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Home Front: WoT
Is the White House behind the manipulation of ISIS reporting?
2015-09-13
[RedState] A few days ago it was reported that the US intelligence apparatus support US Central Command, the war fighting joint command that is charged with "defeating and degrading" ISIS, was in a state of near mutiny. As it turned out, the only thing being "degraded" was the integrity of the senior leadership of that command.

More than 50 intelligence analysts working out of the U.S. military's Central Command have formally complained that their reports on ISIS and al Qaeda's branch in Syria were being inappropriately altered by senior officials, The Daily Beast has learned.

The complaints spurred the Pentagon's inspector general to open an investigation into the alleged manipulation of intelligence. The fact that so many people complained suggests there are deep-rooted, systemic problems in how the U.S. military command charged with the war against the self-proclaimed Islamic State assesses intelligence.

"The cancer was within the senior level of the intelligence command," one defense official said.

Two senior analysts at CENTCOM signed a written complaint sent to the Defense Department inspector general in July alleging that the reports, some of which were briefed to President Obama, portrayed the terror groups as weaker than the analysts believe they are. The reports were changed by CENTCOM higher-ups to adhere to the administration's public line that the U.S. is winning the battle against ISIS and al Nusra, al Qaeda's branch in Syria, the analysts claim.

While we like to think of intelligence analysts as impartial tellers of truth, in reality, the intelligence community is a huge bureaucracy that operates with the same log rolling, blame shifting, and wetted finger in the air that you find in any other bureaucracy. This is especially true when a Democrat is in the White House. For reasons that I've never quit understood, the CIA is, like State, basically an extension of the Democrat party. Through out the administration of George Bush, the CIA carried out a very open war against him and against his policies. The reports from Iraq, called "aardwolf" reports routinely overstated the insurgency and understated success. They mysteriously stopped being leaked after The Surge started. So finding that the intelligence community had cooked the books to make Obama look good was less than shocking. In fact, it was rather to be expected.

On the other hand, what no one in the intelligence community likes is being made to look like an asshat.

That, rather than the cooking per se, is what bought this on. A little cooking, a light saute, of intel is fine. Deep frying that sucker to a crisp becomes problematic.

The initial reports pointed the finger at the top military and civilian leadership at CENTCOM:

The analysts said it was unclear who was leading the pressure to adjust their assessments, which more than one referred to as "spinning." Some called it a result of a climate of the culture their commanders create. How such reports travel from CENTCOM headquarters to the senior reaches of the government and the military, and who reads them along the way, varies. Some reports go directly to the White House. More often, they go through several internal organizations and checks to determine what information is most useful to top officials.

"The phrase I use is the politicization of the intelligence community. That's here. And it's dangerous."
Two defense officials said that some felt the commander for intelligence at CENTCOM failed to keep political pressures from Washington from bearing on lower-level analysts at command headquarters in Tampa, Florida. That pressure, while described as subtle and not overt, is nevertheless clear, the analysts said: Assessments on ISIS should comport with "the leadership consensus," that is, top policymakers' view, that the U.S.-led campaign against the group is paying dividends.

The White House, not amused, seemed to engage in a little push back to let the intel folks know that they had more than their share of f**k-ups to explain:

The CIA detected an apparent Western hostage being held by al-Qaeda in Pakistan but did not keep the person under drone surveillance, according to U.S. officials who said they now suspect that the captive may have been an American aid worker who was killed in an agency strike this year.

The surveillance lapse is being scrutinized as part of an internal CIA investigation of the death of Warren Weinstein, U.S. officials said, describing the sequence as a potential missed opportunity to avert that outcome.

That gambit may have backfired because the real story seems to be a lot worse that a politically attuned Army general, Steven Groves, telling his bosses what he thinks their bosses want to hear. Rather it looks like James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, the titular head of the United States intelligence community, was reaching down into CENTCOM to personally massage the findings produced by General Groves. Significantly, the whistleblower chose to go to a British newspaper rather than relying on an American one.

Barack Obama's intelligence chief is said to be in frequent and unusual contact with a military intelligence officer at the center of a growing scandal over rosy portrayals of the war against the Islamic State, the Guardian has learned.

James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, is said to talk nearly every day with the head of US Central Command's intelligence wing, Army Major General Steven Grove -- "which is highly, highly unusual", according to a former intelligence official.

Grove is said to be implicated in a Pentagon inquiry into manipulated war intelligence.

In communications, Clapper, who is far more senior than Grove, is said to tell Grove how the war looks from his vantage point, and question Grove about Central Command's assessments. Such a situation could place inherent pressure on a subordinate, sources said.

This certainly explains the deviation we are seeing between what is happening on the ground and the official line emanating from the White House. By the same token it is hard to imagine a guy like Clapper, who has spent his entire career in the intelligence community, would willfully set out to totally undermine that community without a good reason. One has to assume that the decision for Clapper to undertake this unprecedented activity originates much, much closer to the Oval Office, if not within it.
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Iraq
Krauthammer: Interpreting The Islamic State's Jihadi Logic
2014-09-20
[WaPo]
Key paragraphs:
They count on Barack Obama quitting the Iraq/Syria campaign just as he quit Iraq and Libya in 2011 and is in the process of leaving Afghanistan now. And this goes beyond Obama. They see a post-9/11 pattern: America experiences shock and outrage and demands action. Then, seeing no quick resolution, it tires and seeks out leaders who will order the retreat. In Obama, they found the quintessential such leader.

As for the short run, the Islamic State knows it will be pounded from the air. But it deems that price worth paying, given its gains in propaganda and prestige -- translated into renown and recruiting -- from these public executions.

We tend to forget that at this stage in its career, the Islamic State's principal fight is intramural. It seeks to supersede and supplant its jihadi rivals -- from al-Qaeda in Pakistan, to Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria, to the various franchises throughout North Africa -- to emerge as champion of the one true jihad.

The strategy is simple: Draw in the world's great superpower, create the ultimate foil and thus instantly achieve supreme stature in radical Islam as America's nemesis.
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Afghanistan
Success Against Al Qaeda Depends on Success in Afghanistan
2011-06-20
BY FREDERICK W. KAGAN AND KIMBERLY KAGAN

The New York Times reports today that senior officials within the Obama administration are pressing for an accelerated withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan.

The “rationale” for that pressure is supposedly the success of America’s efforts against al Qaeda and the fact that “the counterterrorism campaign, which was favored by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2009, has outperformed the more troop-intensive counterinsurgency campaign pushed by Mr. Gates, Gen. David H. Petraeus and other top military planners.”

This rationale—or rationalization?—is specious. It demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of the relationship between our efforts in Afghanistan and our successes in Pakistan, as well as of the inseparability of effective “counter-terrorism” operations from the counter-insurgency strategy President Obama announced in December 2009.

Simply put, if the U.S. abandons the mission in Afghanistan before achieving the objectives President Obama announced at West Point, the “counter-terrorism” operations in Pakistan will also fail.

We should recall that tough fighting conducted by conventional American military forces in 2002 drove al Qaeda into Pakistan in the first place. The Taliban regime may have been brought down largely by American airpower and CIA operatives with bags of cash, but al Qaeda’s leaders did not flee the country when the regime fell. They attempted to reconstitute, rather, in southeastern Afghanistan, particularly in the mountainous terrain in Zormat district of Paktya province known as the Shah-i Kot valley.

It required a significant military operation conducted by conventional American forces—Operation ANACONDA—to drive them from that mountain fastness and persuade them that they could not rely on refuge in Afghanistan.

Thereafter, they established themselves in Pakistan, at bases familiar to them from the days of the anti-Soviet war but from which they had not operated since the Soviet withdrawal. They continued to cooperate closely with the Haqqani Network, the group with which they had been most closely allied while fighting the Soviets, which operates in Paktya and the surrounding provinces of Khost and Paktika. But American forces—both conventional and unconventional—have remained in those provinces continuously since 2002.

The al Qaeda leadership has therefore never seen an opportunity to move back into terrain that had been historically extremely congenial to them. Instead they made their homes among the tribes of Waziristan and, over time, even in metropolitan Pakistan. American unconventional forces with intermittent assistance from the Pakistani government and military have continued to hunt them down.

When President Obama came to office, the group had already been severely degraded and reduced to a relatively small number of senior leaders in Pakistan. The group did not have a significant presence in Afghanistan—largely because, as Ambassador Ryan Crocker noted during his confirmation testimony, the U.S. remained there.

Al Qaeda has, nevertheless, sought to re-establish itself more quietly in Afghanistan, as demonstrated by the periodic forays of mid-level commanders that allow U.S. strike forces to kill them in Afghanistan.

It is faulty logic of the worst kind to take the situation in Afghanistan that makes it so inhospitable to al Qaeda as a given, regardless of the presence or absence of U.S. forces or their activities. If the U.S. withdraws prematurely from Afghanistan and the country collapses again into ethnic civil war, then al Qaeda will have regained its original and most dangerous sanctuary.

Al Qaeda is not finished because of bin Laden’s death, moreover. Senior leaders continue to live and work in Pakistan, coordinating operations with other al Qaeda franchises around the world to attack Americans and America.

What is the strategy for finishing this fight if we abandon Afghanistan prematurely or put progress toward stabilizing that country at risk?

Where did the helicopter assault force that killed bin Laden launch from? Afghanistan. That is a location that will become even more important now that Pakistan has publicly expelled both the CIA and Special Forces operatives who were working against al Qaeda and working with the Pakistani counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism forces themselves.

If the U.S. loses its Afghan bases, as well as its position in Pakistan, the president’s ability to continue the struggle against al Qaeda will be severely degraded.

There is a direct connection between American and international efforts in Afghanistan and the successes we have had against al Qaeda in Pakistan. Any rationalization that relies on separating those two undertakings is, in fact, misinformed and dangerous. Counter-terrorism in Pakistan cannot be separated from the success of the current counter-insurgency mission in Afghanistan.
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India-Pakistan
ANP leaders' assassination: a roundup
2010-08-23
Awami National Party (ANP) provincial leader Ubaidullah Yousafzai along with Saleem Akhtar, a cashier at PIA, was shot dead last week, which resulted in yet another chain reaction because of which more than a dozen people have lost their life and numerous vehicles have been burned. Daily Times on August 14, 2010 "Conspiracy to destabilise Karachi" was the first publication in Pakistan to have predicted and warned of such an assassination of the second-tier leadership of the ANP, MQM, PPP and the Sunni Tehreek citing multiple intelligence sources and investigations by Qari Zafar-led Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), which has recently been hired by al Qaeda in North Waziristan to do their "dirty work". Astonishingly, the ANP leader was targeted at a "high-security zone" by two armed motorcyclists. An intelligence officer who had followed the lead revelled, "Al Qaeda wants to create a Beirut out of Karachi and create such a situation where, somehow the armed forces are bogged down in Karachi, further stretching the army".

"We don't have a clue about what's happening" a senior policeman said. "There's no intelligence sharing with us," he said. Daily Times investigations could reveal that the same hitmen who assassinated MQM's legislator, Raza Haider, killed ANP's Ubaidullah Yousafzai. Both the MQM and the ANP had become the boldest opponents of the Taliban and al Qaeda in Pakistan. The statement of Shahi Syed, the controversial leader of the ANP Sindh chapter about, "calling of army to Karachi" transformed into "we will not blame anyone" and "that extremists" are responsible for the killing pointing towards the Taliban came only when a certain agency briefed the central leadership of ANP to "calm things down in Karachi" and "not blame anyone". Obviously, the army is reluctant to come into the urban areas and open new fronts as it's already been stretched out.

The intelligence agencies are now chalking out a strategy to deal with the current situation in Karachi in absence of the provincial government's writ in Sindh's capital. Interestingly, one of the two persons arrested by the Karachi Police is of Burmese origin, which confirms LeJ's involvement, as LeJ had previously used another Burmese national to assassinate Imam Turabi in Karachi. As a former Western intelligence officer who had previously worked in Pakistan told Daily Times, "Karachi's situation is now controlled by people in North Waziristan as they now have the remote control, and unfortunately we will see them clicking the buttons in the near future -- there's no stopping it".
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India-Pakistan
Insurgents, Police Clash Amid Pakistan Flooding
2010-08-19
[Asharq al-Aswat] Islamist militants attacked police posts in Pakistan's northwest and killed two civilians active in an anti-Taliban militia, challenging a security establishment straining under a national flooding disaster, police said Wednesday.

The attacks came as the U.N. said an estimated 4.6 million flood victims have yet to get any shelter, despite aid workers' attempts to distribute tents. The floods have submerged tens of thousands of villages, killed around 1,500 people and affected 20 million others, authorities say.

A group of militants first killed two members of a militia in the Adezai area of Peshawar as they headed to pray at a mosque late Tuesday, said Liaqat Ali Khan, Peshawar police chief.

In the hours after, dozens of militants from the Khyber tribal region, which lies near Peshawar and along the Afghan border, attacked police posts in the Sarband area of Peshawar. The two sides exchanged fire for about an hour before the militants retreated to Khyber, Khan said.

He said several militants were killed, but there were no police casualties.

The clashes suggest Islamist insurgents are not abandoning their campaign against the state despite the flooding that began three weeks ago. In fact, they may be taking advantage of the government's weak and distracted status.

"As the police force is busy in rescue and relief work for flood affectees, militants tried to take advantage of the situation to attack Peshawar, but the police force was fully alert and vigilant," Khan said.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari was headed to Russia on Wednesday for a regional summit. He was expected to stay only a few hours before returning to his deluged country. An earlier multi-day trip to Europe just as the disaster was unfolding severely damaged Zardari's already poor reputation.

The U.N. appealed last week for $459 million for immediate relief efforts and has received 40 percent of that so far, said U.N. spokesman Maurizio Giuliano. Another $43 million has been pledged.

Aid groups have complained that the response has been too slow and not generous enough, and the U.N. warned that many victims have yet to receive any help. That includes around 4.6 million in eastern Punjab and southern Sindh provinces who still need shelter, Giuliano said Wednesday.

The Pakistani Taliban have urged citizens to reject any foreign aid, saying it will only be stolen by the political elite in the impoverished nation of 175 million.

The military, meanwhile, has some 60,000 troops dealing with flood relief. Many of those soldiers would normally would be battling insurgents or holding territory they had already cleared.

U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson said Tuesday that it was too soon to understand what impact the disaster would have on the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan, but that it was a concern for Washington. The U.S. has pushed Pakistan to eliminate militant hideouts it fears are being used as rest stops for insurgents engaged in the war in Afghanistan.
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Home Front: WoT
US-Pakistani gets 15 years for aiding al Qaeda
2010-06-11
A Pakistani-born American man accused of providing support for al Qaeda's efforts to combat US forces in Afghanistan was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Wednesday, officials said.

A Justice Department statement said Syed Hashmi, who pleaded guilty on April 27 to a charge of conspiracy to provide material support or resources to the terror network, received the maximum sentence under law from US District Chief Judge Loretta Preska.

US Attorney Preet Bharara said, "Hashmi was held accountable for his conduct, and his sentence makes clear that individuals who provide support to such terror networks will be brought to justice."

"Terrorist organisations such as al Qaeda depend upon a wide array of individuals across the world to accomplish their violent objectives. This support network includes individuals like Syed Hashmi who embrace al Qaeda's violent ideology and stand ready to translate ideology into action," the prosecutor added.

Hashmi, also known as Fahad," was arrested on June 6, 2006, form the Heathrow Airport in London, shortly before boarding a flight to Pakistan. He was later transferred to theUS, becoming the first person extradited from Britain to the United States on terrorism charges."

Hashmi, born in Pakistan and educated in New York, was accused of letting a terrorism suspect stay in his student apartment in London and allowing the man to use his cell phone to call other suspects.

The guest also had a supply of rain gear, such as ponchos and waterproof socks that was allegedly being delivered to al Qaeda in Pakistan.

Human rights groups including Amnesty International and the Centre for Constitutional Rights, alleged Hashmi had been subjected to harsh pre-trial detention.
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India-Pakistan
Pak Taliban expanding alliances: report
2010-05-09
The Pakistani Taliban, which American investigators suspect were behind the attempt to bomb Times Square, have in recent years combined forces with al Qaeda and other groups, threatening to extend their reach and ambitions, Western diplomats, intelligence officials and experts claim.
What do the good men at the ISI say? Have they yet started to panic, realizing they've reared a fully grown dragon that they're holding only by the tip of the tail?
Since the group's formation in 2007,
2007? Is the journalist quite, quite certain about the timing?
the main mission of the Pakistani Taliban has been to maintain their hold on territory in Pakistan's tribal areas to train fighters against American and NATO forces in Afghanistan and, increasingly, to strike at the Pakistani state as the military pushes into these havens, the New York Times reported on Friday.

Degraded: Pakistan's military offensives and intensifying US drone strikes have degraded their capabilities. But the Pakistani Taliban have sustained themselves through alliances with any number of other militant groups, splinter cells, foot soldiers and guns-for-hire in the areas under their control.

Those groups have "morphed", a Western diplomat said in a recent interview. Their common agenda, training and resource sharing have made it increasingly difficult to distinguish one from another. The alliances have also added to their skills and tactics and list of shared targets, the newspaper claimed.
In the business world they call that consolidation.
"They trade bomb makers and people around," a senior US intelligence official said on Thursday in an interview. "It's becoming this witches' brew."

The senior intelligence official said that in recent years the overall ability and lethality of these groups had dropped, but that the threat to individual countries like the US had increased somewhat because the groups cooperated against a range of targets.

Not least among the groups is al Qaeda, which is exerting growing influence over the others. The Pakistani Taliban increasingly serve as its fig leaf, some experts said.

"The Taliban are the local partner of al Qaeda in Pakistan," said Amir Rana, the director of the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, who has tracked militant networks for years. "It has no capacity for an international agenda on its own."

Al Qaeda was one of a number of groups, including the Afghan Taliban, that relocated across the border to Pakistan's tribal areas after the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
Interesting. Who else was over there, pray tell? Besides the original Taliban, I mean.
The Pakistani military has said for months that it has broken the back of the Pakistani Taliban since it began operations in Swat, Bajaur and South Waziristan, among other places. But the top leadership of the militant group remains at large and has sought new refuge largely in North Waziristan.

In a video released on Sunday, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan claimed responsibility for the attempted bombing. But on Thursday a spokesman for the group disavowed responsibility, the New York Times said. "The TTP has had no links with Faisal Shahzad whatsoever," the spokesman, Azam Tariq, said in a phone call to reporters in Peshawar from an undisclosed location. "We never imparted training to him, nor had he ever come to us."
"Please don't let the American UAVs kill us!"
But he said the group had placed suicide bombers in the US, who, he said, would carry out their mission at an opportune time.
Modification: "Please don't kill us for an attack that didn't work. You can kill us later when we're successful."
The various tribes and clans within the TTP tend to be tied to their local areas and do not have the reach to recruit beyond their territory.
On the other hand, so long as they're successful, the foreign jihadi wannabes will continue to trickle in.
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India-Pakistan
Panetta: secret attacks in Pakistan have hobbled al-Qaeda
2010-03-18
Aggressive attacks against al-Qaeda in Pakistan's tribal region have driven Osama bin Laden and his top deputies deeper into hiding and disrupted their ability to plan sophisticated operations, CIA Director Leon Panetta said Wednesday. So profound is al-Qaeda's disarray that one of its lieutenants, in a recently intercepted message, pleaded with bin Laden to come to the group's rescue and provide some leadership, Panetta said. Panetta credited improved coordination with Pakistan's government and what he called "the most aggressive operation that CIA has been involved in in our history," offering a near-acknowledgment of what is officially a secret war.

"Those operations are seriously disrupting al-Qaeda," Panetta said. "It's pretty clear from all the intelligence we are getting that they are having a very difficult time putting together any kind of command and control, that they are scrambling. And that we really do have them on the run."

Panetta is one of several senior officials who have stepped forward to argue that the administration is making gains against extremists, in part to rebut Republican criticism that President Obama has weakened national security. He is not the first CIA director to point to progress in the war against al-Qaeda, claims that sometimes prove too ambitious. "I have an excellent idea of where [bin Laden] is," then-CIA Director Porter J. Goss told an interviewer in 2005.
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Home Front: WoT
Terror Networks 'More Dangerous to U.S. Than N. Korea, Iran'
2010-02-09
The greatest threat to the United States are not nuclear-armed countries like North Korea or Iran but "transnational non-state networks," namely Islamic extremists linked to al-Qaeda, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claimed Sunday.
Sorry, Hilde, there is no 'war on terror', no 'transnational non-state networks', and Guantanamo's current inmates are just misguided. Didn't you get the memo?
In an interview with CNN, Clinton said, "Most of us believe the greater threats are the transnational non-state networks, primarily the extremists -- the fundamentalist Islamic extremists who are connected to al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula or al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan." She said these networks "continue to try to increase the sophistication of their capacity. The attacks that they're going to make and the... biggest nightmare that any of us have is that one of these terrorist member organizations... will get their hands on a weapon of mass destruction."

But Clinton added, "In terms of a country, obviously, a nuclear-armed country like North Korea or Iran pose both a real or a potential threat."
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Home Front: WoT
British spies help prevent al Qaeda-inspired attack on New York subway
2009-11-09
British spies have foiled a terrorist plot by a suspected al Qaeda operative to blow up the New York subway. The plan, which reportedly would have been the biggest attack on America since 9/11, was uncovered after Scotland Yard intercepted an email. The force alerted the FBI, who launched an operation which led to airport shuttle bus driver Najibullah Zazi, 24, being charged with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction.

The Afghan is alleged to have been part of a group who used stolen credit cards to buy components for bombs including nail varnish remover. The chemicals bought were similar to those used to make the 2005 London Tube and bus explosives which killed 52 people. Zazi, from Denver, Colorado, is understood to have been given instructions by a senior member of al Qaeda in Pakistan over the internet. US authorities allegedly found bomb-making instructions on his laptop and his fingerprints on batteries and measuring scales they seized. A phone containing footage of New York's Grand Central Station, thought to have been made by him during a visit a week before his arrest, was also found along with explosive residue. Zazi was also said by informants to have attended a terrorist training camp in Pakistan.

The alleged plot was unmasked after an email address that was being monitored as part of the abortive Operation Pathway was suddenly reactivated. Operation Pathway was investigating an alleged UK terrorist cell but went awry after the then Met Police counter-terrorism head Bob Quick was pictured walking into Downing Street displaying top secret documents. Eleven Pakistani suspects were arrested immediately after the gaffe but later released without charge. However, security staff continued to monitor the email address which eventually yielded results.

The British discovery also came at just the right time – the US had threatened to sever intelligence links over the release of Lockerbie bomber Al Megrahi. A British security source told The Sun: "This was excellent work and highlights the fact we produce good information. (The US authorities) were delighted with the intelligence we gave them and believe it helped prevent a catastrophic attack."
Hmm. Reminds me of those who get a bonus just for doing their job.
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Home Front: Politix
The Next Afghan Strategy Looks Like It’ll Focus on the Counterterrorism Question
2009-10-07
If it’s true, as reported, that the question of the CIA’s drone strikes against al-Qaeda in Pakistan is bolstering support for the so-called counterterrorism option in the Obama administration’s Afghanistan/Pakistan strategy, then tomorrow’s meeting at the White House looks, from the attendance sheet, like it’ll debate precisely that issue. Here’s the just-released list of scheduled participants:

Vice President Biden

Secretary of State Clinton

Secretary of Defense Gates

Ambassador Susan Rice, Permanent US Representative to the United Nations

Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan

Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

General David Petraeus, U.S. Central Command

General Stanley McChrystal, U.S. Commander in Afghanistan (via videoconference)

Admiral Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence

CIA Director Leon Panetta

Karl Eikenberry, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan (via videoconference)

Anne Patterson, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan (via videoconference)

General James Jones, National Security Advisor

Tom Donilon, Deputy National Security Advisor

John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security

Brennan, one of Obama’s most important advisers, wasn’t in last week’s meeting; neither was Donilon or Rice.
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India-Pakistan
US threatens air strikes on Quetta: UK paper
2009-09-28
[The News (Pak) Top Stories] The United States is threatening to launch air strikes on Mullah Omar and the Taliban leadership in Quetta as frustration mounts about the ease with which they (allegedly) find sanctuary across the border from Afghanistan, reports The Sunday Times.

The Biden camp argues that attacks by unmanned drones on Pakistan's tribal areas, where al-Qaeda's leaders are (believed to be) hiding, have been successful. Sending more troops to Afghanistan has only inflamed tensions.

The Afghan election has strengthened the position of those in Washington who advocate eliminating Taliban leaders in Pakistan.Senior Pakistani officials in New York revealed that the US had asked to extend the drone attacks into Quetta and other parts of Balochistan. "It wasn't so much a threat as an understanding that if you don't do anything, we'll take matters into our own hands," said one.

The problem is that while the government of President Asif Zardari is committed to wiping out terrorism, Pakistan's powerful military does not entirely share this view, the paper claimed. Earlier this year, there was optimism that Pakistan had turned a corner after it confronted a Taliban group that had taken over the Swat Valley.

There has been tacit cooperation over the use of drones. Some are even stationed inside Pakistan, although publicly the government denounces their use, the paper said. Suspicions remain among US officials that parts of Pakistan's military intelligence agency, the ISI, are supporting the Taliban and protecting Mullah Omar and other leaders in Quetta.

It was to shore up Zardari's domestic standing that Obama attended a Friends of Pakistan summit in New York on Thursday. On the same day, the US Senate tripled non-military aid to Pakistan to $1.5 billion a year.

The Obama administration hopes such moves will reduce anti-American feelings in Pakistan. A survey last month by the Pew Research Centre found that almost two-thirds regarded the US as an enemy.

Drone attacks on Quetta would intensify this sentiment, causing some British officials to argue that such missions would be "unthinkable". However, the paper added, the Pakistani government is reluctant to take its own action.

"We need real-time intelligence," said Interior Minister Rehman Malik. "The Americans have never told us any location."
"We need real-time intelligence," said Interior Minister Rehman Malik. "The Americans have never told us any location."
Western intelligence officers say Pakistan has been moving Taliban leaders to Karachi.
Western intelligence officers say Pakistan has been moving Taliban leaders to Karachi, where it would be impossible to strike. US officials have even discussed sending commandos to Quetta to capture or kill the Taliban chiefs before they are moved, The Sunday Times said.

The threat of air strikes on Quetta comes amid growing divisions in Washington about whether to deal with the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan by sending more troops or by reducing them and targeting the terrorists.

This weekend the US military was expected to send a request to Robert Gates, the defence secretary, for more troops, as urged by General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander there. In a leaked strategic assessment of the war, McChrystal warned that he needed extra reinforcements within a year to avert the risk of failure. Although no figure was given, he is believed to be seeking up to 40,000 troops to add to the 68,000 who will be in Afghanistan by the end of this year.

However, with President Barack Obama under pressure from fellow Democrats not to intensify the war, the administration has let it be known that it is rethinking strategy. Vice-President Joe Biden has suggested reducing the number of troops in Afghanistan and focusing on the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan.

Last week McChrystal denied any rift with the administration, saying "a policy debate is warranted". According to The New York Times, he flew from Kabul to Ramstein airbase in Germany on Friday for a secret meeting with Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to discuss the request for more troops.

So sensitive is the subject that when Obama addressed the United Nations summit in New York, he barely mentioned Afghanistan. The unspoken problem is that if the priority is to destroy al-Qaeda and reduce the global terrorist threat, Western troops might be fighting on the wrong side of the border.
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