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| 5/24 |
| 2008/9/23-29 [Politics/Foreign/Asia/India, Politics/Foreign/Asia/Others] UID:51270 Activity:moderate |
9/22 "Pakistanis say suspected US drone shot down"
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080923/ap_on_re_as/as_pakistan_drone
One fewer friend, one more foe.
\_ Isn't this what Obama said he'd do?
\_ No, but why let facts get in the way.
\_ Obama or Osama? Are we really supposed to belive that Obama said
that he was going to start shooting at US aircraft?
\_ i think pp was referring to Obama saying he would go into
Pakistan without its permission to get Osama
\_ If you want to be depressed, this article in the NYTimes claims
that Pakistan endlessly trolls us into giving them billions while
they fund the Taliban. Let me repeat. We give Pakistan money.
They funnel a large portion to the Taliban in return for the
Taliban leaving Pakistan alone. But lately the crazy portion
\- and a large portion is funneled to the Army's "parallel
economy" ... while not quite an african kleptocracy or
saudi level concentration at the top, it's not a normal state.
it's also a glarine example of "talk/ideology" is cheap in
politics and how it is the amoral realm of calculation
[in re: india].
\_ Further complicating things is that nearly all Pakistanis have
at least one relative in the Army. The "parallel economy"
flows both ways.
of the Taliban are too difficult to control and they have been
suicide bombing inside of Pakistan. This article is an excellent
read, but it might drive you to drink:
http://tinyurl.com/4npby9
\_ http://www.fas.org/irp/world/pakistan/isi
\_ Maybe Pakistan's military should do something other than
stand around like pussies. The reason they don't is that
Pakistanis are sympathetic to the Taliban. "Controlling the
Taliban" isn't on the To Do list.
\_ The tribal regions have never been under the control of the
Army or the Govt. They're pretty much autonomous, which is
why a) you hear plenty of horror stories about primitive
tribal law (e.g., rape as punishment), and b) the tribes have
made deals with the Taleban where beneficial to the tribes.
\_ Now is a good time to remedy that. People should be
registered, there should be checkpoints, heavy weapons
should be confiscated, the border should be watched
more closely, and documents issued/checked. This might
involve going house to house in each village. Build more
permanent bases in the region. That is how the US would
handle it. Once the machine guns and RPGs are off the
streets and the foreigners have been arrested or cleared
\_ wow. wow. You know it's easier to get weapons than
food & clean water in those regions right?
\_ Your point? You can't go in and build dams and
roads and other federally funded projects when
there are hostile morons roaming around with RPGs.
Cleaning up the mess that exists there and
imposing law is the first step to having food
and water instead of AK-47's.
then they can live somewhat normal lives again, but not
until then. Impose a curfew and take every male over 16
into custody (temporarily) if you have to.
\_ wow this is so idiotic, my god, you're an idiot.
\_ I agree. Lawless tribal areas are so much better for
US, Europe, and Pakistan than having some sort
of federal oversight.
\_ http://glumbert.com/media/gunmarket
\_ excellent video on The Gun Bazaar of Pakistan.
Thanks for sharing the video!
\_ good video, proves that the "round up everyone
evil" guy above is stupid.
\_ No, it's proof that the government needs to
regulate these weapons just like ours does.
\_ Yeah, that worked great in Somalia, Iraq,
Vietnam, etc...
\_ Working pretty well in Iraq and Vietnam
wasn't ever really lawless. Somalia was
a token effort. |
| 5/24 |
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| news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080923/ap_on_re_as/as_pakistan_drone AP Pakistanis say suspected US drone shot down 2 hours, 52 minutes ago ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistani troops and tribesman shot down a suspected US military drone close to the Afghan border Tuesday, three intelligence officials said. If verified, it apparently would be the first pilotless aircraft brought down over Pakistan and the incident likely would add to tensions between Washington and Islamabad over a spate of recent American cross-border incursions in the lawless tribal regions. The officials said the unmanned aircraft was shot down late Tuesday in the village of Jalal Khel in South Waziristan after circling over the area for several hours. Its wreckage was strewn on the ground, they said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. |
| tinyurl.com/4npby9 -> www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07pakistan-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all Play Right at the Edge Lynsey Addario for The New York Times DJ VU: The Vice and Virtue brigade has taken control of a large swath of Khyber agency near the Afghanistan border. At the commander's compound in Takya, the author and photographer encountered a group of armed men and boys sitting in a Toyota pickup truck, reminding them of Kabul in the 1990s. Enlarge This Image Lynsey Addario for The New York Times PAYING THEIR RESPECTS: Munsif Khan, a spokesman for the Vice and Virtue brigade, greeting visiting Talibs at the Takya compound. Enlarge This Image Lynsey Addario for The New York Times MURDERED: Six weeks after Haji Namdar, commander of the Vice and Virtue brigade, was interviewed by the author, he was gunned down in his house by one of his bodyguards. Enlarge This Image Lynsey Addario for The New York Times BE GOOD: This sign in a marketplace in Peshawar, the conservative Pakistani city close to the Afghanistan border, says, "God is watching," which means that the Taliban are, too. Enlarge This Image Lynsey Addario for The New York Times NORTH PASSAGE: The mountains behind Ayub Khan are the ones Vice and Virtue brigade members cross to wage the Taliban's war against American and NATO forces in Afghanistan. Enlarge This Image Lynsey Addario for The New York Times Revenge "We killed seven Afghan soldiers," Abu Omar, a young Pakistani Talib, claimed of a foray into Afghanistan. Taliban militants along the Afghan-Pakistani border, American soldiers called in airstrikes to beat back the attack. The firefight was taking place right on the border itself, known in military jargon as the "zero line." Afghanistan was on one side, and the remote Pakistani region known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA, was on the other. The stretch of border was guarded by three Pakistani military posts. By the time the fighting ended, the Taliban militants had slipped away, the American unit was safe and 11 Pakistani border guards lay dead. American officials regretted what they called a tragic mistake. But even after a joint inquiry by the United States, Pakistan and Afghanistan, it remained unclear why American soldiers had reached the point of calling in airstrikes on soldiers from Pakistan, a critical ally in the war in Afghanistan and the campaign against terrorism. The mystery, at least part of it, was solved in July by four residents of Suran Dara, a Pakistani village a few hundred yards from the site of the fight. According to two of these villagers, whom I interviewed together with a local reporter, the Americans started calling in airstrikes on the Pakistanis after the latter started shooting at the Americans. "When the Americans started bombing the Taliban, the Frontier Corps started shooting at the Americans," we were told by one of Suran Dara's villagers, who, like the others, spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being persecuted or killed by the Pakistani government or the Taliban. And then the American planes bombed the Pakistani post." For years, the villagers said, Suran Dara served as a safe haven for jihadist fighters -- whether from Afghanistan or Pakistan or other countries -- giving them aid and shelter and a place to stash their weapons. With the firefight under way, one of Suran Dara's villagers dashed across the border into Afghanistan carrying a field radio with a long antenna (the villager called it "a Motorola") to deliver to the Taliban fighters. After the fight, wounded Taliban members were carried into Suran Dara for treatment. "Everyone supports the Taliban on both sides of the border," one of the villagers we spoke with said. Later, an American analyst briefed by officials in Washington confirmed the villagers' account. "There have been dozens of incidents where there have been exchanges of fire," he said. Al Qaeda and other foreign fighters, enjoy freedom from American attacks. But the incident also raises one of the more fundamental questions of the long war against Islamic militancy, and one that looms larger as the American position inside Afghanistan deteriorates: Whose side is Pakistan really on? PAKISTAN'S WILD, LARGELY ungoverned tribal areas have become an untouchable base for Islamic militants to attack Americans and Afghans across the border. Inside the tribal areas, Taliban warlords have taken near-total control, pushing aside the Pakistani government and imposing their draconian form of Islam. And for more than a year now, they have been sending suicide bombers against government and military targets in Pakistan, killing hundreds of people. With much of the North-West Frontier Province, which borders the tribal areas, also now under their control, the Taliban are increasingly in a position to threaten the integrity of the Pakistani state. According to American officials and counterterrorism experts, the organization has rebuilt itself and is using its sanctuaries inside the tribal areas to plan attacks against the United States and Europe. Hoffman says he fears that Al Qaeda could be preparing a major attack before the American presidential election. "I'm convinced they are planning something," he told me. At the center of all this stands the question of whether Pakistan really wants to control the Talibs and their Qaeda allies ensconced in the tribal areas -- and whether it really can. Pervez Musharraf threw his lot in with the United States. Pakistan has helped track down Al Qaeda suspects, launched a series of attacks against militants inside the tribal areas -- a new offensive got under way just weeks ago -- and given many assurances of devotion to the antiterrorist cause. For such efforts, Musharraf and the Pakistani government have been paid handsomely, receiving more than $10 billion in American money since 2001. But as the incident on the Afghan border suggests, little in Pakistan is what it appears. For years, the survival of Pakistan's military and civilian leaders has depended on a double game: assuring the United States that they were vigorously repressing Islamic militants -- and in some cases actually doing so -- while simultaneously tolerating and assisting the same militants. From the anti-Soviet fighters of the 1980s and the Taliban of the 1990s to the homegrown militants of today, Pakistan's leaders have been both public enemies and private friends. When the game works, it reaps great rewards: billions in aid to boost the Pakistani economy and military and Islamist proxies to extend the government's reach into Afghanistan and India. Pakistan's double game has rested on two premises: that the country's leaders could keep the militants under control and that they could keep the United States sufficiently placated to keep the money and weapons flowing. What happens when the militants you have been encouraging grow too strong and set their sights on Pakistan itself? Being a Warlord Late in June, to great fanfare, the Pakistani military began what it described as a decisive offensive to rout the Taliban from Khyber agency, one of seven tribal areas that make up the FATA. "Forces Move In on Militants," declared a headline in Dawn, one of Pakistan's most influential newspapers. Reporters were kept away, but footage on Pakistani television showed troops advancing behind trucks and troop carriers. "We think that's a positive development and certainly hope and expect that this government will continue," Tom Casey, the deputy spokesman at the State Department, said. The situation was serious indeed: Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province and just east of Khyber agency, was almost entirely surrounded by Taliban militias, which had begun making forays into the city. The encirclement of Peshawar was the culmination of the Taliban's advance: first they conquered the tribal areas, then much of the North-West Frontier Province, and now they were aiming for the province's capital itself. The Talibs were cutting their well-known medieval path: shutting girls' schools, banishing women from the streets, blowing up CD kiosks and beating barbers for shaving beards. A few days into the military operation, the photographer Lynsey Addario and I, dressed in traditional clothes... |
| www.fas.org/irp/world/pakistan/isi -> www.fas.org/irp/world/pakistan/isi/ was founded in 1948 by a British army officer, Maj Gen R Cawthome, then Deputy Chief of Staff in Pakistan Army. Field Marshal Ayub Khan, the president of Pakistan in the 1950s, expanded the role of ISI in safeguarding Pakistan's interests, monitoring opposition politicians, and sustaining military rule in Pakistan. The ISI is tasked with collection of foreign and domestic intelligence; co-ordination of intelligence functions of the three military services; surveillance over its cadre, foreigners, the media, politically active segments of Pakistani society, diplomats of other countries accredited to Pakistan and Pakistani diplomats serving outside the country; Critics of the ISI say that it has become a state within a state, answerable neither to the leadership of the army, nor to the President or the Prime Minister. The result is there has been no real supervision of the ISI, and corruption, narcotics, and big money have all come into play, further complicating the political scenario. Drug money was used by ISI to finance not only the Afghanistan war, but also the ongoing proxy war against India in Kashmir and Northeast India. The Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee deals with all problems bearing on the military aspects of state security and is charged with integrating and coordinating the three services. Affiliated with the committee are the offices of the engineer in chief, the director general of medical service, the Director of Inter-Services Public Relations, and the Director of Inter-Services Intelligence. Staffed by hundreds of civilian and military officers, and thousands of other workers, the agency's headquarters is located in Islamabad. The ISI reportedly has a total of about 10,000 officers and staff members, a number which does not include informants and assets. It is reportedly organized into between six and eight divisions: * Joint Intelligence X (JIX) serves as the secretariat which co-ordinates and provides administrative support to the other ISI wings and field organisations. It also prepares intelligence estimates and threat assessments. The JIB consists of three subsections, with one subsection devoted to operations against India. Published reports provide contradictory indications as to the relative size of these organizational elements, suggesting that either JIX is the largest, or that the Joint Intelligence Bureau is the largest with some sixty percent of the total staff. The Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence is of particular importance at the joint services level. The directorate's importance derives from the fact that the agency is charged with managing covert operations outside of Pakistan. The ISI supplies weapons, training, advice and planning assistance to terrorists in Kashmir and the the Northeast frontier areas of India. The 1965 war in Kashmir provoked a major crisis in intelligence. When the war started there was a complete collapse of the operations of all the intelligence agencies, which had been largely devoted to domestic investigative work such as tapping telephone conversations and chasing political suspects. The ISI after the commencement of the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war was apparently unable to locate an Indian armoured division due to its preoccupation with political affairs. Ayub Khan set up a committee headed by General Yahya Khan to examine the working of the agencies. The ISI has been deeply involved in domestic politics and, has kept track of the incumbent regime's opponents. Prior to the imposition of Martial Law in 1958, ISI reported to the Commander-in-Chief of the Army (C-in-C). When martial Law was promulgated in 1958 all the intelligence agencies fell under the direct control of the President and Chief Martial Law Administrator, and the three intelligence agencies began competing to demonstrate their loyalty to Ayub Khan and his government. The ISI became even more deeply involved in domestic politics under General Yahya Khan, notably in East Pakistan, where operations were mounted to ensure that no political party should get an overall majority in the general election. An amount of Rs 29 lak was expended for this purpose, and attempts were made to infiltrate the inner circles of the Awami League. Mr Bhutto promoted General Zia-Ul-Haq in part because the Director of ISI, General Gulam Jilani Khan, was actively promoting him. General Zia, in return, retained General Jilani as head of ISI after his scheduled retirement. The ISI became much more effective under the leadership of Hameed Gul. The 1990 elections are widely believed to have been rigged. party was a conglomerate formed of nine mainly rightist parties by the ISI under Lt General Hameed Gul to ensure the defeat of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) in the polls. Gul denies this, claiming that the ISI's political cell created by ZA Bhutto only 'monitored' the elections. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan made Pakistan a country of paramount geostrategic importance. In a matter of days, the United States declared Pakistan a "frontline state" against Soviet aggression and offered to reopen aid and military assistance deliveries. Pakistan's top national security agency, the Army's Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, monitored the activities of and provided advice and support to the mujahidin, and commandos from the Army's Special Services Group helped guide the operations inside Afghanistan. The ISI trained about 83,000 Afghan Mujahideen between 1983 to 1997 and dispatched them to Afghanistan. Pakistan paid a price for its activities, as Afghan and Soviet forces conducted raids against mujahidin bases inside Pakistan. The ISI continued to actively participate in Afghan Civil War, supporting the Taliban in their fight against the Rabbani government. Backing of the Taliban would officially end after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001; however, there are suspicions that sympathetic elements of the ISI continue to aid Taliban fighters. ISI has been engaged in covertly supporting the Kashmiri Mujahideen in their fight against the Indian authorities in Kashmir. Reportedly "Operation Tupac" was the designation of the three part action plan for the capture of Kashmir through proxy warfare, initiated by President Zia Ul Haq in 1988 after the failure of "Operation Gibraltar." According to a report compiled by the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) of India in 1995, ISI spent about Rs 24 crore per month to sponsor its activities in Jammu and Kashmir. Although all groups reportedly received arms and training from Pakistan, the pro-Pakistani groups were reputed to be favored by the ISI. As of May 1996, at least six major militant organizations, and several smaller ones, operated in Kashmir. Their forces were variously estimated at between 5,000 and 10,000 armed men. The oldest and most widely known militant organization, the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), spearheaded the movement for an independent Kashmir. The most powerful of the pro-Pakistani groups is the Hezb-ul-Mujahedin. The other major groups are Harakat-ul Ansar, a group which reportedly has a large number of non-Kashmiris in it, Al Umar, Al Barq, Jaish-e-Mohammad, and Lashkar-e Toiba, which is also made up largely of fighters from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Many of these militants were trained in Afghanistan, where several ISI agents were killed during US air strikes in 1998 against terrorist training camps. Since the defeat of the Taliban, militant training camps have moved to Pakistani Kashmir. Pakistan's military leader, General Pervez Musharraf, has attempted to rein in the ISI. Since September 11th, Islamic fundamentalists have been purged from leadership positions. This includes then-ISI head Lieutenant General Mahmood Ahmed, who was replaced in October 2001 by Lieutenant General Ehsanul Haq. Most notable was the decision to disband the Kashmir and Afghanistan units. Both these groups have promoted Islamic fundamentalist militancy throughout South Asia. Some officials have been forced to retire and others have been transferred back to the military. Intelligence experts have estimated that these moves would slash the size of the ISI by cl... |
| glumbert.com/media/gunmarket totem 1 year ago 1204 Billion dollars spent on militaries last year, 40% of that being spent by the US. These guys are doing it on the cheap and kicking our butts all over the world. randalflagg 1 year ago thats nothing to what we have in the good ole usa. we have more guns owned by citizens in the state of New york then the citizens of the whole country of afghanistan . |