COSI' ISLAMABAD HA BEFFATO McCHRYSTAL E PREPARA LA SUA PAX AFGHANA ...ALLA FACCIA DEGLI USA

articolo di mercoledì 07 luglio 2010

Trappola degli 007 contro Obama

di Gian Micalessin

Isolare l’India, neutralizzare Washington, controllare l’Afghanistan consegnando al suo debole presidente Amid Karzai una pace su misura e garantire, infine, la sopravvivenza del clan Haqqani e di un parte di Al Qaida. Dietro la notizia della cattura - vera o presunta - del Mullah Omar si nasconde un sinistro trappolone. Un trappolone gestito dal potente capo dell’esercito pakistano generale Ashfaq Parvez Kayani e dal suo braccio destro generale Ahmad Shuja Pasha, attuale comandante dell’Isi, il più importante servizio segreto di Islamabad. Le indiscrezioni sulla cattura del Mullah Omar, forse da tempo sotto controllo pakistano, sembrano l’ennesima avvisaglia di un complotto geopolitico che ha già costretto alle dimissioni il capo dei servizi segreti afghani Amrullah Saleh e potrebbe aver influito su quelle del comandante americano Stanley McChrystal sospettato di aver inconsapevolmente avallato le mosse pakistane prestando troppa fiducia a Karzai.
Cominciamo dalle dimissioni di Saleh. L’ex luogotenente di Ahmad Sha Massoud, strenuo nemico di talebani e pakistani, si ritrova alla porta ai primi di giugno. Con lui viene cacciato anche il ministro degli Interni Mohammad Hanif Atmar, un ex funzionario del Khad - i servizi segreti filosovietici anni Ottanta - che condivide le stesse avversioni di Saleh. I due nelle settimane precedenti si sono strenuamente opposti ai negoziati segreti tra il presidente Karzai e il «clan Haqqani», la struttura filotalebana manovrata dall’Isi, sospettata di fornire ospitalità a Bin Laden tra le montagne del Waziristan. I colloqui organizzati dal generale Kayani e dal capo dell’Isi generale Shuja Pasha rappresentano un autentico contropiede strategico capace di neutralizzare i piani americani che prevedono trattative con i talebani moderati, ma puntano alla totale distruzione di Al Qaida, del clan Haqqani e di tutti i gruppi legati al terrorismo internazionale. La chiave di quel contropiede è il sempre più debole Karzai convinto da Kayani e Shuja Pasha ad accettare una pace garantita da Islamabad e totalmente svincolata dal controllo americano. In quella pace non c’è spazio per il Mullah Omar o per altri capi talebani, fautori di un Afghanistan indipendente. In quella pace c’è posto solo per alleati disposti a collaborare ai disegni di egemonia regionale del Pakistan.
La scelta degli Haqqani non è casuale. Il suo capo storico, il comandante Jalaluddin Haqqani, è un fedelissimo alleato dell’Isi sin dagli anni Ottanta. Non a caso Jalaluddin ha svolto, per esplicita richiesta dell’Isi, le funzioni di comandante generale dei talebani nella guerra agli americani del 2001. Dopo la sconfitta, e prima di passare lo scettro al figlio Sirajuddin, ha inoltre concesso protezione ai fuggitivi di Al Qaida nei santuari pakistani del Waziristan controllati dal suo clan e ha organizzato d’intesa con l’Isi numerosi attentati anti-indiani sul suolo afghano. Trattare con Haqqani significa dunque garantire la sopravvivenza di Al Qaida. Il primo a rendersene conto è l’ex agente della Cia e consigliere della Casa Bianca Bruce Riedel. «La decisione di Karzai di cacciare Saleh e Atmar mi preoccupa più di qualsiasi altro sviluppo», tuona l’ex agente che chiede, probabilmente, anche delucidazioni sul sostegno garantito al presidente Karzai dal comandante McChrystal. La posizione del generale americano si fa ancor più imbarazzante alla luce degli 11 incontri intercorsi con Kayani nel corso dell’ultimo anno. Alla Casa Bianca molti incominciano a dubitare di un comandante che oltre a nutrire eccessiva fiducia per Karzai sembra anche incapace d’intuire le pericolose e sofisticate trame pakistane.
Le incaute dichiarazioni rese dal generale alla rivista Rolling Stone potrebbero dunque rivelarsi solo un pretesto per allontanarlo e per coprire leggerezze assai più gravi dal punto di vista strategico. A quelle leggerezze è ora chiamato a mettere una pezza il comandante David Petraeus, un generale che Kayani non ha mai amato. Un generale che appena arrivato a Kabul ha detto «siamo qui per vincere». O meglio «non siamo qui per sottoscrivere i piani di Islamabad».

---

© IL GIORNALE ON LINE S.R.L. - Via G. Negri 4 - 20123 Milano - P.IVA 05524110961 

CIA and Pakistan locked in aggressive spy battles

On front line in war on terrorism, it's spy vs. spy among supposed friends CIA and Pakistan

ADAM GOLDMAN and MATT APUZZO
AP News

Jul 06, 2010 13:45 EDT

Publicly, the U.S. credits Pakistan with helping kill and capture many al-Qaida and Taliban leaders. Privately, the relationship is often marked by mistrust and double-dealing as Pakistan runs double agents against the CIA and the agency tries to penetrate Pakistan's closely guarded nuclear program.

Spying among friends is old news in the intelligence business, but the U.S.-Pakistan relationship is at the heart of Washington's counterterrorism efforts. Any behind-the-scenes trickery could undermine those efforts as well as the long-standing hunt for Osama bin Laden.

One recent incident underscores the schizophrenic relationship between the two countries. Last year, a Pakistani man approached CIA officers in Islamabad, offering to give up secrets of his country's nuclear program. To prove he was a trustworthy source, the man claimed he had spent nuclear fuel rods. But suspicious CIA officers quickly concluded that Pakistan's spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, was trying to run a double agent against them.

CIA officers alerted their Pakistani counterparts. Pakistan promised to look into the matter and, with neither side acknowledging the man was a double agent, the affair came to a polite, quiet end.

Bumping up against the ISI is a way of life for the CIA in Pakistan, the agency's command center for recruiting spies in the country's lawless tribal regions. Officers there also coordinate Predator drone airstrikes, the CIA's most successful and lethal counterterrorism program. The armed, unmanned planes take off from a base inside Pakistani Baluchistan known as "Rhine."

"Pakistan would be exceptionally uncomfortable and even hostile to American efforts to muck about in their home turf," said Graham Fuller, an expert on Islamic fundamentalism who spent 25 years with the CIA, including a stint as Kabul station chief.

That means incidents such as the one involving nuclear fuel rods must be resolved delicately and privately.

"It's a crucial relationship," CIA spokesman George Little said. "We work closely with our Pakistani partners in fighting the common threat of terrorism. They've been vital to the victories achieved against al-Qaida and its violent allies. And they've lost many people in the battle against extremism. No one should forget that."

Details about the CIA's relationship with Pakistan were recounted by nearly a dozen former and current U.S. and Pakistani intelligence officials, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

An ISI official denied that the agency runs double agents to collect information about the CIA's activities. He said the two agencies have a good working relationship and such allegations were meant to create friction between them.

But the CIA became so concerned by a rash of cases involving suspected double agents in 2009, it re-examined the spies it had on the payroll in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. The internal investigation revealed about a dozen double agents, stretching back several years. Most of them were being run by Pakistan. Other cases were deemed suspicious. The CIA determined the efforts were part of an official offensive counterintelligence program being run by Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the ISI's spy chief.

Pakistan's willingness to run double agents against the U.S. is particularly troubling to some in the CIA because of the country's ties to longtime Osama bin Laden ally Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (gool-boo-DEEN' hek-mat-YAR') and to the Haqqani network, a Pakistan-based Taliban faction also linked to al-Qaida.

In addition to its concerns about Pakistan's nuclear program, the CIA continues to press the Pakistanis to step up their military efforts in North Waziristan, the tribal region where Hekmatyar and Haqqani are based.

CIA Director Leon Panetta talked with Pasha about ISI's relationship with militants last year, reiterating the same talking points his predecessor, Gen. Michael Hayden, had delivered. Panetta told Pasha he had needed to take on militant groups, including those such as Hekmatyar and Haqqani, a former U.S. intelligence official said.

But the U.S. can only demand so much from an intelligence service it can't live without.

Recruiting agents to track down and kill terrorists and militants is a top priority for the CIA, and one of the clandestine service's greatest challenges. The drones can't hit their targets without help finding them. Such efforts would be impossible without Pakistan's blessing, and the U.S. pays about $3 billion a year in military and economic aid to keep the country stable and cooperative.

"We need the ISI and they definitely know it," said C. Christine Fair, an assistant professor at Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Security Studies. "They are really helping us in several critical areas and directly undermining us in others."

Pakistan has its own worries about the Americans. During the first term of the Bush administration, Pakistan became enraged after it shared intelligence with the U.S., only to learn the CIA station chief passed that information to the British.

The incident caused a serious row, one that threatened the CIA's relationship with the ISI and deepened the levels of distrust between the two sides. Pakistan almost threw the CIA station chief out of the country.

A British security official said the incident was "a matter between Pakistan and America."

The spate of Pakistani double agents has raised alarm bells in some corners of the agency, while others merely say it's the cost of doing business in Pakistan. They say double agents are as old as humanity and point to the old spy adage: "There are friendly nations but no friendly intelligence services."

"The use of double agents is something skilled intelligence services and the better terrorist groups like al-Qaida, Hezbollah, provisional Irish Republican Army and the Tamil Tigers have regularly done. It's not something that should be a surprise," said Daniel Byman, a foreign policy expert at the Saban Center at Brookings Institution.

Nowhere is the tension greater than in the tribal areas, the lawless regions that have become the front line in what Panetta described Sunday as "the most aggressive operations in the history of the CIA."

The area has become what's known in spy parlance as a wilderness of mirrors, where nothing is what it appears. The CIA recruits people to spy on al-Qaida and militant groups. So does the ISI. Often, they recruit the same people. That means the CIA must constantly consider where a spy's allegiance lies: With the U.S.? With Pakistan? With the enemy?

Pakistan rarely — if at all — has used its double agents to feed the CIA bad information, the former U.S. officials said. Rather, the agents were just gathering intelligence on American operations, seeing how the CIA responded and how information flowed.

Former CIA officials say youth and inexperience among a new generation of American officers may have contributed to the difficulties of operating in the tribal regions, where the U.S. is spending a massive amount of money to cultivate sources.

After the 2001 terrorist attacks, the CIA dispatched many young officers to Pakistan and Afghanistan to recruit al-Qaida spies. Young officers sometimes unwittingly recruited people who had been on Pakistan's payroll for years, all but inviting Pakistan to use their longtime spies as double agents, former CIA officials said.

The Pakistanis "are steeped in that area," Fuller said. "They would be tripping over a lot of the same people."

Many former CIA officials believe a lack of experience among agency officers led to the bombing in Khost, Afghanistan, last year that killed seven CIA employees. The CIA thought it had a source who could provide information about al-Qaida's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who was believed to be hiding in the tribal lands. But the person turned out to be a double agent wired with explosives.

Ironically, the CIA steered the source to Khost because officers were concerned ISI would spot him if they brought him to Islamabad for questioning or possibly even arrest him because he was an undocumented Arab.

But inexperience isn't always the problem.

One example of how the suspicious relationship constrains operations was the CIA's base in the remote town of Miram Shah in North Waziristan. U.S. military and CIA officers worked with the ISI together there, under the protection of the Pakistani army, which kept the base locked down.

The two intelligence agencies sometimes conducted joint operations against al-Qaida but rarely shared information, a former CIA officer said. Haqqani spies were well aware the CIA was working there, and the base frequently took mortar and rocket fire.

Two former CIA officers familiar with the base said the Americans there mainly exercised and "twiddled their thumbs." Just getting out of the base was so difficult, U.S. personnel gave it the nickname "Shawshank" after the prison in the movie "The Shawshank Redemption."

The CIA closed the base last year for safety reasons. None of that tension ever spilled into the public eye. It's the nature of intelligence-gathering.

___

Associated Press writers Sebastian Abbott and Kathy Gannon in Pakistan contributed to this report

May 24, 2010
Afghan Spy Agency Accuses Pakistan Agency in Suicide Bombing
By ROD NORDLAND and ABDUL WAHEED WAFA
KABUL, Afghanistan — A spokesman for Afghanistan’s intelligence agency on Monday accused Pakistan’s intelligence agency of involvement in the suicide bombing here last week that killed six NATO soldiers, including four colonels.

While Saeed Ansari, the spokesman for the National Directorate of Security, Afghanistan’s spy agency, did not mention the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency by name, he left no doubt of what he meant.

The remarks came in a news conference announcing the arrest of seven people suspected of organizing the attack last Tuesday, in which a suicide bomber drove a minivan full of explosives into a convoy of armored S.U.V.’s. The blast killed 18 people, including a Canadian and an American colonel, 2 American lieutenant colonels and their 2 American drivers, as well as 12 Afghan civilians.

The seven were also charged with involvement in other suicide attacks in Kabul that killed another 25 people.

“All the explosions and terrorist attacks by these people were plotted from the other side of the border and most of the explosives and materials used for the attacks were brought from the other side to Afghanistan,” Mr. Ansari said.

“Of course, when we say that those attacks were plotted from the other side of the border, the intelligence service of our neighboring country has definitely had its role in equipping and training of this group,” Mr. Ansari said.

Afghan officials have frequently accused the Pakistani intelligence agency of supporting the Afghan Taliban and have voiced suspicions about the agency’s role in Taliban suicide attacks on Indian targets in Kabul. In February, suicide bombers attacked two guesthouses popular with Indians, killing 16 people, and in 2008 a suicide bombing of the Indian Embassy killed 41 people.

The seven suspects, all Afghans ranging in age from 21 to 45, lived in Kabul, and included a schoolteacher, a taxi driver and a trading company employee. One was identified as the second in command of the Taliban suicide bombing cell. Mr. Ansari said they had been arrested in the past week but did not say how the authorities managed to arrest them so quickly. Their commander, he said, was a man known as Dawood, the Taliban’s shadow governor for Kabul.

In addition to the attack on the NATO convoy, the suspects were involved in the attack on the guesthouses in February, he said. Mr. Ansari released names and photos of the suspects as well as videotaped confessions.

In the confessions, each a few minutes long, the men admitted having various roles in the attacks, from providing vehicles to storing explosives. They said the attacks had been organized while they were in the Pakistani city of Peshawar. They did not explicitly implicate the Pakistani I.S.I. or Pakistani officials in their plot, but said they belonged to the Taliban, and had organized their attack from the group’s clandestine offices in Peshawar.

Mr. Ansari did not explain what evidence the Afghan spy agency had of Pakistani involvement in the suicide bombings.

On Monday an Afghan court convicted the former treasurer of the Ministry of Hajj and Religious Affairs, Muhammad Noor, of taking bribes and putting more than half a million dollars into his private bank accounts, allegedly to transfer it to his boss, the acting minister, Sediq Chakari.

Mr. Chakari was dismissed from his ministerial post in December and is believed to be in exile in Britain; he has dual British-Afghan citizenship.

The court sentenced Mr. Noor to 15 years in jail and ordered him to repay 41 million afghanis, about $900,000, to the government.

During the proceedings, Mr. Noor claimed the money in his accounts was his personal property, but the prosecutor noted that civil servants of his rank earn $200 a month.

The ministry helps finance those going on the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.

Sharifullah Sahak contributed reporting

"IL SOLE 24 ORE" PARLA DI "PAKISTAN, IL SANTUARIO DI AL QAIDA"

http://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/SoleOnLine4/Tempo%20libero%20e%20Cultura/2010/05/libri-pakistan-santuario-al-qaida.shtml?uuid=d246b2a4-5e9b-11df-9173-01a2af354a3e&DocRulesView=Libero

Pakistan, il santuario di Al Qaida su "Il Giornale" del 12 maggio

Pakistani officials know where Osama bin Laden hiding: Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, has accused Pakistani government officials of knowing where Osama bin Laden and leaders of the Afghan Taliban are hiding.

 

Rob Crilly, in Islamabad
Published: 5:14PM BST 11 May 2010

Osama bin Laden: Hillary Clinton claims Pakistani officials know where he is hidingPhoto: AFP/Getty Images

Western officials have repeatedly questioned the determination of Pakistan to tackle militants, a problem which has taken on added significance following the arrest of Faisal Shahzad, accused of trying to detonate a bomb in Times Square.

American officials believe his plot was backed by the Pakistan Taliban increasing pressure on the Islamabad government to strike against the armed groups.

 

Related Articles

• Pakistan's President says Osama bin Laden could be dead

• Nowhere to hide from the killing

• US privately backs Pakistan's 'Sharia law for peace' deal with Taliban

• Bin Laden thought to be hiding in Pakistani tribal region

• Pakistan launches 'full-scale' offensive on Taliban in Waziristan

• General Petraeus lays groundwork for success in Afghanistan

Mrs Clinton said: "I'm not saying that they're at the highest levels, but I believe that somewhere in this government are people who know where Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda is, where Mullah Omar and the leadership of the Afghan Taliban is, and we expect more co-operation to help us bring to justice, capture or kill those who attacked us on 9/11."

Her comments, are the latest sign of difficult relations between the two countries in the wake of the Times Square bomb plot.

Last week a documentary claimed that bin Laden was alive and well and living in Tehran, where he was learning falconry. However, during a visit to the US, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, responded by saying the al-Qaeda leader was in fact hiding in Washington.

American drone aircraft pounded targets in Pakistan's North Waziristan region, an al-Qaeda and Taliban sanctuary.

Pakistani security officials said at least 14 militants were killed.

It was the third missile strike since the failed attempt to explode a car bomb in Times Square last weekend.

The presence of militant havens has become a headache for Pakistan, which at different times has used Islamist groups to further its foreign policy.

Its military and intelligence services helped set up and equip the Afghan Taliban. They also have backed Jihadi groups in Kashmir fighting Indian forces.

Farhatullah Babar, spokesman for the President of Pakistan, dismissed Mrs Clinton's claims.

"If there were officials who knew where bin Laden was, I can assure you that he would not be a free man," he said.

"The fact is that at the moment we don't even know if he's alive or dead."

The government in Islamabad has insisted it is trying to tackle its home-grown militants. Officials point out the Pakistani civilians and military personnel bear the brunt of attacks, with hundreds of deaths each year.

Failed N.Y. attack highlights mistrust that still marks U.S.-Pakistani relations
By Pamela Constable and Karin Brulliard
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, May 11, 2010; A08 

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN -- Despite what U.S. and Pakistani officials call a marked improvement in cooperation, the attempted Times Square bombing has highlighted the mistrust that still plagues their partnership.
U.S. officials have praised Pakistan for its swift work in tracing Pakistani American suspect Faisal Shahzad's local ties as well as its ongoing military operations against the domestic Taliban, but they also want the nation to do more to curb other extremist groups that preach jihad and offer help to would-be terrorists.
U.S. allegations Sunday that Shahzad received help from Pakistani Taliban militants in the country's northwest also seem likely to put pressure on Pakistan to launch army operations in the tribal region of North Waziristan. Until now, army leaders have resisted, partly because troops are bogged down in other anti-Taliban actions and partly because an offensive could turn friendly local fighters against the state.
A Pakistani security official said senior officials are contemplating an offensive in North Waziristan because the Pakistani Taliban is gaining strength there and more-malleable militant groups are losing control. He said that Pakistani thinking on North Waziristan has nothing to do with the attempted New York attack but rather that the presence of "terrorists" there is "a huge problem that needs to be addressed." He gave no timetable for an offensive.
Many Pakistanis have condemned the attempted bombing, saying Shahzad's alleged actions were un-Islamic and hurt both countries. But in editorials, sermons and protests, activists have blamed the West for spotlighting Pakistan as a source of terrorism because of one incident.
The Nation newspaper, an outlet for nationalist views, declared, "It is crystal clear that the U.S. government is always behind such planted arrests." On Sunday, thousands of supporters of the Jamaat-e-Islami religious party protested in Karachi. Several said they were sure Shahzad had been set up by the CIA. "He's an innocent person. They want to interlink Faisal Shahzad and the Taliban and create a conspiracy against Pakistan," said Fahad Kashif Iqbal, 20, a student.
Some Pakistani officials have lent credence to such theories or have sought to explain the attempted attack as a reaction to U.S. policy. Interior Minister Rehman Malik said initially that before cooperating with the United States, "one has to see, is it some conspiracy against Pakistan?" Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said the attempted bombing could have been a response to U.S. drone attacks in the Pakistani tribal areas.
Although most experts and politicians dismissed the conspiracy theories, they too complained that the incident has tarred Pakistan's reputation. Mushahid Hussain, a leader of the political opposition, said the tendency to link Pakistan with "anything bad, anywhere in the world," was very damaging to his country's image. "It's Pakistan-bashing season," he said.
Adding to the sense of indignation were televised comments made by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on the CBS program "60 Minutes" on Sunday night. Clinton warned that Pakistan would face "severe consequences" if a future terrorist attack on U.S. soil were traced back to Pakistan.
"Clinton's statement and threatening tone will revive Pakistani fears that no matter how much we do, it won't be enough," said Rifaat Hussain, a professor of defense and strategic studies at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad. "Pakistan has bent over backwards to cooperate on this case. My question is, what more can we do?"
Hussain said that army leaders have made it clear they "mean business" about defeating the Taliban but that they want to control the "timing and details" of their operations. "There is always an element of doubt and mistrust when it comes to sharing strategic intelligence, but there is no doubt about the strategic intent," he said.
Yet recent events have muddled that argument, including reports that even as Pakistani authorities won U.S. praise for arresting a Taliban leader in Karachi this year, they allowed several others to escape. Experts said the intelligence services remain sympathetic to domestic extremist groups they once sponsored to fight foreign wars, while civilian leaders have hesitated to challenge them.
On Friday, the leader of a front group for the banned anti-India militia Lashkar-i-Taiba delivered a ringing sermon in a mosque in Lahore. Hafiz Sayeed, once held under house arrest for alleged links to the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, declared that "every terrorist attack attributed to Pakistan is just an attempt to pave the way for the nefarious designs" of the West.
The shifting, sometimes contradictory actions of Pakistani state agencies have long bedeviled U.S. anti-terror efforts and bilateral relations.
Rather than developing a unified plan and message to combat Islamist extremism, the government has multiple agendas and speaks with many voices, confusing both its Western allies and its Muslim populace.
"When one Pakistani American goes the al-Qaeda way, all the dirt falls on Pakistan, but the challenge is much larger than one individual's actions," said Imtiaz Gul, an expert on Islamist extremism in Pakistan. "We need the will to fight these groups. We need to develop a counter-radicalization strategy, but everything is driven by expedience."
Constable reported from Islamabad and Lahore. Brulliard reported from Karachi. Special correspondent Shaiq Hussain reported from Islamaba

FOXNews.com

 - May 10, 2010

Clinton Accuses Pakistani Officials of Holding Back on Bin Laden Intelligence

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused members of the Pakistani government over the weekend of practically harboring Usama bin Laden, raising questions about whether the U.S. is pushing hard enough on its presumed ally to give up the world's most wanted terrorist. 

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused members of the Pakistani government over the weekend of practically harboring Usama bin Laden, raising questions about whether the U.S. is pushing hard enough on its presumed ally to give up the world's most wanted terrorist. 

Clinton leveled the charge in an interview on CBS' "60 Minutes." She praised Pakistan for a "sea change" in its commitment in going after terrorists, but she added that she expects more cooperation. 

"I'm not saying that they're at the highest levels, but I believe that somewhere in this government are people who know where Usama bin Laden and Al Qaeda is, where Mullah Omar and the leadership of the Afghan Taliban is, and we expect more cooperation to help us bring to justice, capture or kill those who attacked us on 9/11," she said. 

The allegation that Pakistani officials know more about terrorists' comings and goings than they're letting on is not new, but Clinton's blunt accusation seemed to go a step further. The comment, not surprisingly, drew widespread attention in the Indian press -- an article in the Times of India on Monday called it a "blistering attack on Pakistan's long and covert association with terrorism." 

Rep. Charles Dent, R-Pa., a member of the House Homeland Security subcommittee on intelligence, said the ties have been pretty "well-established." But he said Monday that if the administration has "solid intelligence" that Pakistani officials know where bin Laden's hiding, then the U.S. should seriously consider withholding aid until they spill that information. 

"We have leverage," Dent said. "We are providing substantial aid to Pakistan and that aid can be granted or withheld depending on the circumstances." 

Lawmakers last year approved a massive $7.5 billion, five-year non-military aid package for Pakistan, despite concerns at the time about whether the country was doing enough to assist the fight against Al Qaeda. 

Rep. Edward Royce, R-Calif., ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on terrorism, said he understands that Pakistan's military is in a genuine campaign against insurgents inside its borders. But he said the local government needs to do more, like complement that effort by cracking down on schools that teach a radical brand of Islam. He, too, said Clinton and the administration can back up their charges by going after U.S. funding, as well as World Bank and International Monetary Fund aid. 

"The United States has been routinely suckered by the government in Pakistan," Royce said. "We can say we will cut that (funding) off unless we get these changes." 

Clinton made the Pakistan accusation at the same time the Obama administration revealed that the investigation into the Times Square bombing attempt showed suspect Faisal Shahzad was working at the direction of the Pakistani Taliban. Shahzad's father also happened to be the former vice chief of Pakistan's air force. 

The Times Square case raised further concern about the prominence of Pakistan as a staging ground for attacks against Western targets. Colorado resident Najibullah Zazi, who was arrested last year and pleaded guilty to plotting to bomb the New York subway system, revealed during questioning that he received his training from Al Qaeda in Pakistan. 

Clinton tried to answer concerns about Pakistan's commitment in the "60 Minutes" interview, suggesting she did not want to meddle and alienate the Pakistani government at a time when the country's military is complementing U.S. efforts across the border in Afghanistan. 

"I have to stand up for the efforts the Pakistani government is taking," Clinton said. 

But she offered a stern warning in reference to the Times Square case. 

"We've made it very clear that, if, heaven forbid, that an attack like this, if we can trace back to Pakistan, were to have been successful, there would be very severe consequences," she said. 

Other administration members were not quite so critical of the Pakistani government in interviews Sunday. 

Attorney General Eric Holder told ABC's "This Week" that Pakistan has been "cooperative" and "extremely aggressive" in the Shahzad investigation and that, "We don't have any indication that the Pakistani government was aware of his plans or the attack that was planned by the Pakistani Taliban." 

White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, speaking on "Fox News Sunday," echoed Holder's comments about Pakistan's cooperation in the Shahzad investigation. 

Asked to elaborate on Clinton's remarks, he said the administration does intend to continue pressuring Pakistan. 

"We've been working very closely with the Pakistanis to make sure that we're able to utilize our intelligence resources that we have, so we can find out where they are, capture them, arrest them, interrogate them," Brennan said. "They need to maintain the pressure on all of these groups. There are no militant or terrorist groups in Pakistan that should be allowed to continue there ... and we need to make sure that there's no support being given to them by the Pakistani government." 

He said the Pakistanis "understand the seriousness of this."

LA PRESENTAZIONE DEL LIBRO A MILANO

Giovedì 13 maggio alle 18.30 alla Mondadori di via Marghera, 28 a Milano 

MONICA MAGGIONI (Tg1) e il generale NICOLO' POLLARI  (ex direttore Sismi)

presentano 

"PAKISTAN, IL SANTUARIO DI AL QAIDA"

Partecipa Gian Micalessin,  introduce e presenta Vichi Festa

Thursday, May. 06, 2010

Did a French Kickback Scheme Lead to a Car Bombing in Pakistan?

By Bruce Crumley / Paris

The car bomb that rocked the streets of Karachi, Pakistan, on May 8, 2002, claimed 14 lives, but its continued reverberations in France threaten to claim victims of another sort entirely. A new French book delves into the Franco-Pakistani military contract that took the 11 French nationals who died in the bombing to Karachi in the first place. And along the way, it reinforces some dark suspicions: that the attack was the deadly implosion of a complex kickback scheme that allegedly implicates some of France's top political leaders — possibly even President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Written by investigative journalists Fabrice Arfi and Fabrice Lhomme, The Contract examines documents linked to the nearly $1 billion contract signed in 1994 committing France to selling three Agosta submarines to Pakistan. Those records, and interviews with people involved with the sale, confirm one previously reported detail: that the deal stipulated the payment of nearly $40 million to intermediaries for distribution to Pakistani officials who helped secure the accord. French laws didn't prohibit such kickbacks until 2000. What was illegal then, however, was the use of so-called retro-commissions, which involved skimming money off outgoing kickbacks for payment back to French officials — a setup that the book claims was part of the Agosta deal. More importantly, however, the book's premise dovetails with the leading theory in an official inquiry being carried out by French justice officials: that the Karachi bombing, which was officially blamed on jihadists, could have been retaliation by members of Pakistan's military and political elite who were infuriated by newly elected French President Jacques Chirac's order in 1995 to end the payment of kickbacks. (Read "Did Pakistani Spies Kill 11 French Naval Engineers?")

"The official Pakistani conclusion that Islamist extremists were responsible doesn't stand up to scrutiny — and even Pakistani courts have acquitted everyone initially charged in the bombing," says a French security official with knowledge of the case. "The thesis that Pakistani officials finally decided to avenge themselves once they realized France really wasn't going to hand over money they'd been promised isn't established as fact. But it is the most plausible theory there is, now that jihadists are ruled out."

That theory brings up a lot of questions, including, Why did Chirac decide to halt what were legal, contracted commissions destined for Pakistani authorities? According to The Contract, it was because he was unhappy about who was benefiting from the retro-commissions. The book — whose excerpts were printed Wednesday in the newsweekly l'Express ahead of a May 19 publication — includes interviews with former French Cabinet members who suggest that money from the Agosta deal was eventually paid back to fund the presidential campaign of then Prime Minister Edouard Balladur. Balladur flatly denies those allegations. (See pictures of Pakistan beneath the surface.)

The context in which the allegations arose was Balladur's decision to surf his mounting popularity to run as a conservative rival to the right's standard-bearer, Chirac, in the 1995 presidential race. In doing so, he took with him the support of many lifelong Chirac loyalists, including Sarkozy, who served as Balladur's Economy Minister and, later, campaign manager. Furious at such a betrayal, the book says, Chirac, upon winning the election, sought to force Balladur and his backers into a political wilderness, and tried to further weaken any future challenges from them by choking off their finances. In responding to similar reports in the French press last week, Balladur said "nothing [in them] corresponds to the truth, and nothing is supported by facts," and refuted them as "a fabric of improbabilities and absurdities." When the inquiry into the Karachi bombing first brought up the theory last year that the attack could have been a reprisal for kickback payments having been halted — a theory that sparked media speculation that Balladur may have benefited from retro-commissions — Sarkozy hotly rejected it as "ridiculous [and] grotesque," asking, "Who would ever believe such a tale?"

See TIME's Pictures of the Week.

See the Cartoons of the Week.

To support its thesis, The Contract quotes former Defense Minister Charles Millon, who says Chirac ordered him to scour military contracts and block payments going to people viewed as allied with Balladur. Millon says he also used secret services to trace retro-commission money to bank accounts in five European countries — but he won't identify those who benefited from them, saying, "I don't feel like taking a bullet" for doing so. (See pictures of Sarkozy's visit to the U.S.)

Former Chirac chief of staff and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin is more pointed in the book in maintaining that money from the Agosta sale found its way back to Balladur. But like Millon, he refuses to make full accusations or substantiate his partial allegations. De Villepin is quoted as saying, "Chirac didn't give Millon [those] instructions without any evidence." De Villepin also says in the book that "perhaps there wasn't any material proof, but there was lots of evidence" of retro-commissions to the Balladur camp, including "phone tapping, lots of phone tapping" that revealed "ministers themselves [speaking] about Balladur and his financing. There was no ambiguity."

But also no smoking gun or any other damning proof — legal or journalistic. And that's a vital fact for many Balladur allies, foremost among them Sarkozy. Having worked with Balladur between 1994 and 1995, the book notes, Sarkozy would have had full knowledge of the details in the Agosta sale and the provenance of the funds financing Balladur's presidential bid. That's significant because Marc Trévidic, the investigating magistrate who is heading the inquiry into the Karachi bombing, reasons that anyone who had knowledge of the entire setup would presumably have had suspicions that the attack that killed the 11 French nationals — all naval engineers working on the submarines — was a retaliatory act for the halting of kickbacks. If so, logic holds that they would have passed their suspicions on to investigators who were focused on following the jihadist trail. (See pictures in "A Jihadist's Journey.")

But the revenge theory only arose last year, when Trévidic came across documents detailing the Agosta sale and spoke with officials who confirmed payments to facilitators. Some of those officials told him they'd suspected the attack was retaliation from the start. And that has played a big part in stoking speculation that officials of the time failed to air similar suspicions out of fear that the investigation would dig up evidence of their receiving retro-commissions.

Cabinet members of that era who have commented on the allegations — including Balladur — have denied them out of hand. After an article in the dailyLibération last week suggested that Balladur's campaign had benefited from suspicious funds that could have been Agosta retro-commissions, he flatly denied the allegations. For good measure, Balladur also gave testimony at his own request to a special parliamentary panel looking into the case, in which he again denied all wrongdoing. The Elysée, meanwhile, has given no response to The Contract and its accounts. (Read "Where's Sarkozy? New Low Profile for French Leader.")

That leaves the affair in a standoff of suspicion, accusation and refutation. Without hard evidence, the retro-commission scheme remains a speculative link to the unproven theory that the Karachi bombing grew out of denied kickbacks. It's a titillating story, but, so far, it's only conjecture. If anyone manages to complete the financial circle back to the former government, however, it would prove explosive for France's entire political establishment.

In Pakistan, ex-spy Khalid Khawaja's killing is surrounded by mystery
By Karin Brulliard
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, May 3, 2010; A09 

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN -- Shrouded in white, the spy's bullet-riddled body was buried Sunday, and with it clues to a cloak-and-dagger mystery gripping Pakistan.
The funeral was for Khalid Khawaja, 58, a former Pakistani intelligence agent who journeyed last month to the militant-controlled borderlands of North Waziristan, only to be killed by a little-known insurgent group that accused him of working for the CIA and its Pakistani counterpart.
That is where this whodunit becomes more of a why-done-it. Khawaja placed himself solidly in the anti-American, pro-Taliban camp. So did his traveling companion, a fellow ex-spy and U.S- trained Taliban architect with the nom de guerre Colonel Imam.
"How could the mujaheddin kill their supporter?" asked Mohammed Zahid, 45, an engineer who was among a modest crowd standing under a baking mid-morning sun at the funeral.
The answer, according to emerging clues and security analysts, is that North Waziristan, once a hub of Taliban fighters with links to Pakistan's military, has evolved into a stewpot of militant groups, each with different loyalties. Old Taliban ties may have meant little to the Asian Tigers, the group that said it killed Khawaja and is thought to be a Punjab-rooted organization battling the Pakistani state.
"Fiefdoms have been formed," said Saad Muhammad, a retired general based in the northwestern city of Peshawar. "It's an area which is almost totally out of control of the state, and even the local Taliban leaders."
Those messy alliances make it increasingly difficult to decipher who is on whose side.
Khawaja, a onetime squadron leader in Pakistan's air force who claimed ties to Osama bin Laden, was long a go-between for militants and military. Recently, he became a legal adviser to five Virginia men accused of terrorism in Pakistan; in a March interview, he said they had been framed by the U.S. government.
Still, many Pakistani militants loathed Khawaja for his role during a 2007 military siege of an Islamabad mosque, during which he allegedly set up a radical cleric's arrest by convincing him to try to escape while disguised in a burqa.
But that same cleric, Abdul Aziz, said the prayer at the funeral on Sunday, and then said in an interview that Khawaja was "a person who always fought for his religion."
Deepening the ambiguity is the involvement of Colonel Imam, whose real name is Sultan Amir Tarar and who boasts even stronger militant credentials than Khawaja. In the 1970s and 1980s, Tarar ran CIA-funded camps for fighters resisting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Among his backers was the late U.S. congressman Charlie Wilson (D-Tex.) and among his charges was Mohammad Omar, who in the mid-1990s became leader of the Taliban.
Trained in guerrilla tactics at Fort Bragg, N.C., Tarar is now among the retired Pakistani intelligence agents suspected by Western officials of continuing to assist the Afghan Taliban. He denied that in a recent interview with the Times of London, but said he was "happy with the current situation because the Americans are trapped there."
Omar, he said, "is a very reasonable man."
But Omar, who still leads the Afghan Taliban, is not based in North Waziristan. That has long been the domain of the Afghan Taliban's Sirajuddin Haqqani and the Pakistani Taliban's Hafiz Gul Bahadur, both of whom have tacit peace deals with the Pakistani army. Recently, however, a military operation in neighboring South Waziristan pushed fighters who attack state forces to the north, and Punjab-based splinter factions have also set up shop in North Waziristan.
Accounts vary wildly about what Khawaja and Tarar -- who also were accompanied by a filmmaker -- intended to do in that thorny region. Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg, a former Pakistani Army chief, said at Khawaja's funeral that they wanted to make a documentary. Khawaja's son told Pakistani television that his father intended to broker a peace deal between the military and Pakistani Taliban forces that attack inside the country.
The killers, however, said Khawaja was a spy. Tarar and the filmmaker, meanwhile, remain captives.
"There was a time when you could take the name of Colonel Imam and go anywhere," a senior Pakistani intelligence official said in an interview. "That was a long time back."
With much of the case still a mystery, Pakistanis are filling in the blanks themselves. As often happens, many point fingers far beyond the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
At the funeral, Beg said Islamist militants could not possibly be the killers. The name "Asian Tigers," he said, "smells of the south of India." At the same time, he said, the United States wants Pakistan to take on militants in North Waziristan, which gives them a motive to instigate turmoil there.
Usama Khawaja, the ex-spy's son, simply said it was "surely a conspiracy." Beyond that, he was stumped.
"My father," he said, "had many secrets in his chest."

Special correspondents Shaiq Hussain and Haq Nawaz Khan contributed to this repor