dagblog - Comments for "Letter from Islamabad: The Journalist and the Spies"

Pakistanis Tied to 2007

artappraiser — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 04:03:19 +0000

In reply to Letter from Islamabad: The Journalist and the Spies

Pakistanis Tied to 2007 Border Ambush on Americans

By Carlotta Gall, New York Times, 14 minutes ago

Details of an ambush indicate that American officials were aware of Pakistan’s sometimes duplicitous role long before its intelligence service was linked to an attack last week on the American Embassy in Kabul.

....The attack, in Teri Mangal on May 14, 2007, was kept quiet by Washington, which for much of a decade has seemed to play down or ignore signals that Pakistan would pursue its own interests, or even sometimes behave as an enemy....

The details of the ambush indicate that Americans were keenly aware of Pakistan’s sometimes duplicitous role long before Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate last week that Pakistan’s intelligence service was undermining efforts in Afghanistan and had supported insurgents who attacked the American Embassy in Kabul this month.

Though both sides kept any deeper investigations of the ambush under wraps, even at the time it was seen as a turning point by officials managing day-to-day relations with Pakistan......

Pakistan Is the Enemy By

artappraiser — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 02:55:03 +0000

In reply to Letter from Islamabad: The Journalist and the Spies

Pakistan Is the Enemy
By Christopher Hitchens, Slate, Sept. 26, 2011, at 11:33 AM ET

We know that Pakistan's intelligence service is aiding terrorists. What are we going to do about it?

I agree. One can have as many

moat — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 23:50:25 +0000

In reply to Myself I seize on any hopey

I agree.

One can have as many paradigm shifts in thinking as one likes but if they don't lead to change of the actual structure of dependencies that limit degrees of freedom, then the shift doesn't amount to much.

My suggestion that solutions might to lead to new problems wasn't given in a spirit of futility; Getting unstuck involves risk.

Myself I seize on any hopey

artappraiser — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 23:09:54 +0000

In reply to I am glad to see the move in

Myself I seize on any hopey of changey in the status quo. No matter how bleak alternatives sound, it's a positive to me to know the simple fact that some peeps in charge are thinking of and planning alternatives, rather than proceeding on the basis that they will never need any.

I am glad to see the move in

moat — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 22:50:16 +0000

In reply to Pakistan?s Spy Agency Is Tied

I am glad to see the move in the pipeline market. Money spent there beats pumping cash into combat operations. Unless, of course, it leads to new combat operations.....

Pakistan?s Spy Agency Is Tied

artappraiser — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 07:14:26 +0000

In reply to Letter from Islamabad: The Journalist and the Spies

Pakistan’s Spy Agency Is Tied to Attack on U.S. Embassy
By ELISABETH BUMILLER and JANE PERLEZ, New York Times, September 22, 2011

WASHINGTON — The nation’s top military official said Thursday that Pakistan’s spy agency played a direct role in supporting the insurgents who carried out the deadly attack on the American Embassy in Kabul last week. It was the most serious charge that the United States has leveled against Pakistan in the decade that America has been at war in Afghanistan.

In comments that were the first to directly link the spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, with an assault on the United States, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, went further than any other American official in blaming the ISI for undermining the American effort in Afghanistan. His remarks were certain to further fray America’s shaky relationship with Pakistan, a nominal ally.....

Obama prepares to punish Pakistan
By M K Bhadrakumar, Asia Times Online, September 20, 2011

The Barack Obama administration is making an extraordinary bid with the United States Congress to get the seven-year old embargo on military aid to Uzbekistan lifted poste-haste this month.....

Plainly put, Washington aims to bribe Tashkent into extending greater cooperation with the US-sponsored Northern Distribution Network (NDN), the overland supply lines from Europe to Afghanistan....

....the latest development to remove the restrictions on American arms for Uzbekistan shows that Obama is prepared to pay a heavy price simply for the sake of lessening the US's political dependence on Pakistan.....

Coming on the heels of the barely-disguised US threats of a hot-pursuit strategy toward the Pakistan-based Haqqani group that is a key component of the Taliban-led resistance in Afghanistan, Obama's move assumes significance.

The US may be left with no alternative but to have a showdown with Pakistan sometime in a near future and contingency arrangements need to be put in place if the US-Pakistan relationship were to unravel or erupt into a nasty confrontation.

Steve LeVine wrote in Foreign Policy wrote last week that the US had already pared down by half the volume of supplies being transhipped through Afghanistan by jacking up the share of the NDN volume correspondingly. Recent Chinese reports indicate that US and NATO are discussing with Beijing alternate transportation routes via Xinjiang.

So far, the anxiety was about keeping the supplies going for the US and NATO troops in Afghanistan. Now comes the requirements of a "reverse flow" as the US drawdown in Afghanistan picks up. The surge of troops and equipment for Afghanistan has already ended and the challenge ahead will be to get the troops and equipment safely and securely out of that country.

History shows that the pull-out by foreigners from the Hindu Kush always turned out to be infinitely more tricky than the conquest itself....

All Roads Lead to Islamabad
BY SHAMILA N. CHAUDHARY, foreignpolicy.com, September 22, 2011

If the killing of peace negotiator Burhanuddin Rabbani and the attacks on Kabul tell us anything, it's that peace in Afghanistan will only come when Pakistan wants it.

Clinton focuses on Haqqani

artappraiser — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 04:20:21 +0000

In reply to Letter from Islamabad: The Journalist and the Spies

Clinton focuses on Haqqani network in talks with Khar
By Masood Haider and Anwar Iqbal, Dawn, September 19/20, 2011

http://www.dawn.com/2011/09/20/clinton-focuses-on-haqqani-network-in-tal...

Shit hits fan: U.S. Blames

artappraiser — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 02:36:32 +0000

In reply to Letter from Islamabad: The Journalist and the Spies

Shit hits fan:

U.S. Blames Pakistan-Based Haqqani Group for Attack on Embassy in Kabul

By Jack Healy and Alissa J. Rubin, New York Times, September 14/15, 2011

KABUL, Afghanistan — Raising the death toll sharply, American and Afghan officials said Wednesday that the complexity and execution of the siege of the American Embassy and NATO’s headquarters in Kabul bore the hallmarks of a militant group based in Pakistan that has become one of the American military’s most implacable foes.

Gen. John R. Allen, the NATO commander here, said 16 people had been killed in the attack — 5 Afghan police officers and 11 civilians, including at least 6 children — double the number reported on Tuesday.

The militant group that he and other officials blamed for the attack, the Haqqani network, is a crucial ally of Al Qaeda in the Pakistani border region and has been a longtime asset of Pakistan’s military and intelligence services in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s military chiefs have resisted American pressure to go after the Haqqanis, whose primary base is in North Waziristan, part of Pakistan’s tribal areas....

In regards to your comment

artappraiser — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 23:47:03 +0000

In reply to The comment made by Rashid

In regards to your comment about Cold War tactics, the idea presented that one part of the Pakistani apparatus didn't know they were helping the U. S. look for someone a different part of the apparatus was trying to conceal is a perfect example.

Yes! Tuly amazing that you understood what I was trying to say from that mess of a comment.

On one of your other points, about Indian journalists--> me too; I am beginning to think that in the past I doubted the integrity and objectivity of many of them too much.

Oh, my takeaway on that is

artappraiser — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 23:40:01 +0000

In reply to Interesting. I was hoping for

Oh, my takeaway on that is the article among other things is very much a confirmation he's dead. In the beginning of the article, page 2:

And then Admiral Nazir made a remark so bizarre that Shahzad said he had thought about it every day since.

“We want the world to believe that Osama is dead,” Nazir said.

Bin Laden was still alive, his whereabouts presumably unknown, when that conversation occurred. I pressed Shahzad. What did they mean by that?

He shrugged and glanced over his shoulder again. They were obviously trying to protect bin Laden, he said.

“Do you think the I.S.I. was hiding bin Laden?” I asked him.

Shahzad shrugged again and said yes. But he hadn’t been able to prove it. (The I.S.I. calls this claim an “unsubstantiated accusation of a very serious nature.”)

And then the rest of the article is a parade of how everything like that is screwing up for the ISI, which they are not used to, and there is panic. I.E., he wasn't dead then; the U.S. no longer believes a thing they say. indeed they might start with the theory that one should suspect the truth is the opposite of what they say; and the raid was one of many things that screwed things up for them. Same with Haqqani network, Ilyas Kashmiri, etc. And worse, everyone in their own country no longer believes what they say.

Some similarities came to my mind of the most complex games of Soviet vs. U.S. spies during the Cold War, almost as if it might help for them to have the advice of some involved from that time. Another similarity is no party involved can just say fuck you, I'm sick of this crap, not going to play anymore, because there's control of nukes involved.

And for me, that also explains some of Obama's reasoning for wanting to stay in that theatre, because nuke control was clearly one of his passions from the getgo.

dagblog - Comments for "Letter from Islamabad: The Journalist and the Spies"

Pakistanis Tied to 2007

Pakistanis Tied to 2007 Border Ambush on Americans

By Carlotta Gall, New York Times, 14 minutes ago

Pakistan Is the Enemy By

I agree. One can have as many

Myself I seize on any hopey

I am glad to see the move in

Pakistan?s Spy Agency Is Tied

Clinton focuses on Haqqani

Shit hits fan: U.S. Blames

In regards to your comment

Oh, my takeaway on that is

**By Carlotta Gall, New York Times, 14 minutes ago**