All Entries Tagged With: "pakistan"

Huge Protest in Pakistan Against US Drone Attacks | Common Dreams

‘Drones are counter-productive’

Over 100,000 Pakistanis rallied in Karachi Friday afternoon to protest US drone strikes on their country. The demonstrators also demanded that the Pakistani government continue the blockade on the NATO supply route to Afghanistan.

The Times of India reports:

DAVOS — Pakistan’s prime minister said today that there was “a trust deficit” between Islamabad and Washington as he criticized the resumption of US drone strikes on his country’s tribal belt.

Speaking the day after over 100,000 people massed in Karachi to protest the strikes, Yousuf Raza Gilani said they only served to bolster militants.

“Drones are counter-productive. We have very ably isolated militants from the local tribes. When there are drone attacks that creates sympathy for them again,” Gilani told reporters at the Davos forum.

Full Story Here: Huge Protest in Pakistan Against US Drone Attacks | Common Dreams.

Officials: U.S. missiles kill Germans in Pakistan

Eight people were killed in a U.S. drone attack near the Afghanistan border on Monday evening, official sources told NBC News.

The unpiloted aircraft fired three missiles and struck a home built on a market at Mir Ali bazaar, the second largest town in North Waziristan, after Miramshah, which is the main town of the restive tribal region.

Some security officials in the area said five among the victims were German nationals.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a security official said that some German nationals, associated with foreign militants, were living in the house.

Full Story: Officials: U.S. missiles kill Germans in Pakistan – World news – South and Central Asia – Pakistan – msnbc.com.

Security stepped up at Kabul Bank

Armed police in pick-up trucks have been stationed outside the main branch of Kabul Bank as customers continue to withdraw money amid fears the Afghan bank may collapse.

Barbed wire has also been placed across the road to hold back the crowds.

The run on the bank began earlier this week after allegations of corruption and mismanagement, although officials have maintained the bank will not fail.

Meanwhile the US Treasury has denied it is preparing to bail out the bank.

“While we are providing technical assistance to the Afghan government, no American taxpayer funds will be used to support Kabul Bank,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin said.

Full Story: BBC News – Security stepped up at Kabul Bank.

Why The Unfolding Disaster in Pakistan Should Concern You

Robert Reich:

The human tragedy unfolding in Pakistan right now demands our full attention.

Flooding there has already stranded 20 million people, more than 10 percent of the population. A fifth of the nation is underwater. More than 3.5 million children are in imminent danger of contracting cholera and acute diarrhea; millions more are in danger of starving if they don’t get help soon. More than 1,500 have already been killed by the floods.

This is a human disaster.

It’s also a frightening opening for the Taliban.

Yet so far only a trickle of aid has gotten through. As of today (Thursday), the U.S. has pledged $150 million, along with 12 helicopters to take food and material to the victims. (Other rich nations have offered even less – the U.K., $48.5 million; Japan, $10 million, and France, a measly $1 million. Today (Thursday), Hillary Clinton is speaking at the UN, seeking more.)

Full Story: Robert Reich (Why The Unfolding Disaster in Pakistan Should Concern You).

Poll: Nearly 6 in 10 Pakistanis view US as enemy

Despite billions in aid from Washington and a shared threat from extremists, Pakistanis have an overwhelmingly negative view of the United States, according to results of a Pew Research Center poll released Thursday.

The survey also found that Pakistanis have grown less fearful of extremists seizing control of their country, perhaps reflecting gains that government troops have made against militants since early 2009.

Most Pakistanis want improved relations with the United States, according to the poll. But most view the U.S. with suspicion, support for American involvement in the fight against extremists has declined, and nearly two-thirds want U.S. troops out of neighboring Afghanistan.

Full Story: Poll: Nearly 6 in 10 Pakistanis view US as enemy | Raw Story.

Kucinich, Ron Paul: Get US troops out of Pakistan

Two US lawmakers — a Republican and a Democrat — proposed a bill this week demanding the withdrawal of all US troops in Pakistan, where they are conducting covert operations against militants.

“We have known that US forces have been operating in secret inside the territories of Pakistan without congressional approval,” Democratic Representative Dennis Kucinich said Friday, pointing to reports the United States was stepping up its presence there.

He said the House of Representatives was expected to take up the resolution next week. The measure was introduced late Thursday.

Full Story: Kucinich, Ron Paul: Get US troops out of Pakistan | Raw Story.

Benazir Bhutto ‘left to mercy of assassins by security chief’

The former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was left to the mercy of her assassins by her security chief who abandoned her in the minutes before her death, a key witness has told the United Nations inquiry into her death.

Chaudhry Mohummad Aslam, one of Ms Bhutto’s protocol officers who was guarding her vehicle when she was shot, said that Pakistan’s interior minister Rehman Malik and current law minister Babar Awan were to blame for security lapses which allowed her killers to strike.

Ms Bhutto was killed on December 27, 2007 as she left an election campaign rally in Rawalpindi’s Liaqat Bagh. She was standing through the sunroof of her Pajero jeep waving to supporters as she left the venue when she was shot through the head by a marksman. She slumped down into the car and died in the arms of her political secretary Naheed Khan. An explosion which followed the gunfire left more than 20 people dead.

Full Story: Benazir Bhutto ‘left to mercy of assassins by security chief’ – Telegraph.

U.S. officials say Pakistani spy agency released Afghan Taliban insurgents

The recent capture of the Afghan Taliban’s second in command seemed to signal a turning point in Pakistan, an indication that its intelligence agency had gone from helping the militant Islamist group to cracking down on it.

But U.S. officials now think that even as Pakistan’s security forces worked with their American counterparts to detain Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and other insurgents, the country’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, or ISI, quietly freed at least two senior Afghan Taliban figures it had captured on its own.

U.S. military and intelligence officials said the releases, detected by American spy agencies but not publicly disclosed, are evidence that parts of Pakistan’s security establishment continue to support the Afghan Taliban. This assistance underscores how complicated the CIA-ISI relationship remains at a time when the United States and Pakistan are battling insurgencies that straddle the Afghanistan border and are increasingly anxious about how the war in that country will end.

Full Story: U.S. officials say Pakistani spy agency released Afghan Taliban insurgents.

All the Things You Didn’t Know About Pakistan

Here’s a quick primer on the world’s most misunderstood and demonized country — and one to which the United States is inextricably tied.

Since 2005, the people of Pakistan, no strangers to upheaval, have been suffering near-constant food and water shortages, rampant power-outages and bodily harm as formerly peaceful cities are besieged by extremist violence. All the while, American leadership continues to direct criticism and threats at the troubled nation, allocating most of its monetary aid for Pakistan to its army, and openly endorsing India as blameless in the endless brinkmanship between the two equally culpable South Asian nations.

A decade ago, few Americans could say with certainty where Pakistan was geographically, let alone where it fit within geopolitics and global commerce. Despite the country’s well-worn place in the headlines recently, Americans still seem unclear as to how Pakistan came to be among the world’s most prolific exporters of nihilistic political Islam, let alone able to think of it as anything but a terrorist training camp. For Bush et al., this was a good thing.

Following 9/11, neoconservatives in the Bush White House worked overtime to at once demonize and obscure the enemy, which, many felt, was Islam itself. Popular perception began to conflate Afghans and Pakistanis as a monolith of geographies and populations. Seven years and two disastrous wars later, candidate Barack Obama made Pakistan a pillar of his platform, vowing to take that nation in hand if it could not heal itself and stamp out terrorism within its borders.

Full Story: All the Things You Didn’t Know About Pakistan | World | AlterNet.

Lifting the Veil on US Troops in Pakistan

GRITtv with Laura Flanders »

“The deaths of three American soldiers in a Taliban suicide attack on Wednesday lifted the veil on United States military assistance to Pakistan.” So began a Feb 4th piece by Jane Perlez in the New York Times.

But even all these days on, it’s been a very discreet unveiling.

Lest we forget, US servicepeople are not supposed to be dying in Pakistan. It’s not Iraq, it’s not Afghanistan. There’s no agreement for combat troops to operate. Until recently, U.S. officials have repeatedly officially denied having any combat troops in place. This month’s killing exposed that lie — so what were the US troops doing there?

What we’ve learned so far is the soldiers were part of what federal officials say is a small contingent of American soldiers who’ve been training Pakistan’s army for 18 months now.

Full Story GRITtv with Laura Flanders » The F Word: Lifting the Veil on US Troops in Pakistan.

U.S. Says 200 Troops on the Ground in Pakistan

The U.S. military has 200 troops on the ground in Pakistan. That’s about the double the previously-disclosed number of forces there. It’s a whole lot more than the “no American troops in Pakistan” promised by special envoy Richard Holbrooke. And let’s not even get into the number of U.S. intelligence operatives and security contractors on Pakistani soil.

The troop levels are one of a number of details that have emerged about the once-secret U.S. war in Pakistan since three American troops were killed yesterday by an improvised bomb. The New York Times reports that the soldiers were disguised in Pakistani clothing, and their vehicle was outfitted with radio-frequency jammers, meant to stop remotely-detonated bombs. “Still, the Taliban bomber was able to penetrate their cordon. In all 131 people were wounded, most of them girls who were students at a high school adjacent to the site of the suicide attack,” the paper reports.

The military tells the Times that in addition to yesterday’s deaths, “12 other service members had been killed in Pakistan since Sept. 11, 2001.”

Full Story U.S. Says 200 Troops on the Ground in Pakistan | Danger Room | Wired.com.

Pakistan Blast Kills U.S. Troops, Children, Say Local Officials

Pakistan — A roadside bomb killed three U.S. soldiers and partly destroyed a girls’ school in northwest Pakistan on Wednesday in an attack that drew attention to a little-publicized American military training mission in the al-Qaida and Taliban heartland.

They were the first known U.S. military fatalities in Pakistan’s lawless tribal regions near the Afghan border and a major victory for militants who have been hit hard by a surge of U.S. missile strikes and a major Pakistani army offensive.

The blast also killed three schoolgirls and a Pakistani soldier who was traveling with the Americans. Two more U.S. soldiers were wounded, along with more than 100 other people, mostly students at the school, officials said.

Full Story Pakistan Blast Kills U.S. Troops, Children, Say Local Officials.

Blackwater in Pakistan: Gates Confirms

Jeremy Scahill -

On Thursday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates confirmed that Blackwater is operating in Pakistan. In an interview on Express TV, Gates, who was visiting Islamabad, said, “They [Blackwater and another private security firm, DynCorp] are operating as individual companies here in Pakistan,” according to a DoD transcript of the interview. “There are rules concerning the contracting companies. If they’re contracting with us or with the State Department here in Pakistan, then there are very clear rules set forth by the State Department and by ourselves.”

Today, the country’s senior minister for the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), Bashir Bilour, also acknowledged that the company is operating in Pakistan’s frontier areas. Bilour told Pakistan’s Express News TV that Blackwater’s activities were taking place with the “consent and permission” of the Pakistani government, saying he had discussed the issue with officials at the US Consulate in Peshawar, who told him that Blackwater was training Pakistani forces.

When Gates was asked what the US response would be if the Pakistani parliament passed a law banning private security companies, Gates said, “If it’s Pakistani law, we will absolutely comply.”

Full Story Blackwater in Pakistan: Gates Confirms.

Pakistan Rejects U.S. Call To Go After Militants

The Pakistani army said Thursday during a visit by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates that it can’t launch any new offensives against militants for six months to a year to give it time to stabilize existing gains.

The announcement probably comes as a disappointment to the U.S., which has pushed Pakistan to expand its military operations to target militants staging cross-border attacks against coalition troops in Afghanistan. Washington believes such action is critical to success in Afghanistan as it prepares to send an additional 30,000 troops to the country this year.

But the comments by army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas clearly indicate Pakistan will not be pressured in the near term to expand its fight beyond militants waging war against the Pakistani state. Whether it can be convinced in the long term is still an open question.

Full Story Pakistan Rejects U.S. Call To Go After Militants.

UN to withdraw staff from Pakistan

The United Nation is to withdraw a quarter of its international staff from Pakistan as the country descends further into violence.

At least 11 UN workers have been killed in Pakistan in the last year, and over 500 people have died in attacks since the army began an offensive against militants in the Taleban stronghold of South Waziristan in October.

In the latest deadly attack, 44 people were killed on Monday when a suicide bomber attacked a Shiite Muslim religious procession in the southern port city of Karachi.

UN security managers are seeking a reduction f up to 30 percent of its 250 international staff working in Pakistan, an official said, but the final number is expected t be lower

Full Story UN to withdraw staff from Pakistan – Times Online.

Obama May Launch Drone Attacks on Major Pakistani City

Drone attacks may be expanded in Pakistan

U.S. officials seek to push CIA drone strikes into the major city of Quetta to try to pressure Pakistan into pursuing Taliban leaders based there.

Reporting from Washington – Senior U.S. officials are pushing to expand CIA drone strikes beyond Pakistan’s tribal region and into a major city in an attempt to pressure the Pakistani government to pursue Taliban leaders based in Quetta.

The proposal has opened a contentious new front in the clandestine war. The prospect of Predator aircraft strikes in Quetta, a sprawling city, signals a new U.S. resolve to decapitate the Taliban. But it also risks rupturing Washington’s relationship with Islamabad.

The concern has created tension among Obama administration officials over whether unmanned aircraft strikes in a city of 850,000 are a realistic option. Proponents, including some military leaders, argue that attacking the Taliban in Quetta — or at least threatening to do so — is crucial to the success of the revised war strategy President Obama unveiled last week.

Full Story Drone attacks may be expanded in Pakistan — latimes.com.

OPS: Well, they have to practice somewhere before they have to start doing it here

Pakistan fights ‘mother of all battles’ with the Taliban

The tanks, armoured columns and helicopter gunships of Pakistan’s army stormed into South Waziristan, the global headquarters of al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies.

Within hours of leaving their camps early on Saturday morning to fight what is being hailed as the decisive battle in the war against terror, 12 soldiers had been killed in the first ferocious gunfights.

Pakistan’s generals have called the offensive the “mother of all battles” for the survival of a country under siege.

There were reports of Taliban compounds coming under aerial bombardment from Pakistan gunships as troops moved out in three columns from Razmak to the north, Jandola to the east and Shakai in the west, and advanced on notorious Taliban target towns like Makeen and Ladha.

Full Story: Pakistan fights ‘mother of all battles’ with the Taliban – Telegraph.

Major Ground Offensive Begins In Pakistan But Few Expect It To Turn The Tide In The War

More than 30,000 Pakistani soldiers launched a ground offensive against al-Qaida and the Taliban’s main stronghold along the Afghan border Saturday, officials said, in the country’s toughest test yet against a strengthening insurgency.

The United States has long pushed the government to carry out an assault in South Waziristan, and it comes after two weeks of militant attacks that have killed more than 175 people across the nuclear-armed country. That has ramped up pressure on the army to act.

Pakistan has fought three unsuccessful campaigns since 2001 in the region, which is the nerve-center for Pakistani insurgents fighting the U.S.-backed government. It is also a major base for foreign militants to plan attacks on American and NATO forces in Afghanistan and on targets in the West.

Full Story: Major Ground Offensive Begins In Pakistan But Few Expect It To Turn The Tide In The War.

Bomb kills 49 at Pakistani market

Officials believe the attack is the Taliban’s latest response to plans for a military offensive in mountain enclaves.

Reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan – A suicide car bomb tore through a bustling market in the northwestern city of Peshawar on Friday, killing at least 49 people in what appeared to be the Pakistani Taliban’s latest broadside against a government that says it is preparing a significant military offensive against the militants.

The explosion, which also injured more than 100 people, occurred at the Khyber Bazaar in the capital of Pakistan’s violence-racked North-West Frontier Province.

Though there was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, Pakistani officials said they believed it was the work of the Pakistani Taliban. The militant group has vowed to ratchet up suicide attacks in response to the Pakistani government’s preparations for an all-out offensive in South Waziristan, a primary base of operations for the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Full Story: Bomb kills 49 at Pakistani market — latimes.com.

In Pakistan, an exodus that is beyond biblical

In Pakistan, an exodus that is beyond biblical  — - The Independent

Locals sell all they have to help millions displaced by battles with the Taliban

The language was already biblical; now the scale of what is happening matches it. The exodus of people forced from their homes in Pakistan’s Swat Valley and elsewhere in the country’s north-west may be as high as 2.4 million, aid officials say. Around the world, only a handful of war-spoiled countries – Sudan, Iraq, Colombia – have larger numbers of internal refugees. The speed of the displacement at its height – up to 85,000 people a day – was matched only during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. This is now one of the biggest sudden refugee crises the world has ever seen.

Until now, the worst of the problem has been kept largely out of sight. Of the total displaced by the military’s operations against the Taliban – the army yesterday claimed a crucial breakthrough, taking control of the Swat Valley’s main town, Mingora – just 200,000 people have been forced to live in the makeshift tent camps dotted around the southern fringe of the conflict zone. The vast majority were taken in by relatives, extended family members and local people wanting to help.

via In Pakistan, an exodus that is beyond biblical – Asia, World – The Independent.

Sats Show Pakistan Super-Sizing Its Nuclear Weapons Complex

Danger Room What’s Next in National Security

Sats Show Pakistan Super-Sizing Its Nuclear Weapons Complex

Top U.S. officials recently made public concerns that Pakistan may be ramping up its nuclear weapons capability, despite a looming civil war. Now we have some visual evidence: Satellite imagery that appears to show the expansion of Pakistan’s plutonium production program and a possible increase in stocks of weapons-grade uranium.

Commercial satellite images released today by the Institute for Science and International Security — a very credible source for arms control analysis — appear to underscore Pakistan’s determination to increase its supply of fissile material and develop more destructive nuclear weapons. Most worryingly, the report suggests that Pakistan may be on the path to creating thermonuclear weapons that would be more powerful and potentially easier to package in a warhead.

Among the findings: Pakistan appears to have increased its plutonium separation capability at a site near Rawalpindi. According to ISIS, the new construction seems to indicate that Pakistan will be increasing its supply of spent fuel from new heavy water reactors, providing the raw material for separating out fissile plutonium. The country is also apparently expanding a facility at Dera Ghazi Khan that produces uranium hexafluoride and uranium metal, two basic ingredients for producing the bomb.

via Sats Show Pakistan Super-Sizing Its Nuclear Weapons Complex | Danger Room | Wired.com.

Curfew lifts, more flee war-torn Pakistani valley

Curfew lifts, more flee war-torn Pakistani valley

MINGORA, Pakistan — Thousands of fearful civilians _ many on foot or donkey-pulled carts _ streamed out of a conflict-ridden Pakistani valley Sunday as authorities briefly lifted a curfew. The army said it had killed scores of militants in the latest fighting.

Pakistan has urged residents of the Swat Valley to leave over the past week, while its warplanes have pounded the Taliban-held valley and surrounding areas in a U.S.-backed operation the prime minister has called a “war of the country’s survival.”

via Curfew lifts, more flee war-torn Pakistani valley.

Advisor: ‘US Needs to Call off Drone Strikes in Pak’

Advisor: ‘US Needs to Call off Drone Strikes in Pak’

Lahore – The top adviser to the US army chief in Afghanistan, David Kilcullen, has observed that the US drone strikes in Pakistan are creating more enemies than eliminating them, and hence, needed to be “called off.”

Responding to a congressman on what the US government should do in Pakistan, he said: “We need to call off the drones.”

The Daily Times quoted Kilcullen, as saying that he has no objection to killing “bad guys” in Pakistan.

However, he added that the strikes were creating more enemies than they eliminate.

via Advisor: ‘US Needs to Call off Drone Strikes in Pak’ | CommonDreams.org.

Don’t Be Fooled by the Taliban Hysteria in Pakistan: They Aren’t Going to Take Over

OPS:  Here is another perspective

Don’t Be Fooled by the Taliban Hysteria in Pakistan: They Aren’t Going to Take Over

The fear being stoked of Taliban taking over nuclear-armed Pakistan are a ruse to legitimize Obama’s expanding Af-Pak war.

Apocalypse Now. Run for cover. The turbans are coming. This is the state of Pakistan today, according to the current hysteria disseminated by the Barack Obama administration and United States corporate media – from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to The New York Times. Even British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said on the record that Pakistani Talibanistan is a threat to the security of Britain.

But unlike St Petersburg in 1917 or Tehran in late 1978, Islamabad won’t fall tomorrow to a turban revolution.

Pakistan is not an ungovernable Somalia. The numbers tell the story. At least 55% of Pakistan’s 170 million-strong population are Punjabis. There’s no evidence they are about to embrace

via Don’t Be Fooled by the Taliban Hysteria in Pakistan: They Aren’t Going to Take Over | ForeignPolicy | AlterNet.

Pakistan takes revenge for Taliban ‘withdrawal sham’

Pakistan takes revenge for Taliban ‘withdrawal sham’

Fresh military strikes after intercepts disclose strategy of Swat valley militants

Backed by fighter jets and helicopter gunships, Pakistani troops dramatically expanded a military offensive against Taliban hideouts yesterday after fresh evidence emerged of the militants’ determination to extend their reach beyond the Swat valley and towards the capital.

Army chiefs said the operation in Buner, which followed swiftly on the heels of a military bombardment of Lower Dir, was expected to last a week. The aim was to “eliminate and expel” an estimated 500 militants scattered across the strategic valley, which lies just 70 miles north of Islamabad, officials said.

The government of the President Asif Ali Zardari struck a controversial deal in February with the Swat militants, whereby he agreed to impose Sharia law in a vain bid to get the Taliban to lay down their weapons. The accord sparked concern in Washington and London and last week the militants appear to rip it up in any case. They rampaged beyond Swat and into Buner, kidnapping and killing policemen, seizing petrol stations and marble factories and terrorising the local population, before claiming to retreat.

via Pakistan takes revenge for Taliban ‘withdrawal sham’ – Asia, World – The Independent.