done a robust business in defense logistics with the Pakistani government and other nations, as well as top US defense companies. Blackwater owner Erik Prince is close with Kestral CEO Liaquat Ali Baig, according to the former Blackwater executive. “Ali and Erik have a pretty close relationship,” he said. “They’ve met many times and struck a deal, and they [offer] mutual support for one another.” Working with Kestral, he said, Blackwater has provided convoy security for Defense Department shipments destined for Afghanistan that would arrive in the port at Karachi. Blackwater, according to the former executive, would guard the supplies as they were transported overland from Karachi to Peshawar and then west through the Torkham border crossing, the most important supply route for the US military in Afghanistan.

According to the former executive, Blackwater operatives also integrate with Kestral’s forces in sensitive counterterrorism operations in the North-West Frontier Province, where they work in conjunction with the Pakistani Interior Ministry’s paramilitary force, known as the Frontier Corps (alternately referred to as “frontier scouts”). The Blackwater personnel are technically advisers, but the former executive said that the line often gets blurred in the field. Blackwater “is providing the actual guidance on how to do [counterterrorism operations] and Kestral’s folks are carrying a lot of them out, but they’re having the guidance and the overwatch from some BW guys that will actually go out with the teams when they’re executing the job,” he said. “You can see how that can lead to other things in the border areas.” He said that when Blackwater personnel are out with the Pakistani teams, sometimes its men engage in operations against suspected terrorists. “You’ve got BW guys that are assisting… and they’re all going to want to go on the jobs–so they’re going to go with them,” he said. “So, the things that you’re seeing in the news about how this Pakistani military group came in and raided this house or did this or did that–in some of those cases, you’re going to have Western folks that are right there at the house, if not in the house.” Blackwater, he said, is paid by the Pakistani government through Kestral for consulting services. “That gives the Pakistani government the cover to say, ‘Hey, no, we don’t have any Westerners doing this. It’s all local and our people are doing it.’ But it gets them the expertise that Westerners provide for [counterterrorism]-related work.”

The military intelligence source confirmed Blackwater works with the Frontier Corps, saying, “There’s no real oversight. It’s not really on people’s radar screen.”

In October, in response to Pakistani news reports that a Kestral warehouse in Islamabad was being used to store heavy weapons for Blackwater, the US Embassy in Pakistan released a statement denying the weapons were being used by “a private American security contractor.” The statement said, “Kestral Logistics is a private logistics company that handles the importation of equipment and supplies provided by the United States to the Government of Pakistan. All of the equipment and supplies were imported at the request of the Government of Pakistan, which also certified the shipments.”

Who is Behind the Drone Attacks?
Since President Barack Obama was inaugurated, the United States has expanded drone bombing raids in Pakistan. Obama first ordered a drone strike against targets in North and South Waziristan on January 23, and the strikes have been conducted consistently ever since. The Obama administration has now surpassed the number of Bush-era strikes in Pakistan and has faced fierce criticism from Pakistan and some US lawmakers over civilian deaths. A drone attack in June killed as many as sixty people attending a Taliban funeral.

In August, the New York Times reported that Blackwater works for the CIA at “hidden bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the company’s contractors assemble and load Hellfire missiles and 500-pound laser-guided bombs on remotely piloted Predator aircraft.” In February, The Times of London obtained a satellite image of a secret CIA airbase in Shamsi, in Pakistan’s southwestern province of Baluchistan, showing three drone aircraft. The New York Times also reported that the agency uses a secret base in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, to strike in Pakistan.

The military intelligence source says that the drone strike that reportedly killed Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, his wife and his bodyguards in Waziristan in August was a CIA strike, but that many others attributed in media reports to the CIA are actually JSOC strikes. “Some of these strikes are attributed to OGA [Other Government Agency,
intelligence parlance for the CIA], but in reality it’s JSOC and their parallel program of UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] because they also have access to UAVs. So when you see some of these hits, especially the ones with high civilian casualties, those are almost always JSOC strikes.” The Pentagon has stated bluntly, “There are no US military strike operations being conducted in Pakistan.”

The military intelligence source also confirmed that Blackwater continues to work for the CIA on its drone bombing program in Pakistan, as previously reported in the New York Times, but added that Blackwater is working on JSOC’s drone bombings as well. “It’s Blackwater running the program for both CIA and JSOC,” said the source. When civilians are killed, “people go, ‘Oh, it’s the CIA doing crazy shit again unchecked.’ Well, at least 50 percent of the time, that’s JSOC [hitting] somebody they’ve identified through HUMINT [human intelligence] or they’ve culled the intelligence themselves or it’s been shared with them and they take that person out and that’s how it works.”

The military intelligence source says that the CIA operations are subject to Congressional oversight, unlike the parallel JSOC bombings. “Targeted killings are not the most popular thing in town right now and the CIA knows that,” he says. “Contractors and especially JSOC personnel working under a classified mandate are not [overseen by Congress], so they just don’t care. If there’s one person they’re going after and there’s thirty-four people in the building, thirty-five people are going to die. That’s the mentality.” He added, “They’re not accountable to anybody and they know that. It’s an open secret, but what are you going to do, shut down JSOC?”

In addition to working on covert action planning and drone strikes, Blackwater SELECT also provides private guards to perform the sensitive task of security for secret US drone bases, JSOC camps and Defense Intelligence Agency camps inside Pakistan, according to the military intelligence source.

Mosharraf Zaidi, a well-known Pakistani journalist who has served as a consultant for the UN and European Union in Pakistan and Afghanistan, says that the Blackwater/JSOC program raises serious questions about the norms of international relations. “The immediate question is, How do you define the active pursuit of military objectives in a country with which not only have you not declared war but that is supposedly a front-line non-NATO ally in the US struggle to contain extremist violence coming out of Afghanistan and the border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan?” asks Zaidi, who is currently a columnist for The News, the biggest English-language daily in Pakistan. “Let’s forget Blackwater for a second. What this is confirming is that there are US military operations in Pakistan that aren’t about logistics or getting food to Bagram; that are actually about the exercise of physical violence, physical force inside of Pakistani territory.”

JSOC: Rumsfeld and Cheney’s Extra Special Force
Colonel Wilkerson said that he is concerned that with General McChrystal’s elevation as the military commander of the Afghan war–which is increasingly seeping into Pakistan–there is a concomitant rise in JSOC’s power and influence within the military structure. “I don’t see how you can escape that; it’s just a matter of the way the authority flows and the power flows, and it’s inevitable, I think,” Wilkerson toldThe Nation. He added, “I’m alarmed when I see execute orders and combat orders that go out saying that the supporting force is Central Command and the supported force is Special Operations Command,” under which JSOC operates. “That’s backward. But that’s essentially what we have today.”

From 2003 to 2008 McChrystal headed JSOC, which is headquartered at Pope Air Force Base and Fort Bragg in North Carolina, where Blackwater’s 7,000-acre operating base is also situated. JSOC controls the Army’s Delta Force, the Navy’s SEAL Team 6, as well as the Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment and 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, and the Air Force’s 24th Special Tactics Squadron. JSOC performs strike operations, reconnaissance in denied areas and special intelligence missions. Blackwater, which was founded by former Navy SEALs, employs scores of veteran Special Forces operators–which several former military officials pointed to as the basis for Blackwater’s alleged contracts with JSOC.

Since 9/11, many top-level Special Forces veterans have taken up employment with private firms, where they can make more money doing the highly specialized work they did in uniform. “The Blackwater individuals have the experience. A lot of these individuals are retired military, and they’ve been around twenty to thirty years and have experience that the younger Green Beret guys don’t,” said retired Army Lieut. Col. Jeffrey Addicott, a well-connected military lawyer who served as senior legal counsel for US Army Special Forces. “They’re known entities. Everybody knows who they are, what their capabilities are, and they’ve got the experience. They’re very valuable.”

“They make much more money being the smarts of these operations, planning hits in various countries and basing it off their experience in Chechnya, Bosnia, Somalia, Ethiopia,” said the military intelligence source. “They were there for all of these things, they know what the hell they’re talking about. And JSOC has unfortunately lost the institutional capability to plan within, so they hire back people that used to work for them and had already planned and executed these [types of] operations. They hired back people that jumped over to Blackwater SELECT and then pay them exorbitant amounts of money to plan future operations. It’s a ridiculous revolving door.”

While JSOC has long played a central role in US counterterrorism and covert operations, military and civilian officials who worked at the Defense and State Departments during the Bush administration described in interviews with The Nation an extremely cozy relationship that developed between the executive branch (primarily through Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld) and JSOC. During the Bush era, Special Forces turned into a virtual stand-alone operation that acted outside the military chain of command and in direct coordination with the White House. Throughout the Bush years, it was largely General McChrystal who ran JSOC. “What I was seeing was the development of what I would later see in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Special Operations forces would operate in both theaters without the conventional commander even knowing what they were doing,” said Colonel Wilkerson. “That’s dangerous, that’s very dangerous. You have all kinds of mess when you don’t tell the theater commander what you’re doing.”

Wilkerson said that almost immediately after assuming his role at the State Department under Colin Powell, he saw JSOC being politicized and developing a close relationship with the executive branch. He saw this begin, he said, after his first Delta Force briefing at Fort Bragg. “I think Cheney and Rumsfeld went directly into JSOC. I think they went into JSOC at times, perhaps most frequently, without the SOCOM [Special Operations] commander at the time even knowing it. The receptivity in JSOC was quite good,” says Wilkerson. “I think Cheney was actually giving McChrystal instructions, and McChrystal was asking him for instructions.” He said the relationship between JSOC and Cheney and Rumsfeld “built up initially because Rumsfeld didn’t get the responsiveness. He didn’t get the can-do kind of attitude out of the SOCOM commander, and so as Rumsfeld was wont to do, he cut him out and went straight to the horse’s mouth. At that point you had JSOC operating as an extension of the [administration] doing things the executive branch–read: Cheney and Rumsfeld–wanted it to do. This would be more or less carte blanche. You need to do it, do it. It was very alarming for me as a conventional soldier.”

Wilkerson said the JSOC teams caused diplomatic problems for the United States across the globe. “When these teams started hitting capital cities and other places all around the world, [Rumsfeld] didn’t tell the State Department either. The only way we found out about it is our ambassadors started to call us and say, ‘Who the hell are these six-foot-four white males with eighteen-inch biceps walking around our capital cities?’ So we discovered this, we discovered one in South America, for example, because he actually murdered a taxi driver, and we had to get him out of there real quick. We rendered him–we rendered him home.”

As part of their strategy, Rumsfeld and Cheney also created the Strategic Support Branch (SSB), which pulled intelligence resources from the Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA for use in sensitive JSOC operations. The SSB was created using “reprogrammed” funds “without explicit congressional authority or appropriation,” according to the Washington Post. The SSB operated outside the military chain of command and circumvented the CIA’s authority on clandestine operations. Rumsfeld created it as part of his war to end “near total dependence on CIA.” Under US law, the Defense Department is required to report all deployment orders to Congress. But guidelines issued in January 2005 by former Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone stated that Special Operations forces may “conduct clandestine HUMINT operations…before publication” of a deployment order. This effectively gave Rumsfeld unilateral control over clandestine operations.

The military intelligence source said that when Rumsfeld was defense secretary, JSOC was deployed to commit some of the “darkest acts” in part to keep them concealed from Congress. “Everything can be justified as a military operation versus a clandestine intelligence performed by the CIA, which has to be informed to Congress,” said the source. “They were aware of that and they knew that, and they would exploit it at every turn and they took full advantage of it. They knew they could act extra-legally and nothing would happen because A, it was sanctioned by DoD at the highest levels, and B, who was going to stop them? They were preparing the battlefield, which was on all of the PowerPoints: ‘Preparing the Battlefield.’”

The significance of the flexibility of JSOC’s operations inside Pakistan versus the CIA’s is best summed up by Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. “Every single intelligence operation and covert action must be briefed to the Congress,” she said. “If they are not, that is a violation of the law.”

Blackwater: Company Non Grata in Pakistan
For months, the Pakistani media has been flooded with stories about Blackwater’s alleged growing presence in the country. For the most part, these stories have been ignored by the US press and denounced as lies or propaganda by US officials in Pakistan. But the reality is that, although many of the stories appear to be wildly exaggerated, Pakistanis have good reason to be concerned about Blackwater’s operations in their country. It is no secret in Washington or Islamabad that Blackwater has been a central part of the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan and that the company has been involved–almost from the beginning of the “war on terror”–with clandestine US operations. Indeed, Blackwater is accepting applications for contractors fluent in Urdu and Punjabi. The US Ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson, has denied Blackwater’s presence in the country, stating bluntly in September, “Blackwater is not operating in Pakistan.” In her trip to Pakistan in October, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dodged questions from the Pakistani press about Blackwater’s rumored Pakistani operations. Pakistan’s interior minister, Rehman Malik, said on November 21 he will resign if Blackwater is found operating anywhere in Pakistan.

The Christian Science Monitor recently reported that Blackwater “provides security for a US-backed aid project” in Peshawar, suggesting the company may be based out of the Pearl Continental, a luxury hotel the United States reportedly is considering purchasing to use as a consulate in the city. “We have no contracts in Pakistan,” Blackwater spokesperson Stacey DeLuke said recently. “We’ve been blamed for all that has gone wrong in Peshawar, none of which is true, since we have absolutely no presence there.”
Reports of Blackwater’s alleged presence in Karachi and elsewhere in the country have been floating around the Pakistani press for months. Hamid Mir, a prominent Pakistani journalist who rose to fame after his 1997 interview with Osama bin Laden, claimed in a recent interview that Blackwater is in Karachi. “The US [intelligence] agencies think that a number of Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders are hiding in Karachi and Peshawar,” he said.

“That is why [Blackwater] agents are operating in these two cities.” Ambassador Patterson has said that the claims of Mir and other Pakistani journalists are “wildly incorrect,” saying they had compromised the security of US personnel in Pakistan. On November 20 theWashington Times, citing three current and former US intelligence officials, reported that Mullah Mohammed Omar, the leader of the Afghan Taliban, has “found refuge from potential U.S. attacks” in Karachi “with the assistance of Pakistan’s intelligence service.”
In September, the Pakistani press covered a report on Blackwater allegedly submitted by Pakistan’s intelligence agencies to the federal interior ministry. In the report, the intelligence agencies reportedly allege that Blackwater was provided houses by a federal minister who is also helping them clear shipments of weapons and vehicles through Karachi’s Port Qasim on the coast of the Arabian Sea. The military intelligence source did not confirm this but did say, “The port jives because they have a lot of [former] SEALs and they would revert to what they know: the ocean, instead of flying stuff in.”

The Nation cannot independently confirm these allegations and has not seen the Pakistani intelligence report. But according to Pakistani press coverage, the intelligence report also said Blackwater has acquired “bungalows” in the Defense Housing Authority in the city. According to the DHA website, it is a large gated community established “for the welfare of the serving and retired officers of the Armed Forces of Pakistan.” Its motto is: “Home for Defenders.” The report alleges Blackwater is receiving help from local government officials in Karachi and is using vehicles with license plates traditionally assigned to members of the national and provincial assemblies, meaning local law enforcement will not stop them.

The use of private companies like Blackwater for sensitive operations such as drone strikes or other covert work undoubtedly comes with the benefit of plausible deniability that places an additional barrier in an already deeply flawed system of accountability. When things go wrong, it’s the contractors’ fault, not the government’s. But the widespread use of contractors also raises serious legal questions, particularly when they are a part of lethal, covert actions. “We are using contractors for things that in the past might have been considered to be a violation of the Geneva Convention,” said Lt. Col. Addicott, who now runs the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio, Texas. “In my opinion, we have pressed the envelope to the breaking limit, and it’s almost a fiction that these guys are not in offensive military operations.” Addicott added, “If we were subjected to the International Criminal Court, some of these guys could easily be picked up, charged with war crimes and put on trial. That’s one of the reasons we’re not members of the International Criminal Court.”

If there is one quality that has defined Blackwater over the past decade, it is the ability to survive against the odds while simultaneously reinventing and rebranding itself. That is most evident in Afghanistan, where the company continues to work for the US military, the CIA and the State Department despite intense criticism and almost weekly scandals. Blackwater’s alleged Pakistan operations, said the military intelligence source, are indicative of its new frontier. “Having learned its lessons after the private security contracting fiasco in Iraq, Blackwater has shifted its operational focus to two venues: protecting things that are in danger and anticipating other places we’re going to go as a nation that are dangerous,” he said. “It’s as simple as that.”


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How Pakistan Interior Minister Helped US Embassy Import Illegal Weapons Without Telling ISI

By : Ansar Abbasi

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—The role of the Pakistani federal Interior Ministry in the issuance of prohibited bore licenses to US defense contractor DynCorp's local partner Inter-Risk appears to be dubious. The US embassy admitted to have imported the prohibited bore weapons but other evidence shows something different.Evidence†available with The News contradicts the US embassy’s viewpoint and shows that a resident of Daryoba Agency FR Bannu had gifted 50 weapons that were reportedly given to Inter-Risk.Documents also show that after US Ambassador Anne Patterson’s letter to Interior Minister Rehman Malik for the issuance of prohibited bore licenses to Inter-Risk, the US embassy continued to influence the Interior Ministry that issued the required licenses to the US-blessed Pakistani security agency without consulting intelligence agencies and the Foreign Office. [continued below]

Following Patterson’s letter, US embassy officials met State Minister for Interior Tasneem Ahmed Qureshi and later formally wrote to him, setting clear deadlines for the issuance of licenses in three phases. The documentary evidence shows that the state minister acted accordingly as per the wishes of the US embassy.



Gerald M Feierstein, Charge dí Affaires ad interim US embassy in Islamabad, wrote to Tasneem Ahmed Qureshi on May 7: “I would like to thank you for meeting with my representative Michael Eicher on May 7 to discuss certain security matters that affect the US Embassy. As Mr Eicher conveyed, the United States and Pakistan share a deep commitment to improving the lives and future of the Pakistani people. However, security concerns have greatly diminished out ability to administer and expand the programmes we would like to support in partnership with the government of Pakistan.




“I order for the Embassy to mitigate the risk associated with some of these security concerns, the US Embassy has engaged with Inter-Risk (Pvt) Ltd to provide armed guards to protect our US diplomatic personnel assigned to Islamabad and Peshawar. Therefore, I would like to request the issuance of 134 prohibited bore (pb) licenses on behalf to Inter-Risk (Pvt) Ltd to accomplish this security goal.




“50 pb licenses are needed as quickly as possible and an additional 50 pb licenses will be needed in June 2009. The remaining 34 licenses will be needed in July 2009.



“I would like to thank you for your personal attention to this matter offer the renewed assurances of my highest considerations.”



Within a week time following this letter, the personal secretary (PS) to the state minister for interior writes a ìTop Priorityî directive on ministerís behalf, ordering the section officer (PB) Ministry of Interior: “The minister of state for interior has been pleased to approve fifty (50) PB arms license in favour of M/S Inter-Risk (Private) Limited.



“2. Arm Section may issue the licenses under intimation to this office by 20-5-2009.”



While the state minister issued strict direction for the issuance of 50 pb licenses to Inter-Risk by May 20, 2009, the deputy commissioner Islamabad received an official communication from office of the district coordination officer/political agent FR Bannu the same day.




The letter’s subject was “Confirmation/Verification of Weapon Gift” and it read as: “The enclosed certificates (consisting 50 no) for gift of weapon, gifted by Malik Khanzada Khan Wazir Daryoba Agency FR Banny dully verified by the undersigned for further necessary action.”



Official sources said that these apparently gifted weapons were provided to Inter-Risk, however, actually the said weapons belonged to the Americans. Why the DCO Bannu did this and on whose order could not be ascertained as despite repeated efforts and telephone calls, the officer did not talk to this correspondent. His staff said that the DCO was sitting in the office but the officer did not even bother to return the call.



Deputy Commissioner Islamabad Amir Ahmad Ali, when contacted, said that he took over as DC Islamabad in June so he did not know as to what was the secret behind the DCO Bannu’s letter. The then DC Islamabad Asadullah Faiz, when contacted, said that he did not remember the case and its details.



US embassy spokesman Richard Snelisry, when approached by this correspondent, admitted for the first time that it had imported prohibited bore weapons for Inter-Risk against the licenses given by the Interior Ministry. He said that it was part of the contract signed between the embassy and Inter-risk. When his attention was drawn to the DCO Bannu letter, he said that he did not know anything about it but insisted that everything on behalf of the US embassy was transparent and within the limits of Pakistan’s laws. He said that it was possible that the Inter-Risk had obtained the gifted weapons for something that had nothing to do with the US embassy. He said that the US embassy was not responsible for everything that the Inter-Risk has done or is doing.


The embassy spokesman Richard Snelsire, commonly known as Rick, said that he had no knowledge of any letter written by any embassy official to the Interior Ministry's state minister and giving deadlines for the issuance of licenses to Inter-Risk following the letter of Anne Patterson.



State Minister Qureshi, when approached, confirmed that he did receive a letter from Gerald M Feierstein but denied that it was part of US embassy’s influence on him to proceed accordingly. Qureshi said that he issued the licenses without referring the matter to the Foreign Office or the security agencies, as it was a routine affair. He said Inter-Risk was a registered security agency and the US embassy wanted prohibited bore licenses to beef up security of its personnel and interests.

The state minister, however, said that he was never informed about the fact that Inter-Risk was a local partner of the American security company DynCorp. He said that he also did not know about the “fishy” affairs connected with Inter-Risk. However, the fact remains that the relationship between DynCorp and Inter-Risk was clearly mentioned by the US ambassador in her letter addressed to Interior Minister Rehman Malik and dated March 30, 2009.

In her two-page letter, Patterson shared her security concerns with Rehman Malik, particularly about the US Consulate in Peshawar. She had referred to the common objectives and shared visions between the two countries for the Frontier province and the tribal areas of Pakistan. She wrote:
“Recognizing that the responsibility of your Ministry and provincial law enforcement is not limited to the Consulate but remains confronting the miscreant elements directly and everywhere, the US government has entered into a commercial contract with DynCorp International and their Pakistani subcontractors Inter-Risk (Pvt) Ltd, and Speed Flo Filter Industries to provide specialized security support for our consulate in Peshawar.

“I feel this contractual arrangement will allow your security forces to focus on their priorities and at the same time allow us the ability to continue consulate operations with an appropriate level of security support. Our security plan will incorporate both the commercial security personnel and the NWFP police contingent already dedicated to supporting the consulate.“To accomplish the goals of our commercial contract, I am requesting your approval for a No Objection Certificate (NOC) for Dyncorp International, Inter-Risk (Pvt) Ltd, and Speed Flo Filter Industries to provide security services for the US government. More urgently, we request your intervention to facilitate granting Inter-Risk (Pvt) the requisite prohibited bore arms licenses to operate in the territorial limits of Pakistan and as soon as possible.”

This report was published by The News International on Sunday, Oct. 4, 2009. Mr. Abbasi broke the story on DynCorp and Inter-Risk. His work, and that of The Nation led to the arrest of the owners of Inter-Risk and the clampdown on the suspicious activities of DynCorp in Pakistan.


Rest of the documents cant be found here : Doc 1 Doc 2

U.S. Push to Expand in Pakistan Meets Resistance

Source : www.pakistankakhudahafiz.com


ISLAMABAD, Pakistan

Steps by the United States to vastly expand its aid to Pakistan, as well as the footprint of its embassy and private security contractors here, are aggravating an already volatile anti-American mood as Washington pushes for greater action by the government against the Taliban. An aid package of $1.5 billion a year for the next five years passed by Congress last week asks Pakistan to cease supporting terrorist groups on its soil and to ensure that the military does not interfere with civilian politics. President Asif Ali Zardari, whose association with the United States has added to his unpopularity, agreed to the stipulations in the aid package.

But many here, especially in the powerful army, object to the conditions as interference in Pakistan’s internal affairs, and they are interpreting the larger American footprint in more sinister ways. American officials say the embassy and its security presence must expand in order to monitor how the new money is spent. They also have real security concerns, which were underscored Monday when a suicide bomber, dressed in the uniform of a Pakistani security force, killed five people at a United Nations office in the heart of Islamabad, the capital. The United States Embassy has publicized plans for a vast new building in Islamabad for about 1,000 people, with security for some diplomats provided through a Washington-based private contracting company, DynCorp.

The embassy setup, with American demands for importing more armored vehicles, is a significant expansion over the last 15 years. It comes at a time of intense discussion in Washington over whether to widen American operations and aid to Pakistan — a base for Al Qaeda — as an alternative to deeper American involvement in Afghanistan with the addition of more forces.

The fierce opposition here is revealing deep strains in the alliance. Even at its current levels, the American presence was fueling a sense of occupation among Pakistani politicians and security officials, said several Pakistani officials, who did not want to be named for fear of antagonizing the United States. The United States was now seen as behaving in Pakistan much as it did in Iraq and Afghanistan, they said.

In particular, the Pakistani military and the intelligence agencies are concerned that DynCorp is being used by Washington to develop a parallel network of security and intelligence personnel within Pakistan, officials and politicians close to the army said. The concerns are serious enough that last month a local company hired by DynCorp to provide Pakistani men to be trained as security guards for American diplomats was raided by the Islamabad police. The owner of the company, the Inter-Risk Security Company, Capt. Syed Ali Ja Zaidi, was later arrested.

The action against Inter-Risk, apparently intended to cripple the DynCorp program, was taken on orders from the senior levels of the Pakistani government, said an official familiar with the raid, who was not authorized to speak on the record. The entire workings of DynCorp within Pakistan are now under review by the Pakistani government, said a senior government official directly involved with the Americans, who spoke candidly on condition of anonymity.

The tensions are erupting as the United States is pressing Pakistan to take on not only those Taliban groups that have threatened the government, but also the Taliban leadership that uses Pakistan as a base to organize and conduct their insurgency against American forces in Afghanistan.

In a public statement, the American ambassador, Anne W. Patterson, suggested last week that Pakistan should eliminate the Afghan Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, a onetime ally of the Pakistanis who Washington says is now based in Baluchistan, a province on the Afghanistan border. If Pakistan did not get rid of Mullah Omar, the United States would, she suggested.
Reinforcing the ambassador, the national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, said Sunday that the United States regarded tackling Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan as “the next step” in the conflict in Afghanistan.The Pakistani army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, in an unusually stern reaction last week, said that missile attacks by American drones in Baluchistan, as implied by the Americans, “would not be allowed.”

The Pakistanis also complain that they are not being sufficiently consulted over the pending White House decision on whether to send more troops to Afghanistan.
The head of Pakistan’s chief spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, or ISI, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, met with senior officials at the Central Intelligence Agency last week in Washington, where he argued against sending more troops to Afghanistan, a Pakistani official familiar with the visit said.

The Pakistani Army, riding high after its campaign to wrench back control of the Swat Valley from the Taliban, remains nervous about Washington’s intentions and the push against the new aid is reflective of that anxiety, Pakistani officials said.

Though the Zardari government is trumpeting the new aid as a triumph, officials say the language in the legislation ignores long-held prerogatives about Pakistani sovereignty, making the $1.5 billion a tough sell.

“Now everyone has a handle they can use to rip into the Zardari government,” said a senior Pakistani official involved in the American-Pakistani dialogue but who declined to be named because he did not want to inflame the discussion.

The expanding American security presence has become another club. DynCorp has attracted particular scrutiny after the Pakistani news media reported that Blackwater, the contractor that has generated controversy because of its aggressive tactics in Iraq, was also in Pakistan.
Recently, there have been a series of complaints by Islamabad residents who said they had been “roughed up” by hefty, plainclothes American men bearing weapons, presumably from DynCorp, one of the senior Pakistani officials involved with the Americans said.

Pakistan’s Foreign Office had sent two formal diplomatic complaints in the past few weeks to the American Embassy about such episodes, the official said.

The embassy had received complaints, and confirmed two instances, an embassy official said, but the embassy denied receiving any formal protests from the Foreign Office. It also declined to comment about the presence of Blackwater, now known as Xe Services, in Pakistan.
American officials have said that Blackwater employees worked at a remote base in Shamsi, in Baluchistan, where they loaded missiles and bombs onto drones used to strike Taliban and Qaeda militants.

The operation of the drones at Shamsi had been shifted by the Americans to Afghanistan this year, a senior Pakistani military official said.

Several Blackwater employees also worked in the North-West Frontier Province supervising the construction of a training center for Pakistan’s Frontier Corps, a Pakistani official from the region said.

There was considerable unease about the American diplomatic presence in Peshawar, the capital of the North-West Frontier Province, one of the senior government officials said. Politicians were asking why the United States needed a consulate in Peshawar, which borders the tribal areas, when that office did not issue visas, he said.

Another question, he said, was why did the consulate plan to buy the biggest, and most modern building in the city, the Pearl Continental hotel — which was bombed in a terrorist attack this year — as its new headquarters.

As Parliament prepared to discuss the American aid package Wednesday, the tone of the debate was expected to be scathing. On a television talk show, Senator Tariq Aziz, a member of the opposition party, called the legislation “the charter for new colonization.”

“People think this government has sold us to the Americans again for their own selfish interests,” said Jahangir Tareen, a former cabinet minister and a member of Parliament, in an interview. “Some people think the United States is out to get Pakistan, to defang Pakistan, to destroy the army as it exists so it can’t fight India and to break down the ISI’s ability to influence events in India and Afghanistan. Everyone is saying about the Americans, ‘Told you so.’ ”

New York Times

Kayani Slams US; Rejects Kerry-Lugar Bill

KARACHI: As anger mounts over the degrading language and observations in the Kerry-Lugar Bill on Pakistan’s military services and intelligence agencies, the Army conveyed its part of protest to the United States when Commander of International Forces in Afghanistan General Stanley McChrystal met Army chief General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani at the GHQ on Tuesday, informed officials said.

These officials said that General Kayani told General McChrystal that like the Pakistani people, the military and intelligence services were furious at the observations made on Pakistan’s security establishment in the Kerry-Lugar Bill. Kayani also protested over the controversial statements made by some US officials in recent days.

“General McChrystal returned from the GHQ with an unambiguous message that the terms set in the Kerry-Lugar Bill on the national security interests of Pakistan are insulting and are unacceptable in their present formulation,” according to an official familiar with the content of the meeting.

Informed official sources said that the Army’s strong reaction to the Kerry-Lugar Bill was shared in detail with the government when General Kayani met Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Sunday.

In a related development, also on Tuesday, Gilani asked Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi to convey Pakistan’s reservations in his meetings with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Obama’s Special Envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke and key members of the US Congress.

While Tuesday’s meeting with General McChrystal provided General Kayani with an opportunity to convey the Army’s serious objection to the controversial sections of the bill in detail, he had lodged an initial protest during his meeting with General McChrystal in Kabul, where he had gone last week toattend the tripartite military conference.

The Kerry-Lugar Bill and its impact on national security interests of Pakistan will be a key subject of discussion when the corps commanders and principal staff officers of the Army meet under General Kayani on Wednesday.

While the nation’s response is currently focused at the controversial content of the Kerry-Lugar Bill, the government is also concerned about a growing unregulated arrival and stay of American citizens in Pakistan.

Concerns grew when Pakistanís security agencies recorded various cases of illegal acquisition of weapons by security firms connected with the US Embassy in Pakistan. Prime Minister Gilani, sources said, has already ordered a complete record with specific details and pre-clearance of US citizens entering Pakistan on US government business.

US threatens to attack Quetta

Its high time we stopped compromising on our sovereignty and declared US a hostile state. Shut down the US Embassy and consulates, order all US diplomatic staff to leave the country with immediate effect, shut down NATO and US supply routes and respond in kind with a threat to launch a full-scale military offensive on US bases in Afghanistan if Pakistani Airspace is breached.


The United States is threatening to launch airstrikes on Mullah Omar and the Taliban leadership in Quetta as frustration mounts about the ease with which they find sanctuary across the border from Afghanistan, according to a The Sunday Times report. The threat comes amid growing divisions in Washington about whether to deal with the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan by sending more troops or by reducing them and targeting the terrorists. This weekend the US military was expected to send a request to Defence Secretary Robert Gates for more troops, as urged by Gen Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan. In a leaked strategic assessment of the war, Gen McChrystal warned that he needed extra reinforcements within a year to avert the risk of failure. Although no figure was given, he is believed to be seeking up to 40,000 troops to add to the 68,000 who will be in Afghanistan by the end of this year. US Vice-President Joe Biden has suggested reducing the number of troops in Afghanistan and focusing on the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Pakistan. Last week Gen McChrystal denied any rift with the administration, saying, “a policy debate is warranted.”

So sensitive is the subject that when US President Barack Obama addressed the UN summit in New York, he barely mentioned Afghanistan.
The Times reports the unspoken problem is that if the priority is to destroy Al-Qaeda and reduce the global terrorist threat, western troops might be fighting on the wrong side of the border.
The Biden camp argues that attacks by unmanned drones on Pakistan’s tribal areas, where Al-Qaeda’s leaders are hiding, have been successful. Sending more troops to Afghanistan has only inflamed tensions.
“Pakistan is the nuclear elephant in the room,” said a western diplomat.
It is a view echoed by Richard Barrett, head of the UN Commission on Monitoring Taliban and Al-Qaeda, who believes the presence of foreign troops has increased militant activity and made it easier for the Taliban to recruit.
“If Obama sends more troops, it would better be clear what they are to do,” he said.
“A few thousand more boots on the ground may not make much difference except push the fight into areas which are currently quiet because no one is there to challenge the Taliban. I cannot see any number of troops eliminating the Taliban. Obama has a really difficult decision to make.”

http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Politics/28-Sep-2009/US-to-attack-Quetta

Terrorists Preparing To Declare Independent Balochistan, Pakistani Politicians Mum

Published : August 5, 2009 Author : Ahmed Quraishi

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—A college chemistry professor is murdered in cold blood at his house’s doorstep in Quetta, the latest in a long list of educationists cowardly assassinated by terrorists claiming to stand for the great Pakistani Baloch. These terrorists, backed by Brahamdagh Bugti and his paid mercenaries sponsored by India and the Karzai regime with US military turning a blind eye, have kidnapped 22 police officers. A terrorist group that calls itself Balochistan Republican Army (BRA) has slaughtered four of them and dumped their bodies in public places.

Despite all these acts of terrorism by the grandson of politician-turned-terrorist Akbar Bugti, no one in the pro-US federal and provincial governments is willing to condemn the terrorists. Last month these terrorists planted a bomb on a train leaving Karachi and detonated it just half an hour away from Quetta, killing an innocent Pakistani Baloch. No condemnation then too.

The sheepish and apologetic attitude of the Pakistani government is inexplicable. Last month this government gave the Indians and the Americans damning proof on how Indian spy outfits were using the Afghan provinces of Helmand and Kandahar to target Balochistan. As much as eight foreign spy agencies are cramming this Pakistani territory. Yet the Pakistani state is reluctant to call a spade a spade. The pro-US government's chief minister in Balochistan Nawab Asalm Raisani is on record having said to reporters a few months ago, "I don't know if there is foreign involvement in the province. Go ask those who say there is." Obviously, in his many meetings with President Zardari, Prime Minister Gilani and Interior Minister Rehman Malik, no one cared to share with him the photographs of Brahamdagh Bugti cavorting with the Indians and Karzai's men not just in Kabul but in New Delhi. A better explanation is that the feudal-politicians of Balochistan, like their kin in the rest of the Pakistani politics, are ready to accept a separated Balochistan in the hope that this somehow will help weaken the grip of the Pakistani military and forever stain it in the eyes of its own people.

Here is what is happening on this front:

1. Reports are emerging that Harbyar Mari, a terrorist given sanctuary and protection by the British government, is preparing to declare the 'independence' of Balochistan. The date for this declaration has been set as 11 August, according to an alert issued by BRASSTACKS, a Pakistani security and defense analysis think tank run by eminent expert Zaid Hamid.

2. This comes with reports that the Zardari government is preparing to grant 'full autonomy' to Balochistan within the Pakistani federation. In essence, this means Pakistan will soon have its own version of Iraq's Kurdistan. Considering the volatile security situation in the region and the active interest of both the Americans and Indians in wresting Balochistan from Pakistani hands, this would prove to be a kiss of death for Pakistan's national integrity. The US media is quiet these days on the so-called Greater Pashtunistan, but in the last two years, the US media leaked story after story on the feasibility of this option. These leaked reports reflected an organized campaign by people within Pentagon and CIA. This campaign ceased only after protests by Pakistani officials. Another reason why this campaign stopped is to give some space to unknown 'terrorists' who have infiltrated from Afghanistan to Pakistan under the guise of the so-called Pakistani Taliban. The Kabul regime and its Indian and American allies were hoping that the death and mayhem created among Pakistani Pashtuns would be enough to rally the Pashtun of both Pakistan and Afghanistan to demand an independent country. Luckily, the Pakistani Pashtun, who are an important and active part of the Pakistani society and the power structure, understood the game and refused to play along despite enticements coming from inside the Afghan territory.

3. According to BRASSTACKS, the US government has requested the Zardari government to give part of the Balochistan coastal are to the US Navy to construct a port that would serve the US occupation forces in Afghanistan. Surprisingly, the Zardari government is actually considering the option. Mr. Zardari is also eager to get back at China, which refused to financially bail out his corrupt pro-American government. China financed part of the Gwadar project.

4. Meanwhile the potential of the Gwadar port has almost been destroyed and it is a matter of time before Pakistan's inept politicians turn it into another irretrievable mess. First Akbar Bugti and his foreign-supported terrorists attacked the project. Now the political parties in power are playing their usual games over the project in the hope of milking maximum kickbacks. So far the Zardari government is yet to commit funds for the remaining parts of the Gwadar port expansion. This happens while the Indians have completed and operationalized the competing Iranian port of Chah Bahar. The US surprisingly permitted Iranian and Indian companies to build roads in eastern Afghanistan connecting the Indian port despite the American aversion to anything that benefits Iran.

5. Balochistan is an American target. Pakistani politicians and some people within the Pakistani security establishment should make no mistake about it. CIA is supporting Sunni Balochis in Iran while backing an ethnic insurgency in Pakistan. It is not a coincidence that Jundullah in Iran and BLA in Pakistan emerged after the arrival of US military and CIA in Afghanistan, in the past five years to be more specific. Before 2004, there was no BLA or Jundullah anywhere.

6. Washington continues to refuse to declare the so-called Balochistan Liberation Army a terrorist group despite the fact that this group has claimed responsibility for killing countless college professors and other civilians in random acts of terror in Pakistan over the past five years. Some Pakistani analysts cite strong circumstantial evidence that the CIA is running operations in the area that may not be in the full knowledge of the new US administration and may in fact contradict the stated US policy of not supporting terrorism and covert operations against allies.

The 'Bugti Hero Brigade' of Zardari-Gilani-Nawaz-Altaf


Instead of putting a politician-turned-terrorist on a pedestal, it is time to ask the question: Was Mr. Akbar Bugti acting on foreign guarantees when he launched without notice a blitzkrieg of rocket fire on vital installations one fine morning in January 2005?

There is enough evidence now that confirms the thesis that Mr. Bugti was dealing directly with the Indians and Karzai’s people. His grandson Brahamdagh moves around in Kabul under the protection of Karzai's security. There is also evidence that some tribal chieftains in Balochistan were promised they would live like Gulf Arab sheikhs in a new entity carved out of southwest Pakistan if they supported the Bugti terrorist movement.

Why does the provincial government of Nawab Aslam Raisani avoid condemning these terrorists? More stunning is the reply of Interior Minister Rehman Malik in the Senate when questioned about how a Pakistani television station was allowed to air an interview with a London-based member of the Brahamdagh terror group. Mr. Malik said the interview was taped in London and “you know there is freedom of speech there.”

What a joke. Britain is providing a sanctuary to people who finance and support terrorism inside Pakistan and all our powerful security czar can say about this is to cite Britain’s speech laws. Is there a conflict of interest here between Mr. Malik’s personal life and interests in the UK and his official duty to level with the Brits on their duplicitous policy?

The terrorist acts and the new evidence is a great opportunity to delegitimize the terrorists who claim to own Balochistan. But our usually bland and uncreative political elite is incapable of encashing this opportunity.

Major grievances aside, there is no direct discrimination against Pakistani Baloch on ethno-language grounds from anyone in the rest of the country. The level of education of Pakistani Baloch denies them opportunities to climb the social ladder. And the blame for this rests squarely with both the federal government and Balochistan’s tribal chieftains. The landlord-feudal politicians of Pakistan are responsible for compounding the problems of Pakistanis everywhere. And there is no hope in sight that those running the federal government – PPP now or PML in the future – can change anything on the ground.


The Solution


Pakistan needs a practical, nationalistic and visionary federal administration that can take monumental steps to reorganize the State and provinces.

These are the major long-term steps that Islamabad needs to take to arrest the push toward Balkanization:

1. Instead of autonomy, the four ethnic-based provinces of Pakistan need to be turned into smaller administrative provinces with their own small parliaments and directly elected governors. This will break national politics into smaller pieces and refocus the people's attention on local politics and development issues instead of the destructive national politics we see today.

2. Ban ethnic-, language- and sectarian-based political parties.

3. Introduce capital punishment for corruption and treason.

4. Ban the conduct of 'private foreign policy' by politicians and political parties with foreign governments.

5. Seize the vast land holdings of the landlord-political elite and empower the more creative and capable lower and middle class Pakistanis to step forward.

6. Forcibly democratize the family-owned political parties of Pakistan.

The big question is: Who will do this? Interestingly, a group of eminent Pakistanis with no political affiliations has come together to answer this question. Members of the group have assigned themselves to developing an out-of-the-box answer to one question: How to enact these difficult reforms outside the realm of the chaotic Pakistani democratic process? This group is expected to soon make its findings public.

Pakistan needs creative minds at the top to unlock the initiative of its people. We need change. But let’s begin with condemning the terrorists who have taken ownership of Balochistan without any contest from the pro-US government in Islamabad.

The original version of this column appeared in The News International. This is an updated version that reflects the latest developments in southwest Pakistan.

WE are PAKISTANIS ...

The author is Editor of PakistanFirst.com and hosts The Editor's Show. He is also the Director of ‘Parliament Watch’ a project of the ‘Future leaders of Pakistan’. Ali believes in the youth of Pakistan and works with different think-tanks and groups to motivate the Pakistani youth.

By Ali Khan
Patriotism, is mostly treated as a word from the English dictionary, it should be, but only when used in a sentence.But when it is put to practice I ask you not to look upon it as ‘just a word’. Think instead, of the act that makes an ‘action’ patriotic.

Look at the intention that makes a decision patriotic, look at the sacrifice that makes a human patriotic.Dinning out on the 23rd of March or the 14th of August is a costly patriotic act, thus, limited to very few people in our country. But what about those for whom every day and every night is full of patriotism? There are many who sleep hungry every night but live their lives minus any iota of corruption.

I remember a picture that I once saw when the hurricane Katrina had hit the United States. It depicted people looting shops and homes. But I also remember those visuals from TV from the October ’05 earthquake in Pakistan, when people opened up their shops to give free food, shared their water and clothes with others.

What if someone unknown, with a big beard, knocks on your door and tells you that he has just fled his home - will you keep him in your house? Share your food and your clothes with him? And then, what if someone else knocks on your door with 5 family members, would you tell your children to share their clothes and toys with these unknown people?

What if you have so many unknown people walking into your home that you share everything with them and are left with nothing but a small blanket to sleep with?


People in Mardan and Dir have done this.

This is ‘patriotism’.

When the West says; “A friend in need is a friend in deed” we believe them, but when we Pakistanis are together, as one, in time of crises, are we not a nation? Helping each other in the time of need is a bad thing, now?

Whatever that Lawyer’s Movement was about, whatever that Chief Justice wanted, I could hardly care less. But don’t overlook that lawyer who saw his children sleep at night on empty stomachs, as he couldn’t make money that day since he was fighting for justice in his country - not selling it.
How can you and I ignore that patriotic act?

For God’s sake, even the maximum torture a ‘Talib’ could do to a non-Muslim in Pakistan is to put ‘Jazia’ on them for against which they provide them security and justice according to their religion. Also, I have never heard that non-Muslim Pakistanis are flogged in trains like chickens and burned. In Pakistan I have never heard of a church burnt to the ground either – with the bishop, his wife and his five-year-old child still inside. And you still say Pakistan never exhibits true unity and bonding?
Patriotism is not an economic scale from which you measure constant progression of development on every level. Even if it was, tell me the name of one other country in the world, which fought three wars, lost a part of it, helped destroy the world’s super power and has an archrival on one side, 7 times bigger in size, but still survived. And in its history the economy never went - with all the turmoil going on - below 2.5% GDP.

Tell me about a country which started with Rs. 200 million in cash, no industry, no resources, no government infrastructure, no offices and became what it is today. Let it be no surprise that in 2004 and 2005 we were the second fastest growing country in the world according to international organizations.

I think, we ought to thank the Almighty as from Rs. 200 million cash today, we stand more than $1 trillion in just 62 years. Although we could do much better.


Let it be known; Pakistan is a great nation. It has the power to not only survive in the gravest of times, but it has also taken the responsibility to save the world from the menace of terrorism and militancy.
The time for hopeless banter should be gone, now is the time for a rising again - with hope, belief and hard work. The time for only criticizing and criticizing alone should be done with, now is time for only developing minds, hearts and the will for a rising Pakistan.

After learning from our past, this time we shall be better and more resilient.

Our country is not as bad as we think it is. We have just stopped looking for the better things it gave us. Remember we don’t have to follow another nation, which does not share the same ideals and beliefs as us.

Let it be known; the people of Pakistan are patriotic, they are the followers of Allama Iqbal and they will one day make their homeland, as their Quaid said: “The greatest nation-state on earth”, a homeland they call Pakistan, ‘The Land of the Pure’!

*This article was written in response to Zareen Zubair’s ‘Who are we?’ article published in one of TGK’s previous issues.

Time Has Come For Pakistan To Decide

By Peter Chamberlin

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The trusted watch-keepers of the world have turned their hearts to midnight plunder, while they carried-out their duty standing guard over mankind, who blissfully, unaware, continued to sleep. Morning rapidly approaches and the householders are sure to demand an accounting.

The exploding world economy and the expanding war are but symptoms of the great mental sickness that afflicts society, waves of warning of the tsunamis that lie directly ahead. The dominant
ideas and ideology that drive our world are all collapsing around us, falling from the weight of their own corruption and immoral baggage.

In the ongoing warfare of ideas, the selfish immorality of the old order is proving to be its downfall, as it meets the impenetrable resistance of the higher ideals of selflessness and human compassion. When the heart of the people is exposed to the emotionally crippling images of the children of war, then and thereafter, their only concern becomes the ending of the scourge of war.

Human nature is naturally compassionate, no matter how much the person has changed from the innocence of their youth. Even evil men must feel the heart’s emotional tugging at their consciences, no matter how deeply they have buried it, at the sight of such a suffering little one. Knowing that you and your government did this to these children and thousands more just like them, just like your own children that you so dearly love. We are the authors of what you see.

For God so loved the world that he sent us all sons and daughters, to melt our cold hearts and to expose our buried consciences. Human suffering is probably the most powerful motivation for good on this earth. It moves men to take-up arms to avenge it. It motivates others to offer their own lives that others might suffer less.

Humankind has the means to save itself from itself, just as surely as it has the means to cause its own extinction, all that separates the two is the gulf of choice and human freewill. Those of us who believe in a higher power, The One who created all things both great and small, know for certain that mankind will one day rise to the challenge before him. We know that the promise of eventual world peace is a solid truth, just waiting for enough people to understand and choose to reach out with us. Peace is truly just a handshake away, all that is lacking is the will to effect change and the desire to leave this world a better place.

The only question is how long before we as a people begin to care about our fellow man? This is the one factor that determines how much the suffering will intensify before we arrive at our predetermined solution. Efforts spent shoring-up the old collapsing political/economic structure only add to the suffering by adding to the length of the suffering and wasting limited resources in futile attempts to repair the rotten, immoral order that compelled mankind’s sprint to self-destruction.

Military adventures, intended to deflect the coming collapse merely increase our national guilt for having failed in our voluntary task of standing watch at the ramparts of freedom, guarding the rights of God’s creation with one arm, while we killed and indiscriminately erased both people and human rights with the other strong arm. Our military became our means of plundering our brothers’ resources and rights, because we were trusted it to defend our friends against foreign aggressors.

We reach-out our hand to both friend and foe, expecting commerce, while preparing to wage covert war upon them. We buy our friends in the world, the rest we simply intimidate or secretly undermine. From behind the shield of nearly omnipotent military power we have bribed and browbeat the world into submission to our ideas, our ideology, our economic schemes. Our cutthroat system of buying, selling and extorting our friends based solely on profit instead of need, therefore it is designed to weed-out everyone (regardless of their needs) who don’t have the cash to meet they need. The “haves and have-nots” exclusionary economic system is about to be crushed under the impending weight of the hungry misery it spreads far and wide.

The immorality of the current system will bring forth a new moral economic system from the violence of the old one dying. Each war or epidemic of violence that wracks the nations is a cry for help, as a segment of society explodes as a result of the local contradictions.


The war on Pakistan is a case in point. Here we have compelled our most faithful ally to engage in full-scale civil war as the means to salvage our failing economic order, by way of seizing the Caspian oil and gas reserves. We have forced Pakistan onto a path towards its own destruction as a feeble-minded calculated gamble to avert our own deserved dissolution. It seems only logical that a nation which feeds its own insatiable appetite for more of everything by depriving the poorest of the poor nations of the little that they have to call their own, would seek to avert its own profit loss by spreading death and suffering amongst the very people who have time and again proven to be among its best friends.

History has proven that some of America’s most trusted friends and allies have been the recipients of her most insidious and deadly intrigues. Pakistani leaders are delusional if they think that their friendship with the United States is stronger than that of Italy, or Germany.

The CIA turned Pakistan into the “epicenter of terrorism” for a reason. That reason went way beyond the mission against the Soviets, or else the training camps would have been shut-down and some attempt would have been made to clean-up the mess they had made when the Russians left Afghanistan. The CIA kept the camps and the madrassas running, turning-out thousands of good jihadis. By relying on the factor of “deniability,” they put the training camps in Pakistani hands. This should have been understood by Pakistan’s leaders for what it was, a euphemistic way to express the reality that the Army and the ISI were always intended to be America’s scapegoat. That time has come.

America has turned the tables on Pakistan. Just as Pakistan has used their proxy army, the local Taliban to stage running battles (some were for real), in order to fool the United States about Pakistani intentions in the war on terror, the new administration is using their own creation, the “Pakistani Taliban” (TTP), to call the Army’s bluff about its latest war in its tribal region. The generals can no longer get away with merely chasing the local Taliban from one agency into another, or anything less than waging total war in all of FATA and the NWFP. Pakistan’s “double-game” is over, while America’s double-games have barely begun.

Gen. Kayani has been trying to follow in Musharraf’s footsteps, running a limited pretend all-out war production, even following the same order of the previous war on Waziristan, tribal jirgas, lashkars, economic siege, etc. The General’s neatly dressed, never dirty, determined-looking soldiers faithfully posed for countless publicity shots, putting on a great show for the international circus media. Army spokesmen claim to have killed 1,500 terrorists in Malakand and elsewhere, always taking place beyond the range of the camera’s lens. There are no “embedded reporters” in Pakistan. The only news coming out of the region is approved after passing through several layers of filtering by the controlling governments there, especially by the one all-controlling super government. If Pakistan is really out to get Mehsud, as Kayani boasted, then it is because that is what Obama wants Pakistan to do.

The Predator strikes are the Pakistani strategy, intended to ease their citizenry into a renewed fight in S. Waziristan. (SEE: Paramilitary Pretense, Who Controls the Predators?) The last two attempts to carry the operation into the militant home base were met by fierce resistance on the ground, as well as in Pakistan’s streets. The people became so enraged that this path of slowly boiling Pakistan’s “frogs” became the only feasible alternative. This theory means that Mehsud is either an asset of the ISI or their CIA bosses. And the regular terror attacks upon Shiites and their shrines, even attacks on outposts of the Frontier Corp are likely the work of the ISI, just as the militants have been claiming in various interviews. As unlikely as this all seems, no other theory explains the curious behavior of Pakistan’s government and military and mountains of circumstantial evidence linking the ISI to the militants.

“So while Pakistan’s dysfunction is entirely Pakistan’s fault, American naivete cannot get a pass because Pakistan is a basket case. In the Age of Obama, America has to do better. Anyone that was really interested in debilitating the Punjabi-dominated, Hindu-hating, right-leaning, military-dominated Pakistani establishment would have to be recklessly foolish if it went and helped rebrand the Pakistan army in the wake of eight years of Musharraf and a devastating and humiliating defeat at the hands of the country’s lawyers. Yet that’s exactly what President Zardari has done since the May 8 offensive was launched into Swat. The Swat offensive has helped rehabilitate the image of the military.”

If Pakistan was really pursuing a policy of “divide and rule” in its negotiations with Mullah Nazir, seeking to separate the powerful warlord from Baitullah Mehsud before launching a new war in S. Waziristan against him, then the Army would not have allowed the continuing Predator attacks on Nazir to take place, or go unanswered. None of this happened. If they were serious about overtures made to the Wana warlord then they most certainly would not have shelled his offices.

Obama is driving the former enemies together. This is Langley’s intention. Mullah Nazir has not been the sole target of drone attacks for the past year to thwart Pakistan’s peace initiatives with the militants (since Washington controls everything Islamabad does), the reason is much more sinister than that.

If the United States government was truly at odds with the Army over American attacks upon Pakistani citizens, carried-out in order to sabotage Pakistan’s war plans, then there would be swift reprisals, because such an affront to Pakistan’s sovereignty would be far worse than merely “counter-productive.” Everything is going according to the Imperial game plan–American drones attack all pro-Pakistani militant leaders, ignoring everyone who is killing Pakistanis. The targeted leaders coalesce into a powerful, motivated union.

The generous benefactors of Maulana Fazlullah and his TNSM forces were sponsors of state terrorism, directed mostly at girls’ schools and CD shops in the North West Region. Their murderous rampage and deceptive Shariah pacts forced Army intervention. Predator attacks upon Mullah Nazir intensify, until he begins to fight back, forcing the Army to scrap plans to divide the Taliban as a means to avoid a massive tribal war, focusing only on Mehsud. Meanwhile, some unknown outfit bombs Shia mosques and shopping areas (Nazir blames the attacks upon the Army), stoking the war in Kurram. Bahadur honors his pact with Nazir and Mehsud; he fights back, forcing the Army to broaden their planned offensive to include N. Waziristan against their better judgment.

Never once, do the generals complain, or offer resistance to American violations of sovereignty. Instead, they follow the orders of their American masters, while the President of Pakistan continues to represent the President of the United States, instead of his own people, who are being killed by the dozens and the hundreds by the good old USA!

Hard as they may try to set their own course, Pakistan’s generals have surrendered their souls to the devil when they plotted with American generals to deceive their countrymen into passively, even enthusiastically accepting the new war. The war in Waziristan (both North and South) will be fought on Obama’s terms.
According to Army spokesman, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas:

“It was thus obvious that the confrontation between the militants and the military in North Waziristan would escalate because the US is unlikely to give up its policy of using drones to target militants positions.”

In other words, for the first time, one of the silent generals dared to explain the Army’s position. ISI concerns about “shaping the battlefield” and confining the war in Wana to Mehsud didn’t amount to a hill of beans to Petraeus and Mullen, Obama insists that Pakistan go against the generals’ better judgment and incite a “tribal uprising.”

The attacks in N. Waziristan by Gul Bahadur and the artillery strikes upon Nazir’s headquarters, both a bi-product of the Predator prevarications, as well as the recent assassination of Pakistan’s other “ace in the hole, Qari Zainuddin, have destroyed Pakistan’s last chance to restore the writ of the state without resorting to all-out civil war. Either Gen. Kayani submits entirely to Obama’s will, including the planned submission to Indian domination afterwards, or he stands-up to the United States, meaning he stops the drone attacks and reveals the entire ugly scenario that the CIA cannot allow anyone to reveal. “Al Qaida” is fake. The war on terror is a fraud. The fraud is a plan for world war. And we all know that neither Gen. Kayani, nor any other Pakistani official will ever reveal the “great game” or the plot to destroy the Islamic Republic.

The United States corporacracy is a monstrous devouring beast and “Islamist terror” is her illegitimate offspring.

Mr. Chamberlin is an American journalist who runs ThereAreNoSunglasses Weblog, Building An American Resistance Movement. This column is reproduced by permission. He can be reached at peterchamberlin@naharnet.com