IL BLOG DEL LIBRO DI GIAN MICALESSIN PUBBLICATO DA BOROLI EDITORE
Un avvincente viaggio nei complotti dei servizi segreti pakistani che negli anni 80 aiutano la resistenza anti-sovietica in Afghanistan per conto della Cia alimentando, al tempo stesso la nascita di un’internazionale islamica ferocemente antioccidentale. Il racconto di come spie, generali e scienziati di Islamabad rubano il nucleare all’Occidente, costruiscono la prima atomica islamica e ne rivendono i segreti a Iran, Libia e Corea del Nord. Una spy story lunga 30 anni ambientata nel paese dove Osama Bin Laden fonda Al Qaida. Un libro fondamentale per comprendere le mosse di servizi segreti e apparati deviati che minacciano di distruggere il Pakistan e consegnare i suoi arsenali nucleari al terrore integralista.

mercoledì 7 luglio 2010

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».

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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

martedì 25 maggio 2010

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

mercoledì 12 maggio 2010

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.

 
Osama bin Laden
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.
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.


martedì 11 maggio 2010

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