Imran Khan: Pakistan has lost its dignity and self-esteem

[ComradePashtun]

Imran Khan: Pakistan has lost its dignity and self-esteem


Everyone began asking: whatever happened to the Pakistani army and its intelligence?

Tuesday, 3 May 2011

The people of Pakistan woke up yesterday morning to be told the news that Osama bin Laden had been killed. But this news did not come from any of their leaders – not the Pakistani President, not the Pakistani Prime Minister, nor the Pakistani Army chief. Instead this news came from US President Obama, when he appeared on television and informed the world how the US had been gathering intelligence about a town two hours north of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.


Pakistanis were dumbfounded especially when no statement was forthcoming from their government in the wake of the Obama speech. The big questions that everyone began asking, and for which no answers have been forthcoming, were: who allowed the Americans to come to Pakistan and carry out this attack? And whatever happened to the Pakistani Army and its intelligence?

We were all still wondering when we heard, much later, contradictory information being disseminated from the Government of Pakistan and the Western media (with the Indian media outrightly accusing ISI of supporting terrorists). Many hours later the Pakistani Prime Minister claimed that all the intelligence had come from Pakistan, but the US administration and the Western media said Pakistan was totally out of the loop with no information sharing on this action.

All this has led to other serious questions being raised in Pakistan. For instance, if the Pakistan government or the army had this intelligence, why did we not take out Bin Laden ourselves? Why did we have to rely on the Americans coming over from their airbases in Afghanistan? Equally disturbing is the tremendous level of distrust the US has for the Pakistanis, which led it to jam the radars during the duration of the operation.

There is not just confusion that prevails in Pakistan, but also a national depression at the loss of national dignity and self-esteem as well as sovereignty. There is no answer to these questions and this simply allows allegations from the West and from India to go unchallenged that Pakistan has been protecting Bin Laden and other terrorists; that Pakistan knew he was here and kept him safe.

The president, the prime minister and the army need to address this immediately and if, as they claim, they had the intelligence that led to the killing of Bin Laden, why it was not done by Pakistani forces? Until this happens, Pakistan will suffer a great loss of credibility – and this from a country that has the fifth biggest army in the world and a hefty defence budget.

The reason we will not get these answers, of course, is that we have the most corrupt and incompetent government in our history.

And just how did it come to this? On 11 September 2001, Osama bin Laden was in Afghanistan and there were no suicide attacks in Pakistan. Fast forward 10 years and there are 34,000 Pakistani dead, the economy has lost $68bn according to President Zardari himself, a massive figure if you consider that the country has received a total of only $28bn in aid from the US.

In the past decade, hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced and we have created insurgent groups like the Pakistani Taliban. Meanwhile, in 2010 across Pakistan there were 500 bomb blasts and today the major financial hub Karachi is aflame with people dying on a daily basis as a result of terrorism. The largest province in area, Balochistan, is prey to a violent insurgency.

Back in 2001 and 2002, the US attacks in the Tora Bora region forced some of the al-Qa'ida leadership across the porous 2,500km border with Pakistan; a border which the local tribes always traversed at will. This was not a situation of war. What Pakistan should have done at this time was to use the tribal people to capture the fleeing members of al-Qa'ida.

Instead, we got ourselves into a situation where the Army, under pressure from the US, commenced military operations against its own tribal people, which is what led to the revolt of the tribals and by 2004 Pakistan was dragged into the conflict with huge levels of collateral damage, and ultimately leading to the creation of the Pakistani Taliban.
After yesterday's attack Pakistan is in great danger. There will be a backlash and there will be added pressure for the Army and the ISI to do more. Will we now be going into North Waziristan in pursuit of other insurgents?

The truth, of course, is that Pakistan cannot afford any of this. It cannot afford the inevitable extremist backlash; it cannot afford the targeting of its troops; and it certainly cannot afford the economic consequences.

We, the people of Pakistan, no longer have a government that represents us. It is time for Pakistan to get out of this war – and to recognise that if we continue along this path we are doomed.

Pakistan can no longer afford the human and financial costs and must, along with the rest of the world, realise that ultimately the solutions to these problems are political – and the weaker the state becomes, the less likely it will be to tackle the menace of extremism.

The US has won its battle against Bin Laden, but the war remains open ended

[khushal]

`

[khushal]

Pakistan never had any Dignity or self esteem.

[Toramana]

WASHINGTON: The United States hunted down and killed the world's most wanted terrorist and 9/11 perpetrator Osama bin Laden in the wee hours of Monday. American Navy Seals stormed a compound in suburban Abbottabad in Pakistan, about 50 miles north of the capital Islamabad, and gunned down bin Laden after a firefight in an operation that took just 40 minutes to execute but four years to fructify.

After identifying bin Laden through photos and videos, and collecting DNA and other evidence, they spirited the body of the Al Qaeda leader out of Pakistan, and later dumped him in the sea in a perplexing move. US officials later said they were conforming to Islamic tenets to bury the dead within 24 hours, but the real purpose of the sea burial was evidently aimed at denying any possible shrine being established for the Al Qaeda leader. Bin Laden was a Saudi national, but the Saudi monarchy reportedly refused to accept his body. The location of the dumping was not identified.

The Obama administration kept Pakistan out of the loop, informing the government in Islamabad about the operation and its purpose only after it was completed. President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged broad intelligence cooperation from Pakistan but did not attribute any operational help from their so-called ally and did not even thank Pakistan.

Suspicion is deep in Washington that Pakistan's military intelligence establishment was sheltering bin Laden, because of his location in a massive compound in a cantonment close to the prominent kakul military academy. Questions are being asked whether the compound was an ISI safehouse.

President Obama and other US officials described a small all-American team, involving Navy Seals in two helicopters, taking part in the swift operation in the dead of the night. Remarkably, there were no US casualties.

Bin laden reportedly put up a fight, but he was shot in the head. Two couriers, through whom he was traced, his eldest son, and an unidentified woman, were killed in the firefight.

There was a US mishap though that resulted in one of the choppers being forced to land in the middle of Abbottabad, possibly as a result of being shot down, recalling the debacles in Iran and Somalia. But the American team regrouped and fled without casualties. ...


http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/...ow/8149230.cms

[faye]

i guess the bin laden drama in pakistan is a good divesion from the complaints against us for their drone attacks and the upcoming protest.
maybe imran khan is gathering too much momentum. just a thought.

[Toramana]

When one of Osama bin Laden’s most trusted aides picked up the phone last year, he unknowingly led U.S. pursuers to the doorstep of his boss, the world’s most wanted terrorist.
That phone call, recounted Sunday by a U.S. official, ended a years-long search for bin Laden’s personal courier, the key break in a worldwide manhunt. The courier, in turn, led U.S. intelligence to a walled compound in northeast Pakistan, where a team of Navy SEALs shot bin Laden to death.
The violent final minutes were the culmination of years of intelligence work. Inside the CIA team hunting bin Laden, it always was clear that bin Laden’s vulnerability was his couriers. He was too smart to let al-Qaeda foot soldiers, or even his senior commanders, know his hideout. But if he wanted to get his messages out, somebody had to carry them, someone bin Laden trusted with his life.
Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, detainees in the CIA’s secret prison network told interrogators about an important courier with the nom de guerre Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti who was close to bin Laden. After the CIA captured al-Qaeda’s No. 3 leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, he confirmed knowing al-Kuwaiti but denied he had anything to do with al-Qaeda.
Then in 2004, top al-Qaeda operative Hassan Ghul was captured in Iraq. Ghul told the CIA that al-Kuwaiti was a courier, someone crucial to the terrorist organization. In particular, Ghul said, the courier was close to Faraj al-Libi, who replaced Mohammed as al-Qaeda’s operational commander. It was a key break in the hunt for bin Laden’s personal courier.
“Hassan Ghul was the linchpin,” a U.S. official said.
Finally, in May 2005, al-Libi was captured. Under CIA interrogation, al-Libi admitted that when he was promoted to succeed Mohammed, he received the word through a courier. But he made up a name for the courier and denied knowing al-Kuwaiti, a denial that was so adamant and unbelievable that the CIA took it as confirmation that he and Mohammed were protecting the courier. It only reinforced the idea that al-Kuwaiti was very important to al-Qaeda.
If they could find the man known as al-Kuwaiti, they’d find bin Laden.
The revelation that intelligence gleaned from the CIA’s so-called black sites helped kill bin Laden was seen as vindication for many intelligence officials who have been repeatedly investigated and criticized for their involvement in a program that involved the harshest interrogation methods in U.S. history.
“We got beat up for it, but those efforts led to this great day,” said Marty Martin, a retired CIA officer who for years led the hunt for bin Laden.
Mohammed did not discuss al-Kuwaiti while being subjected to the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, former officials said. He acknowledged knowing him many months later under standard interrogation, they said, leaving it once again up for debate as to whether the harsh technique was a valuable tool or an unnecessarily violent tactic.
It took years of work before the CIA identified the courier’s real name: Sheikh Abu Ahmed, a Pakistani man born in Kuwait. When they did identify him, he was nowhere to be found. The CIA’s sources didn’t know where he was hiding. Bin Laden was famously insistent that no phones or computers be used near him, so the eavesdroppers at the National Security Agency kept coming up cold.
Ahmed was identified by detainees as a mid-level operative who helped al-Qaeda members and their families find safe havens. But his whereabouts were such a mystery to U.S. intelligence that, according to Guantanamo Bay documents, one detainee said Ahmed was wounded while fleeing U.S. forces during the invasion of Afghanistan and later died in the arms of the detainee.
But in the middle of last year, Ahmed had a telephone conversation with someone being monitored by U.S. intelligence, according to an American official, who like others interviewed for this story spoke only on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive operation. Ahmed was located somewhere away from bin Laden’s hideout when he had the discussion, but it was enough to help intelligence officials locate and watch Ahmed.
In August 2010, Ahmed unknowingly led authorities to a compound in the northeast Pakistani town of Abbottabad, where al-Libi had once lived. The walls surrounding the property were as high as 18 feet (5.5 meters) and topped with barbed wire. Intelligence officials had known about the house for years, but they always suspected that bin Laden would be surrounded by heavily armed security guards. Nobody patrolled the compound in Abbottabad.
In fact, nobody came or went. And no telephone or Internet lines ran from the compound. The CIA soon believed that bin Laden was hiding in plain sight, in a hideout especially built to go unnoticed. But since bin Laden never travelled and nobody could get into the compound without passing through two security gates, there was no way to be sure.
Despite that uncertainty, intelligence officials realized this could represent the best chance ever to get to bin Laden. They decided not to share the information with anyone, including staunch counterterrorism allies such as Britain, Canada and Australia.
By mid-February, the officials were convinced a “high-value target” was hiding in the compound. President Barack Obama wanted to take action.
“They were confident and their confidence was growing- ‘This is different. This intelligence case is different. What we see in this compound is different than anything we’ve ever seen before,’” John Brennan, the president’s top counterterrorism adviser, said Monday. “I was confident that we had the basis to take action.”
Options were limited. The compound was in a residential neighbourhood in a sovereign country. If Mr. Obama ordered an airstrike and bin Laden was not in the compound, it would be a huge diplomatic problem. Even if Mr. Obama was right, obliterating the compound might make it nearly impossible to confirm bin Laden’s death or gather valuable intelligence material on al-Qaeda.
Said Brennan “The president had to evaluate the strength of that information, and then made what I believe was one of the most gutsiest calls of any president in recent memory.”
Mr. Obama tapped two dozen members of the Navy’s elite SEAL Team Six to carry out a raid with surgical accuracy.
Before dawn Monday morning, a pair of helicopters left Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. The choppers entered Pakistani airspace using sophisticated technology intended to evade that country’s radar systems, a U.S. official said.
Officially, it was a kill-or-capture mission, since the U.S. doesn’t kill unarmed people trying to surrender. But it was clear from the beginning that whoever was behind those walls had no intention of surrendering, two U.S. officials said.
The helicopters lowered into the compound, dropping the SEALs behind the walls. No shots were fired, but shortly after the team hit the ground, one of the helicopters came crashing down and rolled onto its side for reasons the government has yet to explain. None of the SEALs was injured, however, and the mission continued uninterrupted.
With the CIA and White House monitoring the situation in real time -- presumably by live satellite feed or video carried by the SEALs -- the team stormed the compound.
Thanks to sophisticated satellite monitoring, U.S. forces knew they’d likely find bin Laden’s family on the second and third floors of one of the buildings on the property, officials said. The SEALs secured the rest of the property first, then proceeded to the room where bin Laden was hiding. A fire fight ensued, Mr. Brennan said.
Ahmed and his brother were killed, officials said. Then, the SEALs killed bin Laden with a bullet just above his left eye, blowing off part of his skull, another official said. Using the call sign for bin Laden’s visual identification, one of the soldiers communicated that “Geronimo” had been killed in action, according to a U.S. official.
Bin Laden’s body was immediately identifiable, but the U.S. also conducted DNA testing that identified him with near 100 percent certainty, senior administration officials said. Photo analysis by the CIA, confirmation on site by a woman believed to be bin Laden’s wife, who was wounded, and matching physical features such as bin Laden’s height all helped confirm the identification. At the White House, there was no doubt.
“I think the accomplishment that very brave personnel from the United States government were able to realize yesterday is a defining moment in the war against al-Qaeda, the war on terrorism, by decapitating the head of the snake known as al-Qaeda,” Mr. Brennan said.
U.S. forces searched the compound and flew away with documents, hard drives and DVDs that could provide valuable intelligence about al-Qaeda, a U.S. official said. The entire operation took about 40 minutes, officials said.
Bin Laden’s body was flown to the USS Carl Vinson in the North Arabian Sea, a senior defense official said. There, aboard a U.S. warship, officials conducted a traditional Islamic burial ritual. Bin Laden’s body was washed and placed in a white sheet. He was placed in a weighted bag that, after religious remarks by a military officer, was slipped into the sea about 2 a.m. EDT (0600 GMT) Monday.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/interna...cle1987763.ece

[Toramana]

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/...ow/8149365.cms

WASHINGTON: For years, the agonizing search for Osama bin Laden kept coming up empty. Then last July, Pakistanis working for the CIA drove up behind a white Suzuki navigating the bustling streets near Peshawar, Pakistan, and wrote down the car's license plate.

The man in the car was bin Laden's most trusted courier, and over the next month CIA operatives would track him throughout central Pakistan. Ultimately, administration officials said, he led them to a sprawling compound at the end....

[faye]

so many different reports. 2 helicopters, 4 helicopters, before dawn, 1 am,3 men killed, women and children left behind. one woman shot. the blame game has started against pakistan.