Pakistan and the "Global War on Terrorism"

Todays Talibans,who were freedom fighters during REAGON/ZIA GOVTS.
By Prof. Michel Chossudovsky
"The new Pakistani general [Musharraf], he`s just been elected -- not elected, this guy took over office. It appears this guy is going to bring stability to the country, and I think that`s good news for the subcontinent." (George W. Bush, 1999)
"In Afghanistan, the freedom fighters are the key to peace. We support the Mujahadeen..." (President Ronald Reagan, Seventh State of the Union Address, January 1988).
The assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto must be understood in a historical context. Since the late 1970s, successive US administrations have contributed to repealing the Rule of Law, destroying Pakistani institutions of civilian and secular government and instating military rule.
During the Cold War and its aftermath, the repeal of democracy and the militarization of the Pakistani State have served US foreign policy objectives. Pakistan is a geopolitical hub from which US sponsored military and covert intelligence operations have been launched.
Pakistan is part of South Asia, at a strategic crossroads, bordering onto the Middle East, Central Asia and the former Soviet republics and within proximity of China`s Western frontier.
Benazir`s father, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, leader of the Pakistan`s People`s Party (PPP) was deposed in a military coup d`Etat on July 5, 1977, which spearheaded Pakistan into a process of virtually uninterrupted military rule. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was subsequently executed, in a judicial assassination, on the orders of the US sponsored military junta.
Under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a secular postcolonial government had developed. Economic nationalism was promoted. The Pakistan People`s Party (PPP) government, which had the support of a large majority of the electorate, was committed to a broad program of economic, social an institutional reforms.
From his early days as foreign minister in the 1960s, Bhutto had called for an independent and non-aligned foreign policy, free of US encroachment as well as the closing down of US military bases. In the course of the 1970s, a nationalization program of key industries under the PPP government was carried out, which undermined the interests of multinational capital.
In the Aftermath of the 1977 Military Coup
Following the 1977 military coup, the structures of democratic government were dismantled. The Constitution was abolished and martial law was established under the rule of General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq who became President in 1978.
The postcolonial political process had been reversed. At the outset of the Zia-ul-Haq regime, the populist PPP nationalization and agrarian reforms of the Bhutto era were reversed and undone.
In turn, the new military rulers sought, with Washington`s support, to undermine the secular structures of the Pakistani State.
Islamism became embedded in the functioning of the State under military rule. The tenets of "Islamic fundamentalism" sponsored by US intelligence were adopted by the military dictatorship of General Zia, with a view to undermining the structures of civilian government and the Rule of Law.
In 1980, the Parliament was replaced by a bogus consultative assembly, the Majlis-e-Shoora composed of scholars and professionals, all of whom were appointed by President Zia. A reign of terror marked by arbitrary arrests and imprisonment was installed in the name of Islam.
State violence under military rule supported the concurrent implementation of "free market" reforms under the helm of the IMF and the World Bank. IMF sponsored macro-economic reforms contributed to destroying the fabric of Pakistan`s economy. The external debt spiraled. Poverty became rampant. The commercial banking system was largely taken over by Western financial institutions.
Since 1977, a military dictatorship has largely prevailed. The short-lived democratically elected governments of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif did not, in a meaningful way, break the continuity of authoritarian military rule. Both Sharif and Bhutto served US interests and accepted the economic diktats of the IMF and the World Bank.
Pakistan`s Role in the Soviet-Afghan War
The Soviet-Afghan war was part of a CIA covert agenda initiated during the Carter administration, which consisted in actively supporting and financing the Islamic brigades, later known as Al Qaeda. The Pakistani military regime played from the outset in the late 1970s, a key role in US sponsored military and intelligence operations in Afghanistan. in the post-Cold war era, this central role of Pakistan in US intelligence operations was extended to the broader Central Asia- Middle East region.
The 1977 military coup in Pakistan, leading to the demise of the PPP government of Ali Bhutto, was a precondition for the launching of the CIA`s covert war in Afghanistan.
In April 1978, the People`s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), seized power in Afghanistan in a popular insurrection directed against the dictatorship of President Mohammed Daud Khan. The PDPA government instigated a land reform program, expanded education and health programs and actively supported women`s rights. Afghanistan`s relationship with the Soviet Union was also strengthened.
The CIA`s covert operation was intended to undermine and ultimately destroy the PDPA government, while also curtailing the influence of the Soviet Union in Central Asia. CIA covert support to the Islamic brigades was also instrumental in destroying the foundations of secular civilian government.
From the outset of the Soviet Afghan war in 1979, Pakistan under military rule actively supported the Islamic brigades. In close liaison with the CIA, Pakistan`s military intelligence, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), became a powerful organization, a parallel government, wielding tremendous power and influence.
America`s covert war in Afghanistan, using Pakistan as a launch pad, was initiated during the Carter administration prior to the Soviet "invasion":
Acording to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention." (Former National Security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, Interview with Nouvel Observateur, 15-21 January 1998)
In the published memoirs of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who held the position of deputy CIA Director at the height of the Soviet Afghan war, US intelligence was directly involved from the outset, prior to the Soviet invasion, in channeling aid to the Islamic brigades.
With CIA backing and the funneling of massive amounts of U.S. military aid, the Pakistani ISI had developed into a "parallel structure wielding enormous power over all aspects of government". (Dipankar Banerjee, "Possible Connection of ISI With Drug Industry", India Abroad, 2 December 1994). The ISI had a staff composed of military and intelligence officers, bureaucrats, undercover agents and informers, estimated at 150,000. (Ibid)
Meanwhile, CIA operations had also reinforced the Pakistani military regime led by General Zia Ul Haq:
Relations between the CIA and the ISI had grown increasingly warm following [General] Zia`s ouster of Bhutto and the advent of the military regime. … During most of the Afghan war, Pakistan was more aggressively anti-Soviet than even the United States. Soon after the Soviet military invaded Afghanistan in 1980, Zia [ul Haq] sent his ISI chief to destabilize the Soviet Central Asian states. The CIA only agreed to this plan in October 1984.(Ibid)
The ISI operating virtually as an affiliate of the CIA, played a central role in channeling support to Islamic paramilitary groups in Afghanistan and subsequently in the Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union.
Acting on behalf of the CIA, the ISI was also involved in the recruitment and training of the Mujahideen. In the ten year period from 1982 to 1992, some 35,000 Muslims from 43 Islamic countries were recruited to fight in the Afghan jihad. The madrassas in Pakistan, financed by Saudi charities, were also set up with US support with a view to "inculcating Islamic values". "The camps became virtual universities for future Islamic radicalism," (Ahmed Rashid, The Taliban). Guerilla training under CIA-ISI auspices included targeted assassinations and car bomb attacks.
Weapons` shipments "were sent by the Pakistani army and the ISI to rebel camps in the North West Frontier Province near the Afghanistan border. The governor of the province is Lieutenant General Fazle Haq, who [according to Alfred McCoy] . allowed "hundreds of heroin refineries to set up in his province." Beginning around 1982, Pakistani army trucks carrying CIA weapons from Karachi often pick up heroin in Haq`s province and return loaded with heroin. They are protected from police search by ISI papers. (1982-1989: US Turns Blind Eye to BCCI and Pakistani Government Involvement in Heroin Trade See also McCoy, 2003, p. 477) .

Osama Bin Laden:::

Osama bin Laden, America`s bogyman, was recruited by the CIA in 1979 at the very outset of the US sponsored jihad. He was 22 years old and was trained in a CIA sponsored guerilla training camp.
During the Reagan administration, Osama, who belonged to the wealthy Saudi Bin Laden family was put in charge of raising money for the Islamic brigades. Numerous charities and foundations were created. The operation was coordinated by Saudi intelligence, headed by Prince Turki al-Faisal, in close liaison with the CIA. The money derived from the various charities were used to finance the recruitment of Mujahieen volunteers. Al Qaeda, the base in Arabic was a data bank of volunteers who had enlisted to fight in the Afghan jihad. That data base was initially held by Osama bin Laden.
The Reagan Administration supports "Islamic Fundamentalism"
Pakistan`s ISI was used as a "go-between". CIA covert support to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan operated indirectly through the Pakistani ISI, --i.e. the CIA did not channel its support directly to the Mujahideen. In other words, for these covert operations to be "successful", Washington was careful not to reveal the ultimate objective of the "jihad", which consisted in destroying the Soviet Union.
In December 1984, the Sharia Law (Islamic jurisprudence) was established in Pakistan following a rigged referendum launched by President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. Barely a few months later, in March 1985, President Ronald Reagan issued National Security Decision Directive 166 (NSDD 166), which authorized "stepped-up covert military aid to the Mujahideen" as well a support to religious indoctrination.
The imposition of The Sharia in Pakistan and the promotion of "radical Islam" was a deliberate US policy serving American geopolitical interests in South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. Many present-day "Islamic fundamentalist organizations" in the Middle East and Central Asia, were directly or indirectly the product of US covert support and financing, often channeled through foundations from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. Missions from the Wahhabi secto of conservative Islam in Saudi Arabia were put in charge of running the CIA sponsored madrassas in Northern Pakistan.
Under NSDD 166, a series of covert CIA-ISI operations was launched.

The US supplied weapons to the Islamic brigades through the ISI. CIA and ISI officials would meet at ISI headquarters in Rawalpindi to coordinate US support to the Mujahideen. Under NSDD 166, the procurement of US weapons to the Islamic insurgents increased from 10,000 tons of arms and ammunition in 1983 to 65,000 tons annually by 1987. "In addition to arms, training, extensive military equipment including military satellite maps and state-of-the-art communications equipment" (University Wire, 7 May 2002).

Ronald Reagan meets Afghan Mujahideen Commanders at the White House in 1983 (Reagan Archives)
With William Casey as director of the CIA, NSDD 166 was described as the largest covert operation in US history:

The U.S. supplied support package had three essential components-organization and logistics, military technology, and ideological support for sustaining and encouraging the Afghan resistance....
U.S. counterinsurgency experts worked closely with the Pakistan`s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in organizing Mujahideen groups and in planning operations inside Afghanistan.
... But the most important contribution of the U.S. was to ... bring in men and material from around the Arab world and beyond. The most hardened and ideologically dedicated men were sought on the logic that they would be the best fighters. Advertisements, paid for from CIA funds, were placed in newspapers and newsletters around the world offering inducements and motivations to join the Jihad. (Pervez Hoodbhoy, Afghanistan and the Genesis of the Global Jihad, Peace Research, 1 May 2005)
Religious Indoctrination

Under NSDD 166, US assistance to the Islamic brigades channeled through Pakistan was not limited to bona fide military aid. Washington also supported and financed by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the process of religious indoctrination, largely to secure the demise of secular institutions:
... the United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation.
The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system`s core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books,..
The White House defends the religious content, saying that Islamic principles permeate Afghan culture and that the books "are fully in compliance with U.S. law and policy." Legal experts, however, question whether the books violate a constitutional ban on using tax dollars to promote religion.
... AID officials said in interviews that they left the Islamic materials intact because they feared Afghan educators would reject books lacking a strong dose of Muslim thought. The agency removed its logo and any mention of the U.S. government from the religious texts, AID spokeswoman Kathryn Stratos said.
"It`s not AID`s policy to support religious instruction," Stratos said. "But we went ahead with this project because the primary purpose . . . is to educate children, which is predominantly a secular activity."
... Published in the dominant Afghan languages of Dari and Pashtun, the textbooks were developed in the early 1980s under an AID grant to the University of Nebraska -Omaha and its Center for Afghanistan Studies. The agency spent $ 51 million on the university`s education programs in Afghanistan from 1984 to 1994." (Washington Post, 23 March 2002)
The Role of the NeoCons
There is continuity. The architects of the covert operation in support of "Islamic fundamentalism" launched during the Reagan presidency played a key role in role in launching the "Global War on Terrorism" in the wake of 9/11.
Several of the NeoCons of the Bush Junior Administration were high ranking officials during the Reagan presidency.
Richard Armitage, was Deputy Secretary of State during George W. Bush`s first term (2001-2004). He played a central key role in post 9/11 negotiations with Pakistan leading up to the October 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. During the Reagan era, he held the position of Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy. In this capacity, he played a key role in the implementation of NSDD 163 while also ensuring liaison with the Pakistani military and intelligence apparatus.
Meanwhile, Paul Wolfowitz was at the State Department in charge of a foreign policy team composed, among others, of Lewis Libby, Francis Fukuyama and Zalmay Khalilzad.
Wolfowitz`s group was also involved in laying the conceptual groundwork of US covert support to Islamic parties and organizations in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Bush`s Secretary of Defence Robert Gates also was also involved in setting the groundwork for CIA covert operations. He was appointed Deputy Director for Intelligence by Ronald Reagan in 1982, and Deputy Director of the CIA in 1986, a position which he held until 1989. Gates played a key role in the formulation of NSDD 163, which established a consistent framework for promoting Islamic fundamentalism and channeling covert support to the Islamic brigades. He was also involved in the Iran Contra scandal.
The Iran Contra Operation
Richard Gates, Colin Powell and Richard Armitage, among others, were also involved in the Iran-Contra operation.
Armitage was in close liaison with Colonel Oliver North. His deputy and chief anti-terrorist official Noel Koch was part of the team set up by Oliver North.
Of significance, the Iran-Contra operation was also tied into the process of channeling covert support to the Islamic brigades in Afghanistan. The Iran Contra scheme served several related foreign policy:
1) procurement of weapons to Iran thereby feeding the Iraq-Iran war,

2) support to the Nicaraguan Contras,

3) support to the Islamic brigades in Afghanistan, channeled via Pakistan`s ISI.

Following the delivery of the TOW anti-tank missiles to Iran, the proceeds of these sales were deposited in numbered bank accounts and the money was used to finance the Nicaraguan Contras. and the Mujahideen:

"The Washington Post reported that profits from the Iran arms sales were deposited in one CIA-managed account into which the U.S. and Saudi Arabia had placed $250 million apiece. That money was disbursed not only to the contras in Central America but to the rebels fighting Soviet troops in Afghanistan." (US News & World Report, 15 December 1986).
Although Lieutenant General Colin Powell, was not directly involved in the arms` transfer negotiations, which had been entrusted to Oliver North, he was among "at least five men within the Pentagon who knew arms were being transferred to the CIA." (The Record, 29 December 1986). In this regard, Powell was directly instrumental in giving the "green light" to lower-level officials in blatant violation of Congressional procedures. According to the New York Times, Colin Powell took the decision (at the level of military procurement), to allow the delivery of weapons to Iran:
Hurriedly, one of the men closest to Secretary of Defense Weinberger, Maj. Gen. Colin Powell, bypassed the written ``focal point system`` procedures and ordered the Defense Logistics Agency [responsible for procurement] to turn over the first of 2,008 TOW missiles to the CIA., which acted as cutout for delivery to Iran" (New York Times, 16 February 1987)

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was also implicated in the Iran-Contra Affair.

The Golden Crescent Drug Trade

The history of the drug trade in Central Asia is intimately related to the CIA`s covert operations. Prior to the Soviet-Afghan war, opium production in Afghanistan and Pakistan was directed to small regional markets. There was no local production of heroin. (Alfred McCoy, Drug Fallout: the CIA`s Forty Year Complicity in the Narcotics Trade. The Progressive, 1 August 1997).

Alfred McCoy`s study confirms that within two years of the onslaught of the CIA operation in Afghanistan, "the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands became the world`s top heroin producer." (Ibid) Various Islamic paramilitary groups and organizations were created. The proceeds of the Afghan drug trade, which was protected by the CIA, were used to finance the various insurgencies:
"Under CIA and Pakistani protection, Pakistan military and Afghan resistance opened heroin labs on the Afghan and Pakistani border. According to The Washington Post of May 1990, among the leading heroin manufacturers were Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an Afghan leader who received about half of the covert arms that the U.S. shipped to Pakistan. Although there were complaints about Hekmatyar`s brutality and drug trafficking within the ranks of the Afghan resistance of the day, the CIA maintained an uncritical alliance and supported him without reservation or restraint.
Once the heroin left these labs in Pakistan`s northwest frontier, the Sicilian Mafia imported the drugs into the U.S., where they soon captured sixty percent of the U.S. heroin market. That is to say, sixty percent of the U.S. heroin supply came indirectly from a CIA operation. During the decade of this operation, the 1980s, the substantial DEA contingent in Islamabad made no arrests and participated in no seizures, allowing the syndicates a de facto free hand to export heroin. By contrast, a lone Norwegian detective, following a heroin deal from Oslo to Karachi, mounted an investigation that put a powerful Pakistani banker known as President Zia`s surrogate son behind bars. The DEA in Islamabad got nobody, did nothing, stayed away.
Former CIA operatives have admitted that this operation led to an expansion of the Pakistan-Afghanistan heroin trade. In 1995 the former CIA Director of this Afghan operation, Mr. Charles Cogan, admitted sacrificing the drug war to fight the Cold War. "Our main mission was to do as much damage to the Soviets. We didn`t really have the resources or the time to devote to an investigation of the drug trade," he told Australian television. "I don`t think that we need to apologize for this. Every situation has its fallout. There was fallout in terms of drugs, yes, but the main objective was accomplished. The Soviets left Afghanistan." (Alfred McCoy, Testimony before the Special Seminar focusing on allegations linking CIA secret operations and drug trafficking-convened February 13, 1997, by Rep. John Conyers, Dean of the Congressional Black Caucus)
Lucrative Narcotics Trade in the Post Cold War Era

The drug trade has continued unabated during the post Cold war years. Afghanistan became the major supplier of heroin to Western markets, in fact almost the sole supplier: more than 90 percent of the heroin sold Worldwide originates in Afghanistan. This lucrative contraband is tied into Pakistani politics and the militarization of the Pakistani State. It also has a direct bearing on the structure of the Pakistani economy and its banking and financial institutions, which from the outset of the Golden Crescent drug trade have been involved in extensive money laundering operations, which are protected by the Pakistani military and intelligence apparatus:

According to the US State Department International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (2006) (quoted in Daily Times, 2 March 2006),

“Pakistani criminal networks play a central role in the transshipment of narcotics and smuggled goods from Afghanistan to international markets. Pakistan is a major drug-transit country. The proceeds of narcotics trafficking and funding for terrorist activities are often laundered by means of the alternative system called hawala. ... .
“Repeatedly, a network of private unregulated charities has also emerged as a significant source of illicit funds for international terrorist networks,” the report pointed out. ... "

The hawala system and the charities are but the tip of the iceberg. According to the State Department report, "the State Bank of Pakistan has frozen more twenty years] a meager $10.5 million "belonging to 12 entities and individuals linked to Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda or the Taliban". What the report fails to mention is that the bulk of the proceeds of the Afghan drug trade are laundered in bona fide Western banking institutions.

The Taliban Repress the Drug Trade

A major and unexpected turnaround in the CIA sponsored drug trade occurred in 2000.
The Taliban government which came to power in 1996 with Washington`s support, implemented in 2000-2001 a far-reaching opium eradication program with the support of the United Nations which served to undermine a multibillion dollar trade. (For further details see, Michel Chossudovsky, America`s War on Terrorism, Global Research, 2005).
In 2001 prior to the US-led invasion, opium production under the Taliban eradication program declined by more than 90 percent.

In the immediate wake of the US led invasion, the Bush administration ordered that the opium harvest not be destroyed on the fabricated pretext that this would undermine the military government of Pervez Musharraf.

"Several sources inside Capitol Hill noted that the CIA opposes the destruction of the Afghan opium supply because to do so might destabilize the Pakistani government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf. According to these sources, Pakistani intelligence had threatened to overthrow President Musharraf if the crops were destroyed. ...

`If they [the CIA] are in fact opposing the destruction of the Afghan opium trade, it`ll only serve to perpetuate the belief that the CIA is an agency devoid of morals; off on their own program rather than that of our constitutionally elected government`" .(NewsMax.com, 28 March 2002)

Since the US led invasion, opium production has increased 33 fold from 185 tons in 2001 under the Taliban to 6100 tons in 2006. Cultivated areas have increased 21 fold since the 2001 US-led invasion. (Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 6 January 2006)
In 2007, Afghanistan supplied approximately 93% of the global supply of heroin. The proceeds (in terms of retail value) of the Afghanistan drug trade are estimated (2006) to be in excess of 190 billion dollars a year, representing a significant fraction of the global trade in narcotics.(Ibid)
The proceeds of this lucrative multibillion dollar contraband are deposited in Western banks. Almost the totality of the revenues accrue to corporate interests and criminal syndicates outside Afghanistan.
The laundering of drug money constitutes a multibillion dollar activity, which continues to be protected by the CIA and the ISI. In the wake of the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan.
In retrospect, one of the major objectives of the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was to restore the drug trade.
The militarization of Pakistan serves powerful political, financial and criminal interests underlying the drug trade. US foreign policy tends to support these powerful interests. The CIA continues to protect the Golden Crescent narcotics trade. Despite his commitment to eradicating the drug trade, opium production under the regime of Afghan President Hamid Karzai has skyrocketed.

The Assassination of General Zia Ul-Haq >:))))))))
In August 1988, President Zia was killed in an air crash together with US Ambassador to Pakistan Arnold Raphel and several of Pakistan`s top generals. The circumstances of the air crash remain shrouded in mystery.
Following Zia`s death, parliamentary elections were held and Benazir Bhutto was sworn in as Prime Minister in December 1988. She was subsequently removed from office by Zia`s successor, President Ghulam Ishaq Khan on the grounds of alleged corruption. In 1993, she was re-elected and was again removed from office in 1996 on the orders of President Farooq Leghari.
Continuity has been maintained throughout. Under the short-lived post-Zia elected governments of Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, the central role of the military-intelligence establishment and its links to Washington were never challenged.
Both Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif served US foreign policy interests. While in power, both democratically elected leaders, nonetheless supported the continuity of military rule. As prime minister from 1993 to 1996, Benazir Bhutto "advocated a conciliatory policy toward Islamists, especially the Taliban in Afghanistan" which were being supported by Pakistan`s ISI (See F. William Engdahl, Global Research, January 2008)
Benazir Bhutto`s successor as Prime Minister, Mia Muhammad Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) was deposed in 1999 in a US supported coup d`Etat led by General Pervez Musharraf.
The 1999 coup was instigated by General Pervez Musharaf, with the support of the Chief of General Staff, Lieutenant General Mahmoud Ahmad, who was subsequently appointed to the key position of head of military intelligence (ISI).
From the outset of the Bush administration in 2001, General Ahmad developed close ties not only with his US counterpart CIA director George Tenet, but also with key members of the US government including Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, not to mention Porter Goss, who at the time was Chairman of the House Committee on Intelligence. Ironically, Mahmoud Ahmad is also known, according to a September 2001 FBI report, for his suspected role in supporting and financing the alleged 9/11 terrorists as well as his links to Al Qaeda and the Taliban. (See Michel Chossudovsky, America`s "war on Terrorism, Global Research, Montreal, 2005)

Concluding Remarks

These various "terrorist" organizations were created as a result of CIA support. They are not the product of religion. The project to establish "a pan-Islamic Caliphate" is part of a carefully devised intelligence operation.
CIA support to Al Qaeda was not in any way curtailed at the end of the Cold War. In fact quite the opposite. The earlier pattern of covert support not only extended, it took on a global thrust and became increasingly sophisticated.
The "Global War on Terrorism" is a complex and intricate intelligence construct. The covert support provided to "Islamic extremist groups" is part of an imperial agenda. It purports to weaken and eventually destroy secular and civilian governmental institutions, while also contributing to vilifying Islam. It is an instrument of colonization which seeks to undermine sovereign nation-states and transform countries into territories.
For the intelligence operation to be successful, however, the various Islamic organizations created and trained by the CIA must remain unaware of the role they are performing on geopolitical chessboard, on behalf of Washington.
Over the years, these organizations have indeed acquired a certain degree of autonomy and independence, in relation to their US-Pakistani sponsors. That appearance of "independence", however, is crucial; it is an integral part of the covert intelligence operation. According to former CIA agent Milton Beardman the Mujahideen were invariably unaware of the role they were performing on behalf of Washington. In the words of bin Laden (quoted by Beardman): "neither I, nor my brothers saw evidence of American help". (Weekend Sunday (NPR); Eric Weiner, Ted Clark; 16 August 1998).

"Motivated by nationalism and religious fervor, the Islamic warriors were unaware that they were fighting the Soviet Army on behalf of Uncle Sam. While there were contacts at the upper levels of the intelligence hierarchy, Islamic rebel leaders in theatre had no contacts with Washington or the CIA." (Michel Chossudovsky, America`s War on Terrorism, Chapter 2).
The fabrication of "terrorism" --including covert support to terrorists-- is required to provide legitimacy to the "war on terrorism".

The various fundamentalist and paramilitary groups involved in US sponsored "terrorist" activities are "intelligence assets". In the wake of 9/11, their designated function as "intelligence assets" is to perform their role as credible "enemies of America".
Under the Bush administration, the CIA continues to support (via Pakistan`s ISI) several Pakistani based Islamic groups. The ISI is known to support Jamaat a-Islami, which is also present in South East Asia, Lashkar-e-Tayya­ba, Jehad a-Kashmiri, Hizbul-Mujahidin and Jaish-e-Mohammed.
The Islamic groups created by the CIA are also intended to rally public support in Muslim countries. The underlying objective is to create divisions within national societies throughout the Middle East and Central Asia, while also triggering sectarian strife within Islam, ultimately with a view to curbing the development of a broad based secular mass resistance, which would challenge US imperial ambitions.
This function of an outside enemy is also an essential part of war propaganda required to galvanize Western public opinion. Without an enemy, a war cannot be fought. US foreign policy needs to fabricate an enemy, to justify its various military interventions in the Middle East and Central Asia. An enemy is required to justify a military agenda, which consists in " going after Al Qaeda". The fabrication and vilification of the enemy are required to justify military action.

The existence of an outside enemy sustains the illusion that the "war on terrorism" is real. It justifies and presents military intervention as a humanitarian operation based on the right to self-defense. It upholds the illusion of a "conflict of civilizations". The underlying purpose ultimately is to conceal the real economic and strategic objectives behind the broader Middle East Central Asian war.
Historically, Pakistan has played a central role in "war on terrorism". Pakistan constitutes from Washington`s standpoint a geopolitical hub. It borders onto Afghanistan and Iran. It has played a crucial role in the conduct of US and allied military operations in Afghanistan as well as in the context of the Pentagon`s war plans in relation to Iran.
Pakistan remains a training ground for the US sponsored Islamic brigades in the Middle East, Africa, Central Asia, South and South East Asia
President Pervez Musharraf, is described by the Western media as "a U.S. ally in its battle against terrorism" Realities are turned upside down. The Pakistani military regime has consistently, since the late 1970s, abetted and financed "Islamic terrorist organizations" on Washington`s behalf.
End.
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Michel Chossudovsky is the author of the international bestseller America`s "War on Terrorism" Global Research, 2005. He is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Center for Research on Globalization.
PART 1 OF THIS ARTICLE..............

The Destabilization of Pakistan
By Prof. Michel Chossudovsky

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto has created conditions which contribute to the ongoing destabilization and fragmentation of Pakistan as a Nation.

The process of US sponsored "regime change", which normally consists in the re-formation of a fresh proxy government under new leaders has been broken. Discredited in the eyes of Pakistani public opinion, General Pervez Musharaf cannot remain in the seat of political power. But at the same time, the fake elections supported by the "international community" scheduled for January 2008, even if they were to be carried out, would not be accepted as legitimate, thereby creating a political impasse.

There are indications that the assassination of Benazir Bhutto was anticipated by US officials:

"It has been known for months that the Bush-Cheney administration and its allies have been maneuvering to strengthen their political control of Pakistan, paving the way for the expansion and deepening of the “war on terrorism” across the region.

Various American destabilization plans, known for months by officials and analysts, proposed the toppling of Pakistan's military...

The assassination of Bhutto appears to have been anticipated. There were even reports of “chatter” among US officials about the possible assassinations of either Pervez Musharraf or Benazir Bhutto, well before the actual attempts took place. (Larry Chin, Global Research, 29 December 2007)

Political Impasse

"Regime change" with a view to ensuring continuity under military rule is no longer the main thrust of US foreign policy. The regime of Pervez Musharraf cannot prevail. Washington's foreign policy course is to actively promote the political fragmentation and balkanization of Pakistan as a nation.

A new political leadership is anticipated but in all likelihood it will take on a very different shape, in relation to previous US sponsored regimes. One can expect that Washington will push for a compliant political leadership, with no commitment to the national interest, a leadership which will serve US imperial interests, while concurrently contributing under the disguise of "decentralization", to the weakening of the central government and the fracture of Pakistan's fragile federal structure.

The political impasse is deliberate. It is part of an evolving US foreign policy agenda, which favors disruption and disarray in the structures of the Pakistani State. Indirect rule by the Pakistani military and intelligence apparatus is to be replaced by more direct forms of US interference, including an expanded US military presence inside Pakistan.

This expanded military presence is also dictated by the Middle East-Central Asia geopolitical situation and Washington's ongoing plans to extend the Middle East war to a much broader area.

The US has several military bases in Pakistan. It controls the country's air space. According to a recent report: "U.S. Special Forces are expected to vastly expand their presence in Pakistan, as part of an effort to train and support indigenous counter-insurgency forces and clandestine counterterrorism units" (William Arkin, Washington Post, December 2007).

The official justification and pretext for an increased military presence in Pakistan is to extend the "war on terrorism". Concurrently, to justify its counterrorism program, Washington is also beefing up its covert support to the "terrorists."

The Balkanization of Pakistan

Already in 2005, a report by the US National Intelligence Council and the CIA forecast a "Yugoslav-like fate" for Pakistan "in a decade with the country riven by civil war, bloodshed and inter-provincial rivalries, as seen recently in Balochistan." (Energy Compass, 2 March 2005). According to the NIC-CIA, Pakistan is slated to become a "failed state" by 2015, "as it would be affected by civil war, complete Talibanisation and struggle for control of its nuclear weapons". (Quoted by former Pakistan High Commissioner to UK, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Times of India, 13 February 2005):

"Nascent democratic reforms will produce little change in the face of opposition from an entrenched political elite and radical Islamic parties. In a climate of continuing domestic turmoil, the Central government's control probably will be reduced to the Punjabi heartland and the economic hub of Karachi," the former diplomat quoted the NIC-CIA report as saying.

Expressing apprehension, Hasan asked, "are our military rulers working on a similar agenda or something that has been laid out for them in the various assessment reports over the years by the National Intelligence Council in joint collaboration with CIA?" (Ibid)

Continuity, characterized by the dominant role of the Pakistani military and intelligence has been scrapped in favor of political breakup and balkanization.

According to the NIC-CIA scenario, which Washington intends to carry out: "Pakistan will not recover easily from decades of political and economic mismanagement, divisive policies, lawlessness, corruption and ethnic friction," (Ibid) .
The US course consists in fomenting social, ethnic and factional divisions and political fragmentation, including the territorial breakup of Pakistan. This course of action is also dictated by US war plans in relation to both Afghanistan and Iran.

This US agenda for Pakistan is similar to that applied throughout the broader Middle East Central Asian region. US strategy, supported by covert intelligence operations, consists in triggering ethnic and religious strife, abetting and financing secessionist movements while also weakening the institutions of the central government.

The broader objective is to fracture the Nation State and redraw the borders of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Pakistan's Oil and Gas reserves
Pakistan's extensive oil and gas reserves, largely located in Balochistan province, as well as its pipeline corridors are considered strategic by the Anglo-American alliance, requiring the concurrent militarization of Pakistani territory.

Balochistan comprises more than 40 percent of Pakistan's land mass, possesses important reserves of oil and natural gas as well as extensive mineral resources.

The Iran-India pipeline corridor is slated to transit through Balochistan. Balochistan also possesses a deap sea port largely financed by China located at Gwadar, on the Arabian Sea, not far from the Straits of Hormuz where 30 % of the world's daily oil supply moves by ship or pipeline. (Asia News.it, 29 December 2007)

Pakistan has an estimated 25.1 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of proven gas reserves of which 19 trillion are located in Balochistan. Among foreign oil and gas contractors in Balochistan are BP, Italy's ENI, Austria's OMV, and Australia's BHP. It is worth noting that Pakistan's State oil and gas companies, including PPL which has the largest stake in the Sui oil fields of Balochistan are up for privatization under IMF-World Bank supervision.

According to the Oil and Gas Journal (OGJ), Pakistan had proven oil reserves of 300 million barrels, most of which are located in Balochistan. Other estimates place Balochistan oil reserves at an estimated six trillion barrels of oil reserves both on-shore and off-shore (Environment News Service, 27 October 2006) .

Covert Support to Balochistan Separatists

Balochistan's strategic energy reserves have a bearing on the separatist agenda. Following a familiar pattern, there are indications that the Baloch insurgency is being supported and abetted by Britain and the US.

The Baloch national resistance movement dates back to the late 1940s, when Balochistan was invaded by Pakistan. In the current geopolitical context, the separatist movement is in the process of being hijacked by foreign powers.

British intelligence is allegedly providing covert support to Balochistan separatists (which from the outset have been repressed by Pakistan's military). In June 2006, Pakistan's Senate Committee on Defence accused British intelligence of "abetting the insurgency in the province bordering Iran" [Balochistan]..(Press Trust of India, 9 August 2006). Ten British MPs were involved in a closed door session of the Senate Committee on Defence regarding the alleged support of Britain's Secret Service to Baloch separatists (Ibid). Also of relevance are reports of CIA and Mossad support to Baloch rebels in Iran and Southern Afghanistan.

It would appear that Britain and the US are supporting both sides. The US is providing American F-16 jets to the Pakistani military, which are being used to bomb Baloch villages in Balochistan. Meanwhile, British alleged covert support to the separatist movement (according to the Pakistani Senate Committee) contributes to weakening the central government.

The stated purpose of US counter-terrorism is to provide covert support as well as as training to "Liberation Armies" ultimately with a view to destabilizing sovereign governments. In Kosovo, the training of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in the 1990s had been entrusted to a private mercenary company, Military Professional Resources Inc (MPRI), on contract to the Pentagon.

The BLA bears a canny resemblance to Kosovo's KLA, which was financed by the drug trade and supported by the CIA and Germany's Bundes Nachrichten Dienst (BND).

The BLA emerged shortly after the 1999 military coup. It has no tangible links to the Baloch resistance movement, which developed since the late 1940s. An aura of mystery surrounds the leadership of the BLA.




Baloch population in Pink: In Iran, Pakistan and Southern Afghanistan

Washington favors the creation of a "Greater Balochistan" which would integrate the Baloch areas of Pakistan with those of Iran and possibly the Southern tip of Afghanistan (See Map above), thereby leading to a process of political fracturing in both Iran and Pakistan.

"The US is using Balochi nationalism for staging an insurgency inside Iran's Sistan-Balochistan province. The 'war on terror' in Afghanistan gives a useful political backdrop for the ascendancy of Balochi militancy" (See Global Research, 6 March 2007).

Military scholar Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters writing in the June 2006 issue of The Armed Forces Journal, suggests, in no uncertain terms that Pakistan should be broken up, leading to the formation of a separate country: "Greater Balochistan" or "Free Balochistan" (see Map below). The latter would incorporate the Pakistani and Iranian Baloch provinces into a single political entity.

In turn, according to Peters, Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP) should be incorporated into Afghanistan "because of its linguistic and ethnic affinity". This proposed fragmentation, which broadly reflects US foreign policy, would reduce Pakistani territory to approximately 50 percent of its present land area. (See map). Pakistan would also loose a large part of its coastline on the Arabian Sea.

Although the map does not officially reflect Pentagon doctrine, it has been used in a training program at NATO's Defense College for senior military officers. This map, as well as other similar maps, have most probably been used at the National War Academy as well as in military planning circles. (See Mahdi D. Nazemroaya, Global Research, 18 November 2006)

"Lieutenant-Colonel Peters was last posted, before he retired to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, within the U.S. Defence Department, and has been one of the Pentagon’s foremost authors with numerous essays on strategy for military journals and U.S. foreign policy." (Ibid)






It is worth noting that secessionist tendencies are not limited to Balochistan. There are separatist groups in Sindh province, which are largely based on opposition to the Punjabi-dominated military regime of General Pervez Musharraf (For Further details see Selig Harrisson, Le Monde diplomatique, October 2006)

"Strong Economic Medicine": Weakening Pakistan's Central Government

Pakistan has a federal structure based on federal provincial transfers. Under a federal fiscal structure, the central government transfers financial resources to the provinces, with a view to supporting provincial based programs. When these transfers are frozen as occurred in Yugoslavia in January 1990, on orders of the IMF, the federal fiscal structure collapses:

"State revenues that should have gone as transfer payments to the republics [of the Yugoslav federation] went instead to service Belgrade's debt ... . The republics were largely left to their own devices. ... The budget cuts requiring the redirection of federal revenues towards debt servicing, were conducive to the suspension of transfer payments by Belgrade to the governments of the Republics and Autonomous Provinces.

In one fell swoop, the reformers had engineered the final collapse of Yugoslavia's federal fiscal structure and mortally wounded its federal political institutions. By cutting the financial arteries between Belgrade and the republics, the reforms fueled secessionist tendencies that fed on economic factors as well as ethnic divisions, virtually ensuring the de facto secession of the republics. (Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, Second Edition, Global Research, Montreal, 2003, Chapter 17.)

It is by no means accidental that the 2005 National Intelligence Council- CIA report had predicted a "Yugoslav-like fate" for Pakistan pointing to the impacts of "economic mismanagement" as one of the causes of political break-up and balkanization.

"Economic mismanagement" is a term used by the Washington based international financial institutions to describe the chaos which results from not fully abiding by the IMF's Structural Adjustment Program. In actual fact, the "economic mismanagement" and chaos is the outcome of IMF-World Bank prescriptions, which invariably trigger hyperinflation and precipitate indebted countries into extreme poverty.

Pakistan has been subjected to the same deadly IMF "economic medicine" as Yugoslavia: In 1999, in the immediate wake of the coup d'Etat which brought General Pervez Musharaf to the helm of the military government, an IMF economic package, which included currency devaluation and drastic austerity measures, was imposed on Pakistan. Pakistan's external debt is of the order of US$40 billion. The IMF's "debt reduction" under the package was conditional upon the sell-off to foreign capital of the most profitable State owned enterprises (including the oil and gas facilities in Balochistan) at rockbottom prices .

Musharaf's Finance Minister was chosen by Wall Street, which is not an unusual practice. The military rulers appointed at Wall Street's behest, a vice-president of Citigroup, Shaukat Aziz, who at the time was head of CitiGroup's Global Private Banking. (See WSWS.org, 30 October 1999). CitiGroup is among the largest commercial foreign banking institutions in Pakistan.

There are obvious similarities in the nature of US covert intelligence operations applied in country after country in different parts of the so-called "developing World". These covert operation, including the organisation of military coups, are often synchronized with the imposition of IMF-World Bank macro-economic reforms. In this regard, Yugoslavia's federal fiscal structure collapsed in 1990 leading to mass poverty and heightened ethnic and social divisions. The US and NATO sponsored "civil war" launched in mid-1991 consisted in coveting Islamic groups as well as channeling covert support to separatist paramilitary armies in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia.

A similar "civil war" scenario has been envisaged for Pakistan by the National Intelligence Council and the CIA: From the point of view of US intelligence, which has a longstanding experience in abetting separatist "liberation armies", "Greater Albania" is to Kosovo what "Greater Balochistan" is to Pakistan's Southeastern Balochistan province. Similarly, the KLA is Washington's chosen model, to be replicated in Balochistan province.

The Assassination of Benazir Bhutto

Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in Rawalpindi, no ordinary city. Rawalpindi is a military city host to the headquarters of the Pakistani Armed Forces and Military Intelligence (ISI). Ironically Bhutto was assassinated in an urban area tightly controlled and guarded by the military police and the country's elite forces. Rawalpindi is swarming with ISI intelligence officials, which invariably infiltrate political rallies. Her assassination was not a haphazard event.

Without evidence, quoting Pakistan government sources, the Western media in chorus has highlighted the role of Al-Qaeda, while also focusing on the the possible involvement of the ISI.

What these interpretations do not mention is that the ISI continues to play a key role in overseeing Al Qaeda on behalf of US intelligence. The press reports fail to mention two important and well documented facts:

1) the ISI maintains close ties to the CIA. The ISI is virtually an appendage of the CIA.

2) Al Qaeda is a creation of the CIA. The ISI provides covert support to Al Qaeda, acting on behalf of US intelligence.

The involvement of either Al Qaeda and/or the ISI would suggest that US intelligence was cognizant and/or implicated in the assassination plot.

Pakistan: Negligent on Terror?

Pakistan: Negligent on Terror?
By Aryn Baker / Islamabad
TIME.COM

It's almost like a bad joke. A bus driver, a ski lift operator and a gym rat have turned the Islamic world's only nuclear-armed nation upside down. On Saturday Pakistani forces chased militants led by former bus driver Mangal Bagh from the fringes of Peshawar, a provincial capital 30 miles from the border with Afghanistan and a key transit point for vital supplies destined for U.S. and NATO forces fighting the Afghan insurgency. In Swat, a onetime tourist haven 100 miles from the capital, Islamabad, militants set five schoolgirls on fire, torched a primary school and burned down the country's only ski resort. Mullah Fazlullah, leader of the local Taliban chapter, used to work the chairlift. Last year he nearly brought the Pakistani military to its knees in brutal fighting that turned "little Switzerland" into something resembling Afghanistan before the fall of the Taliban in 2001. The government sued for peace. Fazlullah agreed, on the condition that he be able to implement Islamic law in the area. Meanwhile, in Waziristan, followers of Baitullah Mehsud, the physical trainer turned assassin, have slaughtered at least 22 peace negotiators who arrived on behalf of the government seeking to cement a cease-fire accord. Both the CIA and Pakistan's intelligence agencies say he is behind the attack that killed former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in December. Three years ago no one had even heard of these men. What happened?

According to a new Pentagon report released on Friday, Taliban militants in Afghanistan have regrouped after their fall from power and "coalesced into a resilient insurgency." That resilience, according to military officials in Afghanistan, has a lot to do with their ability to find sanctuary in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas along the border. The day before the report's release, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in a press briefing that he had "real concern" that Pakistan was contributing to Afghanistan's instability by failing to prevent militants from crossing into Afghanistan to carry out attacks on coalition forces. Cross-border attacks on U.S. troops in eastern Afghanistan have gone up 40% over the past several months. Gates attributes the increase to Pakistani cease-fire accords with Islamist militants in which the country's coalition government agreed to pull the military out of the militants' areas in exchange for a promise not to attack government institutions. The deals meant that "the pressure was taken off" the militants, who are now "free to be able to cross the border and create problems for us," Gates said.

According to U.S. terrorism experts, the threat to the U.S. emanating from Pakistan's ungoverned tribal areas is comparable to the one it faced from Afghanistan on Sept. 11, 2001. Al-Qaeda "has hundreds of training camps" scattered throughout the region, says a Western official in Pakistan with access to some intelligence reports. "Most are less than an acre in size, so they are difficult to detect." But at the moment, Pakistan has little to no ability to tackle the problem. What it does have is a weak, fractured government whose sole focus is figuring out who is running the country. The parliamentary coalition that eclipsed the former military leader, Pervez Musharraf, spends most of its time in office wrangling over positions of power, neglecting the country's most pressing problems. Any long-term strategy on dealing with militants is being pushed aside. "It's like nobody is minding the store," fumes Shaukat Qadir, a retired brigadier. "If they don't start paying attention, we will be in trouble."

At this point, the Pakistani government's lack of attention borders on negligence. For months militants have taken advantage of the Administration's distraction of consolidating forces around the strategic provincial capital of Peshawar. They have attacked freight trucks ferrying fuel, supplies and even helicopter parts from the southern seaport of Karachi to Afghanistan. The notorious Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has seized on this weakness, exhorting militants in Pakistan to attack American interests there rather than fight across the border. "These days, the Afghan mujahedin have no need for you to come and fight in Afghanistan," he said in a statement obtained by the Afghan news agency Pajhwok. "But we do want you to fight Americans inside Pakistan." The supply convoys, he said, were being used to kill "innocent Afghans and civilians." In Karachi, long-distance truckers have been warned by a Taliban leaflet campaign threatening that "any trawler caught supplying diesel, petrol or goods" destined for foreign forces in Afghanistan "will not only be set on fire, but the driver will also be slaughtered."

The offensive against Mangal Bagh marked the first major military response from the new Pakistani government against militants in the country. While the operation was nominally successful — Bagh and his men were driven from the area and his compound was blown up — it does not bode well for future anti-insurgent activities. Only one militant was killed, and within a few hours of the attack, Bagh was back on his pirate radio station vowing to continue his campaign for the imposition of Shari'a — that is, Islamic law.

The lackluster performance of Pakistani security forces has raised eyebrows elsewhere in the region. Coalition-force officials in Afghanistan have noticed a distinct pattern with some of the more recent cross-border strikes. "The point of origin of the attacks [from Pakistan into Afghanistan] is routinely next to border posts of the Pakistani Frontier Corps," says an official with Western coalition forces in Afghanistan. "Either they are ignoring the fact that Taliban are fighting within their areas or they are complicit." Furthermore, details have emerged of deals involving Pakistani officials that specifically allow cross-border attacks in Afghanistan on the condition that those militants do not conduct any attacks in Pakistan. "People are kidding themselves in Pakistan if they think they can solve their insurgency problem by sending it across the border," says the military coalition official. "Any short-term gain has to be offset by the longer-term fact that anyone pursuing the fight across the border is not someone you want in your country."

The U.S. is in a difficult position, says Seth Jones, a terrorism expert at the Rand Corp. No one knows who is in power in Pakistan, so the Americans are dealing with everybody, which essentially means no one. Pakistan has become the neglected stepchild, only third or fourth in a list of U.S. strategic interests that start with Iraq and Afghanistan. "Pakistan should be No. 1," says Jones. "The most serious homeland threat to the United States from abroad comes from militant groups operating in Pakistan. That in itself means that Pakistan should be at the top of U.S. interests for all." —

Editorial: Unfortunate opposition to ‘action’ in Bara
DAILY TIMES
The PMLN and the JUI(S) have opposed the Bara Operation — or ‘action’ as the government would have us believe — because they were not “consulted” before the operation was undertaken. The third coalition partner, the ruling ANP in the NWFP, says it was consulted in two meetings that took place in Peshawar but insists that Peshawar is not “under siege” from the Bara warlord, Mangal Bagh. It apparently has no opinion on the Bara Operation because “Khyber is outside the jurisdiction of the NWFP government”.
The PMLN view was expressed by an outraged Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan in the National Assembly. It was elaborated by its leader from Peshawar, Mr Iqbal Zafar Jhagra, on TV when he said that apart from the fact that his party was kept out of the loop it had always opposed military operation against Pakistan’s “own people”. He insisted that the only way to deal with the situation in the Tribal Areas was through the “political process” (whatever that means), negotiation and peace agreements.
As for the position of the JUI(S), it has always been well known. It represents not so much Islam as the Pakhtun population living in the Tribal Areas and Balochistan. Its leader Maulana Ghafur Haideri has repeated the plaint that his party was not consulted. He went on to say that military action would be counter-productive and his party would not support it. But will the JUI(S) leave the coalition on this issue? No. Much the same response can be expected from the PMLN. Mr Jhagra made it clear that his party would not abandon the coalition. He must however be conscious of the fact that his party’s status in the coalition is different from that of the other partners who are also a part of the government. By getting out of the government, however, the PMLN has obtained the freedom to openly disagree with decisions taken by the prime minister and his cabinet.
The ANP and the JUI(S) have taken positions that are likely to encourage the building up of opposition to the operation among the Pakhtun. Indirectly, the ANP has opted out of the Islamabad policy on the Taliban, by defending its “peace deals” and by denying that the settled areas are under threat or that Peshawar is under siege from the terrorists. This ambivalence can only be understood in light of the ANP’s restricted electorate among the Pakhtun. As opposed to the policy of moulding Pakhtun opinion, it has unfortunately preferred to defer to a collective mind already formed by the religious parties and the Taliban propaganda on the real “intention” of the operation.
The result is that the PPP will have to face up to the backlash that is going to come from the general public who support the views of the PMLN, and from the Pakhtun hinterland. In the coming days, we may expect the TV channels to reflect this “consensus” with the kind of emphasis expected from the “process of repetition” inherent in competition. But the objective fact is that the operation had become unavoidable. And it is no excuse that it should not have been undertaken because it was not thought of three years ago when the warlords of Khyber first came on the scene.
Pakistan’s best known modern physicist Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy has reflected on the “confusion” in Pakistan over the violent events taking place these days. He marvels at the way we ignore Pakistanis kidnapped and killed by the warlords and our violent reaction to the NATO-ISAF forces on the Mohmand border with Afghanistan: “Had the killers been the Taliban, this would have been a non-event...Compare the response to Gora Prai with the near silence about the recent kidnapping and slaughter by Baitullah Mehsud’s fighters of 28 men near Tank, some of whom were shot and others had their throats cut. Even this pales before the hundred or more attacks by suicide bombers over the last year that made bloody carnage of soldiers and officers, devastated peace jirgas and public rallies, and killed hundreds praying in mosques and at funerals”.
Pakistan is in deeper trouble than it thinks. Considering that the top popular concern is the “judges’ restoration”, over which there is no solution in sight, it is unfortunate that we continue to ignore the fact that our economy can only survive if the world helps us. Eminent Pakistani economist Mr Shahid Javed Burki thinks that Pakistan should not return to the IMF because the Fund will impose “stabilisation” and ignore growth pledges because it doesn’t believe that Pakistan can pull it off. He recommends approaching the “donors” for help. The problem is that all the “donors” want Pakistan to take action against the warlords. *

Uzbeks in the Pakistani Tribal Areas

Talking to journalists in Lahore, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani stated that “foreign elements hailing from Central Asian Republics (CAR) are disturbing peace in the Tribal Areas and they are behind the current unrest and spike in violence in the tribal belt”. He was referring to around 2,000 Uzbek warriors belonging to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) who are allegedly spread around in the Tribal Areas of Pakistan. They moved into Pakistan from Afghanistan after the US bombardment of 2001 and formed a part of the “multinational” force that accompanied Al Qaeda as it fled across the Tora Bora mountain range into the tribal areas of Pakistan.

First reports about them and others like the Arabs and Chechens were dismissed as false by the MMA government in the NWFP at the time which said that the “foreigners” were actually the mujahideen who had come here to join the jihad against the Soviet Union and had remained here after marrying into the local Pakhtuns. Most observers in Pakistan agreed with this version and all news about the “foreigners” were labelled “plants” organised by an allegedly pro-US government. But the fact was that commanders in Waziristan like Nek Muhammad looked after the Uzbeks under the tutelage of Al Qaeda and deliberately spread the falsehood that there was no “foreign” presence in the Tribal Areas.

The IMU was led by Qari Tahir Yuldashev whose position about jihad was close to that of Al Qaeda’s second-in-command, Aiman Al Zawahiri. He believed that jihad should first target not the US but those “hypocrite Muslims” who support the US. The Uzbeks soon became known for their cruelty and disregard for local Pakhtun culture in Waziristan. This led last year to a cleavage within the Al Qaeda power in the region. One pro-Al Qaeda commander Maulvi Nazir fell out with the Uzbeks and mounted a bloody operation against them. Today his organisation is under attack from Baitullah Mehsud, which means that the Uzbeks are in the ascendant as followers of Al Qaeda.

The Uzbeks were seen by Pakistani journalists when they came to Swat as a part of the Taliban force in the wake of the storming of Lal Masjid in Islamabad in 2007. They stood out because of their savage conduct among the innocent people of Swat. They were a part of the faction that beheaded local people and placed their headless corpses in the streets. They were partly masked, seemed to look racially different and did not speak because they did not know the local language. Later, news trickled in about training camps established especially for the training of Uzbeks in the Tribal Areas.

The IMU targets Pakistan as compensation for Al Qaeda’s support to IMU’s activities in Uzbekistan. The training camps in Waziristan prepare terrorist squads that stage attacks in Tashkent against the ruling elite there. The Uzbekistan government has also formed its Afghan policy in response to Al Qaeda “plans” for Uzbekistan. Even as the Taliban were conducting their war around Mazar-e-Sharif in the late 1990s, Uzbekistan was in the process of strengthening what later became the Northern Alliance. Pakistan, at that time pursuing the doctrine of “strategic depth” in Afghanistan, was at cross-purposes with Uzbekistan, which was then also backed by Turkey.

Tashkent knows that Uzbek killers are being trained in Waziristan. Tahir Yuldashev is actually running two campaigns for Al Qaeda. One, to bring down the government of Pakistan and replace it with a caliphate supported by Al Qaeda; two, to bring down the government of President Karimov in Tashkent. The camps are thus training two sets of terrorists: Pakistanis from such organisations as Jaish-e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, and Uzbeks that keep trickling in from Uzbekistan who are meant to return and create trouble in their homeland. Their three routes are internationally known: they reach Waziristan by travelling through Kazakhstan, through Azerbaijan and through Iran.

There are Chechens in the Tribal Areas too. They came in with Al Qaeda but “fresh” Chechens from the Russian Federation also keep coming in. The troubled province there is Dagestan where the armed rebels, mostly Chechens, are not having much success against the government. With Uighurs of Chinese Sinkiang added to the number, Waziristan will therefore decide the international move against Pakistan in reaction to its “cross-border” raids into Afghanistan. As a reaction, then, we can be sure that intervention or pre-emptive strikes in the Tribal Areas, violating the sovereignty of Pakistan, will be supported by most of Afghanistan’s neighbours including Russia and India. The game is set for a blazing row across borders.

Out of the Dark Ages

6/29/2008
Pakistan may be a poor nation in a variety of respects but in terms of casual barbarism among some elements it has a richness and diversity that mark it out as a regional leader. Alleged robbers are immolated by a baying mob. Members of 'peace jirgas' are murdered by the dozen and where the writ of the Taliban runs there is the increasingly regular spectacle of public murder. (We will not aggrandise these acts by using the word 'execution' as it implies a due process of law.) The writ of the Taliban appears to run widely in these troubled times and such control that the government has across vast swathes of the Northwest Frontier and the Tribal Areas is diminishing by the day. Pakistan is slowly but surely getting smaller, being eaten away by the acid of advancing Talibanisation. So as these words are written, news has come in that the much-awaited operation against the Taliban who seemed to have encircled Peshawar and were indeed making forays into its various neighbourhoods, going about telling shopkeepers not to sell immoral products (video and audio CDs to boot), has finally begun. A foreign news wire report also quoted Baitullah Mehsud announcing the suspension of peace talks with the government, an expected development really given Saturday's developments.

As for the grisly drama seen in Bajaur on Friday, reports suggest that as many as 5,000 people may have gathered about 10 kilometres to the west of Khar to watch the public murder of two Afghan nationals who had been found guilty of spying for the Americans. They were found guilty by a local jirga working as a Sharia court and we must assume that it is unlikely that either man had the benefit of representation by a defence lawyer. It is said they confessed their 'crime' but we do not know by what means their confession was extracted, though we may assume that violence played a part in their admission of guilt. Once the men had been murdered to the obvious satisfaction of the onlookers their severed heads were paraded for all to see, prompting an enthusiastic outbreak of aerial firing which left a couple more dead and several seriously wounded.

There is unlikely to be any written record publicly available by which we may evaluate the actions of the court; but there is however a record of the outcome of its proceedings as those doing the murdering were sufficiently engaged with the twenty-first century to be able to record the butchery with a digital camera. The images thus captured will doubtless find their way into the media outlets approved and run by those who created them. Still pictures of the killings were published by every Pakistani newspaper and many foreign newspapers were carrying both story and imagery in their online editions by the morning of 28th June -- though with less explicit pictures than those in the Pakistani press. This will of course serve to consolidate the view in other minds that this is a nation of barbarians -- a view that is increasingly difficult to gainsay.

It is said that America is the only nation on earth to have gone from barbarism to decadence without passing through civilisation along the way. Pakistan has rearranged the order of things by moving from the civilisation we enjoyed millennia ago to a historically brief period of decadence and now, as we move through the Dark Ages, a steady gallop in the direction of barbarism - with civilisation a half-remembered dream. This is also precisely why the military operation launched against the carriers of this dreaded scourge, of this obscurantism who perpetrate gruesome deeds as seen in Bajaur, needs to succeed because -- and one doesn't want to sound too alarmist here but the facts speak for themselves -- the survival of our very way of life is at stake.
THE NEWS EDITORIAL.

Pentagon: Taliban 'resilient' in Afghanistan

Pentagon: Taliban 'resilient' in Afghanistan
Story Highlights
NEW: Taliban have regrouped and formed a "resilient insurgency," report says

Monthly death toll of U.S. and allied troops in Afghanistan reaches 7-year high

40 troops have been killed in Taliban attacks in June

Gates hopes Pakistani crackdown will curb Taliban violence

From Mike Mount
CNN
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Nearly seven years after their defeat by U.S. forces, the Taliban have regrouped and have formed a "resilient insurgency," according to a new Pentagon report on security in Afghanistan.

On the same day the number of U.S. and allied troops killed in Afghanistan in June has reached 40, the highest monthly toll of the 7-year-old war.

"The Report Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan," the first progress report to Congress, says that although there has been some progress in battling the Taliban, setbacks are expected.

Although NATO and Afghan force operations kept the insurgency down in 2007 by killing or capturing key leaders and clearing out Taliban safe havens, the report predicted that the Taliban would be back in 2008.

"The Taliban is likely to maintain or even increase the scope and pace of its terrorist attacks and bombings in 2008," the report said.

The report looks at the progress through April, before the rise in violence seen over recent weeks.

On June 14, a suicide bomb at an Afghan prison in Kandahar freed hundreds of Taliban prisoners. There also have been numerous attacks on the restive Afghanistan-Pakistan border in recent weeks.

There are 32,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. About 14,000 serve as part of the larger NATO force, and 18,000 are separate, involved in training and on counterterrorism operations.

The report's authors highlight the eastern border town of Khost as an example of success by coalition forces. Once considered to be an ungovernable insurgent stronghold, the city has been turned around by security and reconstruction efforts, they say. But the report seems a bit outdated.

"It actually was not bad until a few months ago," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said this week. "This is a fairly recent phenomenon of seeing the numbers come across the border. After all, Khost was an example of a successful counterinsurgency."

The report's predictions for 2008 seem to be holding true. It describes a two-front insurgency, with the Taliban ruling in the south and a partnership of insurgent groups -- including al Qaeda -- in the east.

The confederation is made up of both Afghan and Pakistani-based groups with the shared goals of expelling outside military forces and the "imposition of a religiously conservative Pashtun-led government," it said.

The Pentagon report also says the progress of the Afghan army and national police is slow because of a lack of trainers and corruption.

Counter-narcotics also suffered a setback: Opium production increased "substantially" in 2007, the report says.

"Counter-narcotics efforts have resulted in gains over the past six years [but] the battle against drug traffickers is ongoing, and will be for some time," it says.

According to a 2007 U.N. survey, about a quarter of the earnings from opium go to farmers. The rest goes to district officials who collect taxes on the crop, to drug traffickers and to the insurgents and warlords who control the trade.

Taliban militants have increased their attacks this year. The top U.S. commander in southeastern Afghanistan, Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser, said Tuesday that attacks on his troops were up 40 percent in the first five months of 2008.

The latest casualty came when a coalition service member on a reconnaissance patrol in western Afghanistan was killed Thursday, the U.S.-led coalition said Friday.

The incident took place in the Gulistan District of Farah province. Five coalition and two Afghan soldiers were wounded.

Three U.S.-led troops southwest of Kabul in Wardak province were also killed Thursday.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that one of the reasons for the increase was that more people are "coming across the border from the frontier area [of Pakistan]."

Gates said he hoped a newly announced Pakistani effort to clamp down on Islamic militants in the country's northwestern tribal districts would improve the situation in Afghanistan.

"The ability of the Taliban and other insurgents to cross that border and not being under any pressure from the Pakistani side of the border is clearly a concern," Gates said.

One of the weapons of choice for militants in Afghanistan is the roadside bomb.

Pentagon figures detailing the number of roadside bombs detonated and found in Afghanistan illustrate the level of insurgent activity.

In 2007, 876 roadside bombs blew up, and 439 were found. This year, 431 have blown up, with 354 found.

The war in Afghanistan began after the al Qaeda terror network, harbored by the country's ruling Taliban regime, attacked New York and Washington on September 11.

A U.S.-led invasion quickly toppled the Taliban regime.

Since then, the coalition and NATO-led troops have been battling a Taliban insurgency.
CNN.COM

Peshawar may fall to militants

Islamabad, June 25 (IANS) Even as Pakistan negotiates peace deals with militants operating along the border with Afghanistan, there is a very real danger of these elements taking over the North West Frontier Province capital of Peshawar, a media report said Wednesday.

With militants 'knocking at the gates' of Peshawar, 'even the more circumspect government and police officials now grudgingly concede that (it) could fall in a few months', Dawn newspaper said.

'Peshawar is in a state of siege and if Peshawar falls, the rest of the districts in the NWFP would fall like ninepins,' it quoted a government official as saying.

It's not that Peshawar lacks security forces. It is home to the headquarters of the Pakistan Army's 11th Corps, the paramilitary Frontier Corps, the Frontier Constabulary and the police.

Even so, 'the might of the militant groups operating around Peshawar from one to the other end is all too visible and alarming to ignore', Dawn noted.

Police stations in rural Peshawar have long given up patrolling at night after a patrol was blown up by a rocket-propelled grenade. The charred bodies of the victims were retrieved and buried without even allowing their families to see their faces for one last time.

So grim is the situation that a committee that includes NWFP Governor Owais Ahmed Ghani, Chief Minister Ameer Haider Khan Hoti, and 11 Corps commander Lt. Gen. Masood Aslam met May 31 to discuss the possible options for defending Peshawar but failed to come to any conclusions.

Rehman A. Malik, the prime minister's adviser on interior, was in Peshawar June 19 to discuss the situation but this too did not yield any results.

'The military, the paramilitary, the constabulary and the police are unable or unwilling to muster enough force to defend the city,' Dawn noted.

'In some ways, this apparent apathy for Peshawar reflects the federal government's lack of urgency to handle the situation in tribal regions and cope with the possible fallout of the peace agreements it is pursuing with tribal militants,' it added.

President Pervez Musharraf, whose dramatic volte face on the Taliban and alliance with the US global war on terror post- the 9/11 terror attacks had 'largely contributed to the mess in the tribal regions, has now taken a back seat', the newspaper said.

The only person constitutionally mandated to look after the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) that form a part of the NWFP, the president has since the Feb. 18 general elections 'more or less lost all interest in the borderlands', the newspaper maintained.

'The prevailing situation resembles that of a bus-load of drivers, with no one really at the steering wheel and the bus lurching from one side to the other.

'What can be more ironical that those who are supposed to be in the driver's seat are pretending to be passengers?' the newspaper wondered.

Leadership Void Seen in Pakistan

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June 24, 2008
Leadership Void Seen in Pakistan
By CARLOTTA GALL
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan is in a leaderless drift four months after elections, according to Western diplomats and military officials, Pakistani politicians and Afghan officials who are increasingly worried that no one is really in charge.

The sense of drift is the subject of almost every columnist in the English-language press in Pakistan, and anxiety over the lack of leadership and the weakness of the civilian government now infuses conversations with analysts, diplomats and Pakistani government officials.

The problem is most acute, they say, when it comes to dealing with militants in the tribal areas that have become home to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Although the political parties and the military all seek a breather from the suicide bombings and nascent insurgency that have roiled Pakistan in recent years, there are fundamental disagreements over the problem of militancy that they have not begun to address, Pakistani politicians and Western diplomats say.

The confusion is allowing the militants to consolidate their sanctuaries while spreading their tentacles all along the border area, military officials and diplomats warn. It has also complicated policy for the Bush administration, which leaned heavily on one man, President Pervez Musharraf, to streamline its antiterrorism efforts in Pakistan.

If anyone is in charge of security policy in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, Pakistani politicians and Western diplomats say, that remains the military and the country’s premier intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, which operate with little real oversight.

While the newly elected civilian government has been criticized for dealing with the militants, it is the military that is brokering cease-fires and prisoner exchanges with minimum consultation with the government, politicians from the government coalition, diplomats and analysts said.

Politicians in both the provincial and central governments complain they are excluded from the negotiations and did not even know of a secret deal struck in February, before the elections.

“You see a lack of a coordinated strategy between the federal level and provincial level, and that includes the ISI and the military, who are clear players,” said one Western diplomat with knowledge of the tribal regions, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity. “You see it even on principles of negotiation and combined strategy.”

One newspaper, the weekly Friday Times, satirized the situation with a front-page cartoon showing the country’s main political players riding in a plane, all issuing different instructions.

Since coming to power in February, the fragile coalition government, run by Benazir Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party, has been engrossed in internal wrangling over removing President Musharraf.

The coalition is barely functioning after half its ministers left the cabinet in May in a dispute over whether to reinstate 60 high court judges dismissed by Mr. Musharraf last year.

For now it is just accepting the military’s decisions regarding the militants, said Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani general who is now a political analyst. He characterized the country as suffering from “institutional paralysis and a dysfunctional government, signs of which are showing already.”

The American commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Dan K. McNeill, also described the government as “dysfunctional” just before leaving his post earlier this month.

“I have a feeling that no one is in charge and that is why the militants are taking advantage,” Mr. Masood said. “It is a very dangerous situation because what is happening is the Afghan government is getting desperate.”

The frustration is such that President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan threatened this month to send troops into Pakistan to pursue Pakistani militant leaders.

That Pakistan’s government appears broken is not surprising, analysts say. Pakistan’s civilian institutions were atrophied by eight years of military rule, and the country’s major political parties were left rudderless by the absence of their leaders, who lived in exile much of that time. The assassination of Ms. Bhutto in December left her party in even deeper disarray.

The military remains the country’s strongest institution, having ruled Pakistan for about half of the country’s 61 years of independence. But it is proving to be an increasingly fickle and prickly partner for Washington. United States and NATO officials are still struggling to decipher the intentions of the army’s new chief of staff, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.

Last fall, at the time of his appointment, American officials spoke approvingly of General Kayani, who seemed well aware of the threat the militants posed to Pakistan, and of the dangers of peace deals that have allowed the militants to tighten their grip in the tribal areas.

But despite at least $12 billion in aid to Pakistan from Washington for the fight against the militants since 2001, General Kayani has recently shown a reluctance to use the military for counterinsurgency operations, suggesting that the task be left to the much weaker tribal force, the Frontier Corps. He has encouraged the civilian government to take the lead.

Part of the confusion stems from the shift in power from military rule, after President Musharraf stepped down as head of the army in December, to the new civilian government, one Western military official said. “Kayani is being careful not to get too far out in front and is trying to determine who is in charge,” he said. “We all are.”

The uneasy balance between civilian and military authority was demonstrated this month when the finance minister, Naveed Qamar, revealed details of the defense budget to Parliament for the first time in 40 years. While Mr. Qamar called it a “historic moment,” the document was a mere two pages.

Parliament, tied up with budget negotiations until next month, has not discussed security or militancy. “We do understand this is the biggest issue, and after the budget session it will have to be addressed,” said Farah Ispahani, a Pakistan Peoples Party legislator.

Meanwhile, the military under General Kayani has quietly pursued its own policies, politicians from the government coalition, diplomats and analysts say. The military and ISI negotiated a little-known truce with the tribes and militants of North Waziristan just days before the Feb. 18 elections, a senior government official in Peshawar confirmed.

The deal was so secretive that few in the government know its contents even today. “The civilian government is in the back seat, or not even in the back seat,” said the Western diplomat, who did not want to be identified because of the critical nature of the remarks. The military also began negotiations with the most powerful of the Taliban commanders, Baitullah Mehsud, in January, just weeks after the government accused him of masterminding Ms. Bhutto’s assassination.

An official agreement with the Mehsud tribe has not been completed, but the military has already pulled back from some positions, put in place a cease-fire and exchanged prisoners with the militants.

Western officials are suspicious of the deal. Mr. Mehsud is accused of dispatching scores of suicide bombers in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but the agreement initially included no prohibition on cross-border attacks.

Only after strong pressure from the United States and other allies did the military insert such a clause this month, according to a senior official close to the negotiations. In the meantime, cross-border attacks increased by 50 percent in May, NATO officials in Afghanistan say.

The provincial government in the North-West Frontier Province has also expressed its reservations about the deal. Officials from the Awami National Party, a Pashtun nationalist party that leads the government in the province and which is also part of the national coalition, complained that they have not been included in the military’s decisions.

“Our main demand is that we should be included in negotiations,” said Wajid Ali Khan, a party official. “We don’t know with whom they are talking.”

Moreover, the central government’s point man for counterterrorism, the acting interior minister, Rehman Malik, has appeared to have an uneven grasp of developments.

This month he announced in Parliament that the peace deal with militants in the Swat Valley, just outside the tribal areas, had been scrapped. But he retracted the statement the next day, after the provincial government insisted the deal was still on.

Officials of the Awami National Party have complained that his comments undermined their negotiating position. Afrasiab Khattak, a senior official of the party, and other party officials are confident they can make the peace deals in their province work. But few believe that the deals brokered by the military in the tribal regions will last more than a few months, including military officials themselves, senior government officials in Peshawar say.

More fighting and violence is almost certainly on the horizon. What the plan will be then, no one seems to know.

U.S. Funding to Pakistan Plagued With Problems, GAO Report Says

U.S. Funding to Pakistan Plagued With Problems, GAO Report Says

By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 25, 2008; A09



The Bush administration has paid Pakistan more than $2 billion without adequate proof that the Pakistani government used the funds for their intended purpose of supporting U.S. counterterrorism efforts, congressional auditors reported yesterday. Their report concluded that more than a third of U.S. funds provided Pakistan since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were subject to accounting problems, including duplication and possible fraud.

The Pentagon paid about $20 million for army road construction and $15 million to build bunkers in Pakistan, but there is no evidence that the roads or bunkers were ever constructed, the Government Accountability Office reported. Islamabad also billed Washington $200 million for an air defense radar system that may not have met a U.S. condition: that reimbursement cover combat or logistical costs supporting U.S. military operations against terrorism beyond what a country would spend on its own needs.

"It seems as though the Pakistani military went on a spending spree with American taxpayers' wallets and no one bothered to investigate the charges," said Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. "How hard would it have been to confirm that a road we paid $15 million for was ever built? It is appalling that the Defense Department did not send any embassy officials working in Pakistan to verify these enormous costs." Washington should "stop pouring money into a black hole," Harkin said.

Pakistan is the largest recipient of Coalition Support Funds as part of a counterterrorism effort the Bush administration launched in 2001 after the terrorist attacks against New York and Washington. Pakistan has received more than $5.5 billion of the nearly $7 billion distributed to 27 countries over the past six years.

"Apparently, the Bush administration cares so little about the hunt for Osama bin Laden that it is barely paying attention to how the Pakistani military is carrying out the fight," Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement. "It's dangerous to treat the battle against al-Qaeda so casually, and it's unfair to American taxpayers to be so careless with billions of their dollars."

In a response included in the report, the Defense Department said the GAO failed to adequately acknowledge Pakistan's "significant contribution" to fighting terrorism or the "flexibility" required in "contingency environments." Like other recipients of U.S. funds, Pakistan is a sovereign country that may not meet U.S. accounting standards, said the comments submitted by Assistant Secretary of Defense James J. Shinn. The Pentagon has also consistently adhered to the law in overseeing U.S. military aid, the response said. The Defense Department had no further comment yesterday.

But the congressional agency faulted Pentagon oversight between 2004 and 2007, noting that new rules instituted in 2003 did not improve practices. "For a large number of claims, Defense did not obtain sufficient documentation from Pakistan to verify that claimed costs were incremental, actually incurred or correctly calculated," the report concluded.

In one example, the report cited monthly payments averaging $19,000 per vehicle for 20 passenger vehicles used by the Pakistani navy that appeared to contain "duplicative charges," the GAO said. The Pentagon often did not document its basis for evaluating claims and did not check Pakistan's currency conversions, which could have led to overbilling, the report said.

Defense Department representatives at the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan did little to verify Pakistan's billing for a 32-month period between 2004 and mid-2006, with fewer than 3 percent of Islamabad's claims disallowed or deferred by the Pentagon. In September 2006, Pentagon representatives in the Pakistani capital began to question the accounting on 15 to 20 spreadsheets submitted monthly by Pakistan's Defense Ministry -- without receipts -- to the U.S. Embassy.

Among the problems the Pentagon uncovered was the poor readiness of Pakistani helicopters, despite U.S. reimbursement for maintenance, so payment was deferred, the report notes. In February of this year, the Pentagon disallowed or deferred reimbursement for 22 percent of the claims Pakistan had made in a three-month period in 2007. But the report warned that adequate oversight is not assured because the Pentagon has yet to develop guidelines to judge Pakistan's claims.

The report was the subject of a heated hearing yesterday by the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on national security and foreign affairs. "The more I learn about U.S. Coalition Support Funds to Pakistan, the more I am troubled: first, in terms of waste, fraud, and abuse of a huge amount of U.S. taxpayer funds; second, about the program's failure to achieve vital U.S. security objectives; and third, about the program's incompatibility with a long-term strategic partnership between the U.S. and Pakistan," said the subcommittee chairman, John F. Tierney (D-Mass.).

Tierney said the United States must reevaluate the program and reallocate funding to enhance Pakistan's counterinsurgency capabilities and extend the government's control over restive tribal areas along the Afghan border.

The Pakistani Embassy said yesterday that Washington and Islamabad are working to clarify accounting procedures, noting that the United States this week cleared a payment of $373 million to Pakistan for claims from 2007. Ambassador Husain Haqqani said the payment "signals that while criticism relating to past accounting practices continues, so does the realization that this is a critical contribution to help Pakistan in the war against terrorism."
© 2008 The Washington Post Company

Our wars in our Tribal Areas

The war in Khyber Agency now parallels the war in Kurram Agency. The first is three years old and the second is two years old in its latest phase. The Khyber war has unfolded right under the nose of the administration in Peshawar; and the Kurram war has proved too much for Islamabad as it spreads to adjacent Aurakzai and Mohmand agencies, coming down to the settled districts of the NWFP like Hangu and Kohat. There is also the greater war between the Taliban and the state of Pakistan over “lost territory”, and then there is the war with Afghanistan where the Tribal Areas of Pakistan provide up to 40 percent of the “cross-border” warriors. Finally, there is the war within the warriors of which the latest example is the sectarian bloodshed in the Khyber Agency.

Two factions that came on the scene in Khyber around 2005 on the basis of their propaganda on their FM radios are now killing each other freely. So far more than 200 warriors from both sides have been done to death with automatic fire and mortars and rockets. The latest battle has killed nearly 30 in one day’s battle, if the figures claimed by both sides are to be accepted. After Bara, the killings spread to Jamrud, where the murders of innocent people are now going to be avenged. The battle has also spread to the most inaccessible but picturesque Tirah and, going by the images being shown on TV, both sides are squared off with equal strength of weaponry and manpower.

The war in Kurram Agency forms a parallel. It is also close-by because one can reach Kurram from Tirah after a few hours’ journey. While the war in Khyber is between two versions of Sunni Islam — Deobandi versus Barelvi — the war in Kurram is between the Shia and the Sunni, the two major sects of Islam. The Kurram war, mostly centred on the headquarters of the agency Parachinar with a majority Shia population, is of longer gestation. In history it was known as the Turi-Mangal tribal war as both tribes embrace different sects. But after the jihad against the Soviet Union in the 1980s, it became an indirectly state-supported mayhem because jihad was Deobandi-dominated.

Hundreds have been claimed in these two internal wars. As in other areas affected by retaliatory attacks from the NATO-ISAF forces, uninvolved populations are moving out of the affected areas and then wandering from pillar to post in search of shelter. Everywhere they go, the Taliban tighten the noose around their necks by enforcing a brand of Islam that the people have not known before. Meanwhile, the state of Pakistan is nowhere to be seen. The people of Parachinar have made heart-rending appeals to the state to come and save their lives but to no effect. The state is clearly in retreat in the face of all this.

When the Barelvi-Deobandi war started in the Khyber Agency in 2005, its repercussions went as far south as Multan and Karachi where the Deobandi madrassas organised wall-chalkings about a war that no one could figure out. Mufti Munir Shakir was fulminating against his Barelvi rival Pir Saifur Rehman. Both were exiled from Khyber but both left behind their followers. The Deobandi Mufti Shakir has now been replaced by warlord Mangal Bagh who is given to raiding Peshawar to fill his coffers and is clearly putting himself up for adoption by Al Qaeda without whose imprimatur no one can enter the business of terrorism in the Tribal Areas. On the other hand, Pir Saifur Rehman has been succeeded by other leaders, including Maulana Mustamin, who have vowed to fight to the end.

The federal government listened to the distant thunder of war on the FM radios and kept quiet, and there are many interpretations placed on this benign neglect, including the involvement of the intelligence agencies in secretly prosecuting the war against Afghanistan’s Karzai government. The MMA government in Peshawar kept out of the mess on two grounds. The first was overt and it was based on the argument that the Tribal Areas were in the charge of the federal government. That indirectly meant that the governor and the corps commander in Peshawar were effectively responsible for control and management in Khyber. The other less overt reason for the Deobandi-dominated MMA’s indifference was the natural Deobandi ascendancy of Lashkar-e Islam of Mangal Bagh, further empowered by the “alliance” between Deobandi Islam and Arab-dominated Al Qaeda.

Those who are busy counting the errors of President Pervez Musharraf these days should include the chaos of the Tribal Areas and its two epochal wars in Khyber and Kurram in their list. But the danger is that these are precisely the issues that will be ignored by his critics. And that will be the source of further trouble for the country. *
Daily Times - Site Edition Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Pakistan troops 'aid Taliban'

Pakistan troops 'aid Taliban'New classified US documents reveal that mass infiltration of Frontier Corps by Afghan insurgents is helping latest offensive
Peter Beaumont and Mark Townsend The Observer, Sunday June 22, 2008 Article historyThe Pakistani Frontier Corps has been heavily infiltrated and influenced by Taliban militants, sometimes joining in attacks on coalition forces, according to classified US 'after-action' reports compiled following clashes on the border.

According to those familiar with the material, regarded as deeply sensitive by the Pentagon in view of America's fragile relationship with Pakistan, there are 'box loads' of such reports at US bases along the length of the Pakistan-Afghan border. Details of the level of infiltration emerged yesterday on a day when five more US-led soldiers were killed in southern Afghanistan. Four of the soldiers died in a bomb and gunfire attack outside the southern city of Kandahar.

Nato officials have reported a dramatic increase in cross-border incidents compared with the same period last year. The US documents describe the direct involvement of Frontier Corps troops in attacks on the Afghan National Army and coalition forces, and also detail attacks launched so close to Frontier Corps outposts that Pakistani co-operation with the Taliban is assumed.

'The reality,' said a source familiar with the situation on the ground, 'is that there are units so opposed to what the coalition is doing and so friendly to the other side that when the opportunity comes up they will fire on Afghan and coalition troops. And this is not random. It can be exceptionally well co-ordinated.'

Another source - who has seen the reporting - described an attack last year where two Frontier Corps outposts appear to have been directly involved in firing on Afghan forces before a militant attack.

Frontier Corps personnel have in the past been implicated in the past in murdering US and Afghan officers. In the most high-profile case, a Frontier Corps member 'assassinated' Major Larry J Bauguess during a border mediation meeting. In another incident, an Afghan officer was killed. Since then the problem appears to have worsened as the Taliban renew their insurgency on the Afghan side of the border.

'The United States and Nato have substantial information on this problem,' said an American official. 'It's taking place at a variety of places along the border with the Frontier Corps giving direct and indirect assistance. I'm not saying it is everyone. There are some parts that have been quite helpful... but if you have seen the after-action reports of their involvement in attacks along the Afghan border you would appreciate the problem.'

James Appathurai, a Nato spokesman, said: 'The real concern is that the extremists in Pakistan are getting safe havens to rest, recuperate and retool in Pakistan and come across the border. The concerns have been conveyed to the Pakistan authorities.'

Seth Jones, author of the Rand report, which found evidence of collaboration, said the issue had been troubling the US even before the invasion of Afghanistan: 'If you go back a decade to the Clinton administration when the US targeted militant camps, members of the Pakistani intelligence services were killed along with militants.'

The allegation that senior Pakistani officials continue to offer lukewarm assistance to the coalition while offering help to the Taliban is also reiterated in Descent into Chaos, a new book by the veteran Pakistani author Ahmed Rashid.

Relations between the US and Pakistan were strained this month when 11 members of the Frontier Corps were killed when the US allegedly bombed their outpost near the border town of Gora Prai during a gun battle with militants on the border. Pakistani sources have questioned why the troops were hiding in a bunker in the midst of the battle and why they were 'unaware' of an hour-long firefight going on so close by.

The issue of the Taliban's ability to cross and recross the border with Pakistan into that country's Federally Administered Tribal Areas is becoming one of the most contentious issues of the war, with many - including Afghan President Hamid Karzai - insisting that his country is involved in a 'regional conflict' and threatening to send troops across the border.

The death of the five soldiers yesterday came as the Taliban stepped up their offensive. It happened a day after two other US-led soldiers died in separate incidents, including a suicide bombing.