Pakistan to CIA: Get the Hell Out

[n2doc]

— By Siddhartha Mahanta| Tue Apr. 12, 2011 11:05 AM PDT

On Monday, when CIA director Leon Panetta met with Pakistan's spy chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, everything seemed copasetic. The purpose of the tete-a-tete was to smooth over any lingering tensions over the Raymond Davis episode. In January, Davis, a former Blackwater-employed CIA contractor, killed two Pakistanis and got off scot-free, to the considerable dismay of Pakistanis. After the Panetta-Pasha meeting, CIA spokesman George Little said that their discussions were "productive" and that the relationship between the CIA and Pakistani intelligence "remains on solid footing."

By Tuesday, not so much. A host of news outlets are reporting that Pakistani officials, fed up by the America's cloak and dagger operations in their country, are demanding that the CIA suspend its drone strikes in Pakistan and drastically slash the number of intelligence and special operations personnel operating there. How bad are things? "Some officials in both countries intelligence ties are at their lowest point since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks spurred the alliance," The Wall Street Journal reports.

General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the head of the Pakistani army, is demanding that some 335 American operatives, including special operations forces and CIA contractors like Davis, leave his country. That amounts to a cut of 25 to 40 percent in US Special Operations personnel, officials told the New York Times, including the removal of all American contractors used by the CIA. It's a drastic enough drawdown to hinder drone strikes—central to the US war in the border region—and hamper military training for Pakistani soldiers fighting in the tribal region. The Times also reports that Pasha, in his meeting with Panetta, made no specific requests for reductions of CIA officers, contractors or American military personnel.

Pakistan is also seeking the removal of all CIA operatives who, like Davis, are involved in assignments that its intelligence service knows nothing about. "We need to know who is in Pakistan doing what, and that the CIA won’t go behind our back," a top Pakistani official told The Washington Post. The CIA has "to stop mistrusting the ISI as much as they do...you can't have us as your ally and treat us as your adversary at the same time."

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http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/04/pakistan-get-hell-out-cia

[Tuesday Afternoon]

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