Archive for the 'Af-Pak' Category

The goddess of Taliban country

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on March 18, 2010
in Af-Pak, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Terrorism and Travel
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H.M. Naqvi at GlobalPost:

The southern swath of Baluchistan is anything but godforsaken. It is, I learn, hallowed land: When Kali, the Dark Mother of the Hindu religion, the Goddess of Death, shattered millennia ago, her torso landed in the mountains.

Baluchistan, then, is not simply hallowed; it is one of the holiest tracts in Hindu mythology. Several years ago, L.K. Adavni, then-leader of the Hindu fundamentalist party in India, was stirred when he visited Nani Mandir. (On his return, he was temporarily dismissed from the party because of “pro-Pakistan” statements he made to the press.) Asphalt roads were paved in anticipation of his advent.

The approach to the temple is unremarkable: An iron gate opens into a narrow esplanade nestled in a valley, presumably a riverbed in the rainy season. Simple single-story cement rooms stand on either side. A makeshift cupboard-sized shrine houses a statuette of Kali, arms perpendicularly extended, tongue rolled out like Gene Simmons. Burnt incense sticks are pitched in the surrounding earth and empty coconut husks litter the periphery. In April, thousands of Hindu pilgrims, both local and from across the border, make the journey on foot. They shave their hair and shed their clothes. We follow in their tracks, passing mossy pools littered with Frooto boxes and floating locks. There is graffiti in Sanskrit on the boulders, and a pair of vertiginous eyes.

Unlike the temples in and around Karachi — Sri Swami Narayan on Bandar Road, Ratneshwar Mahadev in Clifton — Nani Mandir is not grand; there are no spires, arches, no detailed stonework. More:

Now India and Pakistan can get down to business

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on March 8, 2010
in Af-Pak, India, Pakistan and Terrorism
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Najam Sethi, editor in chief of The Friday Times, Pakistan, in The Wall Street Journal:

On initial appearances, the first high-level bilateral talks between India and Pakistan since November 2008 weren’t a success. When the two foreign secretaries convened in New Delhi on Feb. 25, at times it was as if they were at different meetings. The Indians tried to focus on terrorism sponsored from within Pakistan, while the Pakistanis wanted a broader dialogue. In the end, there was no noteworthy result. But appearances in this case are deceiving. This meeting is likely to prove more successful than many expect.

That’s because interests on both sides are at last correctly aligned to give talks a shot at success. For India, it has been a matter of reaching several conclusions at the same time. First, New Delhi has failed to browbeat Islamabad into steps like cracking down on Lashkar-e-Taiba, the terrorist group responsible for the Nov. 2008 Mumbai attacks. Indian saber rattling alone hasn’t done the trick, just as in 2002 when India’s armed forces tried but failed to intimidate Pakistan into halting the flow of jihadis into the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir. More:

Them and US

Published
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on March 6, 2010
in Af-Pak, India and Pakistan
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Shekhar Gupta in The Indian Express on what a weak America means for India:

There was nothing un-Holbrooke-like about his utterly insensitive statement that the Kabul attack had not particularly targeted Indians. The use of really awful language, “I do not accept [that this was like the attack on the Indian embassy]” and “let’s not jump to conclusions”, was also true to form. In fact, coarse directness of this kind is so much his hallmark that, talking about him when his appointment was announced, a former American envoy — who himself was not exactly some Mr Congeniality — told me, “You guys will learn to deal with Holbrooke… he will make me look so diplomatic to you.” It follows, therefore, that there was also nothing so unusual about what should normally have been shocking insensitivity. What kind of a guy — other than Holbrooke, of course — speaks like this when four Indian victims of that terror attack are still battling for life in the hospital? His tone was dismissive, almost an admonition of those (read the Indian government) who “jumped to the conclusion” that this was an attack specifically on Indian interests. More:

A choice for change

Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s former information minister and currently a member of Parliament’s National Security Committee, in The Times of India:

There is no denying that the only game-changer in the battlefield can now be a shift in anti-Taliban operations across the Durand Line. By arresting much of the dreaded Quetta Shura Taliban, Islamabad has demonstrated two things: that it can swoop down tactically where the US has been unable to tread, and that if given the right strategic incentive, it can draw down on fresh reserves of political will. India was at pains to avoid the word mediation, but clearly, New Delhi hopes that the Saudi card may give it a seat at the Afghan table, as well as open a channel as interlocutor to Islamabad.

As it stands, the motors that work to tip the scales on this razor-edge between war and peace are predictably already at work. Almost as soon as Pakistan’s foreign secretary, Salman Bashir, crossed the Wagah border into Lahore, the debris from the Taliban attack in Kabul, where Indians were also killed among others, infected the air. The Jaish-e-Mohammad disclaimed its hand in the incident, blaming it on a fidayeen Afghan attack, but the terrorists who always seek to disrupt talks reminded everyone how they can affect both headlines and deadlines in this terrain. More:

Former Pakistani officer embodies a policy puzzle

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on March 5, 2010
in Af-Pak, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Terrorism
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Carlotta Gall from Rawalpindi in The New York Times:

With his white turban, untrimmed beard and worn army jacket, the man known uniformly here by his nom de guerre, Col. Imam, is a particular Pakistani enigma.

A United States-trained former colonel in Pakistan’s spy agency, he spent 20 years running insurgents in and out of Afghanistan, first to fight the Soviet Army, and later to support the Taliban, as Pakistani allies, in their push to conquer Afghanistan in the 1990s.

Today those Taliban forces are battling his onetime mentor, the United States, and Western officials say Colonel Imam has continued to train, recruit and finance the insurgents. Along with a number of other retired Pakistani intelligence officials, they say, he has helped the Taliban stage a remarkable comeback since 2006.

In two recent interviews with The New York Times, Colonel Imam denied that. But he remains a vocal advocate of the Taliban, and his views reveal the sympathies that have long run deep in the ranks of Pakistan’s military and intelligence services. More:

Taking on the Taliban

Published
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on March 3, 2010
in Af-Pak, Afghanistan, Books, Pakistan and Terrorism
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Steve Coll in The New Yorker:

The Taliban’s jihad, like rock and roll, has passed from youthful vigor into a maturity marked by the appearance of nostalgic memoirs. Back in the day, Abdul Salam Zaeef belonged to the search committee that recruited Mullah Omar as the movement’s commander; after the rebels took power in Kabul, he served as ambassador to Pakistan. “My Life with the Taliban,” published this winter, announces Zaeef’s début in militant letters. The volume contains many sources of fascination, but none are more timely than the author’s account of his high-level relations with Pakistani intelligence.

While in office, Zaeef found that he “couldn’t entirely avoid” the influence of Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence. Its officers volunteered money and political support. Late in 2001, as the United States prepared to attack Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, the I.S.I.’s then commanding general, Mahmud Ahmad, visited Zaeef’s home in Islamabad, wept in solidarity, and promised, “We want to assure you that you will not be alone in this jihad against America. We will be with you.” And yet Zaeef never trusted his I.S.I. patrons. He sought to protect the Taliban’s independence: “I tried to be not so sweet that I would be eaten whole, and not so bitter that I would be spat out.” More:

In Pakistan raid, Taliban chief was an extra prize

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on February 19, 2010
in Af-Pak, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Terrorism
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From The New York Times:

Only after a careful process of identification did Pakistani and American officials realize they had captured Mullah Baradar himself, the man who had long overseen the Taliban insurgency against American, NATO and Afghan troops in Afghanistan.

New details of the raid indicate that the arrest of the No. 2 Taliban leader was not necessarily the result of a new determination by Pakistan to go after the Taliban, or a bid to improve its strategic position in the region. Rather, it may be something more prosaic: “a lucky accident,” as one American official called it. “No one knew what they were getting,” he said.

Now the full impact of Mullah Baradar’s arrest will play out only in the weeks to come. More:

Rings of terror: A guide to Al Qaeda’s leadership

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on February 17, 2010
in Af-Pak and Terrorism
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Lydia Khalil in Foreign Policy:

1. Al Qaeda’s original leadership. The first group is made up of al Qaeda’s original leadership — and it is shriveling up like the roster of the local VFW. This crew still has a few big names: still-at-large figures like Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Abu Yahya al-Libi. But the original core of al Qaeda is shrinking fast. No one knows the exact composition of this highest-level group, nor its exact whereabouts. But the best intelligence suggests the members live somewhere in the vicinity of Pakistan.

2. Al Qaeda’s regional subsidiaries. Next, there are members of al Qaeda’s regional subsidiaries, local terrorist or insurgent groups that have declared allegiance to the group. This includes outfits such as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Ansar al-Sunnah in Iraq, al-Shabab in Somalia, and segments of the Taliban. These organizations do not take operational direction from al Qaeda’s core, but accept broad strategic guidance. They are often critical to al Qaeda’s efforts to expand its jihad throughout the globe. Al Qaeda, in turn, exploits these proxy groups, often mired in regional conflicts, to co-opt nationalist struggles into its broader narrative. Often, the senior leaders of these regional insurgent-cum-terrorist groups are in contact with original senior al Qaeda leadership. More:

An American admiral, a Pakistani general, and the ultimate anti-terror adventure

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on February 17, 2010
in Af-Pak, Pakistan and Terrorism
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Michael Crowley in The New Republic (via 3quarksdaily):

On August 26, 2008, Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, touched down for a secret meeting on an aircraft carrier stationed in the Indian Ocean. The topic: Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

The summit had been arranged the previous month. Mullen had grown anxious about the rising danger from Pakistan’s tribal areas, which Islamic militants were using as a base from which to strike American troops in Afghanistan and to plot terrorist attacks against the United States. He flew to Islamabad to see the country’s army chief of staff, Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. Kayani is Pakistan’s most important general, commanding its 550,000-man army. By some accounts, he is also the ultimate source of power in a militarized society that reveres its generals more than its politicians. Mullen had been blunt with Kayani: The United States needed Pakistan’s army to take on the militants flourishing along the border, he said. The days of Pakistan looking the other way–cutting deals and playing double games with the radicals–had to end.

It was hardly a painless request; the Pakistani military is organized for warfare against its arch-nemesis India, and many of its mid-level officers are sympathetic to the Taliban and, at best, wary of the United States. More:

Kabul makeover

Published
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on February 11, 2010
in Af-Pak, Afghanistan, Fashion, Society, Terrorism and Women
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Reality-TV shows like Afghan Model are rewiring Afghan culture—for better and for worse. Kim Barker in The Atlantic:

Anita Khalwat wears heavy makeup, fake eyelashes, and a green spangly head scarf, loose dress, and pants fit for an Afghan wedding. But she’s no bride. She’s a warrior in heels and metallic nail polish, preparing to appear on Afghan Model, a new TV show that aims to find the top fashion star in a war-torn nation where neither of the two main languages has a word for “model,” and where threats by the TV-hating, women-loathing Taliban have turned an appearance before the cameras on a rickety, rainbow-lit white stage into a political statement.

“Hide your hair today,” one judge, Hozair Amiri, tells Khalwat before a recent taping. “Please.”

Khalwat, her green head scarf showing off a good part of her highlighted brown hair, looks at Amiri almost fiercely. With less than perfectly white teeth, a generous nose, an average body, and a hip thrust more fitting for a hockey rink than for a runway, the 23-year-old Khalwat would never make the tryouts for America’s Next Top Model, the Tyra Banks vehicle that Afghan Model tries to emulate. More:

Charlie Wilson: 1933-2010

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on February 11, 2010
in Af-Pak, Afghanistan and Obituaries
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The man who masterminded covert US support for the mujahideen during the Soviet-Afghan war. From the Guardian:

His accomplishment in launching and sustaining America’s largest clandestine war – supplying arms to Afghan rebels fighting the Soviets in the 1980s – might have been more understandable had he been one of those discreet figures who slide greyly through the corridors of power. In reality, he was a loud-voiced, 6ft 4in Texan, addicted to outlandish clothes and notorious for his womanising. He staffed his congressional office with beautiful female assistants (dubbed Charlie’s Angels on Capitol Hill) and had well-publicised brushes with the law, including allegations of cocaine-sniffing and drunk driving.

Yet he somehow managed to persuade the Bible belt of rural east Texas to return him for 11 successive congressional terms and to attract huge financial support from American Jews and from the strict Wahhabi Muslims of Saudi Arabia. His inexhaustible capacity to be all things to all men brought him enormous influence in American governance, allowing him to spend the Reagan years virtually running his own foreign policy. More:

Also read All Things Pakistan:

In many ways Charlie Wilson was as much an architect of today’s Pakistan as General Zia-ul-Haq. Only a lot more colorful, and maybe a little more well-meaning; even if equally misguided.

[Image: All Things Pakistan]

On Afghan road, scenes of beauty and death

Published
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on February 8, 2010
in Af-Pak, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Terrorism
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A road that runs through a mountain gorge between Kabul and Jalalabad holds its own terrors. From the New York Times:

Sarobi, Afghanistan — Even in a nation beset by war and suicide bombings, you would be hard-pressed to find anything as reliably terrifying as the national highway through the Kabul Gorge.

The 40-mile stretch, a breathtaking chasm of mountains and cliffs between Kabul and Jalalabad, claims so many lives so regularly that most people stopped counting long ago. Cars flip and flatten. Trucks soar to the valley floor. Buses play chicken; buses collide.

The mayhem unfolds on one of the most bewitching stretches of scenery on all the earth. The gorge, in some places no more than a few hundred yards wide, is framed by vertical rock cliffs that soar more than 2,000 feet above the Kabul River below. Most people die, and most cars crash, while zooming around one of the impossible turns that offer impossible views of the crevasses and buttes. More:

The bad Sufi

Published
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on February 2, 2010
in Af-Pak, Conflict, Faith, Music, Religion and Terrorism
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Modern Sufi leaders have become part of Pakistan’s corrupt ruling elite, favoured by the West not for their ‘moderation’ but for their compliance. Qalandar Bux Memon at Naked Punch:

I was sitting at the shrine of Shah Kamal in Lahore, with the dhol beats and whirling dervishes dancing to connect to the ‘centre of the universe in themselves’, when a friend turned and pointed to an old German fellow sitting a few meters from us. “He just delivered a lecture on Sufism. He is an expert on the subject, and talked about how it’s a religion of peace and love.”

I replied curtly: “Have you ever been in love? Have you had your heart broken? What peace is there in that state? What peace was there when Mansur had his head chopped off on the orders of the Baghdadi Emperor? What peace was there when Shah Inayat was fighting against the Mughal emperor for his life and that of his commune? What peace is there in Sassui’s peeling feet as she searches for her beloved through the desert of Sindh?”

My friend agreed and said: “But they pay me – I have to go along with them.” More:

Part two of Qalandar Bux Memon’s series on Sufism, focusing on the history of Sufism and the positive role it could play, will be published at The Samosa.

Understanding Afghan tribes

Published
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on February 1, 2010
in Af-Pak, Afghanistan, Culture, Society and Terrorism
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From The New York Times:

The Afghan leader’s hat

Published
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on January 27, 2010
in Af-Pak, Afghanistan, Culture, Design, Fashion, Leaders and Politics
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From the New York Times:

Known as a karakul hat, and made of the pelt of fetal or newborn lambs of the karakul breed of sheep, traditionally it was something worn by Tajiks and Uzbeks from northern Afghanistan. When Mr. Karzai, a Pashtun from the turban-wearing south, took office in 2002, the karakul hat was part of his attempt to devise a wardrobe that was Afghan rather than ethnic or regional.

It was a move widely praised at the time, in Afghanistan and abroad. The American designer Tom Ford called the Afghan president “the chicest man on the planet.” Afghans looking for national symbols after decades of ethnic strife inspired a brisk trade in the hats, made of lambskins from Mazar-i-Sharif in the north and fashioned by Kabul’s hatters, whose shops lined both sides of Shah-e-do Shamshera Wali Road.

Now, a tainted presidential election later, and with efforts to make a truly multiethnic government foundering, the sheen is off the shimmery fur headwear.

Young men no longer wear it; Mr. Karzai’s opponent in the aborted election runoff, Abdullah Abdullah, a northerner, preferred a hatless suit-and-tie ensemble. All but 12 of the hatters shops have closed on Shamshera Road, also famous for its shrine covered in pigeons. Those remaining say they are lucky to sell a hat a day. More:

The terrorist mind

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on January 11, 2010
in Af-Pak and Terrorism
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Sarah Kershaw in The New York Times:

What moves people to kill themselves and innocent bystanders?

This mystery of the mind became an issue again in recent weeks as a suicide bomber in Afghanistan — a double agent — killed seven C.I.A. officers; a man plowed a truck full of explosives into a crowded playground in Pakistan, and a Nigerian man tried to blow himself up on a plane bound for Detroit on Christmas Day.

Until recently, the psychology of terrorism had been largely theoretical. Finding actual subjects to study was daunting. But access to terrorists has increased and a nascent science is taking shape.

More former terrorists are speaking publicly about their experiences. Tens of thousands of terrorists are in “de-radicalization” programs around the globe, and they are being interviewed, counseled and subjected to psychological testing, offering the chance to collect real data on the subject. More:

Taliban — a risky ally in the war on polio

Published
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on January 10, 2010
in Af-Pak, Afghanistan, Conflict, Health and Terrorism
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From the Wall Street Journal:

Mehtar Lam, Afghanistan — Knocking on door after door, thousands of volunteers fan out every month across southern and eastern Afghanistan, vaccinating children against polio, a disease eradicated almost everywhere else in the world.

Usually, the volunteers — sent by the government and sponsored by United Nations agencies — bring a single-page letter requesting people to cooperate, “for the benefit of our next generations.” The letter’s signatory: Mullah Mohammad Omar, the one-eyed supreme leader of the Taliban.

“We always carry a copy,” says Dr. Attar Wafa, the chief of polio vaccinations in the insurgent-infested province of Laghman, much of which is a no-go area for government workers and foreigners.

The antipolio campaign brings together the Taliban, President Hamid Karzai’s central government, Unicef and the World Health Organization in an uneasy but functioning partnership — one that recognizes the reality of the insurgents’ stranglehold over large chunks of the country. More:

Waziristan: The last frontier

Published
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on January 8, 2010
in Af-Pak, Afghanistan, Conflict, Culture, Pakistan, Politics and Terrorism
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From The Economist:

“YOU should enjoy this,” said a Pushtun from Waziristan, the most remote and radicalised of the tribal areas in North-West Pakistan that border Afghanistan, as he proffered a bottle of Scottish whisky. It was an excellent Sutherland single-malt; but the man was referring to the bottle’s more recent provenance, not its pedigree.

He had been given it by a fellow Waziristani working for Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. This spy had received the illegal grog from an American CIA officer. Your correspondent’s friend returned homewards, Scotch in hand, driven by another Waziristani, who is also employed as a fixer by al-Qaeda.

Waziristan, home to 800,000 tribal Pushtuns, is a complicated place. It is the hinge that joins Pakistan and Afghanistan, geographically and strategically. Split into two administrative units, North and South Waziristan, it is largely run by the Taliban, with foreign jihadists among them. If Islamist terror has a headquarters, it is probably Waziristan.

For terrorists, its attraction is its fierce independence. More:

A merger of interests

Published
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on January 2, 2010
in Af-Pak, Conflict and Terrorism
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Rajmohan Gandhi in the Hindustan Times:

‘Of course, they will kill me,’ one of the subcontinent’s most-influential Muslim leaders told me the other day. “But first they will flog me.” He was speaking of what would await persons like him if violent extremists took over. But the need to survive is compelling many in Pakistan to fight the jihadists.

The stupid talk of an Indian hand behind suicide attacks is not the real story from Pakistan. That Pakistanis as a society are quietly redrawing their list of friends and enemies.

Violent extremists disgracing Pakistan and Islam are now seen as the nation’s enemy number one as well as danger number one. Certainly the United States is not liked, and there is resentment at the pressure on Pakistanis to do more. Pakistanis think that the US and India should understand what Dawn recently called “the limitations of a sub-optimal state fighting a hydra-headed enemy”.

But the violent extremists who blast women, children and the elderly into body pieces that land in mosques and bazaars have firmly displaced the US from its position as the entity Pakistanis most detest. More:

Decoding the New Taliban

Published
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on December 22, 2009
in Af-Pak, Afghanistan, Books and Pakistan
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Steve Coll reviews “Decoding the New Taliban: Insights from the Afghan Field” and “Empires of Mud: Wars and Warlords in Afghanistan” by Antonio Giustozzi. In The National:

If the American-led war in Afghanistan fails to contain the Taliban, it will not be for lack of resources or military talent; it will be because American leaders have failed to see and analyse the conflict’s diverse human terrain. Afghanistan may be known as a graveyard of empires but it is also a graveyard of generalisations. As the US Commanding General in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, pointed out in his pessimistic assessment of the war last summer, international forces operating in Afghanistan have “not sufficiently studied Afghanistan’s peoples, whose needs, identities and grievances vary from province to province and from valley to valley”.

The present American approach, derived from counterinsurgency doctrine, now presumes that political and economic tactics to pacify the Taliban will prove more effective than military force. But such a politics-first strategy, premised on forging a path toward negotiations with at least some Taliban elements, will require sharp eyesight about the Taliban’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as its place in Afghanistan’s social, tribal and cultural topography. More:

Al Qaeda’s American mole

Published
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on December 16, 2009
in Af-Pak, India, Pakistan and Terrorism
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New court documents on the Chicagoan David Headley suspected of helping plan the Mumbai attacks show who he was working with — and suggest an alliance of some of the world’s deadliest terror groups. Bruce Riedel at The Daily Beast:

taj_hotelThe arrest in Chicago of a Pakistani American, David Headley (originally Daoud Gilani), has rightly gotten much attention because of his alleged role in helping the terror group Lashkar-e-taiba to reconnoiter their targets for the terrorist attack in Mumbai, India, a year ago. That attack killed dozens of innocent Indian, American, and Israeli citizens in the most spectacular act of international terror since the 9/11 attacks. The court documents served in Chicago, however, also show something else. Headley’s most important connection was to an individual, Ilyas Kashmiri, who is a prominent member of al Qaeda. In short, al Qaeda apparently had an American mole operating inside the United States for at least the last year and maybe longer.

The Chicago records are very clear that Headley was closer to Kashmiri than anyone else including his other contacts in Lashkar-e-taiba. When he heard that Kashmiri might have been killed in a drone attack in northern Pakistan this September, according to the court documents, he was distraught and immediately began searching the Web for any news about his handler. Headley was greatly relieved when his contacts told him Kashmiri was still alive and looking forward to seeing him on his next trip to Pakistan. He was arrested when he tried to board the flight. He was actively involved in plots for new attacks in India focusing on Israeli targets, which he had already reconnoitered, and a plot to attack the Danish newspaper that published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that had attracted the anger of al Qaeda. More:

Tete-a-tete with Hillary Clinton

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on December 15, 2009
in Af-Pak and Pakistan
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Hassan Abbas interviews US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:

Do you think there might be some possibility in future that E.U., China, and United States altogether can take an initiative to bring Pakistan and India together and help them resolve their differences. We continuously hear that peace in the Af-Pak region is considered the most critical issue for the global security concerns. A global approach hence can be relevant. Do you think such an international effort can work?

Secretary Clinton: I think it could be a guarantor or it could be a positive force for implementation. But I think that the impetus must come from the two countries themselves. And at some point, both countries might say we’ve gotten as far as we can get; therefore we need some support, we need some new energy. But we have to start with the two countries and with their commitment to pursuing this dialogue first. More:

Gurkha soldiers in Afghanistan

Published
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on December 13, 2009
in Af-Pak, Afghanistan, Nepal and Terrorism
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From The Atlantic: The Gurkhas, who come mostly from the rugged hills of rural Nepal, have fought for the British in almost every war since 1815. Today, members of the Royal Gurkha Rifles are fighting in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. Video by Anup Khaple.

Tycoon, contractor, soldier, spy

Published
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on December 13, 2009
in Af-Pak, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Terrorism
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blackwater1

Photo from “U.S. Training Center.” If you do a Google search for Blackwater and click on blackwaterusa, it directs you to the “U.S. Training Center.”

Blackwater, renamed Xe (pronounced zi) earlier this year, is a private military company and claims to operate the world’s largest tactical training facility. According to its Wiki profile, it is currently the largest of the US State Department’s three private security contractors.

Erik Prince, the founder of the company, has been called “America’s best-known mercenary” by the London Times: He “packed a mobile phone on one hip and a handgun on the other as he flew in and out of the world’s troublespots.”

Erik Prince, CEO of Blackwater, and the company's old and new logos. Photos: Wiki

Erik Prince, CEO of Blackwater, and the company's old and new logos. Photos: Wiki

In a long profile of Prince, Vanity Fair reveals that the CIA had asked Blackwater to kill Pakistani nuclear scientist AQ Khan but the authorities in Washington chose not to pull the trigger.

From Vanity Fair:

In Hollywood, meanwhile, a town that loves nothing so much as a good villain, Prince, with his blond crop and Daniel Craig mien, has become the screenwriters’ darling. In the film State of Play, a Blackwater clone (PointCorp.) uses its network of mercenaries for illegal surveillance and murder. On the Fox series 24, Jon Voight has played Jonas Hodges, a thinly veiled version of Prince, whose company (Starkwood) helps an African warlord procure nerve gas for use against U.S. targets.

But the truth about Prince may be orders of magnitude stranger than fiction. For the past six years, he appears to have led an astonishing double life. Publicly, he has served as Blackwater’s C.E.O. and chairman. Privately, and secretly, he has been doing the C.I.A.’s bidding, helping to craft, fund, and execute operations ranging from inserting personnel into “denied areas”—places U.S. intelligence has trouble penetrating—to assembling hit teams targeting al-Qaeda members and their allies. Prince, according to sources with knowledge of his activities, has been working as a C.I.A. asset: in a word, as a spy. While his company was busy gleaning more than $1.5 billion in government contracts between 2001 and 2009—by acting, among other things, as an overseas Praetorian guard for C.I.A. and State Department officials—Prince became a Mr. Fix-It in the war on terror. His access to paramilitary forces, weapons, and aircraft, and his indefatigable ambition—the very attributes that have galvanized his critics—also made him extremely valuable, some say, to U.S. intelligence.

Click here to read the full article.

The US political weekly The Nation had earlier carried an article titled “Bush’s Shadow Army” adapted from a book by Jeremy Scahill,  ”Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.” Below, an excerpt:

Blackwater was founded in 1996 by conservative Christian multimillionaire and ex-Navy SEAL Erik Prince–the scion of a wealthy Michigan family whose generous political donations helped fuel the rise of the religious right and the Republican revolution of 1994. At its founding, the company largely consisted of Prince’s private fortune and a vast 5,000-acre plot of land located near the Great Dismal Swamp in Moyock, North Carolina. Its vision was “to fulfill the anticipated demand for government outsourcing of firearms and related security training.” In the following years, Prince, his family and his political allies poured money into Republican campaign coffers, supporting the party’s takeover of Congress and the ascension of George W. Bush to the presidency.

While Blackwater won government contracts during the Clinton era, which was friendly to privatization, it was not until the “war on terror” that the company’s glory moment arrived. Almost overnight, following September 11, the company would become a central player in a global war. “I’ve been operating in the training business now for four years and was starting to get a little cynical on how seriously people took security,” Prince told Fox News host Bill O’Reilly shortly after 9/11. “The phone is ringing off the hook now.” More here in The Nation.

David Headley: A terror suspect’s life of contradictions

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on December 12, 2009
in Af-Pak, India, Pakistan and Terrorism
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From the Wall Street Journal:

CHICAGO: Federal authorities allege David Headley is a terrorist. Joy Tomme knew him as a ladies’ man.

“Girls fell on their faces for him,” said Ms. Tomme, who worked the day shift in 1984 at one of two Philadelphia bars owned by Mr. Headley’s mother. Mr. Headley worked nights and still went by his given name, Daood Gilani.

Ms. Tomme, now a 78-year-old writer, said she was surprised during a visit to his apartment. “I thought it was going to be a love-nest,” she said. Instead, she saw posters of anti-capitalistic slogans and Islamic men bearing weapons.

Still tall and fit, the 49-year-old Mr. Headley is in custody, accused of helping coordinate the terrorist assault on Mumbai last year that killed more than 160 people. He is also accused of planning an attack on a Danish newspaper that had published unflattering cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad. More:

Also in the Wall Street Journal:

How Daood Gilani became David Headley

1960: Daood Gilani is born in Washington, to a Pakistani father and an American mother. The family moves to Pakistan while he is an infant.

1970: After divorcing Daood’s father, Serrill Headley returns to U.S. and buys a bar in Philadelphia, which she renames the Khyber Pass.

1977: Serrill Headley brings Daood back from Pakistan, where he attended a military high school. He spends one semester at Valley Forge Military College. Then he lives above his mother’s bar and works there in the 1980s until it is sold. More:

5 US students linked to al Qaeda

One of the men, Ramy Zamzam, seemed just another harried dental student only days ago. The 22-year-old student at Washington’s Howard University was agonizing over big soccer matches in the Middle East.

On Nov. 28, days before landing in Pakistan, a friend posted a note on Mr. Zamzam’s Facebook page, joking about how much they had eaten on Thanksgiving: “I heard your parents had to buy a new scale after you stepped on it??”

“Me or you?” Mr. Zamzam wrote back. “You even packed some to take home!” More in WSJ

How to mend fences with Pakistan

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on December 10, 2009
in Af-Pak, Afghanistan, India, Leaders, Pakistan and Terrorism
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Asif Ali Zardari, the president of Pakistan, in the New York Times:

asif_ali_zardari4Now that President Obama has recommitted the United States to stand with Pakistan and Afghanistan in our common fight against terrorism, extremism and fanaticism, it would be useful for Americans and Pakistanis to consider what has brought us to this point — and what the conflict’s true endgame must be.

Despite the noise created by an often hyperactive press in Pakistan (an essential and preferable alternative to the censorship that prevailed during my country’s military dictatorships), and the doubts expressed in America, Pakistan’s democratically elected government is unambiguously on the right path toward establishing a moderate and modern nation.

Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani and I are working closely with our national assembly and our military and intelligence agencies to defeat the Taliban insurgency and the Qaeda-backed campaign of terrorism. Simultaneously, we are pursuing policies that will re-establish Pakistan as a vibrant economic market and finally address the long-neglected weaknesses in our education, health, agriculture and energy sectors. This isn’t just rhetoric — it is an active policy with new budget priorities and a reoriented national mindset. More:

Also read in NYT: ‘Obama needs a ‘Plan B‘ by Anatol Lieven, a professor in the War Studies Department at King’s College London and a senior fellow of the New America Foundation, and Maleeha Lodhi, senior fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Center and a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington and London.

Headley: Making of a terrorist

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on December 9, 2009
in Af-Pak, India and Terrorism
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Philip Shenon at The Daily Beast:

The Daily Beast has since learned that Headley’s connections to the Drug Enforcement Administration’s murky intelligence unit—which I confirmed yesterday—might have played a role in his alleged conversion to terrorism. Additionally, sources at a foreign intelligence agency tell me that he might have been a double agent who turned on the U.S.

Headley was allegedly valuable to Lakshar-e-Taiba—the Pakistani terror group that pulled off the Mumbai attack—because as an American he traveled easily and undetected between the U.S., India, Pakistan, and Denmark (where he’s been linked to a plot to kill a Danish cartoonist who angered fundamentalist Muslims with his lampooning cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad). Born in Washington, but raised mostly in Pakistan, Headley’s father was a former Pakistani diplomat and his mother a onetime Philadelphia socialite. It’s there that Headley moved in the 1970s to live with his mother and attended a community college. More:

Also read in The Daily Beast: Headley’s ties to visa companies

The war in Pashtunistan

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on December 6, 2009
in Af-Pak, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Terrorism
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An intensifying war: NYT graphic

An intensifying war: NYT graphic

Scott Shane in the New York Times:

That land is not on any map, but it’s where leaders of Al Qaeda and the Taliban both hide. It straddles 1,000 miles of the 1,600-mile Afghan-Pakistani border. It is inhabited by the ethnic Pashtuns, a fiercely independent people that number 12 million on the Afghan side and 27 million on the Pakistani side. They have a language (Pashto), an elaborate traditional code of legal and moral conduct (Pashtunwali), a habit of crossing the largely unmarked border at will, and a centuries-long history of foreign interventions that ended badly for the foreigners.

Whether Mr. Obama will have better luck there than President George W. Bush, the Soviet Politburo and British prime ministers back to the early 19th century remains to be seen. But it is there that the war will be fought, because it is there that the Taliban were spawned and where they now regroup, attack and find shelter, for themselves and their Qaeda guests. More:


The demons that haunt the Pakistanis

Published
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on December 6, 2009
in Af-Pak and Pakistan
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Sabrina Tavernise in the New York Times:

But there was something else, an anti-Americanism whose depth and intensity I could not fully grasp. So to find out where Pakistan’s head was, I sought help from one of the country’s top psychiatrists.

What I got was not so much an explanation as an illustration, in all its anger, of the embittered language in which a great many Pakistanis discuss their relationship with America — living proof of just how different America’s understanding of Pakistan is from its own view of itself.

“The real terrorists are not the men in turbans we see on Al Jazeera,” said the psychiatrist, Dr. Malik H. Mubbashar, vice chancellor of the University of Health Sciences in Lahore. “They are wearing Gucci suits and Brit hats. It’s your great country, Madam.”

I asked him to spell it out. “It’s coming from Americans, Jews and Indians,” he said. “It’s an axis of evil that’s being supervised by you people.” More:

Obama’s Afghanistan timeline and India: His Af, our Pak

Published
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on December 5, 2009
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Shekhar Gupta in the Indian Express:

Our biggest worry will be if he returns a loser, or in haste by claiming a partial success as victory. The situation we would then be left with will be like that of a patient who the surgeon has left unstitched on the operation table. Our policy has to work to ensure that does not happen, and if it does, to build the strength to deal with not one, but two debris states next door. Until then, we also have to accept living in our region with our preeminence deeply curtailed.

If Obama wins, we win. If he loses, we have to be strong enough to look after ourselves — because unlike him, we have no escape. More:


Pakistan and the global war on terror

Published
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on December 2, 2009
in Af-Pak, Pakistan and Terrorism
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An interview with Tariq Ali by Mara Ahmed and Judith Bello in CounterPunch. [via 3quarksdaily]

tariq_aliWhat is the role of Islamophobia in the Global War on Terror. Many American war veterans have described the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as imperialistic, racist and genocidal. Your comments?

Tariq: Well, I think Islamophobia plays an important part in things, because it creates an atmosphere in which people feel, “Oh, we’re just killing Muslims, so that’s alright.” And this situation is becoming quite serious in the United States and in large parts of Europe, where people feel that the fact that a million Iraqis have died is fine because they’re not like us, they’re Muslims. So, Islamophobia is becoming a very poisonous and dangerous ideological construct which has to be fought against.

It sometimes irritates people but I do compare it to the anti-Semitism that existed in the 20s and 30s and 40s of the last century. And I do wonder whether all the education that people are being given, and rightly so, about the killing of the Jews and the Judeocide of the Second World War is having an impact. What sort of education is it if they can’t relate what happened then to some of the things that are happening now. Education which just centers on one atrocity and that’s all, where people feel very opposed to that [one atrocity], but they can support other atrocities, is in my opinion not a proper education. And some of the level of ignorant comment on Islam and the Islamic world in the United States is deeply shocking. That’s all it is. It’s ignorance. More: