Pakistan

The paper’s editors attack unembedded journalists who report the Pakistani deaths. Instead, they say, we should all just shut up and listen to U.S. intelligence agencies.
READ THE REST BY Jeremy Scahill.

The Times/UK

by Christina Lamb in Karachi

Osama bin Laden and the top Al-Qaeda leadership are not in Pakistan, making US missile attacks against them futile, according to the country's interior minister.

(The Times)

"If Osama was in Pakistan we would know, with all the thousands of troops we have sent into the tribal areas in recent months," Rehman Malik told The Sunday Times. "If he and all these four or five top people were in our area they would have been caught, the way we are searching."

He added: "According to our information Osama is in Afghanistan, probably Kunar, as most of the activities against Pakistan are being directed from Kunar."

Washington does not directly acknowledge its missile attacks on Pakistani territory by unmanned drone aircraft but Pakistani officials say the US has carried out more than 40 attacks inside its borders in the past 10 months, killing hundreds of people.

Protest demo holds Petraeus ‘war criminal’ | GEO World

San Francisco: General David Petraeus, commander of U.S. Central Command in charge of the wars in the Middle East, and architect of the troop "surge" was target of a protest here for his part in torture and killing civilians, Geo News reported Friday.

A major demonstration was held when Petraeus spoke here at the Marines Memorial Theater, 609 Sutter St., 2nd floor.

"Afghanistan is not the 'good war,'" said a spokesperson for World Can't Wait, an organizer of the demonstration. "General Petraeus should answer for his criminal role in the 'war on terror' and the huge escalation in Afghanistan."

Peace activists said that under Petraeus' command, pilotless drones have resulted in "mass murder" of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Read more.

Viva Palestina activists stranded on Gaza border | Press TV

Less than a week after a Free Gaza ship carrying humanitarian aid was seized by the Israelis before it could reach Gaza, a group of US citizens is in Egypt awaiting permission to enter the Gaza Strip with more aid.

At least 100 US activists, said to be carrying $1 million worth of medical supplies for the suffering Palestinians of the Gaza Strip, have been stranded on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing since Sunday, waiting for the Zionist regime to grant them permission to enter the besieged territory. Read more. Note: Please use the blue title link above to get to the article.

How David Davis Exposed Britain’s Secret Torture Scandal
By Andy Worthington | AndyWorthington.co.UK

The following is the statement that David Davis MP made to the House of Commons on the evening of July 7, which exposed the extent of British complicity in the torture in Pakistan of British citizen Rangzieb Ahmed. For further information, see the article “Britain’s Secret Torture Policy Exposed.”

Four years ago today, this country suffered a terrible atrocity at the hands of terrorists: 52 people were killed and many more horribly injured. I stood at the dispatch box that day and spoke of the need to face down this barbarism. In the subsequent weeks and months, I was proud of the calm and just way that the ordinary British citizen dealt with this assault and of the comparative absence of people trying to make scapegoats of the ordinary, decent Muslim community. I was proud of the courage, sense of honour, tolerance and justice of our citizens at home.

I am afraid that I cannot be so complimentary about the actions of our government abroad. In the last year, there have been at least 15 cases of British citizens or British residents claiming to be tortured by foreign intelligence agencies with the knowledge, complicity and, in some cases, presence of British intelligence officers. One case — that of Binyam Mohamed — has been referred to the police by the attorney general, which implies that there is at least a prima facie case to answer. The most salient others include Moazzam Begg, Tariq Mahmoud, Salahuddin Amin and Rashid Rauf, all in Pakistan, Jamil Rahman in Bangladesh, Alam Ghafoor in United Arab Emirates, and Azhar Khan and others in Egypt.

For each case, the government have denied complicity, but at the same time fiercely defended the secrecy of their actions, making it impossible to put the full facts in the public domain, despite the clear public interest in doing so. Although the combined circumstantial evidence of complicity in all these cases is overwhelming, it has not so far been possible — because of the government’s improper use of state secrecy to cover up the evidence — to establish absolutely clear sequences of cause and effect.

In the case I am about to describe, we can follow the entire chain of events from original suspicion, through active encouragement of the Pakistani authorities to arrest and through the subsequent collaboration between UK and Pakistani agencies. This is the case of Rangzieb Ahmed, a convicted terrorist, whose treatment I can describe in some detail. Read more.

By Ted Rall, Smirking Chimp

PORTLAND, OREGON--Robert McNamara, one of the "best and the brightest" technocrats behind the escalation of the Vietnam War, eventually came to regret his actions. But his public contrition, which included a book and a series of interviews for the documentary "The Fog of War," were greeted with derision.

"Mr. McNamara must not escape the lasting moral condemnation of his countrymen," editorialized The New York Times in 1995. "Surely he must in every quiet and prosperous moment hear the ceaseless whispers of those poor boys in the infantry, dying in the tall grass, platoon by platoon, for no purpose. What he took from them cannot be repaid by prime-time apology and stale tears, three decades late."

By Roshan Khan, AFP

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (AFP) — US missiles slammed into militant targets in the stronghold of Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud on Wednesday, killing up to 48 alleged fighters, security officials said.

The attacks -- the second and third suspected US drone strikes in just over 24 hours against Mehsud's South Waziristan stronghold -- come with Pakistan widely expected to launch a ground offensive against the warlord.

Pakistan reported Wednesday that Maulana Fazlullah, the wanted architect of a two-year Taliban uprising in the northwest Swat valley to enforce sharia law, elsewhere in the northwest, was injured during a recent army offensive.

Wednesday's first missile strike flattened an alleged training centre for Islamist extremists in South Waziristan, killing eight militants in the early hours of the morning, security officials said.

Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
http://www.space4peace.org

Bob Anderson from Albuquerque, NM sent me this story this morning. So the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV's) are not only being flown from Nevada but New Mexico as well.

There is talk of trying to establish a UAV test range here in Brunswick, Maine when the Naval air station closes down next year.

This drone killing machine is the Pentagon's answer to escalating war costs and difficulty with recruiting.

These are without a doubt weapons in space.
They will be the centerpiece of the Global Network's Keep Space for Peace Week on October 3-10. Please plan to hold a local action during that week linking these killer drones, space, and the wars in Iraq-Afghanistan-Pakistan.

U.S. drone strike kills 10 in Pakistan: officials
By Hafiz Wazir

WANA, Pakistan (Reuters) - A U.S. drone aircraft fired missiles on Friday into Pakistan's South Waziristan region, killing 10 militants, officials said, ahead of an expected Pakistani military offensive in the area.

The United States, facing a growing Afghan insurgency, began stepping up drone attacks on militant strongholds in lawless enclaves on the Pakistani side of the border a year ago despite Pakistani complaints.

Three missiles were fired at militant hideouts in an area near the Afghan border controlled by Pakistani Taliban leader and al Qaeda ally Baitullah Mehsud, killing 10 militants and wounding seven, two intelligence agency officials said.

"The missiles hit an office of Mufti Noor Wali, who was once in charge of training militants for suicide attacks," one of the officials said.

It was not known if Wali was among the dead, or if any foreign militants had been killed, they said.

By Sherwood Ross

July 3, 2009(Special)---President Obama has no legal authority either from the United Nations or the U.S. Congress under the War Powers Resolution(WPR) to escalate the war in Afghanistan, a distinguished professor of international law says.

“President Obama’s surge of 21,000 troops now engaged in combat in Afghanistan comes on top of the 60,000 we already had there,” says Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law at Champaign.

“The Obama Administration simply ignored Section 4(a)(3) of the WPR when it announced the escalation,” Boyle noted. “U.S. armed forces are in Afghanistan originally pursuant to WPR. Its requirement that the President get Congressional consent on substantial enlargement (of forces) was put there to deal with the kind of gradual escalation we saw in Viet Nam that eventually led to 550,000 troops being there,” Boyle said.

By David Swanson

There are a million and one things that people can do to try to end the U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and to prevent new ones in Iran and elsewhere, as well as to close U.S. military bases in dozens of other nations around the world. Certain people are skilled at or interested in particular approaches, and nobody should be discouraged from contributing to the effort in their preferred ways. Far too often proposals to work for peace are needlessly framed as attacks on all strategies except one. But where new energy can be created or existing resources redirected, it is important that they go where most likely to succeed.

Tomgram: Chalmers Johnson, Baseless Expenditures | TomDispatch.com

Along with postcards of cowboys riding jackalopes and giant berries on flatcars, there's a brand new entry in the American gigantism sweepstakes: an embassy complex to be built in Islamabad, Pakistan, for -- if you assume the normal cost overruns on such projects -- what's likely to be close to a billion dollars. If that doesn't make the U.S. number one in the imperial hubris footrace for all eternity, what will? The question is: with its projected "large military and intelligence contingent," and its "surge" of diplomats, will that embassy also issue the largest visas on the planet?

Here's the strange thing: The embassy story was broken at the end of May by the superb journalists at McClatchy News (in this case, Warren P. Stroebel and Saeed Shah). As part of what Shah, in the Christian Science Monitor, estimates as a staggering "$2-billion-plus price tag on a revamped diplomatic presence for the United States in Afghanistan and Pakistan," they reported that an appropriation of $736 million for embassy construction had quietly made its way through both houses of Congress without a peep from anyone. This news, however, seemed to plunge off a steep cliff into a deep well of silence. Indicative as the Obama administration's decision to build such an imperial monstrosity may be of a longer-term commitment to a wider war in the Af-Pak (as in Afghanistan-Pakistan) theater of operations, it evidently proved of no interest to anyone here.

The story was not widely picked up or played up significantly. Despite the fact that major news operations have been bolstering their staffs in Pakistan, there has been no further reporting on the appropriation, the plans for the embassy, or what it all might mean. As far as I can tell, nowhere in the United States did a mainstream editorial page decry, challenge, or even discuss the development. Charlie Rose didn't gather experts to consider it, nor did the Newshour with Jim Lehrer seem to think it worth exploring. Letters of outrage at the thought of those desperately needed funds heading Islamabad-wards didn't pour into local newspapers (perhaps because few knew it was happening and those who did saw it as just another humdrum story about making the U.S. safer in a dangerous world). I've seen no obvious congressional attempts to oppose the passage of the money. The general attitude is evidently: Been there, done that (in Iraq, as a matter of fact, in the Bush years).

Israel threatens to shoot international activists | Press TV

The postwar humanitarian crisis in Gaza takes a turn for the worse with the Israeli Navy intercepting a relief ship headed toward the coastal strip.

A group of 21 activists sailing to Gaza said Tuesday that Israeli forces had threatened to gun down their boat unless they changed direction.

"There is a patrol boat around us and we were told that if we did not turn back they would open fire," Reuters quoted Irish activist Derek Graham as saying.

"We are continuing our course to Gaza," he added.

The Free Gaza Movement activists had left the Cypriot port of Larnaca earlier on Monday to deliver three tons of medical supplies, some tool kits and copper wiring to Gaza.

The activists onboard included an Irish Nobel peace laureate and a former US congresswoman. Read more.

CIA has Distributed 400 Million Dollars Inside Iran to Evoke a Revolution | PakAlert

Former Pakistani Army General Mirza Aslam Beig claims the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has distributed 400 million dollars inside Iran to evoke a revolution.

In a phone interview with the Pashto Radio on Monday, General Beig said that there is undisputed intelligence proving the US interference in Iran.

“The documents prove that the CIA spent 400 million dollars inside Iran to prop up a colorful-hollow revolution following the election,” he added. Read more.

Now We See You, Now We Don’t
by Kathy Kelly | June 25, 2009 | Voices for Creative Nonviolence

In early June, 2009, I was in the Shah Mansoor displaced persons camp in Pakistan, listening to one resident detail the carnage which had spurred his and his family’s flight there a mere 15 days earlier. Their city, Mingora, had come under massive aerial bombardment. He recalled harried efforts to bury corpses found on the roadside even as he and his neighbors tried to organize their families to flee the area.

“They were killing us in that way, there,” my friend said. Then, gesturing to the rows of tents stretching as far as the eye could see, he added, “Now, in this way, here.”

The people in the tent encampment suffered very harsh conditions. They were sleeping on the ground without mats, they lacked water for bathing, the tents were unbearably hot, and they had no idea whether their homes and shops in Mingora were still standing. But, the suffering they faced had only just begun.

By Alamgir Bitani

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - A U.S. drone killed at least 45 Pakistani Taliban militants on Tuesday when it struck after a funeral of an insurgent commander killed earlier in the day, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

U.S. ally Pakistan officially objects to the strikes by pilotless U.S. aircraft though the attack came as the Pakistani army is preparing an offensive against Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud in South Waziristan on the Afghan border.

The military went on the offensive against Taliban fighters allied with Mehsud in the Swat Valley, northwest of Islamabad, in May and are in the final phase of that operation.

The next target is Mehsud.

"Three missiles were fired by drones as people were dispersing after offering funeral prayers for Niaz Wali," one intelligence official said referring to a Taliban commander who was one of six militants killed in an earlier drone attack.

By Augustine Anthony, Reuters

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Suspected U.S. drone aircraft fired missiles at militant targets in Pakistan's South Waziristan tribal region on the Afghan border on Thursday, killing at least five people, intelligence officials said.

The United States, alarmed by worsening security in Afghanistan, has been using pilotless drone aircraft to attack Taliban and al Qaeda fighters in northwestern Pakistani enclaves, from where the militants mount attacks into Afghanistan.

At the same time, nuclear-armed Pakistan is struggling to push back a growing Taliban insurgency of its own. Its security forces have been fighting the Islamist militants in the Swat valley, northwest of Islamabad, for more than a month.

At least two of the pilotless aircraft used in Thursday's strikes hit two separate areas in the Taliban and al Qaeda stronghold of South Waziristan, the intelligence officials said.

It may be a blow to our self-image, but torture has been part of the American way for decades.
By Ben Ehrenreich, LA Times

Perhaps we protest too much. Torture, after all, is a venerable American tradition. If not quite as homespun as apple pie or lynching, it is at least as old as our imperial aspirations. We were waterboarding captives in one of our earliest wars of occupation, the Philippine-American War, which cost as many as 1 million civilian lives. In 1902, Teddy Roosevelt himself wrote with laconic praise of "the old Filipino method."

Tomgram: The Ir-Af-Pak War
Obama Looses the Manhunters: Charisma and the Imperial Presidency
By Tom Engelhardt | TomDispatch.com

Let's face it, even Bo is photogenic, charismatic. He's a camera hound. And as for Barack, Michelle, Sasha, and Malia -- keep in mind that we're now in a first name culture -- they all glow on screen.

Before a camera they can do no wrong. And the president himself, well, if you didn't watch his speech in Cairo, you should have. The guy's impressive. Truly. He can speak to multiple audiences -- Arabs, Jews, Muslims, Christians, as well as a staggering range of Americans -- and somehow just about everyone comes away hearing something they like, feeling he's somehow on their side. And it doesn't even feel like pandering. It feels like thoughtfulness. It feels like intelligence.

For all I know -- and the test of this is still a long, treacherous way off -- Barack Obama may turn out to be the best pure politician we've seen since at least Ronald Reagan, if not Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He seems to have Roosevelt's same unreadable ability to listen and make you believe he's with you (no matter what he's actually going to do), which is a skill not to be whistled at.

Right now, he and his people are picking off the last Republican moderates via a little party-switching and some well-crafted appointments, and so driving that party and its conservative base absolutely nuts, if not into extreme southern isolation.

US-PAKISTAN: CIA Secrecy on Drone Attacks Data Hides Abuses
By Gareth Porter | IPSNews

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s refusal to share with other agencies even the most basic data on the bombing attacks by remote-controlled unmanned predator drones in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal region, combined with recent revelations that CIA operatives have been paying Pakistanis to identify the targets, suggests that managers of the drone attacks programmes have been using the total secrecy surrounding the programme to hide abuses and high civilian casualties.

Intelligence analysts have been unable to obtain either the list of military targets of the drone strikes or the actual results in terms of al Qaeda or civilians killed, according to a Washington source familiar with internal discussion of the drone strike programme. The source insisted on not being identified because of the extreme sensitivity of the issue.

"They can’t find out anything about the programme," the source told IPS. That has made it impossible for other government agencies to judge its real consequences, according to the source. Read more.

Commentary: 3 million and counting
By Arnaud De Borchgrave, Editor at Large | UPI

Stung by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's suggestion the Pakistani army was wimping out against Taliban insurgents, the country's strongest institution swung into action a month ago 60 miles from the seat of government in Islamabad. Unfamiliar with counterinsurgency operations, the army laid down withering artillery fire in the Buner district, quickly followed by more shelling in the scenic Swat Valley, Pakistan's premier tourist destination.

Since then some 3 million refugees have fled towns and cities turned to rubble and are now huddling in makeshift shelters in 28 camps where only one in five is under canvass in the broiling heat. One of the senior officials in charge of refugees, speaking not for attribution, said he expects the number to climb to 4 million, the largest exodus since partition from India created the state of Pakistan in 1947. Pakistan can't cope with a refugee crisis of this magnitude. When the last major earthquake hit Pakistan in October 2005, killing 75,000, some 400,000 dwellings were destroyed and the U.S. military played a key role in a major relief effort. The latest upheaval has displaced far more people. Read more.

By Gareth Porter, IPS

WASHINGTON, Jun 12 (IPS) - The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s refusal to share with other agencies even the most basic data on the bombing attacks by remote-controlled unmanned predator drones in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal region, combined with recent revelations that CIA operatives have been paying Pakistanis to identify the targets, suggests that managers of the drone attacks programmes have been using the total secrecy surrounding the programme to hide abuses and high civilian casualties.

Intelligence analysts have been unable to obtain either the list of military targets of the drone strikes or the actual results in terms of al Qaeda or civilians killed, according to a Washington source familiar with internal discussion of the drone strike programme. The source insisted on not being identified because of the extreme sensitivity of the issue.

By Kathy Kelly and Dan Pearson

In Pakistan’s Swabi district, a bumpy road leads to Shah Mansoor, a small village surrounded by farmland. Just outside the village, uniform size tents are set up in hundreds of rows. The sun bores down on the Shah Mansoor camp which has become a temporary home to thousands of displaced Pakistanis from the Swat area. In the stifling heat, the camp’s residents sit idly, day after day, uncertain about their future. They spoke with heated certainty, though, about their grievances.

'US military surge destabilizes Pakistan' | Press TV

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi says the US' move to send 21,000 extra troops to war-ravaged Afghanistan could have serious implications for Pakistan.

"Pakistan has talked through political and military ways at all levels to the stakeholders that transferring the problem from Afghanistan to Pakistan will not help resolve the issue," Qureshi said at a news conference with his Turkish counterpart in Islamabad on Tuesday.

The Islamabad government is worried that the US President Barack Obama's move to boost its military presence in Afghanistan could further destabilize Pakistan by pushing more militants across the border.

Increased US military activity may also spark an influx of refugees from insurgency-hit southern Afghanistan into border areas of Pakistan. Read more.

By Kathy Kelly

In Jayne Anne Phillips’ Lark and Termite, the skies over Korea, in 1950, are described in this way:

“The planes always come…like planets on rotation. A timed bloodletting, with different excuses.”

The most recent plane to attack the Pakistani village of Khaisor (according to a Waziristan resident who asked me to withhold his name) came twenty days ago, on May 20th, 2009. A U.S. drone airplane fired a missile at the village at 4:30 AM, killing 14 women and children and 2 elders, wounding eleven.

Washington D.C. (June 9, 2009) – Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today made the following statement against the war supplemental on the House floor:

“It is good that our Administration is reaching out to the Muslim world. It is bad to spend another $100 billion to keep wars going which will kill innocent Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“It is good that we try to create an incentive for people to buy efficient cars. It is bad that the car vouchers will not be expressly for the purchase of cars made in America. It is even worse that we tie such an incentive to a war funding bill. Cash for clunkers and bunkers in the same bill!

“Cash for more war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Cash to help China sell its cars to Americans.

Pentagon: Pakistan terror aid diverted | UPI

Pakistan diverted U.S. aid meant for fighting Taliban terrorists to bolster its conventional warfare capabilities against India, documents indicate.

U.S. Defense Department documents accessed by the Press Trust of India reveal Islamabad secretly diverted a substantial portion of nearly $7 billion in foreign military financing and arms sales from the administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush to beef up its armed forces along the Indian border instead of fighting terrorists. Read more.

Purported bin Laden tape slams U.S. role in Pakistan | CNN

Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden purportedly issued another statement Wednesday, saying U.S. policy in Pakistan has generated "new seeds of hatred and revenge against America."

Zeroing in on the conflict in Pakistan's Swat Valley, where Pakistan's troops are taking on Taliban militants, the message asserts that President Obama is proving that he is "walking the same road of his predecessors to build enmity against Muslims and increasing the number of fighters, and establishing more lasting wars."

Al-Jazeera, the Arabic-language TV network that aired the message, said the statement was "a voice recording by bin Laden," and a CNN analysis said the voice does indeed sound like the leader of the terrorist network that attacked the United States on September 11, 2001.

The remarks -- which would be bin Laden's first assessment of Obama's policy -- were believed to have been recorded several weeks ago at the start of a mass civilian exodus because of fighting in northwestern Pakistan.

The speaker cites strikes, destruction and Obama's "order" to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari "to prevent the people of Swat from implementing sharia law."

"All this led to the displacement of about a million Muslim elders, women and children from their villages and homes. They became refugees in tents after they were honored in their own homes," the message says. Read more.