Is Pakistan a Friend or Foe?

[varun]

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030929-488779,00.html

Washington has new doubts about one of its most crucial partners in the war on terrorism
By TIM MCGIRK I ISLAMABAD AND MASSIMO CALABRESI I WASHINGTON


Sunday, Sep. 21, 2003
Pakistani generals routinely deny that their army retains any sympathy for the Taliban. But here is a secret they managed to keep quiet for several months. In early summer U.S. soldiers scrambling after Taliban remnants along the craggy mountains of southeastern Afghanistan made a surprising discovery. Among the gang of suspected Taliban agents they nabbed were three men who, it emerged in interrogations, were Pakistani army officers. Authorities in Pakistan clapped the three in a military brig; an official from military intelligence called them "mavericks." But the news of their capture alongside enemy fighters underscored a persistent issue in Washington and Kabul: Whose side, exactly, is Pakistan on? ...

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Dumbya picked the wrong country - Iraq.

[happyslug]

1. Whose side is Pakistan on?

Their own side, which side do you think they would be on?

[LeftistGorilla]

2. hehe...

with friends like Pakistan, The Saudis and Egypt...

who needs enemies?

[LoneStarLiberal]

3. Ahhh...So NOW They Have Doubts...

<slaps head>

[eridani]

6. No shit, Sherlock

http://www.guardian.co.uk/alqaida/story/0,12469,1028044,00.html

That is one of the reasons why, almost two years after the September 11 attacks, Osama bin Laden has yet to be found.

But a Guardian inquiry has revealed that there are others. Experts who have been following the attempts of the Pakistanis and the US to find the al-Qaida leader have suggested that:

· The Pakistani president, General Pervez Musharraf, struck a deal with the US not to seize Bin Laden after the Afghan war for fear of inciting trouble in his own country;
· The al-Qaida leader is being protected by a three elaborate security rings which stretch 120 miles in diameter; and
· The Pakistani special forces looking for him are no closer than they were a year ago.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030908-480226,00.html

Seventeen months ago, the U.S. finally grabbed Zubaydah in Pakistan and has kept him locked up in a secret location ever since. His name has probably faded from most memories. It's about to get back in the news. A new book by Gerald Posner says Zubaydah has made startling revelations about secret connections linking Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and bin Laden.

Yet when Zubaydah was confronted by the false Saudis, writes Posner, "his reaction was not fear, but utter relief." Happy to see them, he reeled off telephone numbers for a senior member of the royal family who would, said Zubaydah, "tell you what to do." The man at the other end would be Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz, a Westernized nephew of King Fahd's and a publisher better known as a racehorse owner. His horse War Emblem won the Kentucky Derby in 2002. To the amazement of the U.S., the numbers proved valid. When the fake inquisitors accused Zubaydah of lying, he responded with a 10-minute monologue laying out the Saudi-Pakistani-bin Laden triangle.

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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&e=3&u=/ap/20030801/ap_on_re_mi_ea/attacks_intelligence

Investigators have traced the funding for the Sept. 11 attacks to al-Qaida accounts in Pakistan, a top FBI (news - web sites)
counterterrorism official told a Senate panel Thursday. Officials did little to clarify the Saudi role in the funding.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?art_id=1454238160

Top sources confirmed here on Tuesday, that the general lost his job because of the "evidence" India produced to show his links to one of the suicide bombers that wrecked the World Trade Centre. The US authorities sought his removal after confirming the fact that $100,000 were wired to WTC hijacker Mohammed Atta from Pakistan by Ahmad Umar Sheikh at the instance of Gen Mahumd.

[cantwealljustgetalong]

4. Pakistan through the US looking glass...

On the eve of the second anniversary of al-Qaeda's terrorist strikes in the US of September 11, the US government declassified 32 documents relating to the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Twenty-six of these documents are of the US State Department, and the remaining are of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) of the Pentagon. This article analyzes the contents of three of the DIA documents only.

...

The analysis carries the most damning account of Pakistan's role as the real host of bin Laden and his al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. It says, "Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network was able to expand under the safe sanctuary extended by the Taliban following Pakistan directives. If there is any doubt on that issue, consider the location of bin Laden's camp targeted by US cruise missiles, Zahawa. Positioned on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, it was built by Pakistani contractors, funded by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate and protected under the patronage of a local and influential Jadran tribal leader, Jalaluddin Haqqani. However, the real host in that facility was the Pakistani ISI. If this was later to become bin Laden's base, then serious questions are raised by the early relationship between bin Laden and Pakistan's ISI."

...

"During the Soviet-Afghan war, the West preferred to maintain a policy of deniability and allowed Pakistan to handle the daily administration of the war, cash and arms distribution. It was a task Pakistan carried out with great enthusiasm and they helped themselves to generous portions of cash and arms. The Pakistan government also had a hidden agenda.

"Unlike the West, they were concerned with what would happen after the war to ensure influence over any government that came to power in Afghanistan after a Soviet withdrawal. Pakistan decided to directly influence the outcome. Rather than allow the most gifted Afghan commanders and parties to flourish, who would be difficult to control later, Pakistan preferred to groom the incompetent ones for the role of future leaders of Afghanistan. Being incompetent, they would be wholly reliant on Pakistan for support. The principal beneficiary of this policy was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. His credentials were that of an anti-Western Islamic fundamentalist.
"In tandem with favoring the incompetent Hekmatyar over more enterprising and gifted commanders such as Ahmed Shah Masoud, the Tadjik commander from northern Afghanistan, Pakistan also encouraged, facilitated and often escorted Arabs from the Middle East into Afghanistan ... visitors from the Middle East had been in evidence since the very early part of the Soviet-Afghan war. However, they lacked numbers, confidence, experience or bonding ties sufficient to give them a separate identity from their hosts.

...

"The Taliban is not synonymous with Afghanistan. It was created, imposed and recognized by Pakistan in pursuit of its own interests. Playing the Islamic fundamentalist card as a means of securing control over a compliant proxy regime in neighboring Afghanistan has seriously backfired. Pakistan has also lost control of the Taliban, who are proving to be both unpredictable and ungrateful. Under the shade of the Taliban umbrella, the bin Laden brand of extremism has been able to grow unmolested inside Afghanistan.

...

"In Islamabad, they have tried to ignore or bury the evidence for some time. It must be a deeply troubling period for General Pervez in Pakistan, who is asked to help hunt down the culprits that he helped to establish and supported. Not to support the US invites trouble and to assist the US to their aims also presents problems to Pakistan. The quandary leaves the Pakistanis confused as to how they might be absolved without permanently shattering their regional aspirations or their government."

...

From these documents, it is clear that the DIA knew of the role of the ISI in the sponsorship of not only the Taliban, but also al-Qaeda. And yet the Bush administration has for over two years chosen to close its eyes to the complicity of Pakistan and to project Musharraf to its own public opinion as well as to the international community as a frontline ally in the war against terrorism. Why? A question to which there has been no convincing answer.


http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/EI20Df03.html

[varun]

5. and this is where $3 billion of US taxpayer's money is going to...

Students of the famous religious intitution Haqqania, where most of the Taliban leadership studied, gathered at a graduation ceremony, in Akora Khattak near Peshawar, Pakistan on Thursday, Sept 25, 2003. School's dean and anti-US, pro-Taliban cleric Samiul Haq criticizes the US war on terrorism in his address, Haq urged the Muslim Ummah (community) to get united in front of the daunting challenges of the time. He said the US government could not eliminate Taliban in Afghanistan (news - web sites) as religious seminaries in Pakistan. (AP Photo/M. Sajjad)



Supporters of Pakistani religious party Jamat-e-Islami, Party of Islam chant anti-U.S. slogans at a rally to codemn arrests of religious students from Malaysia and Indonesia and Myanmar, Thursday, Sept. 25, 2003 in Karachi, Pakistan. Pakistani authorities arrested 16 Islamic students from different religious schools includes brother of Hambali, al-Qaida's alleged top agent in Southeast Asia. (AP Photo/Shakil Adil)