Saturday, November 05, 2011
U.S. Congress urged to re-think Pakistan relationship
From The Hindu
There is deep concern within the United States Congress about the Obama administration’s strategy of relying on Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence to broker a deal with various militant groups in the Af-Pak region, it emerged at a Congressional hearing this week.
In a House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Thursday titled “2014 and Beyond: U.S. Policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Congressmen discussed the thorny question of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, particularly in the context of the impending U.S. troop drawdown and its implications for regional stability.
In that regard Representative Steve Chabot, Republican of Ohio, cautioned, that although working with the ISI might make sense in the context of reconciliation, it risked rewarding the very elements responsible for sheltering insurgents who kill Americans and Afghans alike.
Mr. Chabot added, “None of this, of course, even begins to address the implications of this policy for India, which has been, continues to be, and I hope will remain, a close ally and friend of the U.S.”
Representative Gary L. Ackerman, Democrat of New York, noted in a similar vein, “It's not a secret that Lashkar-e-Taiba, which was responsible for the horrific November 2008 massacre of civilians in Mumbai, India, an attack that clearly implicated the Pakistani military, operates openly in Pakistan.” He said that the Government of Pakistan had made no effort to interfere, disrupt, arrest or shut down any of these groups or their activities.
Strategic concerns were focused on the question of post-2014 Afghanistan, and answering some of the questions of Congressmen Ashley Tellis, Senior Associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said, “Reconciliation with the Taliban is a sensible strategy in principle, but it faces enormous obstacles to success in practice.”
Mr. Tellis pointed out that it was not clear whether the Taliban had a genuine interest in reconciliation, especially given that they did not believe that they had been decisively defeated by the U.S. and they looked to the security transition as heralding the moment when the U.S. would leave the region.
Experts at the hearing also argued against sustaining U.S. military aid to Pakistan, particularly when such support entailed the supply of offensive assets such F-16 fighter aircraft. Commenting on this arrangement Christine Fair, Assistant Professor, Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University, said, “Let's be very clear about the F-16 canard. We didn't give them the F-16s because we thought it would enhance their counterterrorism or their counterinsurgency capabilities. We did it to placate Musharraf. We did it to placate Kayani. And it hasn't gotten us anywhere.”
Dr. Fair added that so far Pakistan has wanted weapons systems that could “deal more effectively with India and have very little utility for their domestic threat,” adding that catering to this demand from Pakistan “completely undermines our regional interests in every possible way, be it democratisation of Pakistan, be it regional stability vis-a-vis India and Pakistan.”
Labels: ISI, Pak militancy, US-Pak ties
U.S. refuses to back down on ISI-terror connections
From The Hindu
The toxic fallout is continuing in the spat between the United States and Pakistan over allegations that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence openly connives with terror groups such as the fearsome Haqqani network.
The latest public rebuff of this bitter saga was delivered to Pakistan on Friday in a statement by Pentagon Spokesman John Kirby, who said to media that “there has been a long-standing historical relationship between the ISI and extremist groups.”
Declining to get into the “specifics” of the intelligence that the U.S. possessed on the support that the Haqqani network enjoyed in Pakistan, Mr. Kirby however said: “All I can tell you is that we are confident that the ISI continues to support and even encourages the Haqqanis to launch these attacks.”
His comments came in the wake of sharp recriminations between top officials in the U.S. and Pakistan, which was set off by a statement by U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen on Thursday, who said that “the Haqqani network acts as a veritable arm of [the] ISI.”
Admiral Mullen also cited specific instances of alleged ISI-Haqqani network cooperation in terror attacks, noting that “With the ISI support, Haqqani operatives planned and conducted... [the September 10 Kabul] truck bombing, as well as the [September 14] assault on our embassy.”
In his testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee Admiral Mullen added that the U.S. was in possession of “credible evidence” that the ISI was behind these and other attacks earlier in the summer in Afghanistan.
Following this damning indictment, senior Pakistani officials, including Chief of Army Staff Ashfaq Kayani and Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar, reacted angrily and respectively warned that blaming Pakistani agencies for such attacks was “very unfortunate and not based on facts,” and that the U.S. could “lose an ally” in the fight against extremism.
Ms. Khar, who is in the U.S. for the United Nations General Assembly, said, “You cannot afford to alienate Pakistan. You cannot afford to alienate the Pakistani people,” adding that the U.S. had not shared any evidence with Pakistan about its evidence on the ISI-Haqqani network connections.
Yet it was obvious that the Pentagon was not backing down from Admiral Mullen's comments. “The chairman stands by what he testified before the U.S. Senate,” Mr. Kirby said, adding that the terror outfit's activity “has become more brazen, more aggressive, more lethal, and the information has become more available, that these attacks have been supported or even encouraged by the ISI.”
Labels: ISI, ISI-terror links, terrorism, US-Pak ties
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Pakistan arrests CIA informants
From The Hindu
The reported arrest of five men by Pakistan for collaborating with the CIA in its mission to track down Osama bin Laden, appears to have further shaken the deeply fraught relationship between the two countries' intelligence agencies, according to some experts here.
The reported detention of CIA informants comes at a time when Pakistan's intelligence agencies are facing unprecedented criticism following the events of May 2011 beginning with bin Laden being found in a cantonment area, the siege of naval airbase PNS Mehran and the killing of journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad.
With numerous intelligence specialists in Washington asking why Pakistan was focusing on alleged CIA informants instead of targeting al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters, concerns have also been expressed regarding the risks the growing chasm poses for continued drone strikes.
Even as these concerns mounted in Washington, Pakistan on Wednesday “strongly refuted” the report claiming that an Army Major was among the five Pakistani informants detained for spying on bin Laden in Abbottabad. “There is no army officer detained and the story is false and totally baseless,” said the Inter Services Public Relations in a statement.
Bruce Riedel, Senior Fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, described U.S.-Pakistan relations as being “in a steep nose dive with the intelligence relationship leading the way.” Speaking to The Hindu he said that within the army there was a sense of deep humiliation owing to the U.S. strike against bin Laden, and “the officer corps is questioning its top leaders' competence and they face unprecedented public criticism”.
Mr. Riedel also alluded to heightened anti-Americanism in Pakistan, arguing that the Pakistani army shared “the anger and resentment the average Pakistani feels toward America, a sentiment stoked by every drone strike.”
Lisa Curtis of the Heritage Foundation, a former CIA officer like Mr. Riedel, said while “Pakistan's arrest of the CIA informants may add to ISI-CIA tensions, would not push the intelligence relationship to the breaking point.” In particular, Ms. Curtis told The Hindu the U.S. would be willing to accept “a high degree of tension in the relationship,” as it needed to track additional terrorists.
Ms. Curtis also raised the question of where the arrests of the informants would lead, saying, “If Pakistani authorities move to prosecute the individuals for espionage, this would put Pakistan in an awkward position of punishing individuals who helped track the world's most wanted terrorist.” A better course of action may be to quietly release the individuals and avoid further questions about loyalties, she added.
The drone programme in particular was said to have been at risk for several months, and continuing tensions might necessitate a shift in the location from which they were launched, from Pakistan to Afghanistan.
Labels: anti-Americanism, CIA informant, CIA-ISI ties, ISI, Osama killing, Pak Army Major, Pakistan intelligence agencies, terrorism
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
"Pakistan still smuggling nuclear goods from U.S."
From The Hindu
A top Washington think tank has argued that recent examples of nuclear industry goods being smuggled from the United States to Pakistan highlight the need for closer monitoring and raise questions about how an ostensible “ally” of the U.S. could be involved in this illicit trade.
Speaking to The Hindu David Albright, President and founder of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) said the “U.S. government and the nuclear industry need to be working closer together” if such smuggling rings were to be detected.
Reflecting upon an ISIS paper that examined the case of Pakistani Nadeem Akhtar, Mr. Albright said, “The U.S. government should simply ask Pakistan to stop this trade, if they want to be our allies,” adding that the recent cases in which smuggling rings were caught they ultimately lead back to supply orders originating in Pakistan.
Akhtar's case made news last month when U.S. prosecutors charged him with “running a smuggling operation that shipped materials and equipment to the agencies operating Pakistan's nuclear program,” according to media reports.
Akhtar (45) was said to have operated an export firm in Maryland, which obtained items such as radiation-detection devices, calibration equipment and nuclear-grade resins from a company based in North Dakota and passed them on to “agencies that are on a U.S. Commerce Department blacklist.” The orders made to the U.S. company dated back to 2005 and 2006.
Specifically the two Pakistani entities that received goods through Akhtar's alleged illicit procurement operation were the Chashma nuclear power plant and the Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission. ISIS reported that in 2006 and 2008 Akhtar purchased equipment from a Massachusetts company used to control electrical circuits in nuclear power and fuel reprocessing plants and shipped them to the Chashma plant.
Dual-use goods
According to ISIS, among the tactics that Akhtar allegedly used to obtain the dual-use goods were “using a U.S. company to buy goods from another U.S. company on his behalf, using a contractor of a U.S. company to buy goods, doing business with a U.S. company that knowingly or accidentally violated the U.S. ban on nuclear dual-use exports to Pakistan, and even lying to a Commerce Department official when asked about an end-user.”
As a result of these activities and also falsifying shipping documents and illegally routing goods to Pakistan via another Dubai-based company, Akhtar was said to be facing trial and up to five years in prison for conspiracy to commit export violations, 20 years for unlawfully exporting U.S. goods, and 20 years for conspiracy to commit money laundering, .
Mr. Albright told The Hindu, said the U.S. probably did not expect Pakistan to extradite the procurement agents implicated, yet given that the orders originated from the nuclear plants in Pakistan, official involvement in the smuggling ring was likely.
Mr. Albright said the recent events had echoes of the Asher Karni case of 2004, in which Karni, a Hungarian-born Israeli citizen was charged by U.S. authorities for involvement in the A.Q. Khan network of nuclear smugglers associated with the clandestine nuclear policy of Pakistan.
A top Washington think tank has argued that recent examples of nuclear industry goods being smuggled from the United States to Pakistan highlight the need for closer monitoring and raise questions about how an ostensible “ally” of the U.S. could be involved in this illicit trade.
Speaking to The Hindu David Albright, President and founder of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) said the “U.S. government and the nuclear industry need to be working closer together” if such smuggling rings were to be detected.
Reflecting upon an ISIS paper that examined the case of Pakistani Nadeem Akhtar, Mr. Albright said, “The U.S. government should simply ask Pakistan to stop this trade, if they want to be our allies,” adding that the recent cases in which smuggling rings were caught they ultimately lead back to supply orders originating in Pakistan.
Akhtar's case made news last month when U.S. prosecutors charged him with “running a smuggling operation that shipped materials and equipment to the agencies operating Pakistan's nuclear program,” according to media reports.
Akhtar (45) was said to have operated an export firm in Maryland, which obtained items such as radiation-detection devices, calibration equipment and nuclear-grade resins from a company based in North Dakota and passed them on to “agencies that are on a U.S. Commerce Department blacklist.” The orders made to the U.S. company dated back to 2005 and 2006.
Specifically the two Pakistani entities that received goods through Akhtar's alleged illicit procurement operation were the Chashma nuclear power plant and the Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission. ISIS reported that in 2006 and 2008 Akhtar purchased equipment from a Massachusetts company used to control electrical circuits in nuclear power and fuel reprocessing plants and shipped them to the Chashma plant.
Dual-use goods
According to ISIS, among the tactics that Akhtar allegedly used to obtain the dual-use goods were “using a U.S. company to buy goods from another U.S. company on his behalf, using a contractor of a U.S. company to buy goods, doing business with a U.S. company that knowingly or accidentally violated the U.S. ban on nuclear dual-use exports to Pakistan, and even lying to a Commerce Department official when asked about an end-user.”
As a result of these activities and also falsifying shipping documents and illegally routing goods to Pakistan via another Dubai-based company, Akhtar was said to be facing trial and up to five years in prison for conspiracy to commit export violations, 20 years for unlawfully exporting U.S. goods, and 20 years for conspiracy to commit money laundering, .
Mr. Albright told The Hindu, said the U.S. probably did not expect Pakistan to extradite the procurement agents implicated, yet given that the orders originated from the nuclear plants in Pakistan, official involvement in the smuggling ring was likely.
Mr. Albright said the recent events had echoes of the Asher Karni case of 2004, in which Karni, a Hungarian-born Israeli citizen was charged by U.S. authorities for involvement in the A.Q. Khan network of nuclear smugglers associated with the clandestine nuclear policy of Pakistan.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
CIA chief in Pakistan flees after suspected ISI exposure
From The Hindu
The Islamabad station chief of the Central Intelligence Agency hastily departed from Pakistan on Thursday after his cover was blown through a suspected deliberate leak by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence.
Jonathan Banks was identified as the head of the CIA’s Pakistan office, in a lawsuit filed against the United States’ secretive spy agency by a resident of North Waziristan. The resident, Kareem Khan, was said to have filed the case against the CIA and Mr. Banks for their role in organising drone strikes that killed his son and brother.
The legal case brought by Mr. Khan called for murder charges to be brought against Mr. Banks and the CIA, and also reportedly said they should be executed for their crimes. Mr. Khan’s lawyer was quoted by the Guardian saying he had obtained Mr. Banks’ name from Pakistani journalists.
While Pakistan was quick to deny any involvement in leaking Mr. Banks’ name, U.S. officials were quoted as saying that since he had been identified publicly Mr. Banks “had received a number of death threats,” and they “strongly suspected” that the ISI had a hand in the leak.
CIA operatives’ identities are usually classified information given the risks associated with the covert operations that they are often engaged in. Leaks of their names have occurred occasionally, as in the 2003 case of Valerie Plame, a CIA agent who resigned after officials in the Bush administration exposed her identity to the American media.
Intelligence officers here were also quoted by the New York Times as saying that the leak may have been in retaliation for a civil lawsuit filed in New York City last month implicating the ISI chief Ahmad Shuja Pasha in the Mumbai terror attacks of November 2008.
The incident laid bare the deep and growing mistrust between the U.S. and Pakistani spy agencies even as U.S. President Barack Obama made a speech this week in which he warned that “terrorist safe havens within their borders must be dealt with.”
This week, the White House also released a progress review for the U.S.’ Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy, a report that sharply focused on the need for greater Pakistani cooperation in eliminating terrorist safe havens in the tribal border areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Following Mr. Obama's speech there were reports of CIA-supported drone attacks that were said to have killed 54 suspected militants in Khyber Agency located in the border area. While drone strikes have enjoyed tacit support from the Pakistani government, they are a source of widespread resentment in the broader public.
The Islamabad station chief of the Central Intelligence Agency hastily departed from Pakistan on Thursday after his cover was blown through a suspected deliberate leak by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence.
Jonathan Banks was identified as the head of the CIA’s Pakistan office, in a lawsuit filed against the United States’ secretive spy agency by a resident of North Waziristan. The resident, Kareem Khan, was said to have filed the case against the CIA and Mr. Banks for their role in organising drone strikes that killed his son and brother.
The legal case brought by Mr. Khan called for murder charges to be brought against Mr. Banks and the CIA, and also reportedly said they should be executed for their crimes. Mr. Khan’s lawyer was quoted by the Guardian saying he had obtained Mr. Banks’ name from Pakistani journalists.
While Pakistan was quick to deny any involvement in leaking Mr. Banks’ name, U.S. officials were quoted as saying that since he had been identified publicly Mr. Banks “had received a number of death threats,” and they “strongly suspected” that the ISI had a hand in the leak.
CIA operatives’ identities are usually classified information given the risks associated with the covert operations that they are often engaged in. Leaks of their names have occurred occasionally, as in the 2003 case of Valerie Plame, a CIA agent who resigned after officials in the Bush administration exposed her identity to the American media.
Intelligence officers here were also quoted by the New York Times as saying that the leak may have been in retaliation for a civil lawsuit filed in New York City last month implicating the ISI chief Ahmad Shuja Pasha in the Mumbai terror attacks of November 2008.
The incident laid bare the deep and growing mistrust between the U.S. and Pakistani spy agencies even as U.S. President Barack Obama made a speech this week in which he warned that “terrorist safe havens within their borders must be dealt with.”
This week, the White House also released a progress review for the U.S.’ Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy, a report that sharply focused on the need for greater Pakistani cooperation in eliminating terrorist safe havens in the tribal border areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Following Mr. Obama's speech there were reports of CIA-supported drone attacks that were said to have killed 54 suspected militants in Khyber Agency located in the border area. While drone strikes have enjoyed tacit support from the Pakistani government, they are a source of widespread resentment in the broader public.
Labels: CIA, ISI, secret services
Saturday, March 20, 2010
U.S. "extremely gratified" by Pak arrest of Baradar: Holbrooke
From The Hindu
At a press briefing on the upcoming Strategic Dialogue between the Untied States and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said the U.S. was “extremely gratified that the Pakistani Government has apprehended the number-two person in the Taliban.”
His reaction comes shortly on the back of revelations by former UN staff that secret negotiations with the Taliban for greater peace in Afghanistan might have slowed down due to the arrest of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, Afghan Taliban’s number two commander.
Mr. Holbrooke said many other militants and groups have been picked up or eliminated, and this is increasing the pressure on the Taliban; he added that this was “a good thing for the simplest of reasons: It is good for the military efforts that are underway in Afghanistan.”
Mr. Holbrooke was asked about the revelation by former UN Representative in Afghanistan Kai Eide that he was in talks with senior Taliban leaders since last spring and that those talks were shut down after the Pakistani authorities began arresting senior Afghan Taliban leaders like Baradar.
Reacting to the question about revelations by former UN Representative in Afghanistan Kai Eide that he was in talks with senior Taliban leaders since last spring and that those talks were shut down after the Pakistan arrested Baradar, he said, the arrest “is not related to the issue that you’re addressing.” President Karzai has said he wanted a reconciliation program with all Afghans, including people fighting with the Taliban and President Obama has said we support Afghan-led reconciliation, Mr. Holbrooke said.
On the importance of the talks to U.S.-Pakistan relationships Mr. Holbrooke said, “It marks a major intensification of our partnership, and we welcome the extremely high caliber delegation which Pakistan is sending. It will be lead, of course, by Foreign Minister Qureshi..” He added that President Obama and Secretary Clinton have long stressed the breadth and depth of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship: “This is a partnership that goes far beyond security, but security’s an important part of it,” he said.
Clarifying the intention behind the Strategic Dialogue Mr. Holbrooke said “This strategic dialogue with Pakistan is not at the expense of any other country in the region.” Also there would be no question of telling Pakistan what to do militarily in North Waziristan: “”The Pakistani army, since May of last year, has gone into Swat, where two divisions remain. They have gone into South Waziristan, where an additional number of troops are deployed. They have taken remarkable steps to push back people who threaten their security. What they do in North Waziristan is a decision for them to make.”
However a few days ago Mark Toner, Deputy Spokesman at the State Department said in press interaction, “Obviously, we’re talking about… Afghanistan, the situation there, the spill-over into the FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas] and how to really better engage. And in fact, we’ve seen some successes on that front in recent weeks on terrorism,” he added.
In terms of substantively content of the dialogue, Mr. Holbrooke explained that the two countries would “talk about our basic core objectives, [including] defeating, destroying al-Qaida; helping the Afghans become self-reliant so they can take care of their own security; strengthening Pakistan’s ability to – with its own security; development; strengthening democratic institutions.”
Mr. Holbrooke expressed hope that the next round of Strategic Dialogue would be held in Islamabad “within the next six months.”
Labels: al Qaeda, Holbrooke, ISI, Kayani, Mumbai attacks, terrorism, U.S Special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Zardari
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