Pakistan's intelligence ready to split with CIA

[Mutee]

Isi should stop taking $$$$$ and it should now start working for pakistans ingest rather then it's foreigner paymasters!!!!!

 

[ARSENAL6]

My looking in a mirror doesn't solve the way you look, does it? Shouldn't you have your own reasons for straightening up?

Why, did the Mirror Cracked ?

 

[ajtr]

Pakistan Demands Data on C.I.A. Contractors​

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan’s chief spy agency has demanded an accounting by the Central Intelligence Agency of all its contractors working in Pakistan, a fallout from the arrest last month of an American involved in surveillance of militant groups, a senior Pakistani intelligence official said Friday.

Angered that the American, Raymond A. Davis, worked as a contractor in Pakistan on covert C.I.A. operations without the knowledge of the Pakistanis, the spy agency estimated that there were “scores” more such contractors “working behind our backs,” said the official, who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly about a delicate matter between the two countries.

In a slight softening of the Pakistani stance since Mr. Davis’s arrest, the official said that the American and Pakistani intelligence agencies needed to continue cooperation, and that Pakistan was prepared to put the episode in the past if the C.I.A. stopped treating its Pakistani counterparts as inferior.

“Treat us as allies, not as satellites,” said the official of the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI. “Respect, equality and trust are needed.”

George Little, a C.I.A. spokesman, said the American spy agency’s ties to the ISI “have been strong over the years, and when there are issues to sort out, we work through them.”

“That’s the sign of a healthy partnership,” Mr. Little said.

The arrest and detention of Mr. Davis, 36, after he shot and killed two motorcyclists in the city of Lahore, soured already testy relations between two governments that are supposed to have a common front in the fight against terrorism.

The top American and Pakistani military leaders, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, and the leader of the Pakistani Army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, met this week in Oman, where the Davis case was discussed. .

According to a report by a former head of the Pakistani Army, Gen. Jehangir Karamat, who runs a research and analysis center based in Lahore, both sides agreed to try to “arrest the downhill descent.”

Even so, the Pakistani intelligence community was divided over how quickly to settle the Davis case and how much to extract from the C.I.A., said a Pakistani official with intimate knowledge of the situation, who declined to be named because of the delicacy of the issue.

At a minimum, the ISI wants an accounting of all the contractors who work for the C.I.A. in roles that have not been defined to Pakistan, and a general rewriting of the rules of engagement by the C.I.A. in Pakistan, the official said.

Mr. Davis, who appeared in handcuffs on Friday for a hearing in a closed courtroom at the jail where he is being held in Lahore, faces possible murder charges.

The Obama administration insists that Mr. Davis has diplomatic immunity and should be released. The Pakistani government has left the determination on diplomatic immunity to the Foreign Office and a hearing before the Lahore High Court on March 14.

Some senior Pakistani intelligence officers were unwilling to have Mr. Davis released under almost any circumstances, said the official with knowledge of the split in the intelligence community.

He said others wanted to use the Davis case as a bargaining chip to get the withdrawal of a civil lawsuit filed in Brooklyn last year that implicates the ISI chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, in the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India.

The demand for the C.I.A. to acknowledge the number of contractors in Pakistan was driven by the suspicion that the American spy service had slipped many such secret operatives into Pakistan in the past six months, the senior ISI official said.

The increase occurred after a directive last July by the Pakistani civilian government, which is often at odds with the ISI, to its Washington embassy to expedite visas without supervision from the ISI or the Ministry of Interior, the senior ISI official said.

The behavior of people like Mr. Davis is deeply embarrassing to the ISI because it makes the agency “look like fools” in the eyes of the anti-American Pakistani public, the ISI official said.

The Davis case made it hard to explain to Pakistanis why the ISI was cooperating with Washington, he said.

The clampdown on American contractors by the Pakistani authorities appeared to be under way Friday with the arrest of an American citizen, Aaron Mark DeHaven, in the northwestern city of Peshawar.

The Peshawar police said Mr. DeHaven was detained because he had overstayed his business visa after his request for an extension last October was turned down.

There was no immediate accusation that Mr. DeHaven worked for the American government, a security official in Peshawar said. But the arrest of Mr. DeHaven, who is married to a Pakistani woman, appears to be a signal that the Pakistani authorities have decided to expel Americans they have doubts about.

The security official said Mr. DeHaven owned a firm, Catalyst Services in Peshawar, that rented houses for Americans in the city.

The American Embassy in Islamabad said in a statement that it did not have details about Mr. DeHaven but that it was arranging consular access for him through the Pakistani government.

During his first months in Pakistan in early 2010, Mr. Davis, the contractor for the C.I.A., was attached to the American Consulate in Peshawar and lived in a house with other Americans in an upscale neighborhood, according to Pakistani officials.

At the 20-minute court hearing on Friday, Mr. Davis told the judge he would not take part in the proceedings because he had diplomatic immunity, Pakistani officials told reporters later.

He refused to sign the charge sheet presented to him, the officials said.

The Obama administration insists that Mr. Davis acted in self-defense when the two motorcyclists tried to rob him while he was driving on a busy road in Lahore.

In the charge sheet, the Pakistani police said Mr. Davis shot the motorcyclists multiple times from inside his car, and then stepped from the car and continued shooting with his Glock pistol. Mr. Davis then drove from the scene and was arrested several miles away, the police said.

At Friday Prayer in mosques in Lahore and in Islamabad, the capital, anti-American sermons, in some cases laced with references to Mr. Davis, were common.

Hafiz Saeed, the founder of the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which Mr. Davis is believed to have been conducting surveillance on, said the American was “a spy, committing terrorism, helping in drone attacks.”

Banners reading “Hang Davis” and “No immunity to Davis” were strung across the road adjacent to Mr. Saeed’s headquarters.

Ismail Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan, and Waqar Gillani from Lahore, Pakistan.

 

[H2O3C4Nitrogen]

America’s mala fide intent?

The writer is CEO of Strategic Technology Resources and a former head of the Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad

It seems there are some in the Pakistani media who will buy into the official US line on Davis and get irked, by the likes of this columnist, enough to name her in their rather histrionic defence of the murderer (regardless of his rather murky status he did kill in cold blood)!

And seeing Christine Fair appear on these pages reminded me of the time her fiddling with statistics on Occupied Kashmir was questioned at a National Defence University seminar in Islamabad, some years ago. We now also know how the US clamped down on its own media on the Davis case and it was an impressive reminder of how ‘free’ the mainstream US media really is. However, there has been a somewhat belated awakening amongst some even in the US media, including an interesting piece by Charles Savage in the New York Times, which seeks to question the whole immunity issue. Perhaps our unquestioning defenders of Uncle Sam should stop and pause, notwithstanding the aid flows into the media.

Meanwhile, the US continues to muddy the grounds of the Davis case and, unfortunately, has succeeded in pushing into the background the issue of what happened to the murderer of the third victim and his car. Amongst the more bizarre logic being offered for freeing Davis, is the argument that the trial would not be seen as ‘fair’ — presumably by those in the US. This is ironic given how the Dr Aafia Siddiqi trial by jury in New York was a visible sham and yet, that has not prevented the US from penalising the lady in a most despicable fashion. In any case, are we to try murderers based on how the US views these trials and condemn the credibility of our judiciary proactively?

While most arguments dealing with Davis continue to touch on the same issues, some new developments are interesting. The first is the growing evidence that Davis was indulging in spying, which makes it relevant for the Pakistani state to formally frame charges of espionage against him. In this connection, his links to banned terrorist groups are also coming to light (including in a report in this newspaper). Under the law, no one can maintain contact with such groups without being questioned at the very least. To allow foreigners to freely have truck with such groups is even worse — whatever their intent. Nor is it far-fetched to assume that Davis may have had something to do with attacks against Pakistan’s security establishment, specifically the military. After all, why were pictures of sensitive military areas found on his person? The point here being that, at a minimum level, the espionage issue should not be neglected and if, as most Pakistani experts think and his visa shows, he is not a diplomat then, he can certainly be tried and punished for this very serious crime. If nothing else, the duplicity of our successive governments, in terms of hidden deals with the US, certainly needs to be exposed through this case and, perhaps, other Davis-like characters expelled forthwith.

The US has now floated another idea — intended to be a threat of sorts from their blinkered perspective — and that is to take the whole issue of Davis’s immunity to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) under the Optional Protocol attached to the 1961 Vienna Convention. Presumably Pakistan is also a signatory to this Protocol and, therefore, if the US decides to take the issue to the ICJ, according to the Protocol, it becomes incumbent upon Pakistan to accept, not only this move, but also the decision that may follow, since, under Article I, disputes of interpretation or application of the Convention “shall lie within the compulsory jurisdiction of the ICJ”. Of course, Articles II and III allow a certain time period in which other options can be exercised, including an arbitral tribunal or a conciliation procedure, since, once the ICJ is approached, its decision in this context will be binding on both parties.

The ICJ option is a viable one since it will clear the issue for both the US and Pakistan but this Optional Protocol (where the word “optional” is actually a trifle deceptive) is applicable to the 1961 Vienna Convention and the whole issue is whether Davis is covered by this or by the 1963 Convention relating to Consular matters, since the US itself first claimed that Davis was attached to the US Consulate in Lahore. It is yet another irony produced by the Davis case, that the US, which is loathe to have anything to do with the ICJ and with the notion of international courts per se, (one can still remember how the US rubbished the ICJ Advisory Opinion on the US mining of the harbour in Nicaragua and how the US has rejected the idea of the International Criminal Court (ICC) precisely to allow its Davis-like characters to kill with impunity), is now going to initiate proceedings in the ICJ. Or, perhaps, that is merely a new form of pressure with which to browbeat the present government. Whatever the purpose, the ICJ is a viable option and Pakistan should not be fearful of it but, surely, first the issue of whether it is the 1961 or the 1963 Convention that applies to Davis, needs to be settled.

One issue has become evident: the US agenda for Pakistan has growing question marks to it. The appointment of Marc Grossman as Holbrooke’s successor is a case in point. A known critic of the ICC, as vice-chairman of the Cohen Group, he has been closely associated with furthering US-India relations, including in the aerospace and defence fields. The Cohen Group was in the forefront of lobbying for the US-India nuclear deal. Earlier, as undersecretary of state for political affairs, Grossman was the main architect of the “Next Steps in Strategic Partnership between the United States and India” initiative. An active Indophile will now be dealing with Pakistan on behalf of the US. This really says it all about US intent in Pakistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 26th, 2011.

The Express Tribune

 

[mughaljee]

The ISI fears there are hundreds of CIA contracted spies operating in Pakistan without the knowledge of either the Pakistan government or the intelligence agency

This is what i am talking about & how those guys succeeded who killed Abad Ur Rehman by land crusier to land in USA soil successfully ?
where were our agencies. ?

 

[Rafael]

Then why do Pakistani diplomats go out of their way to ask us?

Nobody does, Its your delusional mind that is working overtime.

Who is the know-it-all now? And why?

Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq to name just few.

With the decay in rule-of-law demonstrated by terror-paralyzed officials, undoubtedly it is PAKISTAN which is falling from civilization into barbarism. How can you think that it is the U.S.? Psychologists call this displacement.

With the ethical and moral bankruptcy demonstrated by your President, Foreign minister, Ambassador and many others including yourself in the case, surely it is AMERICA that has shown to the world that there is no nation even close to Americans when it comes to brutality. You are such low lives.

 

[Solomon2]

Nobody does, Its your delusional mind that is working overtime.

This was not a rhetorical question, as to me this is fact. I was asking for my own edification. If you have nothing to contribute, isn't the proper thing to do to say so plainly, rather than accuse me of delusions?

Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq to name just few.

These are not answers.

With the ethical and moral bankruptcy demonstrated by your President -

Anybody can call anybody anything. One has to discern the difference between what things are and what they are called. If you can't attempt to do that, how can you claim to be sane?

 

[Solomon2]

Sorry but i cant buy what you are selling .Working of CIA is like totall pure , it cant be and could never be. Does your blind hypocrycy in support of the wrong doings never cease to stop.None of the americans i come by are that much hardcore.CIA has been conducting black ops and the whole top slot in the intel comette either knows all about it or dosent...

Oh, I get it. You have trouble dealing with the idea that the CIA is a law-abiding (at least by U.S. law) organization that is accountable to democratic superiors, rather than the plot-behind-the-scenes-for-evil organization you learn about in Pakistan's media.

Well, you wouldn't be the first Pakistani to react that way! (Maybe you guys should form a support group!) Even some Americans have trouble with this, though currently we aren't cursed with a mainstream media that engages in the sort of blatant invention that I read about in Dawn.

Maybe I once had such media blindness as well. Luckily the U.S. government process is rather open. It is quite possible for ordinary citizens and foreign observers to do what I have done several times and attend, say, congressional committee hearings in person and in the evening watch media coverage of the same event and notice the differences between one's own observations and those of the reporters - especially what they choose to omit for the purposes of furthering controversy and dissent. It can be a REAL eye-opener! Nowadays most people satisfy themselves by watching C-SPAN, but that still doesn't tell you enough about the commercial media.

For sometimes it isn't even necessary to wait for the nightly news. I don't think anything prepared me for that moment when, in one hearing, I was face-to-face with one of America's most prominent female TV news anchors, wearing not the calm demeanor I was used to but a mouth twisted in hatred, who then proposed to her crew that they all break for dinner rather than stay to cover a fine speech by George Shultz (Secretary of State under Pres. Reagan) that met with bipartisan approval. No trace of that speech ever hit the airwaves.

Pakistani society, with decaying law-and-order, with a police force that knows many things very quickly but cannot secure convictions because of political interference or sloppiness or corruption - I imagine such a society would tend to be dominated by bullies. And people always hate the biggest bully the most. And America is portrayed as the biggest baddest bully, isn't it? The displaced focus of all the injustices and bullyings you've ever experienced, right? Well, do try to get a grip and see how you are being manipulated by those in Pakistan who seek to divert the searching eye of public scrutiny to hide their deeds from democratic accountability.

 

[53fd]

The onus is on the CIA to repair its relationship with the ISI, if it wants to that is. I'm guessing it does, because without Pakistan, there is no WOT in Afghanistan. Simple as.

 

[mughaljee]

 

[Rafael]

Anybody can call anybody anything. One has to discern the difference between what things are and what they are called. If you can't attempt to do that, how can you claim to be sane?

The best you could come up with Solomon? Your president and FO are trying their arses out to make a criminal look an innocent. What does that makes them? You figure. Also not to forget that murderer driver of your embassy that has already flown away to US. Not a single statement from the American authorities condemning him, forget about criminal proceedings. Such is the value of human life for them.

 

[Solomon2]

Your president and FO are trying their arses out to make a criminal look an innocent. What does that makes them?

Uh-uh. The argument about diplomatic immunity isn't about guilt or innocence, but about criminal jurisdiction. Most diplomats who commit offenses get off scot-free because the host country doesn't invest the human and material resources to bring a case to trial in the diplomat's home country. You tell me how likely it is that the GoP, in the face of public pressure, will simply forget about the whole thing rather than pursue Davis in U.S. courts?

Also not to forget that murderer driver of your embassy that has already flown away to US.

"Murder" is something premeditated and no one thinks that was the case here. Yet in many ways I wonder more about this guy than I do about Davis. Had GoP officials stuck to their lawful duty of yielding Davis to U.S. custody would American officials have been more forthcoming about releasing details about this driver? Remember, the driver only flew the coop after weeks of blatant Pakistani government violations of the laws and procedures concerning diplomats. One always has to expect tit-for-tat retaliation in circumstances like this. Now no case against the driver seems possible. That's part of what Pakistan surrendered by insisting, in violation of domestic and international law, that it hold on to Davis.

 

[Rafael]

Uh-uh. The argument about diplomatic immunity isn't about guilt or innocence, but about criminal jurisdiction. Most diplomats who commit offenses get off scot-free because the host country doesn't invest the human and material resources to bring a case to trial in the diplomat's home country. You tell me how likely it is that the GoP, in the face of public pressure, will simply forget about the whole thing rather than pursue Davis in U.S. courts?

"Murder" is something premeditated and no one thinks that was the case here. Yet in many ways I wonder more about this guy than I do about Davis. Had GoP officials stuck to their lawful duty of yielding Davis to U.S. custody would American officials have been more forthcoming about releasing details about this driver? Remember, the driver only flew the coop after weeks of blatant Pakistani government violations of the laws and procedures concerning diplomats. One always has to expect tit-for-tat retaliation in circumstances like this. Now no case against the driver seems possible. That's part of what Pakistan surrendered by insisting, in violation of domestic and international law, that it hold on to Davis.

The diplomatic immunity for now has only been claimed by Americans. No pakistani official has confirmed it as we speak. If he has a his diplomat card, what is stopping him to present it in the courts and the media to finish this debate once and for all? Answer is that there is none present. Pakistani Govt. does not recognise Davis as a diplomat.

Your other argument is also nullified by above.

 

[NaqsheYaar]

The arrogance of the West in general and Amerikka in particular is incredible.
Let's see where your arrogance takes you to in the next 1.5-2 years.

Historical forces have been unleashed. Just try to behold what is going to unfold in the days to come...
It won't be pretty I promise!!

Edit-1: Please remember the time-fame I mentioned above.

 

[mr42O]

It appears the Pakistanis here have nothing to say on the matter.

Yepp u are right we only want USA to get the f*** out of Pakistan. AS our law Davis should be hanged.