White House in-fighting stalled Osama bin Laden hunt in Pakistan

[t-birds]

By Toby Harnden in Washington
Last Updated: 9:20PM BST 30/06/2008

The White House has blocked a secret Pentagon plan to pursue Osama bin Laden in the tribal areas of Pakistan, it has been reported.

Intelligence agencies have concluded that bin Laden has re-established a network of new training camps
For six months, the possibility of killing or capturing the al-Qa'eda leader and mastermind of the September 11 terrorist attacks has diminished because of political in-fighting, according to the New York Times.

Late last year, the newspaper said, senior Bush administration officials, casting aside long-held concerns about the diplomatic ramifications, drafted a plan to enable US Special Forces to operate in the lawless tribal areas.

But the classified Pentagon order, which was designed to mark a shift from what some officials saw as an aversion to risk, became bogged down in a Bush administration turf war and has not been carried out.

A defence official was quoted as saying there was "mounting frustration" within the Pentagon over the continued delay in sending special operations teams into Pakistan's tribal regions, where senior al-Qa'eda operatives are thought to be based.

Bush administration lawyers and State Department officials are said to be concerned about military missions not being authorised by the US ambassador in Islamabad while other argue that the opportunity for success has passed.

Codenamed "Operation Cannonball" by the CIA, the hunt for leading al-Qa'eda figures in Pakistan is seen by CIA officers in Afghanistan as best way to prevent another attack on the United States.

But the newspaper reported that CIA operatives in Pakistan had played down the al-Qa'eda presence there and senior CIA figures at the agency's headquarters had intervened to ease tensions between its Kabul and Islamabad stations.

With just over six months left before the end of George W. Bush's presidency, bringing bin Laden – whom Mr Bush said in 2001 was wanted "dead or alive" – to justice remains a priority.

Intelligence agencies have concluded that bin Laden has re-established a network of new training camps and recruits have risen to up to 2,000 in recent months from 200 earlier this year.

But sending US forces into Pakistan would be carry significant risks both politically and militarily. The tribal areas are populated by bin Laden sympathisers, making it unlikely that even the best-planned raid could succeed.

State Department officials are concerned that such a move would also trigger a diplomatic outcry from the Pakistani government and could destablilise President Pervez Musharraf.

A series of aerial drone attacks have been carried out against Taliban and al-Qa'eda leaders in Pakistan, killing several key figures and narrowly missing bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in one strike.

In an attack earlier this month, however, several Pakistani border guards were accidentally killed by US forces, increasing Pakistani unwillingness to allow American strikes on its territory.

Taliban forces in Pakistan, allied with al-Qa'eda, have grown much stronger in the country's border areas and threatened its regional capital of Peshawar last week.

Pakistan's new coalition government has made a series of truces with Islamist fighters. At the weekend, it was forced to launch an offensive to push the them back from Peshawar. Pakistan described the operation as a success, though there were no reports of anyone being killed.

Al-Qa'eda had a network of terrorist camps from which to plan attacks on the West, just as it had before September 11, 2001, the New York Times stated.

But Ryan Crocker, US ambassador in Baghdad and former ambassador in Islamabad, said: "I do wonder if it's in fact the case that al-Qa'eda has really reconstituted itself to a pre-9/11 capability, and in fact I would say I seriously doubt that.

"Their top-level leadership is still out there, but they're not communicating and they're not moving around. I think they're symbolic more than operationally effective."

 

[Always Neutral]

I doubt the US will hesitate if they have very good info on OBLs whereabouts.

The writer is not making sense.

Regards

 

[Neo]

Secret US military plan for Pakistan on hold: Report​

30 Jun, 2008

WASHINGTON: Top Bush administration officials drafted a secret plan late last year to make it easier for US Special Operations forces to operate inside Pakistan's tribal areas, but Washington turf battles and the diversion of resources to Iraq have held up the effort, a newsdaily reported on Monday.

The Times quoted a senior Defense Department official as saying there was "mounting frustration" in the Pentagon at the continued delay in deployment of special operations teams into Pakistan's mountainous and lawless western tribal regions, where senior al Qaeda operatives are thought to be hiding.

The Times report, based on more than four dozen interviews in Washington and Pakistan, said al Qaeda's new safe haven in Pakistan was in part due to the administration's accommodation to Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf, whose advisers have long played down the terrorist threat.

It was also a story, the report concluded, of infighting between U.S. intelligence agencies and a shifting in White House priorities from counter-terrorism efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan to the war in Iraq. The Times quoted a retired CIA officer as estimating that al Qaeda training compounds in Pakistan now host as many as 2,000 local and foreign militants, up from several hundred three years ago.

Infighting within the CIA included battles between field officers in Kabul and Islamabad and the counter-terrorism center at CIA headquarters in Virginia whose preference for carrying out raids remotely, via Predator missiles strikes, was derided by field officers as the work of "boys with toys," the Times reported.

GROWING THREAT

Turf battles between CIA officials in Afghanistan and others in Pakistan have also impeded progress, the Times reported, with officers in Kabul expressing alarm at what they see as a growing threat from the tribal areas and those in Islamabad, who are more prone to accept the Pakistani government's argument that the tribal areas are beyond anyone's control.

The level of expertise among CIA officers in the region was also a drag on operations, the report said. "We had to put people out in the field who had less than ideal levels of experience," it quoted a former senior CIA official as saying. One reason for that, two former intelligence officials told the Times, was that the Iraq war had drained away most of the CIA officers with field experience in the Islamic world.

The Times said the Pentagon's top commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, ordered military officers, Special Operations and CIA operatives to assemble a dossier in late 2006 showing Pakistan's role in allowing militants to establish a safe haven in the tribal territories.

The general's order reflected a "broader feeling of outrage" within the Pentagon that the war on terror "had been outsourced to an unreliable ally, and at the grim fact that America's most deadly enemy had become stronger." In response to Eikenberry's dossier, the White House sent Vice President Dick Cheney and Deputy CIA Director Stephen Kappes to Islamabad in March 2007 to register U.S. concern.

That visit, the Times said, was the beginning of a more aggressive effort by the administration to pressure Pakistan into stepping up the fight. Last year's decision to draw up the Pentagon order authorizing a Special Operations campaign in the tribal areas was part of that effort, it said.

Secret US military plan for Pakistan on hold: Report- News-The Economic Times

 

[Munir]

If they cannot survive Irac they sulrey would meet more problems in Pakistani territories. I doubt they will make that mistake but then again they made Musharraf introduce rotten democracy... We could have prediced it but the western information services still need some glasses.

 

[mujahideen]

^^^^No one made him introduce anything. When he introduced it we supported him, and now we curse him. It's not his fault its not Americas fault, it is our fault, because its our country.

 

[maqsad]

Is Osama even alive? Besides a few grainy videos which were said to be faked what proof is there that he didn't die in 2002 in Tora Bora?

And by an interesting coincidence the search for a person who may no longer exist brings US special forces closer and closer to pakistani nuclear sites.

 

[Rabbit]

And by an interesting coincidence the search for a person who may no longer exist brings US special forces closer and closer to pakistani nuclear sites.

Pakistan has nuclear sites in an area of their country where they have little-no influence? Somehow I doubt that.

 

[maqsad]

Pakistan has nuclear sites in an area of their country where they have little-no influence? Somehow I doubt that.

Special Ops are coming closer not just geographically but also psychologically closer through the breach of national borders.

The crossing over of multitudes of heavily trained and well equipped soldiers is the breach of a psychological barrier in terms of worldwide public perception. Locally it also breaches a sense of sovereignty.