US Refused Predators UAV To Pakistan, For Being Too Cosy With China

US Refused Predators UAV To Pakistan, For Being Too Cosy With China

US Refused Predators UAV To Pakistan, For Being Too Cosy With China

(NSI News Source Info) March 11, 2009: Pakistan is using several different types of UAVs along the Afghan and Indian borders. The most effective of these is the Italian Falco UAV, which Pakistan ordered Falco three years ago.

The air force completed evaluation of the Falco a little over a year ago, and put at least four of them into service. Falco is a 924 pound aircraft with a 150 pound payload. Ceiling is 5,000 meters, but it usually operates at lower altitudes (2,000 meters). Endurance is up to 12 hours, but typical missions are 6-8 hours. Max speed is 210 kilometers an hour, although it usually cruises at 150. Falco can be up to 200 kilometers from its ground station. The UAV can take off and land on an air strip, or use a catapult for takeoff and parachute for landing.
Pakistan has also been using several Chinese UAVs for the last decade or so. First, they got the ASN-105, a 308 pound aircraft with a payload if 88 pounds and endurance of only two hours. This is a 1980s era design, that has since been replaced by the ASN-206/207. This is a 488 pound aircraft, with a 110 pound payload. The 207 model has a max endurance of eight hours, but more common is an endurance of four hours.

Max range from the control van is 150 kilometers away and cruising speed is about 180 kilometers an hour. A UAV unit consists of one control van and 6-10 trucks, each carrying a UAV and its catapult launch equipment. The UAV lands via parachute, so the aircraft get banged up a lot. This UAV can broadcast back live video, and be equipped for electronic warfare.
Pakistan is also developing its own UAVs.

Last year it flight tested the Uqaab. This design looks very similar to models offered by a Pakistani firm, Integrated Dynamics, which has been producing smaller (under 500 pounds) UAVs for the government and commercial market since 1997. The Uqaab also appears similar to the U.S. Army RQ-7B Shadow 200.
Pakistan requested Predators from the United States, but this was turned down because it was feared that the Chinese would be allowed to dissect the American UAV and acquire too many production secrets. Pakistan and China have been chummy for decades. No secrets between friends and all that. But European nations, like Italy and Germany, have been willing to sell Pakistan UAVs.

The Groundwork Has Already Been Laid for Martial Law

By John W. Whitehead
3/4/2009

During his two terms in office, George W. Bush stepped outside the boundaries of the Constitution and assembled an amazing toolbox of powers that greatly increased the authority of the Executive branch and the reach of the federal government.

Bush expanded presidential power to, among other things, allow government agents to secretly open the private mail of American citizens; authorize government agents to secretly, and illegally, listen in on the phone calls of American citizens and read our e-mails; assume control of the federal government following a “catastrophic event”; and declare martial law.

Thus, the groundwork was laid for an imperial presidency and a potentially totalitarian government–a state of affairs that has not ended with Barack Obama’s ascension to the Oval Office, despite hopes to the contrary that President Obama would fully restore the balance between government and its citizens to a pre-Bush status quo. As Charlie Savage reports in the New York Times, “Signs suggest that the administration’s changes may turn out to be less sweeping than many had hoped or feared–prompting growing worry among civil liberties groups and a sense of vindication among supporters of Bush-era policies.”

The fact is that the problem is bigger than Obama or any individual who occupies the White House. Indeed, once the government assumes expansive powers and crosses certain constitutional lines, it’s almost impossible to pull back.

Just consider some of the lines that have already been crossed.

The local police have, in many regards, already evolved into de facto extensions of the military. Dressed like Darth Vader look-alikes, the police have opted for the SWAT-team dress formally adopted by the federal agencies. Congressional legislation allows the U.S. military, by way of the Pentagon, to train civilian police. The Pentagon has also provided local police with military equipment such as M-16 rifles, bayonets, boats, vehicles, surveillance equipment, chemical suits and flak jackets, among other items. Thus, they are armed to the teeth.

We already have a federal police force comprised of Secret Service agents who are authorized to “carry firearms; make arrests without a warrant for any offense against the United States committed in their presence.” A recent incident demonstrates the increased and immediate involvement of federal agents in local matters with the assistance of local police. Chip Harrison, a construction worker in Oklahoma, was pulled over by local police because of an anti-Obama sign proclaiming “Abort Obama, not the unborn” in his pickup truck window. The sign was confiscated by local police, and Harrison was informed that the sign could be considered a threat to the president. The local police contacted the Secret Service, who, within a matter of hours, came to Harrison’s home and investigated the matter. So much for the freedom of expression.

According to the Army Times, we now have at least 20,000 U.S. military troops deployed within our borders to “help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.” I am not alone in believing that we are just one incident–be it a terrorist attack, a major financial blowout or a widespread natural disaster–away from martial law being declared in this country. And once that happens, the Constitution and Bill of Rights will be suspended and what government officials believe and do, no matter how arbitrary, will become law.

Our methods of communication are already being monitored–and, in some instances, shut down, abetted by the telecommunications giants, which act as extensions of the government. Thus, not only does the government have the ability to open and read our mail, it can also listen in on our phone calls and jam our cell phone calls. As the Washington Post reports, federal authorities already have the ability to jam cell phones and other wireless devices. Unbeknownst to the nearly two million people who attended the Obama Inauguration festivities, federal authorities jammed cell phone signals at specific locations. Such disruptions simply appear to be a dropped call or lost signal. Of course, such jamming could be conducted on a more extensive basis nationwide. This would prevent citizens from being able to communicate with one another or make appeals to their government representatives. Although jamming is technically illegal for state and local agencies, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) plans to introduce legislation to allow local police to “selectively” jam cell phones.

We already live in a surveillance state. There was a time when people could flee when the government got out of control. Now, with our every movement monitored by cameras on sidewalks, streets, ATMs, and in shops, offices, schools and parks, there truly is nowhere to hide. Moreover, equipped with high-powered satellites and massive databases, the government can track us using our cell phones, cars, credit cards, driver’s licenses and passports.

For those who have been paying attention, such as former war correspondent Chris Hedges in his Truthdig article, “Bad News From America’s Top Spy,” it’s clear that the groundwork for a seamless transition into martial law under a totalitarian state of government has been laid. And local law enforcement, which has already been serving as a de facto military force, will be the key to maintaining martial law under a police state. Given the interconnectedness of our federal, state and local agencies, you can be sure that all of this will happen quickly.

All that is needed is another threat to national security–a so-called “catastrophic event.” Under the Bush administration, the danger was terrorism. Under the Obama administration, the economy is being posed as the greatest threat to national security.

This danger was made clear in a U.S. Army War College report issued last fall. As Hedges reports, “The military must be prepared, the document warned, for a ‘violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States,’ which could be provoked by ‘unforeseen economic collapse,’ ‘purposeful domestic resistance,’ ‘pervasive public health emergencies’ or ‘loss of functioning political and legal order.’ The ‘widespread civil violence,’ the document said, ‘would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.’”

What does all this mean for you and me, the average citizen? When and if martial law is declared, freedom, as we have known it, will be obsolete. And don’t expect much in the way of warning or help from the corporate media. As the war in Iraq showed, they are all too willing to be co-opted by the military for the sake of access and ratings. And there will be many Americans who won’t know what’s happening. They’ll be too busy watching the latest entertainment spectacle and trying to guess the next American Idol.

Thankfully, we have not yet reached the point of no hope. But it must be acknowledged that the average American simply does not have the ability to withstand a totalitarian government.

Right now, all we can do is sound the alarm. Become educated. Form local citizens groups in your community. Educate your neighbors on their rights and inform them about the grave possibilities we face in the event of a government-declared emergency. Keep in almost near-constant contact with your representatives in Congress and voice your discontent. Most of all, stay informed and exercise your right to redress your grievances with the government while you still can.

As abolitionist Wendell Phillips once proclaimed:

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty–power is ever stealing from the many to the few…. The hand entrusted with power becomes … the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continual oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot.

USA Loses the War against Latin American Drug Cartels

Nil Nikandrov, http://en.fondsk.ru

Staying at the baggage zone at the airport in Mexico City I was one of the passengers flying in from Venezuela who watched the local police drug unit catching a large cargo of drugs. Wearing black uniforms and masks, the agents rolled out of the baggage section not less than 40 quite sizeable identically-looking valises for all of us to see. I thought then: «Well done! It must be more than a tonne of cocaine!» The next day Mexican newspapers informed that the cargo was to be received by some Maria Rojas from Venezuela who never turned up at the airport that day. Later I came to realize the gist of the «drug show» performed for us as the audience…

The United States is set to resort to most extreme measures to fight Latin American drug cartels. Their main unit is the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). It is lavishly financed (with official budget amounting to $2.5 billion), has a staff of6,000 to 7,000 special agents having at its disposal electronic equipment to trace drug routes, hundreds of aircraft and high-speed sea vessels and a powerful media machinery. It also relies on collaboration agreements with similar services in about 65 countries.

These agreements as often as not ensure DEA’s privileges to conduct «joint operations» against drug traffickers jointly with others. But even relying on the above the DEA management when US strategic interests are at stake, it is ready to violate the restrictive clauses of these agreements without hesitation. The covert goals of DEA activities can be easily sensed. They include interception of drug money flows and liquidation of unwelcome competitors that spring up to existence at the endless spaces of this profitable business. DEA primarily strikes at those drug mafia organisations that act against its interests. But how much did it achieve in the last several years?

Among its priorities in the last decade Washington declared launching a «crusade» against the cartels in Columbia, the epicenter of the drug business in the Western hemisphere. By implementing its «Plan Columbia» DEA management hoped to get control of the top positions in drugs organizations to use them for the ongoing «operative expansion.» Alongside this they had other tasks: destruction of the leftist Marxist guerilla groups in Columbia; pushing a segment of the Columbian drug business to Venezuela, then to Ecuador to discredit the governments of Hugo Chavez and Rafael Correa, and vindicating deployment of new US military bases in the region.

Starting from 1999 US Congress earmarked not less than $6 billion to fulfill «Plan Columbia», but with lamentable outcomes. Columbia’s drug business, «independent» from the DEA increased its coca sowing land by 26% in 2008, increasing production of cocaine at its secret laboratories by 16%. «The Plan» aimed to halve the annual «production» of cocaine to 300 tonnes. It failed, as the figure 600 tonnes was quoted in many analytical documents on Columbia in 2008-2009.

The collapse of «Plan Columbia» affected the general process of transfer of hallucinogens from Latin America to the USA and Europe most negatively. The double standards of the US anti-drug service in its war on drug business were taken by the organised crime as some sort of a cart-blanche to boost their activities by using more sophisticated methods of supplying «drug commodities», winning new markets and further expanding the armies of consumers.

Supplies of Columbian drugs to the US «consumer markets» began to grow. Most often the countries of Central America, the Caribbean and Mexico were used as channels to deliver cocaine, heroine and marijuana. DEA experts and its mouthpieces made their best to prevent «international public» from taking a closer look at these routes. It was more profitable for politicians to use the theme of drug trafficking to attack leftist regimes. DEA offices in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and other «ideologically unfriendly» countries emphasized the problems of fighting drug-trafficking to create a false image of the governments that US administration viewed as unwelcome, accusing them of covert protection of «narcoguerillas» and engaging in «drug business.» DEA agents tried to put to doubt efficiency of anti-drug agencies in these countries, often deliberately preventing them from performing their activities. The situation was so evident that Latin Americans could not help but start acting. Hugo Chavez was the first to terminate DEA activities in Venezuela. Bolivian president Evo Moralez followed the example. In Ecuador Rafael Correa is going to close this year the base in Manta, which Americans refer to as a regional drug traffic control centre.

Speaking at the National Police Academy the Bolivian leader gave an extremely precise assessment of cooperation with Americans, saying: «The worst thing was the DEA did not fight drug dealers but rather encouraged them.» And things went this way in all the 30 years DEA acted in Bolivia. Moralez recalled that Americans used the revenues from Bolivian cocaine sales to finance «the dirty war» of «contras» units in Central America. DEA controlled and protected virtually all large cocaine «factories» in Santa Cruz. Another scandal broke out when anti-drug agents supported the transfer of 4 tonnes of cocaine by air from Bolivia to the United States in 1995. Later this sort of things became their usual procedure vindicated by motivation of the need to maintain «test supplies» with an eye at identifying the traffic channels used by narcotics mafia. In 2003 with the help of Bolivia’s Department of Financial Investigators in La-Paz DEA began to study personal bank accounts of Evo Moralez, David Chokeuanki, Marcel Cesada and other leftist India bloc politicians who were beginning to muster clout and influence. Attempts of patriotically- minded military and police officers to make relevant facts public not infrequently resulted in their harassment if not physical destruction.

DEA’s painstaking care of ensuring reliable «controllable» channels of drug trafficking to Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean countries resulted in the emergence in the region of firmly consolidated mafia groups that worked under the DEA’s protection but never failed to see to their own commercial interests. Their corruption potential was so big that many DEA officials began and still continue to turn into double dealers. Statistics of inner investigations show the growth of this trend, the traitors are put behind bars or dismissed, but there are more and more successful «narcotics businessmen» who rely on their knowledge of the results of the latest DEA advanced techniques.

In Mexico for one, the critical level of narcomafia’s degrading influence on all aspects of social life has reached such heights that it now is no longer possible to disregard it. President F.Calderon had to play the part of a «dirt consumer», declaring he would make fighting for «public security» his priority. Indeed, he got down to business seriously but in the end, after two years of bitter struggle against «the drug underground» in all parts of the country he failed to achieve a decisive reversal of the situation. Mexican police stations now look like the «Atlantic Barrage Line» erected during the second world war. Grenade-thrower shootouts, attacks with the use of the latest automatic weapons and the tactic of «narco-commando» attacks on army columns and police check-points are now quite matter-of-fact.

Nearly 6,000 casualties of the deadly warfare waged by the narcotics cartels against prevention activities of law enforcement agencies and army units were registered in Mexico in 2008. The ominous statistics of the «drug war» reports in Mexico is way ahead of the losses of the «expedition force» in Iraq. Experts do not exclude that US special services, and primarily DEA deliberately provoke conflicts between «uncontrollable cartels» in Mexico in order to prevent them from crossing into the United States and establishing themselves there.

Chief suppliers of weapons for Mexican narcotics cartels are businessmen linked with the US military an industrial complex. US-made weapons kill people outside Mexico, too. Militants of Columbia’s semi-military organisations also value it as well as the rightist extremists in Venezuela, and criminal communities in Latin America. Not a single US supplier of smuggled weapons has ever been jailed. Its justice is on the lookout for the culprits wherever possible except at home. It would only be appropriate to recall the story of Viktor But, a Russian citizen whom US blames of every deadly sin including supplies of arms to Columbia. Indeed, that country has stockpiles of modern small arms and other weapons. But up to 90% of it is made in the USA! If one stumbles upon a Kalsahnikov assault gun, it would either be a clone made in China or Bulgaria. The leaders of law enforcement structures and the Attorney General prepared an analytical report for President Calderon dealing with illegal US arms trade with Mexico. The report has proof that the members of cartels Golfo, Sinaloa, Tjuana and others receive large consignments of US weapons on a regular basis. Most often these weapons are used by group of professional killers known in Mexico as «Zetas» that are actually combat units of narcotics cartels.

Anti-tank missiles and grenade-throwers of the latest design were found in the arsenals of narcotics cartels, as well as thousands of hand grenades, 28,000 units of small arms and 3.5 million pieces of different ammunition. According to experts that only one-tenth of the arms owned by Mexican cartels that act in close cooperation with their North American colleagues has been disclosed.

Predictions say that the drug war in Mexico would continue to become more intensified, more and more often crossing its borders. It has already felt in Guatemala in the south and left victims in all Central American states. Columbian and Mexican drug dealers continue to explore the South American continent. In the north the Mexican drug war keeps the forces of law enforcement alerted at the trans-border US territory. Relevant bodies have even started debating the potential use of US army units to reinforce the most vulnerable segments of its state border. Experts are coming up with alarming forecasts. Mexican drug barons have everything they need to efficiently protect their interests up to unleashing an asymmetric warfare in the United States, where local narcotics businessmen and consumers of hallucinogens in the upper echelons of power have long been acting as «the fifth column.»

The Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy headed by ex-presidents of Mexico, Columbia and Brazil Ernesto Seilho, Cesar Gaviria and Fernando Enrique Cardozo have studied this problem for a year and published a report, in which without any reservation they acknowledged the total US defeat in the anti-drug war: «We find ourselves even farther than at any previous time from the declared goal of a total elimination of narcotics. Columbia is the best proof of this. For decades different ways of fighting it were used there, but the results are in no correlation with the spending. The same is true about «Merida Initiative» proclaimed in Mexico as a tool of fighting narcotics business in Mexico.» The recommendations of the Commission are of a general nature, and one of them was more than once voiced in the past, calling to boost the fight against drugs in the basic consumer European countries and the United States.

Now is the time to recall the «drug show» at the Mexico City airport. DEA tried to present the capture of the valises with cocaine as a successful joint operation of the United States and Mexico aimed at severing «the Venezuelan channel» of supplies, allegedly meaning to show that after the Bolivarian government with no sufficient grounds terminated its collaboration with DEA, the results are there for all to see. It showed how brazen their narco-dealers have become to be able to act almost openly. What other proofs would people need to see that the Chavez regime connives of the drug business?

Of course Venezuelan authorities responded to the accusations and began investigating the circumstances in relation to the use of Mexican flight for the transport of cocaine. It turned out that a number of Venezuelan National Guard officers acting as DEA agents had to do with that. We, ordinary passengers had to go through close searches and UV investigation throughout the entire process of boarding the plane, whereas DEA guards just taxied their jeep to the plane and without any obstacle loaded the cocaine valises into the cargo bay of our Boeing.

Still, the official investigation in Venezuela soon got into a deadlock. One of the people participating in the drug valise operation was soon found at the outskirts of Caracas peppered with bullets; others disappeared into thin air.

Has any of them survived? It is hard to tell. During the Bush administration’s stint both DEA and the CIA were licensed to play «games with no rules.» Will this licence be used under Barack Obama? It is hard to hope to get the truthful answer. But maybe it is not wise to trust agreements with cooperation with DEA without second thoughts. Dealing with this organisation there is always the danger of being framed up. Latin Americans had a lot of experience in this respect.

RALPH SCHOENMAN: 9-11 A FALSE FLAG OPERATION – Motore di ricerca video Truveo

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Holbrooke bypasses Zardari, calls PM

Agencies Islamabad, March 12: US representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke on Thursday telephoned Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani and expressed concerns over deepening political crisis in Pakistan. Holbrooke’s call to Gilani not Asif Ali Zardari fuels speculations about Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari been sidelined. It further adds to theory that political change in Pakistan is imminent. Earlier in the day, US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne W Patterson held talks with opposition leader Nawaz Sharif in Raiwind hours before the scheduled ‘long march’ from Karachi to Sindh. Political turmoil in the South Asian country has worried the United States, which has been pushing Pakistan to focus on fighting militants holed up on the border with Afghanistan and which is concerned about further instability in the nuclear-armed country.

US warships head for South China Sea after standoff

Tim Reid in Washington

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A potential conflict was brewing last night in the South China Sea after President Obama dispatched heavily armed American destroyers to the scene of a naval standoff between the US and China at the weekend.

Mr Obama’s decision to send an armed escort for US surveillance ships in the area follows the aggressive and co-ordinated manoeuvres of five Chinese boats on Sunday. They harassed and nearly collided with an unarmed American vessel.

Washington accused the Chinese ships of moving directly in front of the US Navy surveillance ship Impeccable, forcing its crew to take emergency action, and to deploy a high-pressure water hose to deter the Chinese ships. Formal protests were lodged with Beijing after the incident.

On a day that Mr Obama and his senior officials met the Chinese Foreign Minister, Yang Jiechi, in Washington, Beijing showed no sign of backing down. Its military chiefs accused the unarmed US Navy ship of being on a spying mission.

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Related Links

• China condemns US warship deployment

• Chinese ‘harass’ US Navy surveillance ship

• Analysis: so much more than a naval water fight

The US keeps a close eye on China’s arsenal, including its expanding fleet of submarines in the area. Washington says that the confrontation occurred in international waters, but Beijing claims nearly all the South China Sea as its own, putting it in conflict with five other nations that have claims over different parts of the waters.

The episode complicated fragile military relations between the US and China, which appeared to have improved after the two held defence talks in Beijing last month.

Mr Obama yesterday urged more military dialogue with China to avoid similar incidents after talks with Mr Yang, the White House said. “The President also stressed the importance of raising the level and frequency of military-to-military dialogue,” it said.

A hotline was established between the Chinese Defence Ministry and the Pentagon in April last year, but it was not used during or after Sunday’s standoff, defence officials said. The US Government immediately protested to Chinese authorities after the incident, about 75 miles south of Hainan Island.

Beijing has rejected the US account and demanded that the United States cease what it calls illegal activities in the South China Sea. The Chinese maintain the area is part of the country’s exclusive economic zone.

Washington insists that the area is part of international waters and that US ships have a legal right to operate there.

Zardari gets 24-hr ultimatum to end deadlock

WILL GILANI/KIYANI ALLIANCE SOLVE PAKISTAN’S DILEMMA OR DEEPEN THE WEB OF CONTROL?

Zardari gets 24-hr ultimatum to end deadlock

Times of India reports that Pakistan army and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani have asked President Asif Ali Zardari to go if he does not accept a new deal hatched by them in consultation with foreign powers.

The new political deal, backed by Washington, London and the army establishment, has quietly been conveyed to Pakistan PM Gilani, to bring down the political temperature in the country.

Read the rest of the report below. However, only fools would believe that the US, UK and General Kiyani are interested in democracy, rule of law and supremacy of the constitution and parliament in Pakistan. stay tuned for the next military take over or an arrangement where everyone would say, ‘even Zardari was better than this.’ The reason is that whatever arrangement is in the making, it is definitely not for giving Pakistanis the right to self-determination and self-rule. The new plan would be to further the plans for continuing the process of undermining Pakistan more effectively, with more justification and more convenience. Zardari regime was an interim set from the get go. The ideal outcome for the warlords in Washington is a military general ruling the country and waging the war of terrorism on Pakistan. Musharraf couldn’t stay longer. Kiyani could not take over right away. Benazir had to be assassinated to increased polarization and turmoil. NRO had to be crafted to let all the enemies of Pakistan get a lease on life and reach the vital positions in the state apparatus. Zardari was a good pick but his criminal past, thuggish attitude and total lack of acceptance at all levels made life difficult for the puppet masters. Now stay tuned for a yet more bloody chapter of the colonial intervention in Pakistan.

As part of the deal, the PM has been asked to immediately convince Zardari to demonstrate the flexibility required to break the present deadlock, before the ‘Long March’ reaches Islamabad.

Gilani has reportedly been given 24 hours to convince Zardari into agreeing to the new political and constitutional arrangement, as further delay will not produce any positive results for the political forces currently on the warpath.

The ball is now firmly in the court of President Zardari, who has to take a decision swiftly on endorsing the agreement brokered by powerful international actors.

If Zardari does not accept the new deal then:

* Army, foreign powers will be left with no option but to implement ‘minus-one formula’
* Presidents office will be completely marginalised, Zardari will be removed
* Gilani will take over as power will be restored to PM office
* Nawaz Sharif’s PML(N) will join the cabinet
* Deposed SC chief Justice Iftikar Chaudhary will be reappointed.

Terms of the deal are:
* Pak PM Gilani has been asked to convince Zardari to accept the new political and constitutional arrangement
* The deal also states the removal of Punjab governor Salman Taseer, who is an obstacle to good relations between the PPP and the PML(N)
* Implementation of the new Constitutional package through the Parliament
* The deal also demands the restoration of Supreme Court Justice Ifthikar Chaudhary.

Since March 11, there have been a series of meetings that have shaped this deal.

The Pakistan army chief General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani met PM Gilani in Islamabad on March 11, where in the ninety minute meeting the former essentially told the latter to set the deal in motion.

On Thursday, the US ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson met former prime minister Nawaz Sharif. The reason ostensibly was after Sharif alleged that there was a plot to assassinate him.

Meanwhile, the PM has not met the president after he returned from his trip to Dubai. He has however been talking to the President over the phone.

UK foreign secretary David Miliband also telephoned President Asif Ali Zardari to discuss the present situation on Thursday.

IDF Chief in Washington to Talk War on Iran

Ashkenazi to Focus on Iran in US Visit

Readers Number : 72

13/03/2009 Iran will be the focus of talks Israeli army Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi is to hold in Washington this weekend as he meets with top American military commanders regarding “regional and global threats”. Ashkenazi, who left late Thursday night, will meet with National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones, a meeting Israeli officials said was of extreme importance due to the important role Jones plays in the Obama administration as far as setting policy vis á vis Israel and the Palestinians. Ashkenazi will also hold intelligence consultations and will meet with Dennis Ross, who was recently appointed a special adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Iran. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen will be out of town during Ashkenazi’s visit. Instead, the Israeli army chief will meet with top Navy, Air Force and Army commanders. During his visit, Ashkenazi will be accompanied by army Spokesman Brig.-Gen. Avi Benayahu and Israel’s Military Attache in Washington Maj.-Gen. Benny Gantz. This is Ashkenazi’s second visit to the US as chief of staff. In addition to holding talks at the Pentagon, Ashkenazi will also attend a Friends of the Israeli army dinner next week in New York City. Israeli defense officials said that Ashkenazi’s US visit came at a critical time and would be the first formal exchange of ideas since the Obama administration took office in January. While Mullen and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates held the same positions under former president George W. Bush, it was important, the sources said, for the IDF to bolster its ties under the new administration as well. One topic that will feature prominently on Ashkenazi’s agenda will be the Iranian nuclear threat. Earlier this week, Israeli Military Intelligence head Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin told the cabinet that Iran had crossed the technological threshold needed to develop a nuclear weapon. Last week, Mullen said in an interview that Iran had obtained enough fissionable material to develop a single weapon. “It is important that Israel and the US see eye-to-eye on this threat,” another official explained. “These talks will be aimed at ensuring that is the case.” Another topic that will come up is Israel’s request to insert indigenous technology in the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) fifth-generation stealth fighter jet that the IAF intends to purchase in the coming year. The Pentagon has so far rejected a request to allow Israel to install its self-developed electronic warfare and radar systems. On Thursday, Ashkenazi met with Israeli Prime Minister-designate Binyamin Netanyahu to discuss the defense budget. The Israeli army would like the Treasury to commit to the Brodet Commission’s conclusions, which were to establish a multi-year spending plan that will grow annually over the next decade. Ashkenazi and Netanyahu also discussed the continued US foreign military aid to the Israeli army.

Taliban set to burn the Reichstag?

Pepe Escobar

March 12, 2009

For those wondering where United States Vice President Joe Biden bides his – vast – spare time, he has just spent quite an eventful Tuesday both at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU) headquarters in Brussels.

Biden’s message to Europeans in panic with the financial crisis (but reluctant to bail out Eastern Europe) was, well, comforting: “It is worth engaging and determining whether or not there are those who are willing to participate in a secure and stable Afghan state.”
This was designed to stress the prime (revolutionary?) US counter-insurgency tactic in the increasingly tumultuous

Afghanistan-Pakistan theater: the urgency in launching a “good” Taliban talk show.

As if NATO’s top brass hadn’t noticed – and maybe they didn’t – following the example of their troops who’d rather buy carpets in Chicken Street in Kabul than face a mujahid – Biden stressed the situation in the South Asian theater was getting worse.

The Europeans were not impressed – ie, no more forking out troops. Biden said the current mess “poses a security threat … not just to the United States, but to every single nation around this table”. There’s still no credible evidence the Taliban want to cruise the Brandenburg Gate in their Toyota Land Cruisers – or set the new, post-modern, Sir Norman Foster-redesigned Reichstag alight (again).

The hunt for the ‘good’ Taliban
A French/EU strategist confirmed to Asia Times Online that Biden and his eminent NATO round table simply couldn’t agree on which “good” Taliban to talk to. A Skype conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai would not enlighten matters. A phone call to the puppet across the border, Benazir Bhutto’s widower President Asif Ali Zardari, might.

Contrary to a female member of the Afghan parliament in Kabul who summed it all up so nicely last week (“Send us 30,000 scholars instead. Or 30,000 engineers. But don’t send more troops – it will just bring more violence”), Afghan president – they call him the mayor of Kabul – Karzai remains isolated, thus he has chosen to stick to his guns trying to anticipate the outcome of elections set for August.

Afghans didn’t fall for it. The gang of neo-liberal realists of US President Barack Obama’s foreign policy team also didn’t fall for it. True, they’d rather have another Afghan puppet as soon as possible, but for the moment, everyone waits for the August elections.

As for Zardari, he is after all the go-to guy in the theater as far as hugging a Taliban is concerned. He made a deal with Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of Tehrik-i-Taliban in Pakistan. He made a deal with the Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) which led to the release of its leader, the intractable Sufi Mohammad. On February 16, the government of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) signed the Swat peace deal; this means that TNSM will enforce sharia law in the valley and will not attack Zardari’s troops.

This is the model for other tribal areas as well. Two weeks ago the Taliban and the Pakistani government in Bajaur declared a truce – and that will certainly lead to yet another peace deal. Immediately afterwards three key Taliban factions – the Mehsud group, the Gul Bahadur group and the Mullah Nazir group – declared they were forming a tight alliance in Waziristan to fight not Zardari and the Pakistani feudalistic power elite, but NATO, the Americans, their “war on terror” and foreign occupation in general.

United States Central Command chief General David “I’m positioning myself for 2012″ Petraeus, Pentagon supremo Robert Gates, Obama, Biden, the NATO round table, everybody now is on message. The problem is how to locate these oh-so-elusive “good” Taliban.

Biden certainly knows that late last year a select group of Afghan diplomats plus Karzai’s brother, Ahmad Wali, finally talked to some Taliban, good or bad, with mediation by notorious Taliban-enabler Saudi Arabia. That means, with US approval.

What Biden doesn’t admit in public is that the Petraeus-Gates-Obama-Biden strategy amounts to showering US dollar bills on any Taliban commander that wants to make any kind of deal with NATO. Zardari for his part is doing the same thing – but much, much faster.

“Taliban” of course is a supremely elastic denomination. The motley crew on the prowl for “good” Taliban should at least know who they are looking for.

Number one is the historic Taliban led by Mullah Omar, last seen escaping from American bombs and into legend in Kandahar province in the autumn of 2001 on the back of a 50cc Honda. US counter-intelligence aces know he is now based in Quetta, in Balochistan – Pakistan territory, with access to e-mail. But they haven’t even been able to send him an SMS.

Number two is the Hizb-i-Islami (Islamic Party) of former Afghan prime minister and uber-warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar; strictly speaking they are not Taliban.

Number three is the group of famous jihad commander Jalaluddin Haqqani – based in the Waziristan tribal areas of Pakistan.

Then there are at least three Pakistani Taliban groups – Mehsud, Gul Bahadur and the TNSM.

And finally any group of Pashtun peasants who hate foreign occupation (that’s about everybody); had family killed by the Americans, NATO or the Pakistani army (a lot of people); or lost their opium poppy crops, which means their livelihood (many more are candidates for this as soon as Obama’s surge troops hit Helmand province).

All these, on the Afghan side, account for no more than 15,000 people, according to the Afghan Ministry of Interior; but they happen to be very active, and reachable, in no less than 17 Afghan provinces. Certainly the more than 60,000 US and NATO troops, not to mention the 17,000 in Obama’s surge, could engage them in a little more conversation.

The mullah is not in the coola
A case of Chateau Margaux 1982 can be bet on the fact that no one at NATO’s round table knows how to deal with Hekmatyar – the man who chose to destroy Kabul in the civil war in the mid 1990s before the Taliban took power in 1996 (in fact he managed to kill more Afghans than Soviets).

Hekmatyar is the Michael Corleone of jihad. Recently in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, the Karzai people thought they had handed Hekmatyar the famous “offer he can’t refuse”: asylum in Saudi Arabia first, then return to Afghanistan with full immunity. They forgot that a proud Hekmatyar does not want asylum. He wants a piece of the action in Kabul – preferably the meatiest part.
Former Taliban foreign minister Mullah Muttawakil – whom this correspondent had the pleasure to meet in those golden Taliban power days – knows from experience this won’t work. He told al-Jazeera, “It will not benefit anyone … it will not finish the war.”

This means that the hunt for the good Taliban will have to be focused on first finding out, and then talking to, the Shadow himself – Mullah Omar.

And what would Mullah Omar tell all these suddenly talkative Westerners? He would tell exactly what Mullah Omar’s close friend Mullah Mutassim, a former Taliban finance minister, told al-Samoud magazine two weeks ago: we want the US and NATO out of Afghanistan now, we want sharia law and we want absolutely no Western interference in our country.

Now what does Michael Corleone – oops, Hekmatyar want?

He’s not Taliban. He’s not al-Qaeda. He was a darling of the US, Saudi Arabia and the Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) during the jihad in the 1980s. He’s not a fundamentalist – more like Muslim Brotherhood. The US Central Intelligence Agency tried to kill him with – what else – a Hellfire missile. He escaped.

This correspondent almost bumped into him in Kunar province in 2002 – to the astonishment of US troops on the prowl. Then the – who else – ISI helped him to regroup. Karzai offered him a not meaty enough piece of the action in Kabul. Pakistan released his brother from custody. China invited some of his associates to Beijing.

So everybody loves him – Karzai, Zardari, the ISI, the House of Saud, China and, sooner or later, the Obama administration. He may even get an offer he can’t refuse. But there’s a problem: he also wants the US and NATO out. And he’s clever enough to try to fight a united Taliban flush with opium money and ultra- energized against the Petraeus/Gates counter-insurgency tactics. By the way, Hekmatyar was the pioneer of refining heroin inside Afghanistan, instead of just taxing opium.

So what happens next? Well, the usual. The united Pakistani Taliban is helping to prepare the massive spring offensive directed by … Mullah Omar against the surging US plus NATO in Afghanistan. Cynics in Brussels bet that those at the NATO round table know deep inside that this weaponized arm of Western arrogance doesn’t stand a chance in the long run against built-for-war mujahideen who defeated everyone from Alexander The Great onwards.

For public consumption Obama insists “we have no interest or aspiration” to be in Afghanistan “over the long term”. He obviously forgot to ask the Pentagon. Their acronym-infested bible – the famous FM 3-05.202 (Special Forces Foreign Internal Defense Operations) spells counter-insurgency lasting forever. Retired Lieutenant General David Barno, the former top military man in Afghanistan, even said the US will stay until 2025.

Plenty of time to either find any “good” Taliban to talk to or, Allah forbid, helplessly watch them conquer Berlin singing The Ride of the Pashtun with the Berlin Philharmonic.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

Endgame Zardari; or goodbye to all of this

Islamabad diary Friday, March 13, 2009 Ayaz Amir This is not a tragedy. It is a self-manufactured farce– a crisis wholly self-invented –which cannot go on much longer without irreparably compromising the nation’s already embattled wellbeing and security. In other words, if the paladins pretending to run Pakistan are given free rein for some more time, even for a few more days, there won’t be much left to save. In that eventuality we might as well invite Baitullah Mehsud, virtual Emir of Waziristan, and Maulana Fazlullah, very much Emir of Swat, to descend from their mountain fastnesses and march on Islamabad. More than any madressah, it was General Pervez Musharraf with his stupid actions who gave a fillip to Taliban power. President Asif Ali Zardari professes himself to be an enemy of the Taliban. By sowing discord in Pakistan, in reality he is proving to be their best friend. Our American godfathers, to whom we owe so many of our troubles, should savour the irony of it all. Asif Zardari was their Karzai in Islamabad, someone who was supposed to fight the Taliban better than the discredited Pervez Musharraf. But by proving an all-round disaster he is undermining everything. His detractors, of whom there was never a shortage, had no illusions about him. But his supporters, internal and external, thought the leopard might just change his spots. They have been proved wrong. Zardari is not even Karzai. He is proving himself a pale copy of the original, which only underscores our luck. Karzai is the quintessential American puppet but compared to Zardari he begins to look like a national hero. To call Zardari’s recent actions reckless is to invest them with a measure of dignity. Hitler was reckless. So, in some of his late military adventures, was Napoleon. Zardari’s ill-considered actions are plain silly, revealing a capacity wholly inadequate and disproportionate to the challenges Pakistan faces, or the job in which providence — not the people of Pakistan — placed him. Anyone even dimly aware of what’s what in Pakistan knows that the Dogar Supreme Court — there’s no other word to describe it — walks in Zardari’s shadow. Zardari has been Dogar’s great protector and Dogar has done all in his power to return the favour. So it is scarcely to be wondered at if most people have traced to the presidency the footprints of the Supreme Court decision disqualifying the Sharifs from holding public office. This is what sparked the present crisis. For any adventurer that one adventure should have been enough. Not Zardari who went on to compound his initial folly by imposing governor’s rule in Punjab. This left no room for a cover-up. It revealed the twisted vision taking shape in his mind: the desire to seize control in Punjab. In normal times this would have been considered part of the normal pattern of Pakistani politics. But with the northwest and Swat lost to the Taliban, terrorism spreading to other parts of Pakistan — as evidenced by the audacious attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore — tensions with India unresolved and the US breathing down our necks to get our act together and “do more”, who so bold as to say these are normal times? At such a time to open another front in Punjab was not just suicidal but insane. Pakistan is now reaping the fruits of this insanity. Al Qaeda’s purposes are served if there is turmoil in Pakistan. But even if it had wanted to, Al Qaeda could not have scripted the present unrest sweeping Pakistan. This required the artistic flair of the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of Pakistan, Asif Zardari. Pakistan is no stranger to undeserved leadership. But this one takes the prize. What about the army? Well, the army is part of Pakistan. If ordinary citizens are worried, why shouldn’t it be worried? From domestic security to external challenges, it has its hands full, and it is more over-stretched now than in any of its wars with India. It would have to be out of its mind to even contemplate seizing power. But it is too much to expect it would remain unmoved at the spectacle of the Supreme Commander leading the country over the edge. Indeed, not learning anything from our history, and unmindful of the consequences, everyone is hurtling towards the precipice. Those watching Pakistan are increasingly given to saying that this country is consumed by a death wish. On top of all this angst, we get Zardari. Our sins may be great but this is punishment for sins we have not committed. If Pakistan is to be saved the pantomime being enacted in the presidency has to end. This shouldn’t necessarily mean getting Zardari to quit the presidency. But it does mean clipping his powers so that instead of igniting new fires we can concentrate on tackling the fires already raging.. How is this possible? The outlines of various possibilities have already been sketched in the media. A consensus is emerging on the role of Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani. If he were to assert himself, this crisis can be resolved. The first thing to do is call an immediate session of the Punjab assembly to ascertain who commands a majority. This would bring down the political temperature at once and also create space for discussing how best to resolve the judicial crisis. Salmaan Taseer, the governor of Punjab, has done the impossible. He has made himself more unpopular than Zardari. He has also turned himself into an object of ridicule. Whom the gods would destroy, they first make ridiculous. It is in everyone’s best interests, including perhaps his own, that he should go. Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and his ambitious cousin, Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, have also performed the impossible. At a time when they could have washed all their sins by adopting a principled stand and coming out openly against the politics of Zardari and his Punjab minion, Salmaan Taseer, they have been frantically hunting for political advantage: trying to secure for themselves either the chief ministership of Punjab or the chairmanship of the Senate. They will get neither but they have lived up to their reputation of being unprincipled adventurers. There is a strong section of opinion within the PML-N — but which doesn’t include Nawaz Sharif — favouring an alliance with the Chaudhrys.. Which only proves that no single party has a monopoly on short-sighted politics. But to return to Gilani, he can only be effective if he has army backing and if the Americans also play along. Short of stepping into the arena itself — a move sure to have disastrous consequences — the most attractive option for the army is to work from the sidelines and stiffen Gilani’s spine so that, in a remarkable turn of events, he becomes the instrument to cut Zardari down to size. Zardari as unfettered president is a disaster Pakistan can no longer afford. But Zardari as figurehead president — a continuing embarrassment for Pakistan, yes, but a embarrassment hidden safely behind the tall fa�ade of the presidency — is something most Pakistanis can live with. Our American friends must be tearing their hair. Pakistan is key to their endeavour in Afghanistan and Pakistan is in a mess. Since mid-term elections are not an immediate option, this rules out any fresh players (PML-N?) at the centre. This leaves Gilani, or rather a combination of Gilani in front and army chief, Ashfaq Pervaiz Kayani, in the shadows. And the PML-N holding the fort in Punjab. And some way to settle the question of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry’s future. Not an ideal solution but the best under the circumstances. Just three weeks ago Zardari had the initiative while the PML-N was on the defensive. Now Zardari is cornered while Nawaz Sharif is very much in the ascendant, his moral position and his party’s standing stronger than ever. When Harold Wilson said that a week was a long time in politics how could he have known that to no country would his adage apply better than Pakistan? In one sense, however, we have to be grateful to Zardari. Had he been cautious and prudent, eschewing adventurism, he could have been around for four more years. Imagine the calamity this would have been. By shooting himself in both feet, thus ensuring a premature end to his days of unrestricted glory, he has done Pakistan a favour. This is the only silver lining in the present crisis. So perhaps Mao had a point when he said, “There is great disorder under the heavens and the situation is excellent.” Email: winlust@yahoo.com

Osama bin Elvis

By Angelo M. Codevilla from the March 2009 issue

All the evidence suggests Elvis Presley is more alive today than Osama bin Laden. But tell that to the CIA and all the other misconceptualizers of the War on Terror.

Seven years after Osama bin Laden’s last verifiable appearance among the living, there is more evidence for Elvis’s presence among us than for his. Hence there is reason to ask whether the paradigm of Osama bin Laden as terrorism’s deus ex machina and of al Qaeda as the prototype of terrorism may be an artifact of our Best and Brightest’s imagination, and whether investment in this paradigm has kept our national security establishment from thinking seriously about our troubles’ sources. So let us take a fresh look at the fundamentals.

Dead or Alive?

Negative evidence alone compels the conclusion that Osama is long since dead. Since October 2001, when Al Jazeera’s Tayseer Alouni interviewed him, no reputable person reports having seen him—not even after multiple-blind journeys through intermediaries. The audio and video tapes alleged to be Osama’s never convinced impartial observers. The guy just does not look like Osama. Some videos show him with a Semitic aquiline nose, while others show him with a shorter, broader one. Next to that, differences between colors and styles of beard are small stuff.

Nor does the tapes’ Osama sound like Osama. In 2007 Switzerland’s Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence, which does computer voice recognition for bank security, compared the voices on 15 undisputed recordings of Osama with the voices on 15 subsequent ones attributed to Osama, to which they added two by native Arab speakers who had trained to imitate him and were reading his writings. All of the purported Osama recordings (with one falling into a gray area) differed clearly from one another as well as from the genuine ones. By contrast, the CIA found all the recordings authentic. It is hard to imagine what methodology might support this conclusion.

Also in 2007, Professor Bruce Lawrence, who heads Duke University’s religious studies program, argued in a book on Osama’s messages that their increasingly secular language is inconsistent with Osama’s Wahhabism. Lawrence noted as well that the Osama figure in the December 2001 video, which many have taken as his assumption of responsibility for 9/11, wears golden rings—decidedly un-Wahhabi. He also writes with the wrong hand. Lawrence concluded that the messages are fakes, and not very good ones. The CIA has judged them all good.

Above all, whereas Elvis impersonators at least sing the King’s signature song, “You ain’t nutin’ but a hound dawg,” the words on the Osama tapes differ substantively from what the real Osama used to say—especially about the most important matter. On September 16, 2001, on Al Jazeera, Osama said of 9/11: “I stress that I have not carried out this act, which appears to have been carried out by individuals with their own motivation.” Again, in the October interview with Tayseer Alouni, he limited his connection with 9/11 to ideology: “If they mean, or if you mean, that there is a link as a result of our incitement, then it is true. We incite…” But in the so-called “confession video” that the CIA found in December, the Osama figure acts like the chief conspirator. The fact that the video had been made for no self-evident purpose except perhaps to be found by the Americans should have raised suspicion. Its substance, the celebratory affirmation of a responsibility for 9/11 that Osama had denied, should also have weighed against the video’s authenticity. Why would he wait to indict himself until after U.S. forces and allies had secured Afghanistan? But the CIA acted as if it had caught Osama red-handed.

The CIA should also have taken seriously the accounts of Osama’s death. On December 26, 2001, Fox News interviewed a Taliban source who claimed that he had attended Osama’s funeral, along with some 30 associates. The cause of death, he said, had been pulmonary infection. The New York Times on July 11, 2002, reported the consensus of a story widespread in Pakistan that Osama had succumbed the previous year to his long-standing nephritis. Then, Benazir Bhutto—as well connected as anyone with sources of information on the Afghan-Pakistani border—mentioned casually in a BBC interview that Osama had been murdered by his associates. Murder is as likely as natural death. Osama’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is said to have murdered his own predecessor, Abdullah Azzam, Osama’s original mentor. Also, because Osama’s capture by the Americans would have endangered everyone with whom he had ever associated, any and all intelligence services who had ever worked with him had an interest in his death.

New Osama, Real Osama

We do not know what happened to Osama. But whatever happened, the original one, the guy who looked and sounded like a spoiled Saudi kid turned ideologue, is no more. The one who exists in the tapes is different: he is the world’s terror master, endowed with inexplicable influence. In short, whoever is making the post-November 2001 Osama tapes is pretending to far greater power than Osama ever claimed, much less exercised.

The real Osama bin Laden, like the real al Qaeda over which he presided, was never as important as reports from Arab (especially Saudi) intelligence services led the CIA to believe. Osama’s (late) role in Afghanistan’s anti-Soviet resistance was to bring in a little money. Arab fighters in general, and particularly the few Osama brought, fought rarely and badly. In war, one Afghan is worth many Arabs. In 1990 Osama told Saudi regent Abdullah that his mujahideen could stop Saddam’s invasion of the kingdom. When Abdullah waved him away in favor of a half-million U.S. troops, Osama turned dissident, enough to have to move to Sudan, where he stayed until 1996 hatching sterile anti-Saudi plots until forced to move his forlorn band to Afghanistan.

There is a good reason why neither Osama nor al Qaeda appeared on U.S. intelligence screens until 1998. They had done nothing noteworthy. Since the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa, however, and especially after director of Central Intelligence George Tenet imputed responsibility for 9/11 to Osama “game, set, and match,” the CIA described him as terrorism’s prime mover. It refused to countenance the possibility that Osama’s associates might have been using him and his organization as a flag of convenience. As U.S. forces were taking over Afghanistan in 2001, the CIA was telling Time and Newsweek that it expected to find the high-tech headquarters from which Osama controlled terrorist activities in 50 countries. None existed. In November 2008, without factual basis and contrary to reason, the CIA continued to describe him and his organization as “the most clear and present danger to the United States.” It did not try to explain how this could be while, it said, Osama is “largely isolated from the day to day operations of the organization he nominally heads.” What organization?

Axiom and Opposite

Why such a focus on an organization that was never large, most of whose known associates have long since been killed or captured, and whose assets the CIA does not even try to catalogue? The CIA’s official explanation, that al Qaeda has “metastasized” by spreading its expertise, is an empty metaphor. But pursuant to it, the U.S. government accepted the self-designation as “al Qaeda” of persons fighting for Sunni-Baathist interests in Iraq, and has pinned the label gratuitously on sundry high-profile terrorists while acknowledging that their connection to Osama and Co. may be emotional at most. But why such gymnastics in the face of Osama’s incontrovertible irrelevance? Because focusing on Osama and al Qaeda affirms a CIA axiom dating from the Cold War, an axiom challenged during the Reagan years but that has been U.S. policy since 1993, namely: terrorism is the work of “rogue individuals and groups” that operate despite state authority. According to this axiom, the likes of Osama run rings around the intelligence services of Arab states—just like the Cold War terrorists who came through Eastern Europe to bomb in Germany and Italy and to shoot Pope John Paul II supposedly acted despite Bulgarian intelligence, despite East Germany’s Stasi, despite the KGB. This axiom is dear to many in the U.S. government because it leads logically to working with the countries whence terrorists come rather than to treating them as enemies.

But what if terrorism were (as Thomas Friedman put it) “what states want to happen or let happen”? What if, in the real world, infiltrators from intelligence services—the professionals—use the amateur terrorists rather than the other way around? What is the logical consequence of noting the fact that the terrorist groups that make a difference on planet Earth—such as Hamas and Hezbollah, the PLO, Colombia’s FARC—are extensions of, respectively, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and Venezuela? It is the negation of the U.S. government’s favorite axiom. It means that when George W. Bush spoke, and when Barack Obama speaks, of America being “at war” against “extremism” or “extremists” they are either being stupid or acting stupid to avoid dealing with the nasty fact that many governments wage indirect warfare.

In short, insisting on Osama’s supposed mastery of al Qaeda, and on equating terrorism with al Qaeda, is official U.S. policy because it forecloses questions about the role of states, and makes it possible to indict as warmongers whoever raises such questions. Osama’s de facto irrelevance for seven years, however, has undermined that policy’s intellectual legitimacy. How much longer can presidents or directors of the CIA wave the spectra of Osama and al Qaeda before people laugh at them?

An Intellectual House of Cards

Questioning osama’s relevance to today’s terrorism leads naturally to asking how relevant he ever was, and who might be more relevant. That in turn quickly shows how flimsy are the factual foundations on which rest the U.S. government’s axioms about the “war on terror.” Consider: We know that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) planned and carried out 9/11. But there is no independent support for KSM’s claim that he acted at Osama’s direction and under his supervision. On the contrary, we know for sure that the expertise and the financing for 9/11 came from KSM’s own group (the U.S. government has accepted but to my knowledge not verified that the group’s core is a biological family of Baluchs). This group carried out the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa and every other act for which al Qaeda became known. The KSM group included the perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombings Abdul Rahman Yasin, who came from, returned to, and vanished in Iraq, as well as Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of that bombing, who came to the U.S. from Iraq on an Iraqi passport and was known to his New York collaborators as “Rashid the Iraqi.” This group had planned the bombing of U.S. airliners over the Pacific in 1995. The core members are non-Arabs. They had no history of religiosity (and the religiosity they now display is unconvincing). They were not creatures of Osama. Only in 1996 did the group come to Osama’s no-account band, and make it count.

In life, as in math, you must judge the function |of a factor in any equation by factoring it out and seeing if the equation still works. Factor out Osama. Chances are, 9/11 still happens. Factor out al Qaeda too. Maybe 9/11 still happens. The other bombing plots sure happened without it. But if you factor out the KSM group, surely there is no 9/11, and without the KSM group, there is no way al Qaeda would have become a household word.

Who, precisely, are KSM and his reputed nephews? That is an interesting question to which we do not know the answer, and are not about to find out. Ramzi Yousef was sentenced to life imprisonment for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing after a trial that focused on his guilt and that abstracted from his associations. Were our military tribunal to accede to KSM’s plea of guilty, he would avoid any trial at all. Moreover, the sort of trial that would take place before the tribunal would focus on proving guilt rather than on getting at the whole truth. It would not feature the cross-examination of witnesses, the substantive proving and impeachment of evidence, and the exploration of alternative explanations of events. But real trials try all sides. Do we need such things given that KSM confessed? Yes. There is no excuse for confusing confessions with truth, especially confessions in which the prisoners confirm our agencies’ prejudices.

The excuse for limiting the public scrutiny of evidence is the alleged need to protect intelligence sources. But my experience, as well as that of others who have been in a position to probe such claims, is that almost invariably they protect our intelligence agencies’ incompetence and bureaucratic interests. Anyhow, the public’s interest in understanding what it’s up against should override all others.

Understanding the Past, Dealing With the Future

Focusing on Osama bin Elvis is dangerous to America’s security precisely because it continues to substitute in our collective mind the soft myth that terrorism is the work of romantic rogues for the hard reality that it can happen only because certain states want it to happen or let it happen. KSM and company may not have started their careers as agents of Iraqi intelligence, or they may have quit the Iraqis and worked for others, or maybe they just worked for themselves. But surely they were a body unto themselves. As such they fit Osama’s description of those responsible for 9/11 as “individuals with their own motivation” far better than they fit the CIA’s description of them as Osama’s tools.

More important, focusing on Osama and al Qaeda distorts our understanding of what is happening in Afghanistan. The latter-day Taliban are fielding forces better paid and armed than any in the region except America’s. Does anyone suggest seriously that Osama or al-Zawahiri are providing the equipment, the money, or the moral incentives? Such amounts of money can come only from the super wealthy of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. The equipment can come only through dealers who work at the sufferance of states, and can reach the front only through Pakistan by leave of Pakistani authorities. Moreover, the moral incentives for large-scale fighting in Pushtunistan can come only as part of the politics of Pushtun identity. Hence sending troops to Afghanistan to fight Pushtuns financed by Saudis, supported by Pakistanis, and disposing of equipment purchased throughout the world, with the objective of “building an Afghan nation” capable of preventing Osama and al Qaeda from messing up the world from their mountain caves, is an errand built on intellectual self-indulgence.

Intellectual Authority

The CIA had as much basis for deeming Osama the world’s terror master “game, set, and match” in 2001 as it had in 2003 for verifying as a “slam dunk” the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and as it had in 2007 for determining that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program. Mutatis mutandis, it was on such bases that the CIA determined in 1962 that the Soviets would not put missiles in Cuba; that the CIA was certain from 1963 to 1978 that the USSR would not build the first strike missile force that it was building before its very eyes; that the CIA convinced Bush 41 that the Soviet Union was not falling apart and that he should help hold it together; that the CIA assured the U.S. government in 1990 that Iraq would not invade Kuwait, and in 1996 that neither India nor Pakistan would test nuclear weapons. In these and countless other instances, the CIA has provided the US government and the media with authoritative bases for denying realities over which America was tripping.

The force of the CIA’s judgments, its authority, has always come from the congruence between its prejudices and those of America’s ruling class. When you tell people what they want to hear, you don’t have to be too careful about premises, facts, and conclusions. Our problem, in short, is not the CIA’s mentality so much as the unwillingness of persons in government and the “attentive public” to exercise intellectual due diligence about international affairs. Osama bin Laden’s role may be as good a place as any to start.

Angelo M. Codevilla, a professor of international relations at Boston University, a fellow of the Claremont Institute, and a senior editor of The American Spectator, was a Foreign Service officer and served on the staff of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee between 1977 and 1985. He was the principal author of the 1980 presidential transition report on intelligence. He is the author of The Character of Nations: How Politics Makes and Breaks Prosperity, Family, and Civility.

CIA to face “Big Cleaning”

Nil NIKANDROV, http://en.fondsk.ru

The United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is going to check the activities of CIA over two presidential terms of George Bush Junior. The official ground for this check is the problem of “legal methods” the Company’s officers used to detain and to question people suspected in terrorism.

The cases of power abuse are so numerous and their details published in mass media are so shocking that American legislators simply cannot ignore this wave of disclosures. If in early 2000 an average newspaper reader did not know what “waterboarding” is now he would look naïve if he asked about it. “Waterboarding” is a widespread “technical method” (a form of torture) used by US security forces during interrogation in order to get confessionary statements. In combination with many other methods “waterboarding” proved to be efficient: there is no terrorist who after pouring water over his face many times and experiencing drowning effect will not admit to many crimes whether he committed them or not.

In order not to spread havoc among CIA structures it is stressed that the check will be made “not to initiate legal proceedings against the agency officers” but “to define how rightful CIA actions were and to make necessary changes in current practices” , according to the brief statements of anonymous sources in Senate. Nevertheless, on the second day after his inauguration president Barack Obama ordered to close secret prisons of CIA and to stop using tortures as a method of interrogation.

In early February 2009 Leon Panetta (born 1938) became the new director of CIA. Before his appointment he had never dealt with the Agency. The milestones of his career are as follows: 1964–1966: served in the US Army; 1971: joined the Democratic party; 1970-1971: assistant of Mayor of New York. In 1976 Panetta was for the first time elected in the US Congress where he was busy with budget and civil rights issues. In 1994-1997 he was President Bill Clinton’s White House Chief of Staff and since 1997 – up to 2009 he was the head of “a family” Institute for Public Policy (together with his wife Silvia). Panetta is an experienced administrator, a strong liberal and flexible politician.

Lack of emotional factor (the fact that he was not involved in CIA before) will definitely help him to work on the Company’s enhancement. Before his appointment Panetta said at the Senate that one of his priority tasks as the director of CIA will be tracking down or liquidation of international terrorist number 1 Osama bin Laden.

Panetta’s appointment does not mean anything good for CIA officers: it is clear that “big cleaning” is on the way and it concerns everyone who under the veil of fighting terrorism contributed to turning CIA into “global ohranka” – “torture security service”. Trying to justify their actions, CIA officers refer to the directives from the government. They admit that there had been mistakes and abuses and sometimes it had been “inexact identification of the enemy” but business is business and war is war. Should you reproach them for it?

Before Iraq was attacked some people in the US government ordered to find evidence of Saddam Hussein links with Al-Quaeda by all means as well as to prove that Iraq has weapon of mass destruction and the components for its construction. President Bush and the “hawks” from his team got only irritated with the true answers of honest American diplomats and intelligence officers: “No links between Hussein and Al Qaeda have been revealed”, “No weapon of mass destruction in Iraq has been found”.

Ambassador Joseph Wilson was publicly criticized for stating that the story with Hussein’s envoys purchasing nuclear stuff in Nigeria was fake. “To punish” him people from Bush’s team (with his consent) organized the leak of information into mass media saying that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame works at CIA in the department of control over the spread of mass destruction weapon. This signal was clear – the instructions of the White House should be carried out by all means. If someone in the government tells you that Iraq has the weapon of mass destruction, the weapon should be found there. The reputation of CIA was affected by so called preventive operations against terrorists on the territory of the countries friendly to the USA.

For example an incident with a Muslim activist who was kidnapped in Italy as well as flights of CIA aircraft with captured “terrorists” in Europe and their sending to numerous secret prisons for tortures. The security services of East European countries, including Poland and Romania, also learnt from CIA new technologies of interrogation.

Justifications of the Company’s officers saying “We were forced!” are unlikely to be accepted by the officials who will check CIA activities. Dragged out war against terrorism, (both real and fictional – I stress it) has discredited the USA in the eyes of the whole world and now it is impossible to do without washing of “white robes” of US democracy and legality. The best object for public lashing is CIA.

People in the Company understand “what is good and what is bad” which is proved by the fact that CIA had burned 92 video tapes with records of tortures of suspected “terrorists” of Al Quaeda. The content of those tapes could have served as uncontroversial evidence to start criminal proceedings against the officers of CIA, who had taken part in tortures and initiated them. The Company continues to liquidate internal documents which could discredit it upon the pretext that they are no longer needed for work. First of all the liquidation concerns the materials which could serve as evidence of operations on neutralization of politicians in the South America especially Venezuela President Hugo Chavez and Bolivia’s president Evo Morales, both hostile to the USA.

By now Langley paper trimmers at CIA headquarter have trimmed hundreds of pages of reports on operations in “this field”, which were carried out via CIA spies in DAS (security service of Columbia) and via “paramilitares” from so called AUC (united self-defense forces of Columbia).

It is not for the first time when the Company is to be checked by the Senate – there were several similar checks in CIA history. The most famous investigation was carried out in 1970-s under the chairmanship of Senator Frank Church. Then his commission investigated sharp practices of CIA, secret operations of different kind including physical liquidation of “enemies” of the USA.

Already then the Company had become known for its uncontrolled practices in international and domestic affairs, and the Congress had to publish many revealing facts in order to get control over CIA again. Some former CIA agents told American citizens about illegal operations of their Company, cases of power abuse and the use of antihuman methods. The public attention was drawn to CIA secret laboratory in Fort Detrick. There virulent poisons and psychotropic substances were made which helped CIA to get control over human mind as well as to kill people “without leaving any trace”. There was rush of indignation in the world regarding such practices. Soon a special directive was adopted which prohibited CIA officers to liquidate foreign high rank politicians. But in the time of Bush Junior everything resumed its natural course.

Of course current nervous atmosphere in CIA affects the work of its agents especially those who are working in hot spots of the world. Life in extreme conditions, when you can be killed or seriously injured or arrested by terrorists who take revenge for Guantanamo and other prisons – all this makes the efficient work impossible. Not all CIA officers can withstand constant risk and the cases of suicide among them are more usual thing than among the soldiers of American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even job sharing system which CIA uses in order not to overload their officers with extreme conditions does not work.

Often the company officers use alcohol and drugs to reduce tension and stress and to escape from reality. The number of cases of abuse of office by CIA residents has also increased. One of the latest cases – the case of CIA top officer in Algeria who used psychotropic substances (of those who were made in Fort Detrick laboratory) to “court the ladies”. The story of CIA resident who turned out to be rapist hit the headlines. Though he was taken off the job put under on trial it does not seem that he feels remorse writing bestsellers about his love affairs with Muslim ladies.

Under George Bush Junior those CIA officers were in great demand, who in order to protect US interests could easily, without any moral conflict, cross the line between the good and the bad. When George Tenet was the director of CIA the recruitment of such people became especially popular. Trent said that CIA should not care about doubtful reputation of its new agents and the most important factor was their skills. He said that it was difficult to do dirty work for those who had clean sheet.

These new CIA experts were moved up to the key positions in CIA by the influential neo conservatives from the Bush team. The typical representative here was John Negroponte, ex-director of National Intelligence, the man of quick and cruel decisions. When he was US ambassador in Honduras he supported the activities of death squards in the Central America. Hundreds and thousands victims in Honduras, Guatemala, Salvador and Nicaragua are under his belt. Negroponte wanted the officers of National Intelligence to be as cold-blooded and remorseless as he was. He used to say that the best enemy is the dead enemy.

There were a lot of conflicts inside CIA when some officers refused to execute criminal orders of their bosses – these officers became outlaws, fell from grace and became the object of mockery. Some of them failed to protect their rights themselves and had to address to lawyers. The best known lawyer among CIA officers is Janine Brookner. She is a former CIA officer who in early 1990-s was wrongly accused of abuse of power (it was claimed that when she was in charge of CIA office on Jamaica there were cases of sexual harassment there). In the course of a long trial Brookner managed to prove that the accusations were ungrounded and the reason for accusation was only the fact that she was a demanding boss. After that Brookner became a lawyer herself and her field is the cases related to CIA. However the number of CIA related cases has increased recently and now the whole team of lawyers have to deal with them.

Leon Panetta does not have too much time to get rid of the most notorious masters of torture methods. Some publishing houses in the USA signed contracts with the officers of the Company who decided to tell the truth about the CIA activities under Bush Jr. There is a good precedent for it. In 1970 Philip Agee, CIA officer, published his book: “Inside the Company”. The book was translated into many languages and up to date remains the true evidence of sentiments of CIA “plankton” executives. That means that a new wave of Agee-like disclosures can seriously destabilize CIA functioning. Hopefully Panetta is a good administrator and after getting rid of Bush CIA officers who had enjoyed the use of Gestapo methods to get information he will manage to win back good reputation for CIA.

One more thing which worries the head of CIA is the lack of moral guidelines in the Company’s work, which leads to patriotic disorientation of CIA officers and disappointment in national ideals. Some of these disappointed officers easily betray the Company’s interests and sell top secret materials.

In the times of bipolar world spy scandals in CIA were mainly linked with the Soviet Union. At present the number of “anonymous enthusiasts” who are willing to learn more about CIA activities is bigger. Here is an explanation for it: the global expansion as planned by the neo-cons has definitively failed, and the shadow government of the Empire in the current situation of international crisis and threatening collapse of the economy and the financial system may start the last and decisive battle which can be catastrophic for the world. Heavily armed Empire now may decide attack ignoring its partners and allies. This has been the case many times and US is experienced enough in making excuses to use military forces.

No matter what kind of “cleaning” will be carried out inside the Company it is unlikely that CIA will cease to be global ohranka security agency which plays by its own rules. That is why even security forces of the US allies are now trying (and not without success) to get secret intelligence positions within CIA.

Three of the Wana Suspects Held Carry Indian and Sri Lankan Currency

3 Maldives held in SWA

⋅ Friday, March 13th, 2009 ⋅

PESHAWAR (SANA): Three Maldives’ inhabitants were held by Khushhal Scout in Jandoola area of South Waziristan on Tuesday.

According to the sources, the three Maldives citizens were illegally entered into Pakistan through Wagah border and later reached South Waziristan.

The police seized from the holders $ 2400, Rs. 9000 and 700 Indian and Sri Lankan currencies.

According to the security sources, it was quite astonishing on their travel from India to South Waziristan holding Indian and Sri Lankan currencies.

ARE THESE THE ASSASSINS OF THE WAZIRI TRIBESMEN?

Nine foreigners held in Wana

WANA: Security forces on Thursday arrested nine foreigners as they attempted to cross into Afghanistan early on Thursday. A security official confirmed the arrest of three foreign nationals from Manzai checkpost on the Wana-Tank Road and six from Korre checkpost. The authorities also seized foreign currency and religious literature from the accused. In preliminary interrogation, the accused confessed to entering Pakistan via the Wahga border and said they were headed for Afghanistan through Wana. app

Quetta observes complete strike against targeted killings

Staff Report

QUETTA: A complete shutter-down strike was observed in the city on Thursday against a spate of target killings in Quetta. The Pakhtoonkhwa Milli Awami Party and the Anjuman-e-Tajraan had given the call for strike.

Business activities remained completely paralysed in the city as all major shopping centres, banks and offices on Jinnah Road, Liaqat Bazaar, Abdul Sattar Road, Prince Road and elsewhere in the city remained closed. The strike was peaceful and the police were on alert with extensive patrolling.

Quetta has recently witnessed a number of targeted killings in which the activists of banned outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and other outlawed groups had targeted Shias belonging to the Hazara tribe.

On March 3, unidentified assailants killed five Shias in the city – taking the death toll from sectarian attacks in a single week to 12.

Despite the killings of around 50 people, not a single arrest has been made.

Here is the twist we have been waiting for

After successfully driving the “Pakistani Taliban” back together (See:Taliban rename their group)

through destabilization of one-sided Predator attacks upon Nazir’s forces

(See: US/Pakistan Showdown/Throwdown July12),

shadowy hooded figures are abducting and killing men from Wana to sow fear and suspicion among Ahmadzai Wazir tribesmen.

THIS IS THE “STRATEGY OF TENSION” AT WORK, FOLKS; IF EVERYONE IS SUSPECTED OF BEING THE CIA’S FINGERMAN THEN NO ONE CAN BE TRUSTED AND UNITY IN THE FACE OF AMERICAN AGGRESSION CANNOT BE MAINTAINED.

Target killing spree terrifies tribesmen in Waziristan

By Mushtaq Yusufzai

PESHAWAR: The recent killing of two brothers and their maternal uncle on spying charges in South Waziristan, which was first-ever incident of its kind there, has terrorised local Ahmadzai Wazir tribesmen.

Around half a dozen gunmen having their faces covered shot dead a local tribesman Qayyum Wazir, resident of Dhog village near Wana, two weeks ago. He was maternal uncle of Tahir and Said Wali, both real brothers, lived at Zyari Noor village near Wana, headquarters of militancy-hit South Waziristan tribal region.

The blind murder of Qayyum terrified local tribespeople and they sent a jirga of noted tribal elders to Taliban central leader, Maulvi Nazeer to investigate his killing. Maulvi Nazeer heard their reservations and promised to thoroughly investigate the incident.

After the mysterious murder of Qayyum in broad daylight in Wana’s busy Rustam bazaar, suspected militants kidnapped Tahir and then threw his bullet-riddled body near Wana bazaar.

The perpetrators of his murder left CD and a hand-written letter in which Tahir was accused of spying on ‘Mujahideen’ in South Waziristan for helping US forces in Afghanistan to target their locations through drones.

In the compact disc (CD), Tahir confessed his alleged involvement in helping US drones to target suspected positions of local Taliban, led by Maulvi Nazeer. He, however, argued they worked on directives of his brother, Said Wali.

He said his brother, Said Wali, was giving them SIMs, which they placed near the positions of senior Taliban commanders and their guests. In his alleged confessional statement, which his killers could have forced him to record, he said they were paid Rs300,000 per person killed in the drone attack.

After his murder, unknown gunmen shot dead his brother Said Wali at Tanaee area near Wana. He was reportedly on his way to home when fired upon. Tribal sources said another tribesman, Shabir, who belongs to Ahmadzai Wazir tribe, mysteriously disappeared and was reportedly picked up by suspected militants, is still in their custody.

The Ahmadzai Wazir Taliban had not yet taken responsibility for the killing of the brothers and their maternal uncle. However, tribal sources said militants could be behind their murders as they were angry over the loss of their senior commanders and some Arabs in frequent drone attacks in their area.

It is to be mentioned here that dozens of people, including tribal militants and al-Qaeda operatives and some innocent tribespeople had been killed in the missile attacks by the CIA-operated spy planes in South Waziristan.

In the adjoining North Waziristan, where too senior Taliban and al-Qaeda commanders lost their lives in drone attacks, around 40 people have been killed by suspected Taliban on charges of spying for US forces. In South Waziristan, it was first-ever killing of the alleged US spies which terrified the local tribespeople.

The “Rule the World” Gang Wants Merger of CIA Special Forces

IMAGINE HOW MUCH THE CIA COULD F**K-UP THE WORLD WITH ALL THOSE EXPERT KILLERS SET LOOSE UPON THE WORLD UNDER THE SPY AGENCY’S COVERT AUTHORITY.

Plan would have SOCOM, CIA share personnel

By Sean D. Naylor – Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Mar 5, 2009 20:59:09 EST

Special Forces soldiers and Central Intelligence Agency operatives could soon be moving seamlessly between the military and intelligence realms if Congress follows advice it received Tuesday.

The special operations community and the CIA each would benefit from a much closer integration of their personnel, Roger Carstens, a recently retired Special Forces lieutenant colonel who is a non-resident fellow at the Center for a New American Security, and Robert Martinage, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, told a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee’s terrorism, unconventional threats and capabilities subcommittee.

Martinage, who authored an 82-page report titled “Special Operations Forces — Future Challenges and Opportunities” that was published in November, argued for “increased institutionalized cooperation between the CIA and SOCOM [i.e. U.S. Special Operations Command], including hybrid career paths, so people could go back and forth between the two.”

“Ideally, personnel should not only be able to move back and forth from CIA stations and SOF ground units, but also to compete for selected mid- and senior-level leadership positions in either organization,” Martinage said.

The Defense Department should “migrate Special Forces [units] over to the CIA,” suggested Carstens, who conducted a yearlong study of the U.S. special operations community for CNAS in 2008.

“I’m not talking about just onesies and twosies,” he said. “Why not take a Special Forces company and just plop them down in Virginia and say, ‘When you go to that company, you’re spending a three year-long tour working for the agency’?”

CIA operatives as well as members of other government agencies, could also serve on A-teams, the 12-man units also known as operational detachments-alpha, or ODAs, that are the lowest echelon of command in Special Forces, Carstens said.

Such arrangements would have multiple benefits, they said.

What Martinage termed “flexible and routine detailing of SOF personnel” to the CIA would allow special operations forces to use the agency’s Title 50 foreign intelligence authorities, which permit covert activities in which the U.S. role is hidden, he said. The same would be true if a CIA operative was serving on an A-team, according to Carstens, who noted that adding a State Department representative would give the A-team access to authorities under Title 22, the section of the U.S. Code that covers foreign relations.

Seconding a Special Forces company to the ground branch of the CIA’s Special Activities Division would give the agency “a resident capability in foreign internal defense, which is not a bad thing,” Carstens said. Foreign internal defense is the training of host-nation security forces in counterinsurgency and related techniques.

Any special operators detailed to the agency “would also benefit from being exposed to the tradecraft of National Clandestine Service personnel,” Martinage said in his prepared remarks.

Contacted by Army Times, U.S. SOCOM spokesman Ken McGraw declined to answer questions on the relationship between the CIA and special operations forces.

“The Central Intelligence Agency is one of U.S. Special Operations Command’s key interagency partners,” he wrote in an e-mail “It would be inappropriate to discuss the details of that partnership or speculate how the CIA and special operations forces may or may not integrate in the future.”

An Islamic View of Gog and Magog in the Modern World

I haven’t had the time yet to read the following book, but the topics it deals with are of absolute relevance to the times we are living in and the momentous turmoil that is about to be released into the world.

Imran N. Hosein

The following excerpt shows just what I mean:

The Wahhabi sect
Among the strange and misguided sects is one that
mysteriously emerged out of the region of Najd in Arabia to
declare all its Muslim rivals to be Mushrikūn (i.e. a people who
blaspheme against the one God), and to further declare it
obligatory to kill all such rivals. Members of that Najdi Wahhabi
sect entered into an alliance with a Saudi clan in order to win
control over first, the Nejd, and then the Hejazi Arabian heartland
of Islam. They sought this control over the Hejaz in order to
cleanse it of what they considered to be Shirk (blasphemy) and to
thus restore the true faith. When they succeeded in winning that
control they proceeded to slaughter thousands of innocent
Muslims.
The raison d’etre for the mysterious emergence of the Saudi-
Wahhabi alliance was clearly revealed when both the Saudi clan
and the Wahhabi sect conspired in the creation in Arabia of a Saudi
Anglo-American client-State that they audaciously named Saudi
73
Arabia. In the process of creating that client State they destroyed
Dār al-Islām and the Caliphate (i.e. Khilāfah State) that the blessed
Prophet had himself established. They were duped by Dajjāl since
their betrayal of Islam paved the way for Gog and Magog to fulfill
their mysterious role described in the Qur’ān (al-Anbiyah’:95-6).
The Saudi-Wahhabi alliance also joined Europe’s mysterious
Judeo-Christian alliance in preference to fraternal solidarity with
those who proclaimed their faith in Islam.
The final and formal consummation of this momentous deal
with the very heartland of Islam was of such critical importance to
the Judeo-Christian alliance that an American President had to
travel himself on an American warship to meet personally with the
Saudi King. The USS Murphy secretly took King Abdul Aziz Ibn
Saud from the Arabian port of Jeddah to the Great Bitter Lake in
Egypt’s Suez Canal where the USS Quincy waited with US
President Roosevelt on board. The two leaders met on February 14,
1945, to seal their alliance. The Saudi Wahhabis reaped the bitter
fruit of that alliance just three years later when the State of Israel
was born and USA was proud to be the first State to recognize
Israel.
The fact that the Saudi-American alliance has not only
survived but also prospered since that cataclysmic event in 1948
clearly indicates that the Wahhabi sect is complicit in the betrayal
of Islam.

YOU CAN READ THE ENTIRE BOOK HERE, PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF IT IS HELPFUL TO THE CAUSE OF WORLD PEACE OR ANTITHETICAL TO OUR HOPES AND DREAMS.

Bridging The Divide Among American Muslims

Unity can’t be achieved without recognizing the intrinsic dignity of all and appreciating the contributions that all have made in the advancement of the true human interests.

Bridging The Divide Among American Muslims
Dawud Walid
Illume Magazine
http://www.illumema gazine.org/ magazine/ publish/unconven tional_perspecti ve/Bridging_ The_Divide_ Among_American_ Muslims.php

In conjunction with the Hajj season, it is fitting to re-examine the current state of unity or lack thereof within the American Muslim community. Just a few days ago at the Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA) conference, I participated on a panel titled “Beginning the Dialogue on Healing and Reconciliation: Addressing the Historic Divide Within the American Muslim Community.” As it relates to addressing Hajj and the discussion of healing and reconciliation within the community, I addressed some aspects that can aid in bringing about unity in its true sense.

There are different levels of tension currently within the community that should be acknowledged, however, before continuing:

1) Intra-indigenous Muslim tension based upon historical claims to ownership of the Islamic movement in America. One example is tension between those who embraced mainstream Islam prior to 1975 without going through the Nation of Islam with those who went through the Nation of Islam then transitioned to mainstream Islam under the leadership of Imam Warith Deen Mohammed.
2) Indigenous Muslim – “Immigrant” Muslim conflict based upon historical grievances and perceived, sometimes incorrectly, slights.
3) Lack of interaction and non-cooperation based upon interpretative or methodological differences. Salafi – Sufi non-cooperation to Sunni – Shi’i animosity are a couple of examples.
4) Generational differences between those who are part of the “old guard” with the younger, more collegiately educated as well as descendants of immigrants with their parent and grandparent generations.

The Qur’an states, “Hold on all of you together to the rope of Allah, and do not divide yourselves.” Also, “Surely, this community your community is one, and I am your Lord, so worship Me [alone].” Prophet Muhammad (SAAS) said, “The believers are like one body. When one part of the body is afflicted, the entire body feels the pain.” These can be quoted by the average high school age Muslim. Quoting is not the problem; implementation is.

Hajj reaffirms the unity of the Almighty and teaches the conscious believers that humanity is one although people have diverse expressions whose capacities of expression were made by the Creator. Allah created humans to express diversity “in order that you may know each other” per the Qur’anic statement. And this mutual awareness or reciprocal knowledge can only be achieved through real time interaction, which heightens the spiritual awareness of man with man. This principle is embodied in the beauty of Hajj especially Mt Arafat, which pilgrims strengthen their one on one relationships with Allah, yet move in unison and harmony with others.

True awareness and recognition of those who are different naturally inspires appreciation, appreciation in the sense that common aspirations and humanity can be clearly seen as well as appreciation of various contributions. Such was the purpose of the main session at the MANA conference, which was mentioned earlier about bridging the divide within the community to not only discuss issues in a candid, constructive manner but to also provide the space for real interaction. Unity can’t be achieved without recognizing the intrinsic dignity of all and appreciating the contributions that all have made in the advancement of the true human interests.

MANA has a very timely initiative planned to hold town halls throughout major cities in America to discuss what has kept American Muslims divided; the town halls’ objective will be to cultivate a spirit of unity without seeking to impose uniformity. Just as the Prophet Muhammad (SAAS) started a brotherhood system pairing off the Ansar in Al-Madinah with the Muhajireen from Makkah, I look forward to such efforts here where real relationships can be born, American-born with non-American born and elder with youth. Until we develop deep, meaningful relationships between Muslims in America, unity will be extremely elusive.

Dawud Walid is currently the Executive Director of the Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MI). He is frequently quoted in the media regarding civil and human rights issues facing Muslims and has penned articles that have appeared in various publications.

National Project on Foreign Military Bases

Security Without Empire:  National Organizing Conference on Foreign Military Bases

American University, Washington, D.C.

Feb. 27�Mar. 2, 2009

Featured Conference Speakers

Phyllis Bennis � Institute for Policy Studies

Cynthia Enloe � Clark University

Bruce Gagnon � Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space

Joseph Gerson � American Friends Service Committee

Jana Glivicka � Czech Republic, No Bases Initiative

Raed Jarrar � Iraq & American Friends Service Committee

John Lindsay-Poland � Fellowship of Reconciliation

Zia Mian � Princeton University

Lisa Natividad - Guam

Miriam Pemberton – Institute for Policy Studies

Suzuyo Takazato � Okinawa

Wilbert van der Zeijden � International Network for the Abolition of Foreign  Military Bases

Ann Wright � Retired Army Reserve Colonel and Diplomat

Download full agenda

Conference flier


Conference Presentations

No Bases Strategy Overview

No Bases Strategy Overview – Powerpoint

Guahan: An American Colony and “Tip of the Spear”, Lisa Natividad from I Nasion CHamoru

Conference Reports

Security without Empire Gets a Hearing in Washington, John Lindsay-Poland, Fellowship of Reconciliation

DC Trip Report, Bruce Gagnon, Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space

Veterans for Peace No Bases Report, Michael Uhl, Veterans for Peace

Coordinator Trip Report, Wilbert Van Der Zeijden, International Network for the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases

Strategy papers presented at the conference

Peacework’s No Bases Forum Say your piece about foreign military bases!

Conference Press Coverage

Activists Urge End to US Foreign Military Bases, Free Speech Radio News, March 2 2009.

Security Without Empire – Put an End to Foreign Military Bases, WBAI Pacifica Radio, Feb 27 2009.

Security Without Empire, Bruce Gagnon, Op-Ed News, Jan 29 2009.

Resources

Too Many Overseas Bases, David Vine, Foreign Policy in Focus, Feb 25 2009.

Source: David Vine, Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia (Princeton University Press, 2009).  Click to see larger view

Battle Over Bases, David Vine, Foreign Policy in Focus, March 9 2009.

Overseas Military Bases and the Environment, Nick Morgan & John Lindsay-Poland, Foreign Policy in Focus, vol. 3, no. 15 June 1998.

Letter of Solidarity, Japan Peace Committee.

Empire of Bases, Hugh Gusterson, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, March 10 2009.

For more information, contact:

Joseph Gerson
JGerson at afsc.org
(617) 661-6130 x119
National Project on U.S. Military Bases

Too Many Overseas Bases

Too Many Overseas Bases

By David Vine

12 March, 2009
Fpif.org

In the midst of an economic crisis that’s getting scarier by the day, it’s time to ask whether USA can really afford some 1,000 military bases overseas. For those unfamiliar with the issue, you read that number correctly. One thousand. One thousand U.S. military bases outside the 50 states and Washington, DC, representing the largest collection of bases in world history.

Officially the Pentagon counts 865 base sites, but this notoriously unreliable number omits all our bases in Iraq (likely over 100) and Afghanistan (80 and counting), among many other well-known and secretive bases. More than half a century after World War II and the Korean War, we still have 268 bases in Germany, 124 in Japan, and 87 in South Korea. Others are scattered around the globe in places like Aruba and Australia, Bulgaria and Bahrain, Colombia and Greece, Djibouti, Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, Romania, Singapore, and of course, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — just to name a few. Among the installations considered critical to our national security are a ski center in the Bavarian Alps, resorts in Seoul and Tokyo, and 234 golf courses the Pentagon runs worldwide.

Unlike domestic bases, which set off local alarms when threatened by closure, our collection of overseas bases is particularly galling because almost all our taxpayer money leaves the United States (much goes to enriching private base contractors like corruption-plagued former Halliburton subsidiary KBR). One part of the massive Ramstein airbase near Landstuhl, Germany, has an estimated value of $3.3 billion. Just think how local communities could use that kind of money to make investments in schools, hospitals, jobs, and infrastructure.

Even the Bush administration saw the wastefulness of our overseas basing network. In 2004, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced plans to close more than one-third of the nation’s overseas installations, moving 70,000 troops and 100,000 family members and civilians back to the United States. National Security Adviser Jim Jones, then commander of U.S. forces in Europe, called for closing 20% of our bases in Europe. According to Rumsfeld’s estimates, we could save at least $12 billion by closing 200 to 300 bases alone. While the closures were derailed by claims that closing bases could cost us in the short term, even if this is true, it’s no reason to continue our profligate ways in the longer term.

Costs Far Exceeding Dollars and Cents

Unfortunately, the financial costs of our overseas bases are only part of the problem. Other costs to people at home and abroad are just as devastating. Military families suffer painful dislocations as troops stationed overseas separate from loved ones or uproot their families through frequent moves around the world. While some foreign governments like U.S. bases for their perceived economic benefits, many locals living near the bases suffer environmental and health damage from military toxins and pollution, disrupted economic, social, and cultural systems, military accidents, and increased prostitution and crime.

In undemocratic nations like Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Saudi Arabia, our bases support governments responsible for repression and human rights abuses. In too many recurring cases, soldiers have raped, assaulted, or killed locals, most prominently of late in South Korea, Okinawa, and Italy. The forced expulsion of the entire Chagossian people to create our secretive base on British Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean is another extreme but not so aberrant example.

Bases abroad have become a major and unacknowledged “face” of the United States, frequently damaging the nation’s reputation, engendering grievances and anger, and generally creating antagonistic rather than cooperative relationships between the United States and others. Most dangerously, as we have seen in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and as we are seeing in Iraq and Afghanistan, foreign bases create breeding grounds for radicalism, anti-Americanism, and attacks on the United States, reducing, rather than improving, our national security.

Proponents of maintaining the overseas base status quo will argue, however, that our foreign bases are critical to national and global security. A closer examination shows that overseas bases have often heightened military tensions and discouraged diplomatic solutions to international conflicts. Rather than stabilizing dangerous regions, our overseas bases have often increased global militarization, enlarging security threats faced by other nations who respond by boosting military spending (and in cases like China and Russia, foreign base acquisition) in an escalating spiral. Overseas bases actually make war more likely, not less.

The Benefits of Fewer Bases

This isn’t a call for isolationism or a protectionism that would prevent us from spending money overseas. As the Obama administration and others have recognized, we must recommit to cooperative forms of engagement with the rest of the world that rely on diplomatic, economic, and cultural ties rather than military means. In addition to freeing money to meet critical human needs at home and abroad, fewer overseas bases would help rebuild our military into a less overstretched, defensive force committed to defending the nation’s territory from attack.

In these difficult economic times, the Obama administration and Congress should initiate a major reassessment of our 1,000 overseas bases. Now is the time to ask if, as a nation and a world, we can really afford the 1,000 bases that are pushing the nation deeper into debt and making the United States and the planet less secure? With so many needs facing our nation, it’s unconscionable to have 1,000 overseas bases. It’s time to begin closing them.

David Vine, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at American University in Washington, DC and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus, is organizing the Security Without Empire conference that will bring together leading U.S. peace activists and scholars, as well as base opponents from 11 nations from February 27-March 2. He is the author of Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia (Princeton University Press), to be released in April.

http://www.countercurrents.org/vine130309.htm

U.S. queries Israel’s toilet-paper rules for Gaza

AFTER ALL, ONLY HUMANS USE TOILET PAPER, HAVE A NEED FOR PROPER SEWAGE TREATMENT, CLEAN WATER, WOOD AND CONCRETE FOR BUILDING.  ANIMALS DON’T NEED TO CLEAN THEMSELVES, OR HAVE DECENT SHELTER, OR WORRY ABOUT THEIR FAMILIES!!

ZIONIST SCUM!!

U.S. queries Israel’s toilet-paper rules for Gaza

By Adam Entous

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The United States is protesting to Israel over seemingly random restrictions on deliveries to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip of harmless goods such as soap and toilet paper, diplomats said Wednesday.

Diplomats fear day-to-day crisis management on Gaza was diverting the United States and other Western governments from bigger issues like the goal of restarting peace negotiations for a Palestinian state.

In one case, Israel blocked for weeks a World Food Program (WFP) shipment of chickpeas, used to make the Palestinian food staple

hummus, the U.N. food agency said.

“We’re certainly asking the Israelis questions about this,” a U.S. official said of the restrictions on what is allowed into Gaza.

A Western official said: “The Americans and international NGOs (non-governmental organizations) are raising their concerns… We’re protesting.”

Israel says it has opened Gaza’s border crossings to larger amounts of food and medicine since a January military offensive that killed about 1,300 Palestinians, destroyed 5,000 homes and left large swathes of the coastal enclave in ruins.

But U.S. and Western officials complain the limited list of humanitarian goods that Israel allows into Gaza changes almost daily, creating major logistical problems for aid groups and donor governments which are unable to plan ahead.

Protests have been made to Israel via diplomatic channels, and have increased since last week’s visit by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.S. and Western officials said.

“It is totally surreal,” one European diplomat said of Israeli decision-making. “One day we had 600 kg (1,300 pounds) of pasta at the Kerem Shalom crossing but they said, ‘Today, pasta can’t go in’.”

Another Western diplomat said: “It’s ever-changing. One week jam is okay and the next week it’s not.”

In addition to soap and toilet paper, the officials cited restrictions that come and go on imports of certain types of cheeses, toothbrushes and toothpaste.

Israeli defense official Peter Lerner said in response: “I’m not aware of any problems with toilet paper, toothpaste, dairy products … and other food stuffs. Basic necessities are being met and are going in on a daily basis.”

TRANSITIONAL STALL?

Diplomats said the current political transition in Israel was part of the problem, with many decisions on access to Gaza and demolitions in Arab East Jerusalem of Palestinian homes being taken by relatively low level bureaucrats that are slow to change and hard to influence.

The Jewish state held a parliamentary election on Feb 10 but rightist prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu is still in the process of forming a coalition government.

In addition to pushing for expanded humanitarian access to Gaza, the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama has protested the East Jerusalem demolition plans.

The European Union have also protested to Israel about access to Gaza and its actions in Jerusalem.

In a letter of response, obtained by Reuters, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Israel was cooperating with international organizations and would keep Gaza’s border crossings open to humanitarian assistance “for exclusively civilian needs.”

Israel has long banned military equipment and most commercial goods from entering Gaza, and those restrictions may hinder a multibillion-dollar reconstruction plan backed by Western and Arab governments.

ISRAEL-OPT: Gaza fishing industry reeling

Photo: Erica Silverman/IRIN

A family of Gaza fishermen work together to untie their nets, now in short supply after the 19-month long Israeli blockade of the territory

GAZA CITY, 12 March 2009 (IRIN) – A combination of damage to fishing resources caused by the Israeli offensive, and a restriction on the zone in which Gazans are allowed to fish is reducing catches and adversely affecting people’s diets in Gaza, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

In January 2009 the Israeli authorities reduced the area in which fishermen can fish from six to three nautical miles from Gaza’s coastline.

In Rafah (southern Gaza) fishing has almost completely stopped due to the damage inflicted on fishing gear and boats during the 22-day war which ended on 18 January.

Fishing nets, rope, twine and gas mantles are in short supply due to the Israeli blockade of Gaza since June 2007, according to OCHA, along with engines and spare parts.

“During Operation Cast Lead a naval closure was imposed on the Gaza Strip. Following the end of fighting the navy decided to allow fishing from up to three miles from the coast,” said an Israeli military source who preferred anonymity. “The closure was imposed to prevent the smuggling of weapons and ammunition into the Gaza Strip by sea.”

Gazan fishing was permitted up to 12 nautical miles from the coast before 2000, but was reduced to six after 2000, according to OCHA. Under the Oslo Accords signed in 1993 fishing off Gaza was allowed within 20 nautical miles of the coast.

Photo: Erica Silverman/IRIN

A fisherman at the Gaza City marina points to the bullet holes in his boat engine. He said he was attacked by Israeli gunboats while fishing

Parlous state

In 2008 fishing accounted for 1.5 percent of Gaza’s economy (agriculture and fishing together accounted for 10 percent), according to the agricultural ministry in Gaza.

The fishing industry was in a parlous state even before the 27 December 2008 Israeli attack on Gaza.

“Today there are about 3,500 fishermen in Gaza; in 2000 there were 10,000,” said agricultural minister Mohammed Agah. “The main obstacle for fishermen before the war was the lack of fuel, but now they are having greater difficulties.”

Petrol and diesel were last allowed into Gaza via Nahal Oz for public use on 2 November 2008, reports OCHA, and according to the Gas Station Owners’ Association, no fuel has been delivered to Gaza through the tunnels under the Gaza-Egyptian border since 26 February 2009.

Protein intake down

The restrictions on fishing – and imports of such things as animal feed and livestock – have effectively reduced Gazans’ protein intake since the war, said Agah, who says daily protein intake is 50 percent less than average daily protein intake across the Arab world – something that would affect child development, he said.

“In 2008, the fishing catch in Gaza was 3,000 tonnes – about 250 tonnes monthly – while Gaza needs an annual catch of 20,000 tonnes to meet people’s needs,” said the head of the fishing authority, Hassan Azman, adding: “only 65 tonnes were caught in February.”

After the recent war the Israeli naval authorities have been allowing Gazan fishermen to make just 10 fishing trips per month, instead of the 80 required, according to Azman.

“The larger fishing boats [about 85 of the total of 450 boats] cannot fish less than three miles from the coast,” said Azman.

“We can’t catch big, healthy fish within the three mile zone, and in April Israeli and Egyptian fishermen will fish beyond the three-mile zone, reducing stocks,” said 56-year-old Gaza fisherman Mohammed al-Hisi.

Since the war nine fishermen have been wounded by Israeli gunboat-fire, Al-Hisi said.

Photo: Erica Silverman/IRIN

Fishing boats at the Gaza City marina. The rubble in the background has been transferred from areas in the Gaza Strip that were heavily bombed during Israel’s recent military campaign

War damage estimates

During the war Gazan boats were sprayed by water-cannon, drenching engines and flooding decks, and they were also shot at. Many boats were riddled with bullets, and about 113 were damaged, said Azman. He estimates the fishing industry suffered US$10 million worth of damage during the Israeli offensive.

Direct losses to agriculture during the war were US$218.2 million, according to preliminary estimates by the Gaza ministry of planning, while direct and indirect opportunity losses to the agricultural sector are estimated at US$228.6 million.

The Gaza fishing authority is trying to create a third fish farm in Gaza to boost supplies.

Pakistani-American Groups Demand Independent Judiciary in Pakistan

Photos:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=99749&id=698328857

By SYED ADEEB

(InformPress.com) – Many Pakistani-Americans held a car rally and a
protest demonstration in front of the Embassy of Pakistan in
Washington DC, USA on Wednesday, 11 March 2009 to publicly demand an
independent judiciary; reinstatement of Pakistan Supreme Court Chief
Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and all other illegally deposed
judges of Supreme Court and provincial high courts; freedom for all
Pakistani advocates, political dissidents and civil society activists
recently arrested by the Zardari-Gillani corrupt tyranny; rule of fair
& just laws; human rights; and equal justice for all Pakistani
citizens in Pakistan.

Leaders of Pakistani American National Alliance (PANA), Pakistan
American Democratic Forum (PADF), Human Rights Justice Forum (HRJF),
Pakistani American Citizens Council (PACC), Friends of Pakistan (FOP),
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI VA) and Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N VA-
DC) enthusiastically participated in their car procession and protest
march to express solidarity and support for the lawyers Long March in
Pakistan led by Ali Ahmed Kurd, Aitzaz Ahsan, Muneer A. Malik, Hamid
Khan, Athar Minallah and other eminent advocates.

Pakistani-American community activists – including Agha Khalid Saeed,
Muhammad Ashraf Toor, Muhammad Salim Akhtar, Raja Muhammad Yaqub,
Zahid Hameedi, Mansha Khokhar, Shahzad Chaudhry, Junaid Bashir, Chand
Iqbal Dodhy, Narjis Bokhari Ali and Uzma Qureshi – addressed the
protestors in front of the Pakistan Embassy.

This reform movement for real reforms in Pakistan was oganized by PANA
Executive Director M. Salim Akhtar and HRJF Executive Director M.
Mohsen Bashir. It was endorsed/supported by Friends of Pakistan (FOP)
DC-VA Chapter President Yousuf Choudhry, Pakistani American Leadership
Center (PALC) Director Mossadaq Chughtai, Pakistani American Congress
(PAC) President Khawaja Ashraf, Pakistan USA Freedom Forum (PUFF)
President Mohammad Shafique, PUFF General Secretary Shahid Comrade,
Nationwide President Muhammad Akbar and National Lawyers Guild (NLG)
Mid Atlantic Region Vice President and Rule of Law Institute (ROLI) Co-
Founder, Civil Rights Attorney-at-Law Ryan Allen Hancock.

The caravan of cars traveled from the Smithsonian Institution to the
Voice of America (VOA), to the U.S. Congress, to the U.S. Supreme
Court, to America’s National Press Club, to the U.S. State Department
and then to the Pakistan Embassy.

One PANA poster, with a photo of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry,
pasted on all cars in the car rally states: “President Obama, Win
Hearts & Minds. Support Pakistan’s Independent Judiciary.” Another
PANA poster reads: “Pakistani-American Long March in Washington DC
(From National Mall to Pakistan Embassy) in Support of Long March in
Pakistan.”

The PANA poster, with a picture of protesting Pakistani advocates,
quotes an excerpt from page 218 of “Pakistan – Between Mosque and
Military”, a book written by PPP envoy to Washington DC Husain
Haqqani, which states: “[Benazir] Bhutto’s husband, Asif Ali Zardari,
continued his [corruption] business while she was in office and took
an active interest in government contracts involving his friends.
Despite the absence of conflict of interest laws in Pakistan, there
was sometimes a clear sense of impropriety.” The same PANA poster also
quotes former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark as saying to Chief
Justice Chaudhry in a telephone conference call on 16 June 2008: “What
you and your colleagues have done has never been done in the history
of the world. The whole world is indebted to you. Your are an
inspiration to all of us.”

During the protest demonstration, two diplomats of the Pakistan
Embassy, Faqir Syed Asif Hussain (Minister) and Zahid Hafeez Chaudhri
(Counsellor & HOC), came out of the Embassy and talked to HRJF
President Syed Adeeb, PML-N Chicago, IL President Raja M. Yaqub and
several other Pakistani-Americans about various US-Pakistan issues.

Shortly after this 4-hour long assembly of protesters ended, PANA
Chairman Dr. Muhammad Ashraf Toor met with Faqir Syed Asif Hussain
(Minister) in the Pakistan Embasssy. Dr. Toor demanded that the
Pakistan Government must take all legal actions to quickly release
Pakistani political prisoner Dr. Aafia Siddiqui from the U.S. jail,
who was illegally kidnapped from Afghanistan or Pakistan, unlawfully
tortured and illegally charged by the U.S. Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) with some ‘crimes’. Dr. Toor presented the two
PANA posters and the following two PANA documents (a PANA Press
Statement and a Letter of U.S. Congressman Andre Carson) to Faqir
Hussain, who told Dr. Toor that all the PANA papers will be sent by
the Embassy to the Government of Pakistan very soon:

PANA LONG MARCH PRESS STATEMENT:

The Pakistani American National Alliance (PANA), a coalition of
Pakistani-American organizations, has decided to hold US-wide rallies
in support of the independent judiciary movement; also to seek repeal
of Article 270AAA and other illegal amendments [to the Constitution of
Pakistan].

In the coming weeks, members of the PANA will hold US-wide rallies,
meetings, seminars, press conferences and teach-ins to inform and
mobilize the international civil society in support of the Pakistani
civil society’s struggle for the rule of law.

PANA is supporting lawyers and civilians in Pakistan who are taking
part in a country-wide protest to demand the reinstatement of senior
judges [unlawfully] sacked by [illegal, self-appointed] President
[Pervez] Musharraf, but have yet to be reinstated by [PPP] President
[Asif Ali] Zardari.

PANA is calling on the Obama Administration and the [U.S.] Congress to
support this week’s “Long March” in Pakistan, a civil society movement
begun in 2007, by expressing consistent support for an independent
judiciary, supremacy of the Constitution, rule of law, due process,
equal justice, transparency and accountability.

On March 12 [2009], the people of Pakistan will be traveling by car
and bus from Quetta and Karachi simultaneously to support the long
struggle, which began in 2007, to repair the nation’s judiciary.

Unfortunately, the Zardari Government has placed all major opposition
leaders under [unlawful] house arrest, imposed Section 144, a
throwback to the British rule over India, to prohibit exercise of the
freedom of expression and “the right to assemble peacefully” as
guaranteed by Article 16 of the Constitution of Pakistan, and to
petition the Government for a redress of major socio-political
grievances.

Pakistan Peoples Party [PPP], a major party that had imbued the
Pakistani mainstream with progressive ideas and values in the
seventies in now fast becoming a reactionary, repressive and
undemocratic institution.

We call on the Zardari Administration for (1) full and formal
restoration of all judges [unlawfully] deposed by General Musharraf on
November 3, 2007; (2) repeal of unconstitutional amendments
promulgated between Nov. 3, 2007 and Dec. 15, 2007; and (3) retraction
of arbitrary and person-specific clauses in the PPP-proposed
Constitutional Package.

The present struggle for the rule of law in Pakistan marks a defining
moment in the history of Pakistan, akin to the American Revolution,
civil war and the civil rights movement of the sixties. Perceptions
and affinities formed in this process will last for several
generations.

It will be disastrous, therefore, for the Unites States to be seen
once again supporting the wrong side and opposing the Pakistan’s march
towards democracy and the rule of law.

We call on the Obama Administration, [U.S.] Congress and all Americans
to stand in solidarity with Pakistan’s civil society movement by
showing consistent expressions of support for an independent judiciary
in Pakistan, supremacy of the Constitution, rule of law, due process,
equal justice, transparency and accountability.

LETTER OF U.S. REPRESENTATIVE ANDRE CARSON

THE LONG MARCH – A CALL FOR THE RULE OF LAW

“As lawyers who value freedom and the rule of law, we at Harvard Law
School want Chief Justice [Iftikhar Muhammad] Chaudhry and all of the
courageous lawyers in Pakistan to know that we stand with them in
solidarity. We are proud to be their colleagues in the cause of
justice, and we will do all we can to press for the prompt restoration
of constitutionalism and legality in Pakistan.” — Harvard Law School
Dean Elena Kagan awarding Chief Justice Chaudhry the Harvard Law
School Medal of Freedom, the school’s highest award, November 13,
2007.

Dear Colleague,

I write to draw your attention to the upcoming National March in
Pakistan. The march, led by the Pakistani bar association, continues
the ongoing struggle for respect for the rule of law and an
independent judiciary in Pakistan. On March 12 [2009], lawyers, civil
servants and everyday Pakistanis will march from throughout Pakistan
to the capital of Islamabad to demand the reinstatement of former
Chief Justice Iftikhar [Muhammad] Chaudhry and a government commitment
to respecting the rule of law.

During last year’s constitutional crisis, Chief Justice Chaudhry was
illegally removed from office by former President Pervez Musharraf. In
response to President Musharraf’s unconstitutional and undemocratic
actions, the people of Pakistan, led by Chief Justice Chaudhry, rose
up in protest. As a result, democracy was restored. Although democracy
prevailed, Chief Justice Chaudhry has still not been reinstated to the
Pakistani Supreme Court.

As Pakistan struggles to move back to the vision of its founding
father, renowned human rights lawyer Mohammad Ali Jinnah who
envisioned a democratic state that respects the rule of law and an
independent judiciary, we must remember that the principles being
fought for now in Pakistan are the same as those espoused by our own
nation’s founding fathers. By respecting the wisdom of an independent
judiciary, America has kept a basic promise of our democracy: the
peaceful resolution of disputes by the rule of law rather than by
force, economic sway or appeals to prejudice. A Pakistan grounded in
these same principles represents an opportunity to replace the growing
threats of extremism and terrorism.

US Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts stated, “Every week at
the [Supreme] court, we have a delegation of judges or justices from
an emerging democracy around the world… They are striving to
establish an independent judiciary that can defend the rule of law in
their country. They come to our country, and they come to the Supreme
Court because they draw inspiration from the role and stature of the
Third Branch in our democracy.” On March 12th, I ask each of you to
reaffirm our nation’s principles and ideals and to stand with the
people of Pakistan in their quest for a better, more just and fairer
system of governance.

Sincerely,

ANDRE CARSON (D-IN)
Member of the U.S. Congress
Washington DC, USA

http://carson.house.gov

[Mr. Syed Adeeb is an investigative journalist, Chief Editor of the
Information Press, TV-Video Documentary Film Producer, IT Consultant
and Human Rights Advocate based in Virginia, U.S.A.
www.SyedAdeeb.net - www.AdeebPress.com - www.AdeebMedia.com -
Thursday, 12 March 2009]

[Copyright: Information Press - www.InformPress.com - 2009 - USA]

PHOTOS taken by M. Mohsen Bashir, Reporter-Photographer – Information
Press – USA.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=99749&id=698328857

INTERNET-WEB LINKS:

(1) HRJF:
http://www.HRJF.org

(2) PACC:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5773156768

(3) PANA:
http://www.pananet.org

(4) PADF:
http://www.padfonline.org

(5) FOP:
http://www.fopglobal.com

(6) PAC:
http://www.pacusa.org

(7) PALC:
http://www.pal-c.org

(8) PTI:
http://www.insaf.pk

(9) PML-N:
http://www.pmlusa.org

(10) ROLI:
http://www.ruleoflawproject.org

NLG Philadelphia Chapter:
http://www.nlgphilly.org

Pakistan Human Rights

Support Judges and Lawyers in Pakistan

Lawyers in an anti-Musharaf
demonstration  © Wally Santana/
AP/PA

Judges, lawyers and human rights activists remain forcefully silenced in Pakistan. General Musharraf continues to refuse to restore the rule of law and to reinstate the judges who were dismissed during a “State of Emergency” (November 3 to December 15 2007). Shamefully, the US government has failed thus far to use its influential position as a major provider of military aid to successfully pressure General Musharraf to revoke the damage he has caused to human rights and civil liberties. A return to full rule of law is essential for restoring democracy, human rights, and stability in Pakistan.

Law students and professionals in the US and around the world have been among the most vocal advocates on behalf of their counterparts in Pakistan. Your voice is critical to maintaining pressure on the government of Pakistan and in shifting American policy.

New! Check out our action pack

Take Action:

• Urge the US Government to pressure Pakistani authorities to reinstate judges and restore the rule of law in Pakistan
• Call on the Senate and the House to speak out about ongoing harassment of judges and lawyers
• Express your outrage to Pakistani authorities over the ongoing shutdown of the independent judiciary
• Become educated about the recent developments in Pakistan and encourage others to take action

Human Rights Concerns

more about “Pakistan Human Rights“, posted with vodpod

See the interview with Mohammad Akram Sheikh, former President of Pakistan’s Supreme Court Bar Association, about the crackdown on human rights in Pakistan.

On November 3, 2007, a “State of Emergency” was declared in Pakistan and much of the Constitution was suspended. Within hours, hundreds of lawyers, human rights activists, and other perceived opponents of General Pervez Musharaff’s government began to be arrested under provisions allowing detention without charge or trial. Courts were expressly prohibited against issuing any order against the President, Prime Minister or any person exercising powers under their authority. Lawyers opposing these measures were arrested en masse, and a number of Supreme Court and Provincial High Court justices were suspended and placed under house arrest for refusing to take an oath to uphold the new Provisional Constitution Order. Meanwhile, human rights activists have also been targeted and imprisoned, and peaceful demonstrations met with violence. All private local and international news broadcasts were suspended, and new laws impose heavy restrictions on all forms of media.

This crisis has occurred amidst longstanding concerns about human rights in Pakistan, including patterns of arbitrary detention, torture in custody, imposition of the death penalty, and abuses committed during the course of the “War on Terror.” Vulnerable and marginalized groups, including women and religious minorities, have faced particular threats. As a major recipient of US military aid, Amnesty International USA has also opposed American military assistance that may contribute to these human rights violations. US assistance since 9/11/2001 has totaled about $9.6 billion, plus an additional $5.3 billion in reimbursements for assisting with US military operations in Afghanistan.
» More information

» Take action!

Sisters in Struggle

In 1981 Hina Jilani co-founded the first all-female law firm in Pakistan and later established a women’s legal aid program for Pakistani women, including for those seeking to divorce abusive husbands. As a result Ms. Jilani became the target of violent attacks, including the “honor killing” of a client in her office. In recognition of her work, she was appointed the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on the situation of human rights defenders, and won a Ginetta Sagan Award from Amnesty International USA in 2000. Amnesty International has worked for many years to ensure that Ms. Jilani and others like her are able to carry out their work freely and safely.

On 3 November 2007, following the crackdown on perceived political opposition in Pakistan, a 90-day order was issued to detain her. She happened to be visiting London at the time, so managed to avoid arrest. Following outcry from Amnesty International and others, the detention order against her was lifted and she was able to return home safely.
View Hina Jilani’s comments on the November 2007 Crackdown »

Ms. Jilani’s sister, Dr. Asma Jahangir, was among those placed under house arrest in early November. Dr. Jahangir is Chair of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP); she has also been appointed UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, serves on the Board of Directors of the International Crisis Group, and is co-chair of South Asians for Human Rights. Following international outcry from Amnesty International and others, Dr. Jahangir was released in mid-November. Hundreds of others, however, remain under house arrest, in prison, or have “disappeared.”

Your letters helped to free Dr. Jahangir. Help other victims of the crackdown in Pakistan!

CIA MAINTAINS THE TERROR THAT THEY THINK WILL DRIVE THE TALIBAN TO THE BARGAINING TABLE

Suspected U.S. missiles kill 14 in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Missiles believed to have been fired by U.S. pilotless drone aircraft hit a militant hideout and training camp in Pakistan on Thursday, a local official told Reuters, and a villager said at least 14 people were killed.

The missiles struck in the Barjo area of Kurram tribal region, close to the Afghan border.

“The training camp was completely destroyed,” said Noor Islam, a villager in Barjo. He said 14 bodies had been recovered from the debris of the blitzed camp.

U.S. drone attacks in Kurram are rare, as al Qaeda and Taliban militants have been mostly targeted in the nearby Waziristan region.

“Four missiles hit a militant hideout and training camp in the Barjo area,” a senior government official in Kurram told Reuters.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of sensitivity over U.S. missiles strikes on Pakistani territory. Pakistan has told its American ally that the strikes are counter-productive in the long run because they often cause civilian casualties and fuel support for the militant cause.

Obama: Troop move to Mexican border under consideration

By Maria Recio | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — President Obama weighed in Wednesday on the escalating drug war on the U.S.-Mexico border, saying that he was looking at possibly deploying National Guard troops to contain the violence but ruled out any immediate military move.

“We’re going to examine whether and if National Guard deployments would make sense and under what circumstances they would make sense,” Obama said during an interview with journalists for regional papers, including a McClatchy reporter.

“I don’t have a particular tipping point in mind,” he said. “I think it’s unacceptable if you’ve got drug gangs crossing our borders and killing U.S. citizens.”

Already this year there have been 1,000 people killed in Mexico along the border, following 2008′s death toll of 5,800, according to federal officials who credit Mexican President Felipe Calderon for a crackdown on drug cartels.

But the spillover on the border — for example, to El Paso from neighboring Ciudad Juarez — has created a political reaction.

In a recent visit to El Paso, Texas Gov. Rick Perry called for 1,000 troops to protect the border.

Obama was cautious, however. “We’ve got a very big border with Mexico,” he said. “I’m not interested in militarizing the border.”

The president praised Calderon, “who I believe is really working hard and taking some extraordinary risks under extraordinary pressure to deal with the drug cartels and the corresponding violence that’s erupted along the borders.”

Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., chair of a key subcommittee on border security, will hold a hearing Thursday on Mexican border violence.

“Last week Mexico sent an additional 3,200 soldiers to the border,” Sanchez said in a prepared opening statement for the hearing, “increasing the total number of Mexican soldiers combating drug cartels to more than 45,000.”

Sanchez chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security’s subcommittee on border, maritime and global counterterrorism.

“It should be noted that over 200 U.S. citizens have been killed in this drug war, either because they were involved in the cartels or were innocent bystanders,” she said. “With those concerns in mind, it is essential that the Department of Homeland Security, along with other relevant departments, continue to pursue a contingency plan to address ‘spillover’ violence along our border.”

At a hearing this week, Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, who visited Mexico last month as part of a congressional delegation tour, praised the so-called Merida Initiative — a drug cartel fighting agreement between the U.S. and Mexico that provides Mexico with $1.4 billion to control drug trafficking.

“From helicopters and surveillance planes to non-intrusive inspection equipment, the U.S. investment is intended to provide the hardware necessary for the Mexican government to extend its authority to those remote and hard-to-access parts of the country ravaged by the drug trade,” said Granger.

That agreement between Calderon and President George W. Bush will be updated, Obama said.

“We expect to have a comprehensive approach to dealing with these issues of border security that will involve supporting Calderon and his efforts in a partnership, also making sure we are dealing with the flow of drug money and guns south, because it’s really a two-way situation there,” said Obama.

“The drugs are coming north, we’re sending funds and guns south,” he said. “As a consequence, these cartels have gained extraordinary power. Our expectation is to have a comprehensive policy in place in the next few months.”

(David Goldstein of the Kansas City Star contributed.)

“So that war against terrorism could be taken to its logical end”

AMBASSADOR HOLBROOKE WANTS AMERICAN PUPPET ZARDARI TO MAINTAIN REINS OF POWER UNTIL TERROR WAR BROUGHT TO “LOGICAL END.”  MAYBE HE CAN ENLIGHTEN US, WHAT WOULD BE THE LOGICAL END OF A WAR AGAINST TERROR THAT IS WAGED BY SOWING STATE TERRORISM?

PRIME MINISTER GILLANI AND GEN. KAYANI MUST STAND FIRM AND PROTECT THEIR HOMELAND FROM THOSE WHO MEAN IT EXTREME HARM.

Holbrooke expresses concern over arrest of political leaders

Richard Hallbroke assured his complete cooperation to President Asif Ali Zardari to strengthen democracy in Pakistan. –Reuters Photo

ISLAMABAD: US Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke on Thursday held a triangular telephonic conversation with President Asif Ali Zardari and the US ambassador to Pakistan Anne W Patterson and discussed the overall political situation of the country, arrest of lawyers and political leaders, lawyers’ long march and war against terrorism in length.

According to the sources, US Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke spoke to Asif Ali Zardari for more than 20 minutes and expressed concern over the political turmoil and arrest of political and lawyers in Pakistan. He said US wanted continuity of democracy in Pakistan so that war against terrorism could be taken to its logical end , and also urged President Asif Ali Zardari to show restraint.

Speaking on the occasion, President Asif Ali Zardari told US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan that Pakistan Peoples Party had tried its level best to resolve political crises but did not get any constructive response from Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N).

‘There is real and genuine democracy in Pakistan but some elements are trying to derail the processes,’ he said, adding that, ‘neither there is any danger to democracy nor PPP have closed door of dialogue with PML-N’.

‘We want peaceful resolution of disputes but all stakeholders would have to play their role in this respect, the President said.

He assured Holbrooke that he would overcome political crises peacefully, besides ensuring peace in the country. He vowed to flush out terrorism and extremism from the country saying war against menace of terrorism and extremism was in country’s interest.

Richard Hallbroke also assured his complete cooperation to President Asif Ali Zardari to strengthen democracy in Pakistan.