Rockets fired from a US drone killed between eight and 15 people in north-west Pakistan on Monday, officials have said in varying accounts. It is the third strike in as many days after attacks on Saturday and Sunday killed a total of 12 people.Read the rest of this post...
The latest strike targeted a militant hideout in the Hesokhel village of the North Waziristan tribal region, officials said.
US drones hit targets in the South Waziristan tribal region on Saturday and Sunday. There have been a total of seven strikes in less than two weeks.
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Showing posts with label pakistan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pakistan. Show all posts
US drones continue to shower Pakistan with rockets
These remote bombings (including when done in a traditional aircraft and pilot) don't have a tremendous track record. With each attack, we're only one step away from the next wedding party disaster. Is this really where we want to go?
Pakistanis convict doctor, who helped hunt for bin Laden, of treason
Wash Post:
Glad to see our billions spent every year on Pakistan are going to good use. Read the rest of this post...
A Pakistani court imposed a 33-year sentence Wednesday on a doctor who assisted the CIA in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, prompting dismay among U.S. officials and warnings that the punishment will exacerbate strained relations and could lead to cuts in aid.
Shakil Afridi, 48, a government surgeon in the semiautonomous Khyber Agency along the border with Afghanistan, was convicted of treason for using a vaccination drive to try to gather DNA samples from the Abbottabad compound where bin Laden was in hiding.
A Pakistani government commission tasked with reviewing intelligence failures related to the Abbottabad raid had recommended that Afridi be tried for treason. The government has fired 17 other health workers who assisted in the vaccination program.So the Pakistani guy who tried to help catch bin Laden is in jail, but the Pakistani guy who helped Libya try to get the bomb, and may have done the same for Iran and North Korea, is free.
Glad to see our billions spent every year on Pakistan are going to good use. Read the rest of this post...
Wikileaks: Pakistan intelligence was in regular contact with bin Laden
The Wikileaks Stratfor email dump is telling us what most (if not all) suspected all along. The US is in a bad position if they're counting on any cooperation from Pakistan. The Telegraph:
According to one of the e-mails, the firm was shown the information papers collected from bin Laden's Abbotabad compound after the US special forces attack last May that resulted in his death. The e-mail, from a Stratfor analyst, suggested that up to 12 officials in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency knew of the al-Qaeda leader's safe house. The internal email did not name the Pakistani officials involved but said the US could use the information as a bargaining chip in post raid negotiations with Islamabad.Read the rest of this post...
Noam Chomsky: Who are the Unpeople?
Who are the Unpeople?
In this talk, Noam Chomsky starts with specifics — the Unpeople of Libya, the Unpeople of Africa — but the heart is the general, the concept itself. Who are the Unpeople of the earth?
Here's a taste. Chomsky starts with the unilateral bombing of Libya "by their traditional imperial aggressors: France and Britain, joined by the United States" — in violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973 which "called for a no-fly zone, a cease-fire and measures to protect civilians."
The "triumvirate" blew right past that with their bombing, and the African Union (A.U.) went to the U.N. to object (my emphasis and some reparagraphing throughout):
Who are the Unpeople? Unpeople are those you can abuse and kill, decimate and dislocate, without conscience or consequence, because they aren't fully human — or human at all — in the minds of their abusers.
American Indians were Unpeople, squatting on land just waiting to be "settled" as whites spread across the "empty" American West. Arabs were Unpeople who "crawled like flies" through Palestine (per Agatha Christie), until white Europeans, the only true humans, infiltrated, moved them out, and took over.
Oddly, those same Europeans — ethnic Jews — were Unpeople in the lands they were fleeing. Suffering doesn't always lead to wisdom.
It goes without saying, or should, that the drone-dead in Pakistan are Unpeople. (Feel a tad guilty? Me too.)
Here at home, Unpeople are all around us — the poor, the brown, the black, the homeless, the hopeless, the drugged-out, the cast-out — the wrecks and the unruly. The old. The "losers" in that hyper-Christian "take back America" formulation. The Occupyers and the foreclosed.
All Unpeople are the modern n-word, broadened to include the Unincluded everywhere you find them.
Are you the Unpeople? If you find yourself scooped up by the National Security state, you will be; even that white skin, if you have it, will not set you free.
GP Read the rest of this post...
In this talk, Noam Chomsky starts with specifics — the Unpeople of Libya, the Unpeople of Africa — but the heart is the general, the concept itself. Who are the Unpeople of the earth?
Here's a taste. Chomsky starts with the unilateral bombing of Libya "by their traditional imperial aggressors: France and Britain, joined by the United States" — in violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973 which "called for a no-fly zone, a cease-fire and measures to protect civilians."
The "triumvirate" blew right past that with their bombing, and the African Union (A.U.) went to the U.N. to object (my emphasis and some reparagraphing throughout):
The A.U. call to the Security Council also laid out the background for their concerns: “Sovereignty has been a tool of emancipation of the peoples of Africa who are beginning to chart transformational paths for most of the African countries after centuries of predation by the slave trade, colonialism and neocolonialism. Careless assaults on the sovereignty of African countries are, therefore, tantamount to inflicting fresh wounds on the destiny of the African peoples.”You can see where this is headed.
The African appeal can be found in the Indian journal Frontline, but was mostly unheard in the West. That comes as no surprise: Africans are “unpeople,” to adapt George Orwell’s term for those unfit to enter history.
On March 12, the Arab League gained the status of people by supporting U.N. Resolution 1973. But approval soon faded when the League withheld support for the subsequent Western bombardment of Libya. And [then] on April 10, the Arab League reverted to unpeople by calling on the U.N. also to impose a no-fly zone over Gaza and to lift the Israeli siege, virtually ignored.Read the rest; it's very good (and available as a video here.)
That too makes good sense. Palestinians are prototypical unpeople, as we see regularly.
Who are the Unpeople? Unpeople are those you can abuse and kill, decimate and dislocate, without conscience or consequence, because they aren't fully human — or human at all — in the minds of their abusers.
American Indians were Unpeople, squatting on land just waiting to be "settled" as whites spread across the "empty" American West. Arabs were Unpeople who "crawled like flies" through Palestine (per Agatha Christie), until white Europeans, the only true humans, infiltrated, moved them out, and took over.
Oddly, those same Europeans — ethnic Jews — were Unpeople in the lands they were fleeing. Suffering doesn't always lead to wisdom.
It goes without saying, or should, that the drone-dead in Pakistan are Unpeople. (Feel a tad guilty? Me too.)
Here at home, Unpeople are all around us — the poor, the brown, the black, the homeless, the hopeless, the drugged-out, the cast-out — the wrecks and the unruly. The old. The "losers" in that hyper-Christian "take back America" formulation. The Occupyers and the foreclosed. All Unpeople are the modern n-word, broadened to include the Unincluded everywhere you find them.
Are you the Unpeople? If you find yourself scooped up by the National Security state, you will be; even that white skin, if you have it, will not set you free.
GP Read the rest of this post...
Spencer Ackerman: Where we really are in Iraq (plus drone talk)
This is a nice interview, a great where-we-are piece. You should come away pleased with the way you spent your minutes.
We (the U.S.) have supposedly left Iraq, and the chest-bumps are everywhere. But where are we really? What have we left behind? Ackerman is an expert on this stuff.
The piece starts with a discussion of the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) now before Congress. This is the bill that includes the "Indefinite Detention on the Everywhere Battlefield" provision. (The interview took place prior to the Senate's successful vote to approve.)
If that sounds like martial law by the way, rolled out in stages, your ears aren't lying to you. Could the Republicans be worse than our own irrepressible Dems? (That 2012 Obama scare-arg gets harder and harder to make, doesn't it?)
At 5:45 Ackerman discusses Iraq and what we've left behind. (Hint: That would be us; we've left us behind, with 5000+ mercs as guards.) Ackerman: "The U.S. military comes home; the hired military goes in."
At 13:55 the talk shifts to drones, Pakistan, and the money we give them. The discussion of North Waziristan in Pakistan (described as "the epicenter of global terrorism" and "a complete black box") is fascinating, as is the ultimate Pakistani problem — how do they take their money and yet stop us from killing them?
Listen:
The interviewer is Sam Seder of the daily political podcast Majority.fm (an excellent national daily broadcast, by the way, and good news source).
GP Read the rest of this post...
We (the U.S.) have supposedly left Iraq, and the chest-bumps are everywhere. But where are we really? What have we left behind? Ackerman is an expert on this stuff.
The piece starts with a discussion of the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) now before Congress. This is the bill that includes the "Indefinite Detention on the Everywhere Battlefield" provision. (The interview took place prior to the Senate's successful vote to approve.)
If that sounds like martial law by the way, rolled out in stages, your ears aren't lying to you. Could the Republicans be worse than our own irrepressible Dems? (That 2012 Obama scare-arg gets harder and harder to make, doesn't it?)
At 5:45 Ackerman discusses Iraq and what we've left behind. (Hint: That would be us; we've left us behind, with 5000+ mercs as guards.) Ackerman: "The U.S. military comes home; the hired military goes in."
At 13:55 the talk shifts to drones, Pakistan, and the money we give them. The discussion of North Waziristan in Pakistan (described as "the epicenter of global terrorism" and "a complete black box") is fascinating, as is the ultimate Pakistani problem — how do they take their money and yet stop us from killing them?
Listen:
The interviewer is Sam Seder of the daily political podcast Majority.fm (an excellent national daily broadcast, by the way, and good news source).
GP Read the rest of this post...
NATO now blames Pakistan for starting fight
Oh please. At this point, nobody really wants to hear about who started the fight. It's like listening to a bunch of five year old kids argue about "he hit me, no he hit me first." Regardless, it comes back to the same question over where this never-ending war is going. From an outsiders perspective, it looks like it's war for the sake of war. The Guardian:
An attack by Nato aircraft on Pakistani troops that allegedly killed as many as 28 soldiers and looks set to further poison relations between the US and Pakistan was an act of self-defence, a senior western official has claimed.Read the rest of this post...
According to the Kabul-based official, a joint US-Afghan force operating in the mountainous Afghan frontier province of Kunar was the first to come under attack in the early hours of Saturday morning, forcing them to return fire.
The high death toll from an incident between two supposed allies suggests Nato helicopters and jets strafed Pakistani positions with heavy weapons.
Report: Pakistan gave China access to downed US helicopter
If true, the budget for Pakistan really needs to be chopped. The cost of maintaining the relationship doesn't match the end result. The Guardian:
Members of the Chinese military were allowed to survey the wreckage of the hi-tech helicopter and take samples of its "stealth" skin, which allowed it to enter Pakistan undetected by radar, the Financial Times reported, quoting US sources.Read the rest of this post...
"The US now has information that Pakistan, particularly the ISI [Pakistan's intelligence agency], gave access to the Chinese military to the downed helicopter in Abbottabad," an intelligence figure was quoted as saying.
The FT said it had been told by figures close to the White House and the CIA that Pakistan had given the Chinese access to the helicopter.
CIA's fake vaccination program under fire
Nobody is arguing that catching bin Laden wasn't a good thing, but the CIA may be endangering others now that the story has emerged. Real vaccination programs may be blocked and viewed as CIA programs which is not good news.
Médecins Sans Frontières has lashed out at the CIA for using a fake vaccination programme as a cover to spy on Osama bin Ladenon Thursday, saying it threatened life-saving immunisation work around the world.Read the rest of this post...
The international medical aid charity said the ploy used by US intelligence, revealed this week in the Guardian, was a "grave manipulation of the medical act".
The CIA recruited a Pakistani doctor and health visitors before the operation in May that killed Bin Laden in Abbottabad in northern Pakistan, to try to ascertain whether the al-Qaida leader was living in the compound. The doctor, Shakil Afridi, set up a vaccination drive for Hepatitis B in the town in order to try to gain entry to the Bin Laden compound and obtain DNA samples from those living there.
US cuts aid to Pakistan
There is no way the relationship could continue as it did in recent years. The blank check had to stop. Now if only the blank check to the US military can be stopped. Al Jazeera:
The US is withholding some $800 million in aid to Pakistan, almost a third of the $2.7bn in security assistance it provides each year to the South Asian nation, Barack Obama's chief of staff has confirmed.Read the rest of this post...
Relations between the key allies, always tricky, have drastically deteriorated since US commandos shot and killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden on May 2 in a Pakistani garrison town, sowing distrust on both sides.
Last month, Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, warned that the US would slow down military aid to Pakistan unless it took unspecified steps to help the US.
Now, it appears, it has, as William Daley, the president's chief of staff, confirmed a New York Times report that the administration was suspending and, in certain cases, cancelling some $800m of military aid.
Report: Pakistan generals involved in selling nuclear secrets
Not much of a surprise, really. How different is it for a Pakistani general to profit from selling nuclear information from our own generals "retiring" and working for the defense industry that is strangling our budget and political process? Neither is very good news for the general population.
The source of the documents is AQ Khan, who confessed in 2004 to selling parts and instructions for the use of high-speed centrifuges in enriching uranium to Libya, Iran and North Korea. Extracts were published by the Washington Post, including a letter in English purportedly from a senior North Korean official to Khan in 1998 detailing payment of $3m to Pakistan's former army chief, General Jehangir Karamat, and another half-million to Lieutenant General Zulfiqar Khan, who was involved in Pakistan's nuclear bomb tests.Read the rest of this post...
Both generals denied the allegations. "What can I say. [These are] bits of old info packaged together. [There is] not an iota of truth in the allegations against me. [There is] no reason on earth for anyone to pay me for something I could not deliver," Karamat wrote in an email to the Guardian. Lt Gen Khan told the Washington Post that the documents were "a fabrication".
The issue is seen as critically important by western governments. Seven years after Khan, the godfather of the Pakistani nuclear programme, made his public confession on Pakistani television, there is still uncertainty over the extent to which he was a rogue operator or just a salesman acting on behalf of the Pakistani state and its army. Western officials are also unsure whether the covert nuclear sales are continuing.
Report: Pakistan tipped off militants, again
This is not good news, if true.
U.S. officials say Pakistan has apparently tipped off militants at two more bomb-building factories in its tribal areas, giving the terror suspects time to flee, after U.S. intelligence shared the locations with the Pakistani government.Read the rest of this post...
Those officials believe Pakistan's insistence on seeking local tribal elders' permission before raiding the areas may have most directly contributed to the militants' flight, though they also suspect low-level security officials may have tipped the militants off.
U.S. officials have pushed for Pakistan to keep the location of such targets secret prior to the operations, but the Pakistanis say their troops cannot enter the lawless regions without giving the locals notice.
Pakistan security forces execute young man while being filmed
The fact that this has even been shown in TV suggests something is changing in Pakistan. The Guardian:
Pakistan's security forces are facing criticism after paramilitary troops were caught on camera apparently shooting dead a teenager at point-blank range.Read the rest of this post...
The footage, broadcast repeatedly on local television, is likely to further undermine faith in the country's powerful security establishment, which is already facing allegations it helped conceal Osama bin Laden.
The video, captured by a cameraman from Pakistan's Awaz television channel, shows a youth, identified as Sarfaraz Shah, arguing with paramilitary rangers in Karachi. The 18-year-old appears to plead for mercy before being shot at close quarters. He then falls to the ground and screams in pain as blood pools beneath his legs.
Questions being asked after Pakistani journalist killed
Did he ask too many questions related to bin Laden and the rumored ISI connections in Pakistan? CNN:
Many Pakistani journalists believe he was killed by elements within the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, because of his frequent reporting about co-operation and contacts between Pakistani security officials and extremist groups. He is known to have received several warnings about his reporting from the ISI. But it is equally possible that his reporting had gone too far for the likes of one of the many militant groups he was in touch with.Read the rest of this post...
Shahzad had recently turned several controversial pieces about the attack by militants on the Pakistani naval base in Karachi.
One of them began in a way that would not have gone done well at ISI headquarters, describing the attack as "the violent beginning of an internal ideological struggle between Islamist elements in the Pakistani armed forces and their secular and liberal top brass."
He also cited (as he often did) unnamed sources in the ISI, Pakistan's military intelligence service, quoting one as saying: "It was shown several months ago that the Pakistan navy is vulnerable to Islamists when a marine commando unit official was arrested.....Now, they (intelligence) realize how the organization (navy) is riddled and vulnerable to the influence of militant organizations."
Al Qaida chooses successor to bin Laden
It sounds like he's in Pakistan so our close allies can maybe use the billions of dollars of US money to help locate him. The Guardian:
Reports from Pakistan named an Egyptian former special forces officer known as Saif al-Adel as the acting leader of al-Qaida.Read the rest of this post...
Al-Adel, who is in his late 40s, is a veteran militant who was close to bin Laden in the 1990s before being detained in Iran after fleeing Afghanistan following the ouster of the Taliban in 2001. According to Noman Benotman, a former Libyan militant now living in London, al-Adel was released from Iranian detention and returned to Pakistan last year.
The report in the Pakistani The News newspaper identified al-Adel as having been chosen as "interim leader" of al-Qaida after a meeting at "an undisclosed location". It also said that "none of sons of Osama Bin Laden has shown willingness" to take up a formal position within the organisation.
Bin Laden pursuit team was prepared to fight its way out of Pakistan
We're forking out billions for an ally that we were prepared to fight? Talk about a dysfunctional relationship. The Guardian:
The strained US-Pakhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifistan relationship has come under further pressure after it emerged that the assault team which killed Osama bin Laden was prepared to fight its way out of Pakistan if necessary.Read the rest of this post...
President Barack Obama ordered two helicopter-borne backup squads to shadow the main US attack force in case it came under fire from Pakistani security forces as it stormed Bin Laden's house.
The Americans had orders to avoid a firefight but to use their weapons if unavoidable, a senior White House official told the New York Times.
Report: Pakistan approved unilateral raids by US for bin Laden hunt
Not only did Pakistan approve it once with the old military government, but it was renewed again in 2008. Musharraf and the others who are publicly criticizing the assault have glossed over their own words and agreements. The Guardian:
The deal was struck between the military leader General Pervez Musharraf and President George Bush after Bin Laden escaped US forces in the mountains of Tora Bora in late 2001, according to serving and retired Pakistani and US officials.Read the rest of this post...
Under its terms, Pakistan would allow US forces to conduct a unilateral raid inside Pakistan in search of Bin Laden, his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the al-Qaida No3. Afterwards, both sides agreed, Pakistan would vociferously protest the incursion.
"There was an agreement between Bush and Musharraf that if we knew where Osama was, we were going to come and get him," said a former senior US official with knowledge of counterterrorism operations. "The Pakistanis would put up a hue and cry, but they wouldn't stop us."
Pakistan refusing to let US talk to bin Laden's wives
From Slate:
The latest point of contention between the two nations is over access to three of Bin Laden’s wives. The three women were among 10 or so of the al-Qaida leader’s family members taken into custody by Pakistan after the raid that killed Bin Laden.Read the rest of this post...
The U.S. is asking for the chance to interrogate the women, believing they may be able to provide crucial information about “the comings and goings of people who were aiding [Bin Laden],” the New York Times reported Monday. So far, Pakistan has refused, a move that isn't helping quell speculation in Washington that Bin Laden may have had help from within the Pakistani government.
Obama demands names of Pakistan agents who helped hide bin Laden
There's no doubt that the ISI has many factions, both pro and anti-American. But after finding bin Laden there's little doubt that people in the ISI had to know something. NY Times:
Pakistani officials say the Obama administration has demanded the identities of some of their top intelligence operatives as the United States tries to determine whether any of them had contact with Osama bin Laden or his agents in the years before the raid that led to his death early Monday morning in Pakistan.Read the rest of this post...
The officials provided new details of a tense discussion between Pakistani officials and an American envoy who traveled to Pakistan on Monday, as well as the growing suspicion among United States intelligence and diplomatic officials that someone in Pakistan’s secret intelligence agency knew of Bin Laden’s location, and helped shield him.
Increasingly difficult to explain how Pakistan didn't know where bin Laden was
From the Economist:
Nobody reports seeing other visitors, official-looking or otherwise, coming to number 25. A nearby hospital could perhaps have been useful for a man, such as Mr bin Laden, who suffered from kidney disease. Pakistan's main military academy—the country’s Sandhurst or West Point—is only short distance away on foot. Local residents say that police regularly swept the area, roughly once a week, checking residents' IDs and sometimes looking inside homes. It is hard to believe that this house could have escaped scrutiny for long. Most embarrassing for Pakistan's most powerful man, General Ashfaq Kayani, the chief of staff, is that he was just across the field from number 25 just last week, boasting at the military academy that Pakistan had broken the back of terrorism. At the time Mr bin Laden was within shouting distance of the general. That looks increasingly difficult to explain.Read the rest of this post...
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