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Chief of Army Staff | General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.

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Kayani vows to defeat terrorism

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s army chief General Ashfaq Kayani vowed to defeat terrorism and rejected the notion of Islamabad “not doing enough” in the war against terrorism, the military said on Thursday.

His comments followed remarks by Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, accusing Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency of having ties with militants in the northwest tribal belt.

The army chief “strongly rejected negative propaganda of Pakistan not doing enough and Pakistan army’s lack of clarity on the way forward,” the military said in a statement, a day after Mullen met top military generals in Islamabad.

Kayani said that the “army’s ongoing operations are a testimony of our national resolve to defeat terrorism”, according to the statement.

In an interview with TV channel Geo, Mullen — the highest ranking officer in the US armed forces — said: “ISI has a long standing relationship with the Haqqani network, that does not mean everybody in ISI but it is there.”

But the military statement said Mullen “lauded the sacrifices and efforts of people of Pakistan and its security forces” in the war against terror.

He also made reassurances that “security ties will not be allowed to unravel between the two armed forces”.

The Haqqani network is an al Qaeda-allied organisation run by Afghan warlord Sirajuddin Haqqani and based in the North Waziristan tribal district.

The group has been blamed for some of the deadliest anti-US attacks in Afghanistan.

Kayani and Mullen re-stated their aims of building “reciprocal respect towards each other’s sovereignty” and addressing the “trust deficit between the institutions as well as the people on both the sides,” the statement said.

Kayani described public support as the key to success in the war against terrorism but said that controversial US drone strikes “not only undermine our national effort against terrorism but also turn public support against our efforts”.

Kayani vows to defeat terrorism – The Express Tribune
 
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Operation Brekhna: Kayani visits Mohmand Agency

Published: April 22, 2011

Kayani visits troops in Mohmand after launch of second phase of military’s campaign against militants.

Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani visited troops in the Mohmand tribal district on Thursday after the launch of the second phase of the military’s campaign against militants in the region adjacent to the border with Afghanistan.

The military launched “Operation Brekhna” after a series of attacks by Taliban militants against the local population, including several suicide bombs and kidnappings of tribal leaders. As a result of its campaign against the Taliban, at least 50,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) have been able to return to their homes, claims the military in a statement released to the press.

The civilian administration of the district has been trying to assist many of the IDPs in their resettlement efforts.

The army chief, who visited the area along with Peshawar Corps Commander Lt Gen Asif Yasin Malik, held discussions with local tribal leaders as well as the commanders of the military units stationed at Mohmand, to assess the strategy against the Taliban.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 22nd, 2011.
 
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ASIA PACIFIC
Date Posted: 21-Apr-2011


Defence Weekly


Pakistan cracks down on undercover CIA operations

Farhan Bokhari Correspondent - Islamabad



The Pakistan Army and its counter-espionage agency, Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), have served notice to the CIA that suspected undercover operatives seeking to enter Pakistan without forewarning the army will be refused visas.

Pakistani intelligence officials told the warning was delivered on 11 April by Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, ISI Director General, in a meeting with CIA Director Leon Panetta at Langley, Virginia.

Gen Pasha is known to be very close to General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, Chief of the Army Staff, prompting speculation that the Pakistan Army - considered a close US ally in its pursuit of Islamic militants along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border - has hardened its position towards Washington.

"In the past decade since 9/11 there have been instances of undercover US operatives from the CIA coming to Pakistan. Now, a message has been strongly conveyed that this has to stop," the intelligence official told .

The hardening of attitudes among Pakistan's top generals follows the arrest on 27 January of Raymond Davis, later found to be a CIA operative, who shot two Pakistani men dead in Lahore. Davis claimed that he shot the men in self defence during an attempted robbery. The US' attempt to secure his release by asserting that he had diplomatic immunity resulted in a series of protests led by Islamists. Davis left the country in March after agreeing financial settlements with the families of the two men.

A Western defence official in Islamabad said the Davis episode had stung the army's leadership. "The generals realised after this affair that they had to scale down the CIA's work in Pakistan," the official said on condition of anonymity.
 
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War Agaisnt Terror: Zardari Accuses Pakistan Army Of Playing Double Game: Newsweek US :confused:

WASHINGTON: President Asif Ali Zardari has accused the army of playing both sides of the war on terror; distressingly, an abundance of evidence backs him up, says an article published in the Newsweek, a US magazine.



The article, written by Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer, says that the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the terror group that attacked the Indian financial capital of Mumbai in 2008, killing 164 people, today, continues to enjoy army patronage. Director General of the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha has even been summoned by a New York City court to answer charges that the ISI oversaw the Mumbai attack.
Tensions between Islamabad and Washington have reached a fever pitch in recent months. As President Obama plans a visit for later this year to the world’s second-most-populous Muslim country, the White House wants above all else to fight al-Qaeda and wage its war in Afghanistan. Islamabad has something else in mind.
In January, the war strategy Obama announced more than two years ago was abruptly put in cold storage. After the American contractor Raymond Davis killed two Pakistanis on a street in Lahore and was then released in March after $2.3 million in compensation (so-called blood money) was paid to the victims’ families, the Pakistani public was more roiled than it has been in recent memory. The majority sentiment is that Pakistan’s national sovereignty comes under daily attack from US drones and private contract operatives running around their country killing people. The Pakistani media fuels the anger, exerting untold amounts of energy on elaborate conspiracy theories about American spies sneaking around the country setting the stage for an American-Indian-Israeli master plan to steal Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile, the Pakistani Army, which unquestionably remains the power behind the throne-has grown increasingly restive and angry with American intelligence work over the past two years. For the army, blunders like the Davis case or operations like the drone strikes serve as incendiary daily reminders that full control of the country’s territory remains out of their grasp.
So what’s Pakistan’s solution? The leadership, including Chief of Army Staff Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and Director General of the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha, want a return to what they remember as “Reagan rules.”



These rules date back to the CIA-ISI relationship of the 1980s, when the agency and the Saudis provided the ISI with money and arms to underwrite the mujahedin’s battle against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Allies, indeed. But back in those days, Washington remained largely hands-off. They left the administration of the programme and the running of the war to the ISI. The Americans had a very small footprint-fewer than 100 CIA officers ran the entire covert programme in Washington, Islamabad, and Riyadh. In turn, there was rarely, if ever, a sense that Pakistani sovereignty or dignity was being challenged, much less violated. The ISI called the shots. Reagan rules also included a tacit agreement that the US would ignore Pakistan’s nuclear programme. Every year the president certified to Congress that Pakistan’s nuclear efforts were “incomplete,” allowing US assistance to continue to flow to Gen Ziaul Haq’s dictatorship. Only after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989 did the U.S. sanction Pakistan for their nuclear program. In 1990 Washington abruptly cut off the supply of F-16s and other weapons that Pakistan had already paid for. The Pakistani Army has never forgotten that betrayal.
The problem today is that we can’t go back to this Cold War world. The Pakistani Army and the ISI cannot be relied upon to fight all of the jihadi Frankensteins they have helped create over the past three decades. Of course, Pakistan is also a victim of terror. Thousands of Pakistanis have died in suicide bombings. Since January, two senior civilian officials-the governor of Punjab and the minister for minority affairs-have been murdered by extremists. According to the United Nations, late Pakistani president Benazir Bhutto, Zardari’s wife, was assassinated by al-Qaeda. And Pakistan, more than any other country in the world, has been crucial to the capture of senior Qaeda operatives, including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Irrefutable: Pakistan has more troops deployed fighting militants on the Afghan border than Nato has in all of Afghanistan.
The complexity and contradictions of Pakistani behavior-most of which is driven by the army’s obsession with India, actually-lies at the heart of the dispute between Islamabad and Washington. There is no simple solution.
Should things go further south, though, there is only one real winner: al-Qaeda. If drone operations slow and the two intel agencies clam up, Obama’s goal to “disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda” will become an ever-more-distant possibility.
Since Pakistan today has the fastest-growing nuclear arsenal in the world-soon to be the fifth largest, just behind the US, Russia, China, and France-Islamabad is growing more and more resistant to outside pressure and intimidation. Unlike Afghanistan, Iraq, or Libya, the US cannot even consider the use of force to pressure Pakistan, a fact of which Kayani is very well aware. Not to mention, Pakistan controls the main supply line for Nato forces from Karachi to Kabul in Afghanistan. Whenever US Special Forces in Afghanistan have strayed across the border to chase terrorists, Pakistan twists a tourniquet on the supply chain.
So at the end of the day, Washington knows it needs Pakistan, no matter how frustrating and irritating the relationship may be. Meanwhile, India, the target of most of the worst of Pakistani-abetted terror and the target for its nuclear weapons, finds itself in much the same dilemma. It demands Pakistan destroy Lashkar-e-Taiba and other militant groups, but it has no means to force Islamabad to do so. It doesn’t want a failed state on its border armed with dozens of loose nukes, so it can’t undermine Pakistan’s fragile democracy with covert operations that would only strengthen the extremists. It can’t intimidate a nuclear rival. So India last month resumed its engagement and dialogue with Pakistan, which had been suspended after the Mumbai attacks. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh acknowledged that even a frustrating and deceitful dialogue is better than none. So he invited his counterpart to watch the semifinal of the Cricket World Cup.
The trick, for everyone involved, is to help strengthen those forces in Pakistan that want to get out of the endless rivalry with India. Then, end Pakistan’s dance with terror. For all his faults, Zardari is one of those who want a different approach. So, too, was Benazir. Both Singh and Obama understand this, too. Unfortunately the civilians and modernists are on the defensive in Islamabad today. In the short term the best help would be for outsiders to keep the footprint as light as possible. In the long term, however, it’s the India-Pakistan tensions that drive the most dangerous tendencies. The battle for the soul of this crucial nation between extremists and moderates is going poorly. We are the loser.
 
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Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer

what do you expect from this guy - i am sure he was 'gung-ho' in supporting the ISI during the afghan war and now like many former CIA or military officers (including PA generals), they sing a different tune today.

War Agaisnt Terror: Zardari Accuses Pakistan Army Of Playing Double Game: Newsweek US and do we think that Zardari has the 'guts' to say something like this and survive.....
 
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The conclusion of the commentary pretty much sums it up for now re Pakistan and NATO relations. Remember, Pakistan is a NATO Affiliate, a formal term, and gains economic/political benefit from such with European nations.

Here is Monitor's conclusion again, for emphasis:

The trick, for everyone involved, is to help strengthen those forces in Pakistan that want to get out of the endless rivalry with India. Then, end Pakistan’s dance with terror. For all his faults, Zardari is one of those who want a different approach. So, too, was Benazir. Both Singh and Obama understand this, too. Unfortunately the civilians and modernists are on the defensive in Islamabad today. In the short term the best help would be for outsiders to keep the footprint as light as possible. In the long term, however, it’s the India-Pakistan tensions that drive the most dangerous tendencies. The battle for the soul of this crucial nation between extremists and moderates is going poorly. We are the loser.
 
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and gains economic/political benefit from such with European nations.

And you think you guys are doing us a favor? i think you missed this:

...Washington knows it needs Pakistan, no matter how frustrating and irritating the relationship may be...
 
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US Army chief meets COAS

Saturday, April 23, 2011

ISLAMABAD: US Army Chief of Staff Gen Martin Dempsey visited Pakistan on Friday to meet and consult with Pakistani leaders and US Embassy officials.

He met with COAS Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. He also met with US ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter, as well as civilian and military staff at the embassy, says a press release issued by the US embassy here.

Both the military chiefs exchanged views on the issue of regional security. They also discussed security situation in North Waziristan and the Army chief told his American counterpart that the decision to launch operation in North Waziristan would be taken by Pakistan after taking stock of ground realities, sources said. Issues relating to ongoing operation against extremists in tribal areas, US drone strikes in country’s tribal belt and Pak-US strategic partnership were also discussed in the meeting, sources added.

the mil-to-mil relationship remains strong. the commanders on both sides understand the 'limitations' of both sides and it is this 'understanding' which is preventing knee-jerk reactions from the civilians on both sides - the militaries of both countries are very influential (in different ways) in both countries.
 
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The conclusion of the commentary pretty much sums it up for now re Pakistan and NATO relations. Remember, Pakistan is a NATO Affiliate, a formal term, and gains economic/political benefit from such with European nations.

Here is Monitor's conclusion again, for emphasis:

then the US needs to inform its 'strategic partner' openly to give us the assurance that they are not a threat to us.as long as 2/3rd of the indian military might is posted at our eastern border, the pakistani high command will be committing 'suicide' to move more troops to its western border. the indian army continues to train its troops in the 'desert terrain'.
 
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Petraeus calls on Gen Kayani


ISAF commander Gen David Petraeus has called on Gen Kayani throughout his brief tour of Pakistan. According to the US embassy, the NATO and International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) commander Gen David Petraeus briefly toured Pakistan. He called on the Pakistan Army Chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and discussed bilateral issues and exchanged thoughts on humanizing the regional security. According to the US embassy, this was Gen Petraeus’ sixth travel around of Pakistan as the NATO and ISAF commander.
 
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