Pakistan lies. It hosted Osama bin Laden (knowingly or not). Its government is barely functional. It hates the democracy next door. It is home to both radical jihadists and a large and growing nuclear arsenal (which it fears the U.S. will seize). Its intelligence service sponsors terrorists who attack American troops. With a friend like this, who needs enemies?
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| Supporters of an Islamic separatist group march a mock nuclear missile through the streets of Karachi, February 2011. (Reuters) |
New US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta has said the US is "within reach of strategically defeating al-Qaeda". Mr Panetta said that following the killing of Osama Bin Laden, key leaders in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere had been identified and would be targeted. He offered the upbeat assessment during his first visit to Afghanistan since taking over at the Pentagon last week.
.... Mr Panetta arrived in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on a previously unannounced visit. Speaking to journalists, Mr Panetta revealed that US analysts had determined that following the death of Bin Laden in May, killing or capturing "around 10 to 20 key leaders" of al-Qaeda and its offshoots would cripple the network.
"We're within reach of strategically defeating al-Qaeda," he said. "The key is that, having gotten Bin Laden, we've now identified some of the key leadership within al-Qaeda, both in Pakistan as well as in Yemen and other areas."
"If we can be successful at going after them, I think we can really undermine their ability to do any kind of planning, to be able to conduct any kind of attack," he added. "That's why I think it's within reach."
Mr Panetta declined to name all the key leaders, but said they included Bin Laden's successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the radical American Muslim cleric of Yemeni descent, Anwar al-Awlaki, who US officials claim is a senior leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
Zawahiri was believed to be hiding in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of western Pakistan, he added, while Awlaki is thought to be living in a remote, mountainous part of central Yemen under the protection of his tribe. Mr Panetta also said he believed the replacement of several key US officials in Afghanistan, including Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, would reset the deteriorating relationship with President Karzai.
"Hopefully, it can be the beginning of a much better relationship than what we've had over the last few years," he said. He said the biggest challenge for the US in the country remained training Afghan forces so they can take over security responsibility by 2014.
"We've made good progress on that, but I think there's a lot more work to do of being able to transition responsibility to them," he added.
There's more, though nothing fully substantiated - make sure you take a look!The story of the world's worst case of nuclear smuggling took a new twist on Thursday when documents surfaced appearing to implicate two former Pakistani generals in the sale of uranium enrichment technology to North Korea in return for millions of dollars in cash and jewels handed over in a canvas bag and cardboard boxes of fruit.
The source of the documents is AQ Khan, who confessed in 2004 to selling parts and instructions for the use of high-speed centrifuges in enriching uranium to Libya, Iran and North Korea. Extracts were published by the Washington Post, including a letter in English purportedly from a senior North Korean official to Khan in 1998 detailing payment of $3m to Pakistan's former army chief, General Jehangir Karamat, and another half-million to Lieutenant General Zulfiqar Khan, who was involved in Pakistan's nuclear bomb tests.
Both generals denied the allegations. "What can I say. [These are] bits of old info packaged together. [There is] not an iota of truth in the allegations against me. [There is] no reason on earth for anyone to pay me for something I could not deliver," Karamat wrote in an email to the Guardian. Lt Gen Khan told the Washington Post that the documents were "a fabrication".
The issue is seen as critically important by western governments. Seven years after Khan, the godfather of the Pakistani nuclear programme, made his public confession on Pakistani television, there is still uncertainty over the extent to which he was a rogue operator or just a salesman acting on behalf of the Pakistani state and its army. Western officials are also unsure whether the covert nuclear sales are continuing.
Young Afghans being coerced into joining jihad with threats of violence and promises of martyrdom
Read it and weep.The Taliban gave Noor Mohammad a simple choice – either they would cut off his hand for stealing or he could redeem himself and bring glory on his family by becoming a suicide bomber.
Held in Taliban custody in a different village from his parents, after allegedly stealing mobile phones during a wedding party in his village, the 14-year-old boy went for the second option. He was soon being given basic lessons in how to use a handgun, which he would use to shoot the guards at a nearby US military base in Ghazni, a province in south-east Afghanistan which is considered the most violent in the country.
He was also fitted with a suicide vest that covered his torso with explosives. He was told that when inside the base he should touch two trailing wires together, killing himself and as many US and Afghan soldiers as possible. Having kitted the soon-to-be martyr out in his jihadi outfit, the insurgents took photos and sent him on his way. Such is one method by which the Taliban recruit a growing number of children used for suicide missions.
A tactic pioneered by al-Qaida but almost unheard of in Afghanistan until 2005, suicide bombing is becoming more popular with insurgents attempting to meet the massively intensified Nato campaign with their own surge of violence. In one recent case a 12-year-old boy in Barmal district in Pakitika province, which borders Pakistan, killed four civilians and wounded many more when he detonated a vest full of explosives in a bazaar.
"They are relying more and more on children," said Nader Nadery, from the country's Independent Human Rights Commission, who thought the Taliban were struggling to recruit enough adults. "When somebody runs out of one tool they go to use the second one."
Mohammad, who talked to the Guardian on Tuesday at a children's prison in Kabul, is awaiting trial after surrendering to the Americans rather than going through with the attack. He says he was left by his Taliban handlers to walk the last few miles to the base in Andar district two weeks ago. Instead he sat down and thought about his predicament. "It is a sin to kill yourself and to kill others," he decided. "So I took off the vest and threw it away."
Surrendering proved tricky as the guards he had been supposed to kill were slow to raise the alert and he was questioned only after sleeping outside the camp for a night. He later led the Americans to the village where the Taliban members lived, identifying a house where the Americans recovered weapons and homemade explosives.
Two Taliban from the village were also killed during a shootout after he identified them, Mohammad said. He knows that because he will never be able to go back to his village and will probably never see his family again.
Not all bombers are coerced. Some are tricked, like a group of four children who were recently arrested after travelling alone across the border from Pakistan into Afghanistan.
Lutfullah Mashal, the spokesman for the National Directorate of Security (NDS), said his spy agency's informants in Peshawar had raised the alarm that the four were on their way.
The boys had confessed during questioning, telling the security forces they believed only American soldiers would die when they detonated their bombs and that they would escape unscathed. But, speaking on Tuesday, they claimed they were forced into making a confession after being beaten and threatened with rape by police. Their new account is hard to believe, however, and at times contradictory.
According to Fazal Rahman, a tearful nine-year-old made all the more distressed by the loss of two teeth at the dentist, the idea to travel to Afghanistan came from Maulavi Marouf, the mullah in charge of the Spin Jumad madrasa in the town of Khairabad. They say an "uncle" in Kabul phoned Marouf asking him to send some physically weak children for a couple of days of manual labour, unloading a delivery of car batteries from lorries. None of the boys, who are Afghans but have lived in Pakistan all their lives, has an address or phone number for the man. Nor did they think it necessary to tell their parents they were going to Kabul.
"Our family is very poor," said Niaz Mohammad, a nine-year-old who said he used to help his father beg. "When I was promised 50,000 rupees [£360] to go to Afghanistan, I went immediately."
But they all describe the madrasa as an institution that cultivated in them a hatred for American soldiers in Afghanistan. "All the time in Friday prayers the maulavi talked about the Americans in Afghanistan and he told us that we should do jihad, especially on Fridays," he said.
It is feared that hundreds of children may have been radicalised and turned into bombers in what Haneef Atmar, Afghanistan's former interior minister, describes as "hate madrasas".
Suicide bombing has also developed a sinister glamour among the youth of the Pakistan's tribal areas. A video in which a group of children enact a suicide bombing has circulated widely in Pakistan in February, sparking public alarm at how jihad appears to have reached the playground.
It also seems to have reached the Kabul juvenile detention centre where staff are trying to give the mix of criminals and would-be jihadists a proper education. "When I told my cellmates I refused to do a suicide attack, none of them could understand why I didn't do it," said Mohammad.
BBC News has put extensive coverage in place (tabs at top of page), with live updates, background information on the raid, an analysis of possible future reprisals, as well as reaction in the USA and wider afield.Bin Laden was killed in a ground operation outside Islamabad based on US intelligence, the first lead for which emerged last August.
Mr Obama said after "a firefight", US forces took possession of the body.
Bin Laden is believed to be the mastermind of the attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001 and a number of others. He was top of the US' "most wanted" list. Mr Obama said it was "the most significant achievement to date in our nation's effort to defeat al-Qaeda".
The US has put its embassies around the world on alert, warning Americans of the possibility of al-Qaeda reprisal attacks for Bin Laden's killing.
Crowds gathered outside the White House in Washington DC, chanting "USA, USA" after the news emerged.
A US official quoted by Associated Press news agency said Bin Laden's body had been buried at sea, although this has not been confirmed.
The unsettling 84-second clip has divided opinions, with some amused by the smiling child actors and fake explosions; others appalled by evidence that suicide bombers have become playground heroes of sorts.
"It's horrifying and alarming. These children have become fascinated by bombers rather than condemning them," said Salma Jafar of Save the Children UK in Pakistan. "If they glamorise violence now, they can become part of it later in life."
The origins of the homemade video, which first surfaced about a week ago, are unknown. Ahsan Masood, a Pashtun from Waziristan who posted it on Facebook, said he believed it had been filmed in Khost, Afghanistan. Masood, who works as a truck driver in the UAE, said he received the video from a friend's mobile phone. "I thought it was funny," he said.
But a sobering reality lies behind the playful drama. Children are both perpetrators and victims in the decade-old Taliban-led conflict that has destabilised both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.An article worth reading full, especiaklly as we try to understand the motivations lying behind terrorism as an expression of political violence.
In Kashmir, such groups are called pro-independence, as opposed to pro-Pakistan groups that advocate union with Pakistan.It is interesting to read the story of militants caught between two major players in the region.
Pakistan and India went to war over Kashmir in 1948. A ceasefire negotiated by the United Nations left the region divided between the two countries, pending a final resolution which still remains elusive.
While initially there was a predominantly pro-Pakistan sentiment across the region, over the last few decades many pro-independence groups have emerged.
Make an effort to read the rest of the article.Is the U.S. drone war in Pakistan putting the squeeze on al-Qaida’s safe havens? It’s not a question that lends itself to easy answers, given the difficulties of reporting from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas where al-Qaida’s top leaders are believed to be. But a new statistical analysis by researchers at Harvard finds that the deadly robots overhead are reaping modest “counterterrorism dividends” — something that al-Qaida itself is complaining about.
Ustadh Ahmad Farooq, a leading al-Qaida propagandist in Pakistan, says in a new audio message that the terrorist network is “losing people” and “facing shortages of resources” in the area, thanks in large part to the escalated U.S. drone campaign. And he indicates the safe havens aren’t as safe as they once were.
“There were many areas where we once had freedom, but now they have been lost,” Farooq laments in a January 23 audio message obtained by the terror-trackers at the SITE Intelligence Group. “Our land is shrinking and drones are flying in the sky.”
