Do you know that:
In 2000, there were 14 bomb blasts in Pakistan; 5 in Punjab, 4 in Sindh, 3 in Balochistan, and one each in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province (KPK) and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in which a total of 79 people died; 55 in Punjab and Sindh, 18 in Baluchistan, 5 in FATA and only one in the KPK. Read more »
By Dexter Filkins, from New Yorker
On May 30th, as the sun beat down on the plains of eastern Pakistan, a laborer named Muhammad Shafiq walked along the top of a dam on the Upper Jhelum Canal to begin his morning routine of clearing grass and trash that had drifted into the intake grates overnight. The water flow seemed normal, but when he started removing the debris with a crane the machinery seized up. Read more »
Former US Intelligence Chief Dennis Blair makes the same points that the critics of the so-called war on terror have made for nearly a decade: Read more »
By Michael Brenner
Leon Panetta, newly-installed Secretary of Defense and former CIA head, made a tour of troubled hot spots in the Middle East. His stopovers in Kabul, Baghdad et al were punctuated by a series of barbed remarks aimed at leaders in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. Read more »
The deadly and brazen attack on Pakistan Navy’s base in Karachi on May 22 has dealt another humiliating blow to the reputation and morale of Pakistan’s armed services. According to the initail accounts the small group of militants, as few as six, Read more »
Time is running out fast. Pakistani Generals’ latest love affair with the United States that started after 9/11 seems to be heading for an acrimonious break up after exchanges of charges of betrayal. The US tolerated Pakistan’s duplicity (we cannot point to America’s because it is a super power and nor can we try Bush for war crimes) from day one Read more »
Dear Lt Gen. Shuja Pasha
We think it is now time to appeal to your sense of patriotism and respect for human values to urge you to inject some sense into the religious parties like the JUI, Jamaat-e-Islami, Sunni Tehreek, Jamaat-ud-Dawa over whom you have considerable influence. Read more »
Sometimes, you can only get so much upset. It has now got to the point where it is getting so ridiculous that one can laugh, albeit with tears. Pakistan’s political and governance landscape presents the picture of a bad drama Read more »
Pentagon Diverts Drones From Afghanistan to Bolster U.S. Campaign Next Door
![[DRONEjp]](http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/WO-AC773_DRONEj_G_20101001181301.jpg "[DRONEjp]")
Reuters
Onlookers in Pakistan’s Sindh province after suspected militants set fire to tankers Friday carrying fuel for NATO troops in Afghanistan. Read more »
The following article by Bob Woodward was published today in the Washington Post. It is a combination of insights into Obama administration’s thinking, carefully- fed selected information and spin by the top U.S. officials. Read more »
What America Has Lost, By Fareed Zakaria
Nine years after 9/11, can anyone doubt that Al Qaeda is simply not that deadly a threat? Since that gruesome day in 2001, once governments everywhere began serious countermeasures, Osama bin Laden’s terror network has been unable to launch a single major attack on high-value targets in the United States and Europe. While it has inspired a few much smaller attacks by local jihadis, it has been unable to execute a single one itself. Today, Al Qaeda’s best hope is to find a troubled young man who has been radicalized over the Internet, and teach him to stuff his underwear with explosives. Read more »
3.5 millon children at risk , economy and exports to contract as losses could exceed $15bn
Pakistan seeks restructuring of $10bn IMF loan as the United Nations urges help and raises $500 million
By Yousuf Nazar
On Aug. 21, around 150,000 Pakistanis in Sindh province were evacuated to higher ground because of the swollen Indus River, a government spokesman said. Officials expect the floodwaters to recede nationwide in the next few days as the last river torrents empty into the Arabian Sea. But survivors may find little left when they return home – the waters have washed away houses, roads, bridges and crops, and leaving millions homeless and penniless. In Sindh, there are already 600,000 people in relief camps set up during the flooding. Read more »
From Antiwar.com, San Francisco
By Justin Raimondo
While most Americans were sitting out on their decks barbecuing over the Memorial Day weekend, our leaders were planning to barbecue a few Pakistanis, as the Washington Post reported:
“The U.S. military is reviewing options for a unilateral strike in Pakistan in the event that a successful attack on American soil is traced to the country’s tribal areas, according to senior military officials.”
Hey, wait a minute: I thought Attorney General Eric Holder has supposedly already established that the Pakistani Taliban were directly involved in the Times Square bombing attempt – which, although not successful, did succeed in generating shockwaves from Washington to Islamabad. Read more »
How explosives have ignited insurgencies and superpowers
Failed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad says he was driven by anger over dozens of unmanned drone attacks that he witnessed during his most recent five-month visit to his home in Pakistan. That seems a plausible enough motive, particularly since he joins a growing list of homegrown U.S. terror suspects who have cited the escalation of U.S. military operations on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in general, or in the drone attacks in particular. They include U.S. resident Najibullah Zazi, the Afghan immigrant who pleaded guilty in a plot to bomb the New York subway system; Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the U.S.-born army psychiatrist, charged with fatally shooting 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, last year; and the five American Muslims from Virginia, accused of plotting attacks against targets in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Read more »
Reproduced by the Business Recorder on June 1, 2010
It is difficult to find words to express my sadness, anger, and horror over the mayhem in Lahore which resulted in the deaths of scores of innocent Pakistanis and human beings. The bigoted barbarians – nurtured, fed, trained, and financed for years by the security establishment – are destroying the society and the response of the powers that be – in this case – Army and the Punjab government – seems to be no more than the usual; “we will investigate and punish the culprits.” We as a Nation have not just lost it but are unable to comprehend why this is happening? It is not just extremists. Read more »
My take on the whole Hamid Mir’s saga is not [assuming of course the tape is authentic] just that he could have contributed to the killing of former Squadron Leader and ISI official Khalid Khawaja by telling that unknown person (who sounded like he was somewhere in the tribal areas and involved with a terrorist group) that Khalid worked for the CIA among other allegations but the fact people like Hamid Mir with known links with Al Qaeda are also alleged to be the intelligence agencies men and work for the biggest media group in the country. No wonder, no newspaper or TV channel took even notice of the story till the Daily Times broke it on its first page. And yet the media has the audacity to make claims about its independence, integrity, objectivity..etc.
The reality is that while politicians have been made to account for their deeds (even though motives related more to revenge and witch-hunting), the Army, the Media, and the Judiciary are not accountable at all. The Jang group has lobbied very effectively for not allowing the Indian TV channels to be aired in Pakistan. I think it is high time we do it. We should trust our people, their intelligence, their political consciousness, and their patriotism in that they can distinguish news from propaganda and objective reporting from spin. But Pakistani people must be freed from the tyranny of these TV anchors many of whom are no more than hired spokesmen of the intelligence agencies. Read more »
Book Review by Matthew Kaminski
A Mosque in Munich (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 318 pages, $27) By Ian Johnson
As we know too well by now, sometime in the past century the religion of Muhammad was weaponized—that is, there was a coupling of terrorism and Islam among its militant believers. This development didn’t take place in isolation, however. Islamism, as we now call a radical version of the faith, emerged in close contact with the West. In the decades before 9/11 Western governments often turned a blind eye to Islamist agitation or, in a few cases, naïvely nurtured the very people who today inspire or lead terrorist attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and other parts of the world—even, as we were reminded by last week’s attempted bombing in Times Square, in the U.S. Read more »
VIEW: Get the militant leadership — By Daud Khattak
From the Daily Times, May 04, 2010
In wars, the death of a leader means half the war is won. But, interestingly enough, in the anti-terror war in this region, the leadership is intact despite the use of all air, ground and intelligence resources against them. Read more »
ISLAMABAD: The last mission of ex-ISI officer Khalid Khwaja failed but his assassination exposed many hidden secrets, including differences between the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban, and has put a spotlight on his highly complex underworld life, as a mediator, sometimes on behalf of the Americans, a power-broker, a mover and shaker besides an ardent Islamic preacher.Squadron Leader (retd) Khalid Khwaja had been playing an active behind-the-scene role in domestic politics of Pakistan for the last 22 years. He became an important international player 11 years ago when he first tried to establish direct links between the Kashmiri militants and the Clinton Administration but failed. Read more »
From The News
Sunday, May 02, 2010
Gibran Peshimam
The past week ought to be celebrated – and enthusiastically so – in Pakistan. Not just by the common man, but also by political and armed forces. After all, we apparently stand on the threshold of solving many mysteries – ones that we thought we would never get to the bottom of. Read more »
Apr 19, 2010
(U.S. Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt jets, also known as the Warthog. File photo)
Pakistani army chief of staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani offered a rare apology at the weekend for a deadly air strike in the Khyber region in the northwest in which residents and local officials say at least 63 civilians were killed. Read more »
April 17, 2010
Military and political officials initially said at least 42 militants were killed in a gunfight and air strike in the Tirah valley of northwest Khyber district, where Pakistani jets targeted local Islamist militants last Saturday. Read more »
It will be late night or early morning in Pakistan when the much awaited United Nations report on Benazir Bhutto’s assassination is released by the UN. There is a litmus test that will determine, for me at least, whether the report has any relevance or meaning. I will come to that later in this article. The United Nations commission was charged with examining the facts and circumstances behind the December 2007 assassination. The Commission is headed by Ambassador Heraldo Muñoz of Chile, and its other members are Marzuki Darusman, the former attorney-general of Indonesia, and Peter Fitzgerald, a veteran of the Irish National Police who has also served the UN in various roles. The UN fact-finders were asked to probe Ms. Bhutto’s assassination in a gun and bomb suicide attack in the closing days of Pakistan’s 2007 elections, as well as her narrow escape from a similar bombing two months earlier, when she paraded triumphantly through Karachi after returning home from eight years in exile. Read more »
ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court (SC) warned the Chairman of National Accountability Bureau (NAB) that he may be put behind bars if the judicial orders delivered on National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO), were not implemented, Geo News reported Monday.Justice Khalilur Rehman Ramday said in his remarks that it is unthinkable why the court order on the NRO is being criticized; though, the Parliament threw it away terming it ‘a stinking mouse’. Justice Ramday wondered what wrong was done in delivering the NRO verdict that a volley of invectives is being showered. A seven-member of the SC headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Iftikhar Muhammed Chaudhry heard the corruption case against Riaz Sheikh, FIA’s additional DG Finance. Read more »
by Peter Chamberlin
By following the trail of militant terrorists US forces and American interests have gained access deep in Central Asia, where oil companies have had little luck gaining a foothold on their own. Read more »
General Pervez Musharraf acknowledged in his book, ‘In the Line of Fire’, that Omar Saeed Sheikh – the man who was convicted for killing Wall Street Journal’s correspondent Daniel Pearl, in 2002, was recruited by MI6, the British intelligence agency.
We also know that Omar Saeed Sheikh conducted terrorist strikes in India and was also very close to the sectarian terrorist outfits in Pakistan besides being very close to the former Intelligence Bureau Head, Brig. (rtd) Ijaz Shah. Omar Saeed was also linked (in the reports of the Associated Press, DAWN, CNN, Fox News, ABC News, among others) to transferring $100,000 to Mohd. Atta, who allegedly led the hijackings of 9/11. Read more »
We have been able to secure an electronic version of Prof. Michel Chossudovsky’s Book, America’s “War on Terrorism”. This book is not available in Pakistan though it can be ordered through Amazon.com. You can download this as a pdf file.
The book starts with a reference to a report by Dan Rather of CBS News [ CBS Evening News with Dan Rather; CBS, January 28, 2002] that on September 10, 2001 Osama bin Laden had been admitted to a Pakistani military hospital in Rawalpindi. What follows is a massive documentary evidence work according to Amazon.com
Michel Chossudovsky is professor of economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Canada and author of several books. He is Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), a think-tank based in Montreal. He has taught as visiting professor at academic institutions in Western Europe, Latin America and Southeast Asia, has acted as economic adviser to governments of developing countries and has worked as a consultant for international organizations including the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the African Development Bank, the United Nations African Institute for Economic Development and Planning (AIEDEP), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the World Health Organisation (WHO), and the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).
Dawn Editorial Read more »
March 3, 2010
Once a promising protégé for the United States, Brig. Sultan Amir, who is known as Col. Imam, has taught insurgent tactics.
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan — With his white turban, untrimmed beard and worn army jacket, the man known uniformly here by his nom de guerre, Col. Imam, is a particular Pakistani enigma.
A United States-trained former colonel in Pakistan’s spy agency, he spent 20 years running insurgents in and out of Afghanistan, first to fight the Soviet Army, and later to support the Taliban, as Pakistani allies, in their push to conquer Afghanistan in the 1990s. Read more »
Lt Gen Masood Aslam, Corps Commander Peshawar said on Thursday March 11, 2010 that the chief of Tehreek-e-Taliban (TeT) Swat, Maulana Fazlullah, has fled from Swat and was being chased.Talking to reporters on the inauguration of the Shuhada Park at Saidu Sharif and the Public Library in Mingora here, the corps commander said Fazlullah would soon be brought to justice. Read more »
by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya Read more »
EXPLOSIVE NEWS
A lingering technical question about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks still haunts some, and it has political implications: How did 200,000 tons of steel disintegrate and drop in 11 seconds? A thousand architects and engineers want to know, and are calling on Congress to order a new investigation into the destruction of the Twin Towers and Building 7 at the World Trade Center.
“In order to bring down this kind of mass in such a short period of time, the material must have been artificially, exploded outwards,” says Richard Gage, a San Francisco architect and foun Read more »
ISLAMABAD: Investigations into murder of Benazir Bhutto take a new turn as Pakistani officials said they are searching for four military personnel who had disappeared just before the assassination of the former prime minister.
Interior ministry officials told DawnNews that the missing soldiers were retired army personnel who were among the eight army soldiers related to the main accused and a proclaimed offender in the case, Ibad Ur Rehman.
The interior ministry officials disclosed that investigators are facing difficulties in determining the exact status of these soldiers and so far no record had been provided. The four other soldiers are still serving the army.
These four army personnel had never been mentioned in the legal proceedings before an anti-terrorist court in Rawalpindi.
This is the first time that the investigators are probing into the possibility of army soldiers’ involvement into the assassination of the former prime minister.
A UN commission constituted to probe into the assassination of Ms. Bhutto is expected to submit its report by the end of this month.
When DawnNews tried to ascertain the view of military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas on this revelation, he could not be reached on his telephone despite repeated attempts.
This DAWN report needs no comment
ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court of Pakistan said on Friday it will not examine evidence against intelligence agencies in the missing persons’ case.
A written order released to the media states that evidence and allegations of involvement of intelligence agencies in abducting people will be examined by an ‘appropriate forum at the relevant time.’
The written orders were released a week after the last hearing in the case, which was conducted by Justice Javed Iqbal, Justice Sair Ali and Justice Tariq Pervez.
The four-page order noted that police officials have expressed their inability to make further probes in certain cases regarding the missing persons’ due to alleged involvement of various intelligence agencies.
Over a thousand people have been missing for the last four years amid allegations of intelligence agencies kidnapping them as part of in relation to the war against terror. The Supreme Court took notice of the complaints and started a probe in 2006.
After assurance of progress from Attorney General Anwar Mansur Sohail, the apex court will now take up the case again next week. —DawnNews
Published 15 February 2010
Pakistan is far from being the country many of us think. Fatima Bhutto dispels a few myths.
Everybody seems to be an expert on the Islamic Republic of Pakistan these days. You can’t turn left without running into some pundit or pontificating layperson moaning heartily about Pakistan’s future, lording it with their imaginary Pakistan PhDs over all and sundry. Baron- esses, David Miliband, the fellow who reads the news – they’re all Pakistan wonks now. Read more »
Published in DAWN
Even after seven years, the US has failed to try the alleged mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. — File Photo
A columnist recently lamented the “emotionally charged thinking of Pakistanis” that leads them to believe conspiracy theories that present the events of Sept 11, 2001 as a plot hatched by mysterious elements in the American establishment. There is no doubt that fundamentalism and terrorism are a serious threat to our country, but the views about 9/11 and the United States “being the only country that can help” need to be analysed with cold logic and in the context of some critical questions about 9/11 that were raised by serious Americans who did not make the movie Loose Change.
But before that, recent comments by former Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohamad; the latter told a Malaysian TV channel last month that 9/11 was an inside job. Mahathir also said some people were afraid of saying anything critical about the governments of powerful countries or accusing them of wrongdoing. But, he added, the governments of powerful countries told lies to go to war.
Mahathir is not the only senior statesman to say this. Francesco Cossiga (Italy’s president for seven years until April 1992) told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera on Dec 3, 2007 that the attacks were run by the CIA and Mossad and that was common knowledge amongst global intelligence agencies. What about Alan Greenspan, an icon of the Wall Street Republicans?
No US official or journalist or think tank has ever raised or answered the question that Alan Greenspan posed in his book, The Age of Turbulence:
“There was no bigger question in Washington than why no second attack? If Al Qaeda’s intent was to disrupt the US economy, as Bin Laden declared, the attacks had to continue. Our society was open, our borders porous, and ability to detect weapons and bombs was weak. I asked this question of a lot of people at the highest levels of government, and no one seemed to have a convincing response.”
Mr Greenspan has known George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and other top leaders for decades and had access to everyone who was anybody in Washington at the time. The reason he did not get a convincing response was that the people at the highest level of (US) government did not have one. Why?
On Sept 17, 2008, Time magazine published a story ‘Risking War with Pakistan’ written by an ex-CIA officer (for the Middle East) Robert Baer. He wrote:
“On Tuesday, Pakistan’s military ordered its forces along the Afghan border to repulse all future American military incursions into Pakistan. The story has been subsequently downplayed.”
Baer asked a troubling question: “Is it worth the ghost hunt we’ve been on since September 11? There has not been a credible sighting of Osama bin Laden since he escaped from Tora Bora in October 2001. As for Al Qaeda, there are few signs it’s even still alive. Al Qaeda couldn’t even manage to post a statement on the Internet marking September 11, let alone set off a bomb.”
The 9/11 commission itself charged the US government of a cover-up. On Jan 2, 2008, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton who served as chairman and vice chairman, respectively, of the 9/11 commission wrote an op-ed piece in The New York Times, accusing the US government of a cover-up and obstruction (of justice) as no one in the administration ever told the commission of the existence of videotapes of detainee interrogations: “…. government officials decided not to inform a lawfully constituted body, created by Congress and the president, to investigate one of the greatest tragedies to confront this country.” (Emphasis added).
John Pistole, deputy assistant director of the Federal Bureau, testified before the US Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs on July 31, 2003.
“The FBI conducted a detailed financial investigation/analysis of the 19 hijackers and their support network, [and] traced the origin of the funding of 9/11 back to financial accounts in Pakistan, where high-ranking and well-known Al Qaeda operatives played a major role in moving the money forward, eventually into the hands of the hijackers located in the US.”
There was no follow-up investigation into these grave and startling revelations. His testimony was consistent with what the Wall Street Journal had published on Oct 10, 2001. The WSJ never followed up or contradicted its story.
The fact is that even after nearly seven years of his arrest, the US government has failed to try the alleged mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in a normal civil federal court. He was arrested in March 2003 and handed over to the US but never faced open trial. According to the 9/11 Commission Report he was “the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks”.
Four critical questions:
1) Why would the US government not pursue the Al Qaeda money trail leading to 9/11 attacks? 2) Why would the CIA destroy video tapes containing hundreds of hours of interrogations of Al Qaeda detainees in Guantanamo Bay? 3) Why would it obstruct independent investigation by members of the 9/11 Commission? 4) Why would the Pentagon and the CIA not try Khalid and other Al Qaeda members in a normal court under normal laws?
Unless the US government can answer these critical questions, followers of the one-sided version of history churned out by networks like Fox TV should not dismiss the sceptics as merely anti-American, emotional Muslims. The critics of the US policies include leading figures in the western world. Many enlightened, liberal, and well-informed Pakistanis have solid reasons, and are not spurred merely by emotions, to not just question but ridicule the US government theory that the Al Qaeda has safe havens in Pakistan from which it can launch terrorist attacks on America given some of the above well-documented facts.
The US government and its intelligence agencies have major credibility issues. Their record, unfortunately, includes lies, deliberate disinformation and doctored intelligence — all designed to promote and implement hidden agendas like conquest of the oil fields in Iraq behind the smokescreen of the weapons of mass destruction that never existed.
Pakistan’s so-called Islamic parties and groups never get tired of blaming America for all the country’s problems. The military has traditionally blamed the politicians. The Americans blame the extremists and terrorists for Pakistan’s current woes. So do Pakistan’s liberals.
In the context of the recent past and Pakistan’s history, Pakistan’s biggest tragedy and the principal reason for its break-up was and has been the axis of trouble between America, Pakistan’s army, and the religious parties.
Until and unless the axis is broken, neither the reconstruction of the Pakistani state nor the so-called democratisation of Pakistan will bring peace or prosperity to the latter’s 170 million people, nearly eighty per cent whom live below the poverty line of $2 a day. Read more »
November 20, 2009
If it accomplished nothing else, the Obama administration’s announcement last Friday to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in lower Manhattan blew the Nidal Hasan murders out of the news. The KSM fiasco deserves all the attention it gets. What Hasan represents, however, is a more immediate concern.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is an old-school jihadi. They sit in far-off redoubts, assembling terror teams of foreign nationals who now must figure out how to get themselves and their plot inside the U.S. Not impossible, but harder than before 9/11.
Hasan is new school. He is what’s known as a homegrown terrorist. Virtually all the Islamic terrorist plots thwarted in the U.S. in recent years were homegrown, not designed from afar by a KSM. Read more »
