Pakistan intelligence rift shows deepening US frustration: analysts

[IceCold]

Not at all. See your immediate reaction is an appeal to emotion where you go off an jingoistiic tirade. Of course I know my people and my nation are indominable. I don't need to be scared into shutting off my cerebrum either.

My whole point is that we shouldn't stick our heads in the sand and not admit that we have problem that has come to full fruition now that the US and the rest of the world will not indulge the ISI.

I'm suggesting that we man up and admit that paradigm has shifted. We cannot have parallel policy run by the ISI blowing isht up willy nilly anymore. All it takes is some buffoon to order a similar attack on a US or NATO facility and they unlike India will consider that an act of War.

No my immediate reaction has nothing to do with emotion, none actually. There are problems but then again have you ever seen a country with no problems. Have a insight and go through numerous articles posted here and in terrorism related threads, you will notice that all drug trafficking is going right under the US and NATO nose through which weapons are bought and then smuggled into Pakistan. Karzai with the consent of their new masters in India are bent on destabilizing Pakistan's tribal area, do you think problem lies here no, Pakistan is trapped in the vested interests of the US and India with supporting ground Afghanistan. You are right that paradigm has shifted and there exactly is where we needed to wake up and stop living in this dream of being the major non NATO ally, because we are not, its just mere words and nothing more. Pakistan is not the same it was a decade ago, we have learned to live without aid and without those F-16s. US now does not have the same kind of leverage over Pakistan it had a decade ago and that is whats messing up with their heads and that is exactly why you hear either the nuclear issue raised or the ISI in an attempt to exert pressure on to the GOP. Wakeup

 

[muse]

From the very first time the first article by Mr. Mazzetti was published, we idenitified it for what it was, we asked readers to read the articles critically, that they were specially crafted pieces, that there was to them "purpose" - below is an article by Mr. Mazetti from today's IHT, readers will note the Mr. Mazzetti himself reveals the "purpose" of the pieces, and critical reader will not fail to note how the pressure is being applied and will see that it is the U.S that is responsible for the the sidelining of Musharraf and the use of the Presidency as a threat:


And please, Indian and Pakistani readers, please no getting angry and name calling, the matter is simple, the entire issue has been developed to exert pressure, so lets simply examine the issue on the merits of using journalists and media for the furtherance of immediate state policies and of course the role of critical readers such as yourself.


U.S. said to pressure Pakistan to rein in spy agency
By Helene Cooper and Mark Mazzetti

Saturday, August 2, 2008
WASHINGTON: The Bush administration is increasing pressure on Pakistan's fledgling civilian government to bring the country's spy service under civilian control, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials.

During meetings in Washington in the past week with Pakistan's prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, senior Bush administration officials pressed their Pakistani counterparts to assert control over Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, the U.S. officials said. The pressure comes as relations between India and Pakistan deteriorate following reports of ISI involvement in the recent bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan.

The U.S. pressure reflects heightened concerns at the State Department, Pentagon and CIA that operatives in the ISI, who have long been believed to have close ties to Pakistani militants, have become bolder and more open in their support for militant Islamist organizations.

The New York Times, of which the International Herald Tribune is the global edition, reported in the past week that U.S. intelligence agencies had said they have evidence that members of the ISI helped plan the deadly July 7 bombing of India's embassy in Kabul.

In an interview on Friday, Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, said that U.S. authorities have yet to show Pakistani officials specific evidence to support that conclusion.

"If any evidence were to be presented against any individual in Pakistan, or against the interest of Pakistan's neighbors, then the government would certainly act on that evidence," he said.

Haqqani hinted, however, that the civilian government would investigate any ISI officers who might be in league with militants, and laid blame on President Pervez Musharraf, who was firmly in power until elections earlier this year.

"Several outstanding problems in the relationship between the United States and Pakistan that the elected government inherited from the past are currently being resolved," Haqqani said. "These include issues of trust between our two intelligence services."

But bringing the ISI under civilian authority is easier said than done, as Pakistan's new government found out. On July 26, while Gilani was en route to Washington, his government announced that the ISI would report to the country's Interior Ministry.

One day later, after objections from inside Pakistan's security apparatus, the government issued a clarification, saying that it had been "misinterpreted" and that the decree only "re-emphasizes more coordination" between the Interior Ministry and the ISI.

The Indian foreign secretary, Shiv Shankar Menon, said Friday that his country's relationship with Pakistan had sunk to its lowest level since 2003, when the nuclear rivals stepped back from the brink of war and began peace talks.

"If you ask me to describe the state of the dialogue, it is in a place where it hasn't been in the last four years," Menon told journalists at the annual meeting of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka.

"We face a situation where things have happened in the recent past which were unfortunate and which, quite frankly, have affected the future of the dialogue," he said.

India has not cut off the peace talks, and Indian officials have said privately that the peace effort has been strained by political problems in Pakistan and the openings they may have created for hard-line forces.

"If you have this fluid situation, you have elements within the army, within the ISI, who have the opportunity to move forward with their own agenda, with respect to Afghanistan and India," a senior Indian official said last week.

"The peace process is in limbo," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media. "There is no direction. This is what has opened up the door to these elements."

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India scheduled a meeting with Gilani in Colombo.

At the State Department, Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte has been in charge of the administration's efforts to press Pakistan, administration officials said. Several officials noted that some officials in the Bush administration had begun to express a nostalgia for Musharraf, who has largely been pushed to the sidelines since his party lost elections in February.

While the State Department has publicly called for democratic elections and civilian rule in Pakistan, some officials said they believed that Musharraf had more authority to bring reform to the security services.

Another Bush administration official said Pakistan's government had yet to assure the administration that it could control the ISI. "There are real questions about the organization's loyalty," the official said. "In the wake of political gridlock and a lack of a clear political direction, some elements of the ISI have started to exercise certain prerogatives."

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity under normal diplomatic rules.

But some experts said the Bush administration should be more patient in allowing the new Pakistani government to assert its authority after years of military rule in Pakistan.

"In general, this administration at its upper reaches has been cool to the elected government from the start," said Teresita Schaffer, a Pakistan expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "They like to look at Musharraf as a factor for stability."

A senior Pakistani official sharply disputed that Musharraf had been more effective at exerting control over the ISI. "It's not disarray in the civilian government that has brought a lot of this to light," the senior official said. "It's the fact that the change of government has brought out to the open a lot that was kept secret before."

Several foreign policy experts noted that there was nothing new in the ISI's close ties to militant Islamist groups. "People tend to forget the frustrations that were there when Musharraf was in place," said Daniel Markey, a former South Asia expert at the State Department. "The civilians are a mess right now, and the government is in a state of flux. When there's flux, individuals in the ISI revert to form."

Somini Sengupta contributed reporting from Bangalore, India, and Salman Masood from Islamabad, Pakistan.

 

[BanglaBhoot]

U.S. vilifies faithful old ally

Bush administration vents against Pakistan's military intelligence for doing its duty -- defending Pakistan


By ERIC MARGOLIS


It's blame Pakistan week. As resistance to western occupation of Afghanistan intensifies, the increasingly frustrated Bush administration is venting its anger against Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan's military intelligence agency.

The White House leaked claims ISI was in cahoots with pro-Taliban groups in Pakistan's tribal area along the Afghan border.

Pakistan's Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar said the White House accuses ISI of warning Pashtun tribes of impending U.S. air attacks. President George W. Bush angrily asked Pakistan's visiting Prime Minister Yousuf Gilani, "Who's in charge of ISI?"

In Ottawa, the Harper government dutifully echoed Bush's accusation against Pakistan, including the so far unsubstantiated claim that ISI agents had bombed India's embassy in Kabul.

I was one of the first western journalists invited into ISI headquarters in 1986. ISI's then director, the fierce Lt.- Gen. Akhtar Rahman, personally briefed me on Pakistan's secret role in fighting Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. ISI's "boys" provided communications, logistics, heavy weapons, and direction in the Afghan War. ISI played the key role in the victory over the Soviets.

On my subsequent trips to Pakistan I was routinely briefed by succeeding ISI chiefs and joined ISI officers in the field, sometimes under fire.

ISI is accused of meddling in Pakistani politics. The late Benazir Bhutto, who often was thwarted by Pakistan's spooks, always scolded me, "you and your beloved generals at ISI." But before Musharraf, ISI was the Third World's most efficient, professional intelligence agency. It defends Pakistan against internal and external subversion by India's powerful spy agency, RAW, and by Iran. ISI works closely with CIA and the Pentagon, but also must serve Pakistan's interests, which often are not identical to Washington's.

The last ISI director general I knew was the tough, highly capable Lt.-Gen. Mahmood Ahmed. He was purged by the new dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, because Washington felt Mahmood was insufficiently responsive to U.S. interests. Ensuing ISI directors were all pre-approved by Washington. All senior ISI veterans deemed "Islamist" or too nationalistic by Washington were purged, leaving ISI's upper ranks top heavy with yes men and paper passers.

Even so, there is strong opposition inside ISI to Washington's bribing and arm-twisting the Musharraf dictatorship into waging war against fellow Pakistanis and gravely damaging Pakistan's national interests.

ISI's primary duty is defending Pakistan. Pashtun tribesmen on the border sympathizing with their fellow Taliban Pashtun in Afghanistan are Pakistanis. Many, like the legendary Jalaluddin Haqqani, are old U.S. allies and freedom fighters from the 1980s.

TRIBAL UPRISINGS

Violence and uprisings in these tribal areas are not caused by "terrorism," but directly result from the U.S.-led occupation of Afghanistan and Washington's forcing the hated Musharraf regime to attack its own people.

ISI is trying to restrain pro-Taliban Pashtun tribesmen while dealing with growing U.S. attacks into Pakistan that threaten a wider war.

India, Pakistan's bitter foe, has an army of agents in Afghanistan and is arming, backing and financing the Karzai puppet regime in Kabul. Pakistan's historic strategic interests in Afghanistan have been undermined by the U.S. occupation. The U.S., Canada and India are trying to eliminate Pakistani influence in Afghanistan.

ISI, many of whose officers are Pashtun, has every right to warn Pakistani citizens of impending U.S. air attacks that kill large numbers of civilians.

But ISI also has another vital mission. Preventing Pakistan's Pashtun (15% to 20% of the population of 165 million) from rekindling the old "Greater Pashtunistan" movement calling for union of the Pashtun tribes of Pakistan and Afghanistan -- divided by British imperialism -- into a new Pashtun nation. That would tear apart Pakistan and invite Indian military intervention.

Washington's bull-in-a-china-shop behaviour pays no heeds to such realities.

Instead, Washington demonizes faithful old allies, ISI and Pakistan, while supporting Afghanistan's communists and drug dealers, and allowing India to stir the Afghan pot -- all for the sake of new energy pipelines.

As Henry Kissinger cynically noted, being America's ally is more dangerous than being its enemy.



CANOE -- Edmonton Sun: - U.S. vilifies faithful old ally

 

[GHATAK]

US warns Pakistan of serious action

Blaming the ISI for “masterminding” the suicide attack on Indian embassy in Kabul, US President George W Bush has warned Pakistan of “serious action” if one more attack in Afghanistan or elsewhere is traced back to it.

Bush confronted Pakistan Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani last week during his Washington visit with evidence of involvement by the ISI in the deadly July 7 attack on Indian embassy in Kabul which left nearly 60 people, including four Indians, dead, The Sunday Times reported.

Christina Lamb who is the most knowledgeable of western analysts of Pakistan’s internal affairs wrote: “Gillani on his first official US visit since being elected in February, was left in no doubt that the Bush administration had lost patience with the ISI’s alleged double game.

Bush warned that if one more attack in Afghanistan or elsewhere were traced back to Pakistan, he would have to take ‘serious action’.

Gillani also met Michael Hayden, director of the CIA, who confronted him with a dossier on ISI support for the Taliban.

An intercepted telephone conversation apparently revealed that ISI agents masterminded the operation. The United States also claimed to have arrested an ISI officer inside Afghanistan.

 

[Keysersoze]

US warns Pakistan of serious action

Blaming the ISI for “masterminding” the suicide attack on Indian embassy in Kabul, US President George W Bush has warned Pakistan of “serious action” if one more attack in Afghanistan or elsewhere is traced back to it.

Bush confronted Pakistan Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani last week during his Washington visit with evidence of involvement by the ISI in the deadly July 7 attack on Indian embassy in Kabul which left nearly 60 people, including four Indians, dead, The Sunday Times reported.

Christina Lamb who is the most knowledgeable of western analysts of Pakistan’s internal affairs wrote: “Gillani on his first official US visit since being elected in February, was left in no doubt that the Bush administration had lost patience with the ISI’s alleged double game.

Bush warned that if one more attack in Afghanistan or elsewhere were traced back to Pakistan, he would have to take ‘serious action’.

Gillani also met Michael Hayden, director of the CIA, who confronted him with a dossier on ISI support for the Taliban.

An intercepted telephone conversation apparently revealed that ISI agents masterminded the operation. The United States also claimed to have arrested an ISI officer inside Afghanistan.

Link please or it will be deleted

 

[was]

Taliban: 'We're Too Busy in Afghanistan' to Work with Pakistan
Militant Leader's Son Denies Links to Pakistan Intelligence Service
By NICK SCHIFRIN AND HABIBULLAH KHAN
July 31, 2008

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan


The son of the most notorious mujahedeen-turned Taliban military leader is denying the CIA's claim that the Pakistani intelligence agency is working with the Taliban to destabilize Afghanistan.
"Afghan mujahedeen are so busy in their war against the westerners, that they don't have the time or the need to go to Pakistan. If we ever needed or hoped for the government's cooperation, then we would have done this. We have neither the hope nor the need," Sirajuddin Haqqani, the son of Taliban commander Maulvi Jalaluddin Haqqani, told ABC News in an interview.

"We in Afghanistan, by the grace of God, don't need them. Our needs in Afghanistan are fulfilled. We are self-sufficient in Afghanistan," the younger Haqqani told ABC News consultant Rahimullah Yusufzai in Khost, Afghanistan, just across the border from Pakistan
The Haqqani network is one of the most notorious of the militant groups that the U.S. believes is attacking forces in Afghanistan. Haqqani himself was one of the CIA's favorite mujahedeen leaders during the war with the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, at one point capturing Khost, the city where the interview with his son took place.

Today, officials say his network is behind some of the largest attacks in Afghanistan in the last year, including the storming of the Serena Hotel and an assassination attempt on Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

The networks, U.S. officials believe, give the Taliban more resources and greater sophistication in their targeting of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.

Sirajuddin Haqqani echoed those fears in the interview.

"It's beyond count," he said when asked how many fighters were loyal to him and his father. "Now tribes have arisen. When we tell them we want 1,000 people, they send 1,000 people. When we ask for 100, they send 100. Now, it's beyond count. It's on a big scale."

But despite those resources, he claimed there is no Taliban campaign being waged in Pakistan. "Our brothers mujahedeen in Pakistan, we have a spiritual relationship with them. But we do not interfere in their internal affairs. Our policy is clear. All our attention is on Afghanistan."


ABC News: Taliban: 'We're Too Busy in Afghanistan' to Work with Pakistan

 

[Goodperson]

Link please or it will be deleted

Bush warns Pakistan of ‘serious action’

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

US warns Pakistan of serious action

A bit sensationalist I must say...

But sensationalism sells!

 

[IceCold]

There is nothing Bush or his ilks can do much about it off course if our government chooses that's another debate but otherwise nothing. Bush knows he is going and so is the republicans, he has to show some progress on WOT to enable the republicans to gain at least some vote bank against the democratic s. Indians on the other hand love every Pakistan bashing news that they can find out and post it here.

 

[Goodperson]

There is nothing Bush or his ilks can do much about it off course if our government chooses that's another debate but otherwise nothing. Bush knows he is going and so is the republicans, he has to show some progress on WOT to enable the republicans to gain at least some vote bank against the democratic s. Indians on the other hand love every Pakistan bashing news that they can find out and post it here.

Here in this case Indian embassy was Bombed hence India has interest, Moreover I quoted Pakistani newspaper.

 

[Spring Onion]

Here in this case Indian embassy was Bombed hence India has interest, Moreover I quoted Pakistani newspaper.

Gilani has came back much before August 4th

The wirte up is the restructuring of the Old stories based on allegations. Nothing New.

 

[was]

Why this anti-ISI propaganda?

BOTH the Foreign Office spokesman and the ISPR chief have rubbished the NYT report that accuses the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of masterminding the July-7 bombing of Indian embassy in Kabul - with promptness and anger that this half-baked ‘scoop’ probably did not deserve. Given western media’s biased coverage of Pakistan’s national attributes, ranging from its ideological basis to its nuclear status, the NYT report is nothing but an ante to keep Islamabad in line in matters that essentially promote its rivals’ objectives. Such subversive accounts always pop up if Pakistan is seen to be making diplomatic gains in relations with other . But, sometimes, they shifting the focus from the real to the mirage. Not unexpectedly, therefore, at the time the ISI is being pilloried by the US media, Pakistan’s so-called partners in the ‘war on terror’ are falling over each other in the rush to sanctify the illegal and immoral co-operation India is going to get from the Western countries in the name of helping its civilian nuclear programme. Who doesn’t know it is being done in clear violation of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. Perhaps, there is also this rising criticism of the US-led coalition forces’ failure to control and snuff out the Taliban militancy in Afghanistan, for which the ISI has been found as a scapegoat. To insist that Pakistan is an unwilling partner in the war on terror is too naïve an assertion to sell in Pakistan. If Islamabad had decided not to be a partner it could well do it. After all, Pakistan had turned down American pleadings to send forces to Iraq; signed up the gas pipeline project with Iran despite Washington’s loud protestations; and rejected President Clinton’s intense pressure not to conduct the tit-for-tat nuclear tests. The fact is that the 9/11 attacks in American causing huge loss of innocent lives had saddened every Pakistani. Such an act of wanton mayhem generated deep revulsion among the people here who had lost whatever sympathy they had for the al Qaeda and their supporters. This is also a fact that the Mullah Omar regime in Afghanistan did not have very comfortable relations with the Pakistan government as both nurtured mutual suspicions.
That Pakistan lost over a thousand soldiers in its battles with the Taliban in the tribal areas and suffered a series of suicide-bombing attacks should be blown off the palm just because of an ambiguous conversation on phone, it is not acceptable. Very conveniently, anonymous sources leak information to newspapers suspecting the sincerity of an ally who has paid more in terms of damage to its internal security, economic setbacks, and military and civilian losses than all the US-led coalition partners put together. The fact is there is no conclusive proof of the ISI’s alleged involvement in the Indian embassy blast. If Indian and Afghan intelligence agencies are bent upon maligning Pakistan, that is an old game. It is time that the newly elected coalition government should conduct a comprehensive review of its policy to continue to be a thankless ally of the West in Afghanistan. If in seven years the world’s greatest military alliance, Nato, has not been able to secure even the capital city of Afghanistan, then it is definitely not a handful of terrorists they are fighting against. The fact is that the US-led coalition is pitted against a whole nation who has a history of standing up to the invaders and never surrendering. If the coalition governments think they want to improve the quality of life of Afghans, who supposedly suffered oppression of medieval times under the Taliban government, then why nothing is being done to rescue them from their biggest bane - the scourge of opium production. If the mission was to establish democracy in Afghanistan then is it the one under Karazi and his warlords that the coalition had envisaged? There was this great realist American, Alan Greenspan, who in his life-long distilled wisdom found “For Oil” as the only motivation behind the US invasion of Iraq. One would not be widely of the mark to say that in Afghanistan it’s not the Taliban but the need for a “central base” to control fossil fuels of Central Asia that has brought there the Nato forces. The review suggested above should look into the emerging reality of the situation particularly the growing Indian political and diplomatic presence in Afghanistan and then, if warranted, reframe its response irrespective of what the NYT writes. Like all intelligence agencies the ISI forms Pakistan’s first line of defence. The knowledge that attempts are being made to break it up does remind us of the impending dangers to our national survival.


The Daily Mail - Daily News from Pakistan - Newspaper from Pakistan

 

[Flintlock]

Wow....the quality of journalism in Pakistan is quite poor.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Wow....the quality of journalism in Pakistan is quite poor.

Right- we don't call a terrorist attack "sophisticated", and believe that settles the deal...

But really - are you just interested in flaming now?

If you disagree with the article, expound upon your disagreements - don't try and start a flame war here please.

 

[Flintlock]

Right- we don't call a terrorist attack "sophisticated", and believe that settles the deal...

But really - are you just interested in flaming now?

If you disagree with the article, expound upon your disagreements - don't try and start a flame war here please.

Who is 'we'? Are you the sole representative of the Pakistani press?

I mean every word I say....the quality of journalism in Pakistan is quite poor. This article in particular is so defensive and the panicky tone robs it of all credibility.

It seems to be a compilation of all the conspiracy theories out there and a mouthpiece of the Pakistan establishment.