Marines Caught On Tape Desecrating Taliban Bodies Deserve Punishment

The Marines who were videotaped while urinating on Taliban members apparently killed in a combat situation deserve whatever punishment is meted out to them. An investigation is underway to determine who was involved, and the charges would likely include conduct unbecoming an officer as well as a general offense (catchall) under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (47 USC Sections 933 and 934). That would include regulations prohibiting photographing/videotaping deceased individuals.

Both charges can lead to dishonorable/bad conduct discharges and/or prison time.

It doesn't take Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) to know that something needs to be done.

The U.S. Marine Corps vowed a full investigation into the 39-second viral video, which infuriated Afghan President Hamid Karzai and others.

“The government of Afghanistan is deeply disturbed by a video that shows American soldiers desecrating dead bodies of three Afghans,” Karzai said in a statement Thursday.

“This act by American soldiers is simply inhumane and condemnable in the strongest possible terms,” he continued. “We expressly ask the US government to urgently investigate the video and apply the most severe punishment to anyone found guilty in this crime.”

TALIBAN: 'SHAMEFUL' VIDEO WON'T HARM POTENTIAL AFGHAN PEACE TALKS

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan also condemned the video.

“This behavior dishonors the sacrifices and core values of every service member representing the 50 nations of the coalition,” said a statement from the ISAF.

Dressed in full combat gear and holding rifles at their sides, the four men stand over the three corpses sprawled out near an overturned wheelbarrow. The warriors start urinating on the bloodied bodies, and cracking sickeningly insensitive jokes.

Bad conduct such as this can hamper the ISAF/US mission in Afghanistan by making it more difficult to gain the trust of potential allies regardless of what one thinks about the Taliban. These Marines need to be dealt with promptly and judiciously.

A Vaccination Ruse To Catch Bin Laden; Drone Program Now In Doubt Over Ongoing Rift

You have to give the CIA credit. They were more than willing to try unconventional means to track down Osama bin Laden and to gain intel they believed necessary to confirm whether they got their man.

The CIA apparently ran a vaccination ruse to obtain DNA information. But perhaps more importantly, the fallout from the bin Laden raid continues to affect the security situation in Afghanistan and the frontier provinces in Pakistan. The drone program and military aid programs to Pakistan are in doubt as the Pakistanis continue to seethe over the raid:

The vaccination program was set up as the C.I.A. was struggling to learn whether Bin Laden was hiding in the compound, and adds a new twist to the months of spy games that preceded the nighttime raid in early May that killed the Qaeda chief.

It has also aggravated already strained tensions between the United States and Pakistan. The operation was run by a Pakistan doctor, Shakil Afridi, whom Pakistani spies have since arrested for his suspected collaboration with the Americans. Dr. Afridi remains in Pakistani custody, the American official said.

Getting DNA evidence from the people hiding in the Abbottabad compound would have been a significant coup, because it would have allowed the C.I.A. to match the samples with DNA from other members of the Bin Laden family that are on file at the C.I.A. — providing the first hard evidence in years of his whereabouts.

The American official said that the doctor managed to temporarily gain access to the compound, but that he never saw Bin Laden and was not successful in getting DNA samples from any Bin Laden family members. Obama administration officials have said publicly they were not sure whether Bin Laden was in Abbottabad when dozens of Navy Seals commandos stormed the house in May.

The existence of the vaccination program was first reported by a British newspaper, The Guardian. A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment.

It is unclear how the C.I.A. first recruited Dr. Afridi to work for the United States. The Guardian reported that he used a team of nurses and other health workers to administer Hepatitis B vaccinations throughout Abbottabad, even starting the program on poor fringes of the town to maintain a low profile.

Pakistani military and intelligence operatives were furious about the American raid that killed Bin Laden, and relations between the United States and Pakistan have only plummeted since. Pakistani officials have suggested that they might use troops to repel another incursion into Pakistan, and many American officials believe that Pakistan seems more concerned with hunting C.I.A. informants than with finding Qaeda operatives.

American officials said they planned to suspend as much as $800 million worth of military aid to Pakistan — a move partly designed to chasten Islamabad for expelling American military trainers — and several influential American lawmakers have suggested attaching more strings to the billions of dollars sent each year to Pakistan.

Also at stake is the C.I.A.’s armed drone program, which has carried out hundreds of strikes in Pakistan in recent years and has killed several senior operatives from Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban. Pakistan has threatened to expel C.I.A. operatives working on the drone program from a base in southern Pakistan, and the C.I.A. has set up contingency plans to run more flights from a base in eastern Afghanistan.

It is interesting that the Pakistanis seem to be more interested in catching those who may have provided intel to the CIA in the hunt for Osama bin Laden than they are in going after other terrorists hiding in their midst.

Drone airstrikes continue, including one that killed 38 people, and the Pakistanis continue to express their displeasure about those ongoing airstrikes. They threaten to stop US operations from airbases inside Pakistan, and the CIA and US military are contemplating carrying those operations from bases inside Afghanistan.

At the same time, Pakistan is also threatening to reduce/eliminate troops from along its border with Afghanistan, which would enable the Taliban to expand operations on both sides of the border, if the US suspends $800 million in aid.

Pakistan is also looking towards China for military aid, equipment, and assistance.


The Pakistanis are currently engaged in military operations against certain Taliban elements, but they aren't willing to eliminate those Taliban factions because the Pakistani ISI has long used the Taliban to influence events in Afghanistan. They aren't going to suddenly reverse course and no longer seek to influence the outcome in their neighbor.

Pakistan is seeking to preserve ties with the Taliban and other militants that it has used for decades to gain political influence in Afghanistan, according to Imtiaz Gul, director of Islamabad’s Center for Research and Security Studies.

The reliance on guerrillas to project power across Pakistan’s borders is part of an effort to compensate for its smaller size compared with arch-foe India, against which it has fought three wars since the countries separated at independence from the U.K.

Any army offensive “is not going to give satisfaction to the Americans, because Pakistan wants to keep a relationship with some of the groups there,” including the one led by Afghan tribal leader Jalaluddin Haqqani, said Gul.

The U.S., which is withdrawing some troops and planning to end its combat role in Afghanistan by 2014, is pushing Pakistan to crush the Taliban in its territory while helping bring its leaders to peace talks. The U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan describe Haqqani as a major enemy.

Things in South Asia are getting a whole lot more dangerous because Pakistan's ongoing limited actions to deal with the Islamists and Taliban who seek to destabilize the region results from the refusal to cut longstanding ties with those elements.

Pakistan Still Cultivating Terrorists

Despite their claims that they aren't supporting militant groups and terrorists, the fact remains that the Pakistani military and security services are constantly in contact with a wide array of groups, including those that operate in the frontier provinces with Afghanistan and in Jammu and Kashmir.

The Pakistanis are double dealing when it comes to the US, NATO, and claims that they're doing all they can to stop terrorists from operating within their territory.

The former commander said that he was supported by the Pakistani military for 15 years as a fighter, leader and trainer of insurgents until he quit a few years ago. Well known in militant circles but accustomed to a covert existence, he gave an interview to The New York Times on the condition that his name, location and other personal details not be revealed.

Militant groups, like Lashkar-e-Taiba, Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen and Hizbul Mujahedeen, are run by religious leaders, with the Pakistani military providing training, strategic planning and protection. That system was still functioning, he said.

The former commander’s account belies years of assurances by Pakistan to American officials since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that it has ceased supporting militant groups in its territory. The United States has given Pakistan more than $20 billion in aid over the past decade for its help with counterterrorism operations. Still, the former commander said, Pakistan’s military and intelligence establishment has not abandoned its policy of supporting the militant groups as tools in Pakistan’s dispute with India over the border territory of Kashmir and in Afghanistan to drive out American and NATO forces.

“There are two bodies running these affairs: mullahs and retired generals,” he said. He named a number of former military officials involved in the program, including former chiefs of the intelligence service and other former generals. “These people have a very big role still,” he said.

Maj. Gen. Zaheer ul-Islam Abbasi, a former intelligence officer who was convicted of attempting a coup against the government of Benazir Bhutto in 1995 and who is now dead, was one of the most active supporters of the militant groups in the years after Sept. 11, the former commander said.

He said he saw General Abbasi several times: once at a meeting of Taliban and Pakistani militant leaders in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province as they planned how to confront the American military in Afghanistan; and twice in Mir Ali, which became the center for foreign militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas, including members of Al Qaeda.

There were about 60 people at the Taliban meeting in late 2001, soon after the Taliban government fell, the former commander said. Pakistani militant leaders were present, as were the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, and Muhammad Haqqani, a member of the Haqqani network.

Several retired officials of Pakistan’s premier spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, were also there, he said, including a man known as Colonel Imam but who was actually Brig. Sultan Amir, a well-known trainer and mentor of militants, and General Abbasi. The militant groups divided Afghanistan into separate areas of operations and discussed how to “trip up America,” he said.

The Pakistani military still supports the Afghan Taliban in their fight to force out American and NATO forces from Afghanistan, he said, adding that he thought they would be successful.

Some Pakistanis will say that these kinds of linkages were severed and these groups are no longer operating with the sanction of the government, but that's highly suspect.

Barbaric Terrorists Attack Afghan Hospital; 60+ Dead; 120 Wounded

Terrorists targeted an Afghan hospital in Eastern Afghanistan, killing at least 60 people. The Taliban denied responsibility, claiming that they don't attack hospitals (even though they've had no problems attacking schools or civilians in any other locale.

This wasn't the only terror attack in Afghanistan, as a bomber blew up an explosive in a bazaar, killing at least 10 people in northern Afghanistan.

The Problematic End of the Afghan Surge

President Obama is set to announce that the Afghan surge, where 30,000 additional US troops were stationed in Afghanistan, will come to an end in 2012. 10,000 troops will be pulled back this year, and 20,000 more will be pulled out by the end of 2012.

This doesn't end the US commitment to Afghanistan and the troop levels will be as they were when President Obama took office - 70,000.

These troop reductions are both deeper and faster than the recommendations made by Mr. Obama’s military commanders, and they reflect mounting political and economic pressures at home, as the president faces relentless budget pressures and an increasingly restive Congress and American public.

The president is scheduled to speak about the Afghanistan war from the White House at 8 p.m. Eastern time.

Mr. Obama’s decision is a victory for Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has long argued for curtailing the American military engagement in Afghanistan. But it is a setback for his top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, who helped write the Army’s field book on counterinsurgency policy, and who is returning to Washington to head the Central Intelligence Agency.

Two administration officials said General Petraeus did not endorse the decision, though both Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who is retiring, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reluctantly accepted it. General Petraeus had recommended limiting initial withdrawals and leaving in place as many combat forces for as long as possible, to hold on to fragile gains made in recent combat.

In announcing the withdrawals, Mr. Obama will fulfill a pledge he made in December 2009, when he coupled the deployment of 30,000 additional troops with a promise to begin winding down America’s engagement by the middle of this year. But the speed and scope of this plan is striking.

The troop withdrawals this year appears to be higher than a level that outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates and General David Petraeus were comfortable with, but it appears that budgeting and politics are trumping security.

Now is not the time to sit back and take the pressure off the Taliban and al Qaeda affiliated Islamists in Afghanistan or the frontier provinces along the Afghan-Pakistani border. It's the time to hammer home the fact that they've lost and that if they want the US to leave, it will be on US terms.

Reducing troop levels will allow the Taliban to claim victory when no such claim could be warranted and that will further allow them to recruit and regain a foothold in areas that are being held by ISAF and US forces.

I fear that this drawdown will allow the Taliban and al Qaeda to reassert themselves in these regions. It also means that intel gathering will be harder to come by in these regions as we will no longer have sufficient boots on the ground to carry out intel gathering missions to go along with fighting the Taliban where they appear.

It means that capturing foreign fighters and their facilitators will be harder as there are simply fewer US troops (and other ISAF troops) to monitor the region and take the fight to the Taliban.

Hamid Karzai Essentially Ends the Afghan War in Favor of Taliban?

The US and its coalition partners have frequently targeted compounds in Afghanistan where Taliban and al Qaeda are suspected of carrying on meetings or gathering. Some of those airstrikes have resulted in civilian casualties, but after the latest such incident, Afghan leader Hamid Karzai has called on the US and the ISAF to cease targeting housing compounds, according to USA Today:

"From this moment, airstrikes on the houses of people are not allowed," Karzai told reporters in Kabul.

NATO says it never conducts such strikes without Afghan government coordination and approval. A spokesman for NATO forces in Afghanistan said they will review their procedures for airstrikes given Karzai's statement but did not say that it would force any immediate change in tactics.

"In the days and weeks ahead we will coordinate very closely with President Karzai to ensure that his intent is met," spokeswoman Maj. Sunset Belinsky said. Karzai has previously made strong statements against certain military tactics — such as night raids — only to back off from them later.

But if Karzai holds to what sounds like an order to international troops to abandon strikes, it could bring the Afghan government in direct conflict with its international allies.

"Coalition forces constantly strive to reduce the chance of civilian casualties and damage to structures, but when the insurgents use civilians as a shield and put our forces in a position where their only option is to use airstrikes, then they will take that option," Belinsky said.

Yet, the New York Times soft-pedals the report:

Speaking at a news conference at the presidential palace in Kabul, Mr. Karzai declined to offer specifics on what actions the government would take, saying only that Afghanistan “has a lot of ways of stopping it.”

In an admonishment that carried an air of threat, he said NATO forces were on the verge of being considered occupiers rather than allies.

“If they continue their attacks on our houses, then their presence will change from a force that is fighting against terrorism to a force that is fighting against the people of Afghanistan,” he said. “And in that case, history shows what Afghans do with trespassers and with occupiers.”

Mr. Karzai has used similar language before, but taken with other recent statements, his comments could further threaten a relationship with his Western backers that has been strained over issues like night raids, corruption and the continuing scandal surrounding questionable loans and huge losses at Kabul Bank.

NATO officials responded diplomatically, saying they would continue to work with the Afghan government to reduce civilian casualties.

“General Petraeus has repeatedly noted that every liberation force has to be very conscious that it can, over time, become seen as an occupation force,” Rear Adm. Vic Beck of the Navy, a spokesman for the NATO-led military coalition, said in a statement, referring to Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top coalition commander in Afghanistan. He added, “We are in agreement with President Karzai on the importance of constantly examining our actions in light of that reality — and we are doing just that.”

Karzai says that NATO shouldn't treat Afghanistan as an occupying nation. Nowhere does he make such harsh statements against the Taliban, which has been the bane of the Afghan's existence for so long:



That all but cedes the field of battle to the Taliban, who have no such interest in preserving civilian lives and who all too frequently target civilians and use civilians as human shields.

It makes going after the Taliban and al Qaeda increasingly difficult and means that further airstrikes against housing compounds would be bringing the US into a more direct conflict with Karzai and the Afghan government.

This puts the US in an untenable situation of trying to deal with the Taliban, who not only use the Pakistani frontier provinces as a safe haven, but use housing compounds inside Afghanistan to further destabilize the US-backed Afghan government.

Reports Claim Mullah Omar Killed; Taliban Deny Reports

Less than a month after the US successfully carried out a raid to kill Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, there are multiple reports claiming that Mullah Omar, one of the top Taliban leaders whose regime sheltered bin Laden in Afghanistan may have been killed.

The Afghan Taliban forcefully denied reports Monday that their leader is dead, dismissing them as "claims and rumors" from the "Kabul stooge regime's intelligence directorate."

Mullah Mohammed Omar "is alive and well and is leading the Mujahideen in all aspects while living safely with reliance on Allah," spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said.

His statement came after suggestions that Omar might have been killed recently.

A spokesman for Afghanistan's intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security, said Monday that Omar has disappeared in the past five days.

Lutfullah Mashal said he "hopes" Omar is dead but cannot confirm it.

"So far, we cannot confirm the death or killing of Mullah Omar officially. But we can confirm that he has been disappeared from his hideout in Quetta, Baluchistan" in Pakistan, he said.

"Our sources and senior Taliban members confirm that they can't contact him," Mashal said, adding that Omar had been living in Quetta for 10 years.

Taliban sources vociferously deny the reports.

It is interesting that the Pakistani sources claim that Omar was living in Quetta for the past decade. That's within spitting distance of the border with Afghanistan and the border provinces.

Pakistani Security Forces Finally Clear Pakistani Air Station of Taliban Terrorists

It took nearly 16 hours, but Pakistani security forces have once again secured PNS Mehran. Taliban terrorists infiltrated the base and managed to damage or destroy two of the P-3 Orion maritime surveillance aircraft and caused other damage.

Ten members of Pakistan’s security forces were killed along with four guerrillas, Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters in Karachi. The “terrorists were 20-22 years of age and wore Western clothes with suicide jackets beneath them,” Malik said. They were armed with rocket launchers and grenades, he said.

Pakistani Taliban had pledged to attack government and military installations after U.S. forces killed al-Qaeda leader bin Laden in a raid in Abbottabad, 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of Islamabad, on May 2. The American raid exacerbated tensions between the two countries, as the U.S. questioned whether Pakistani officials had protected bin Laden and Pakistan protested the violation of its territory.

The insurgents in Karachi damaged surveillance aircraft provided by the U.S. in the biggest strike against a leading Pakistani military installation since a raid on the army’s Rawalpindi headquarters in October 2009.

“This attack shows that the Taliban have sympathizers and insiders in the security establishment,” said Talat Masood, a retired army lieutenant general and security analyst in Islamabad. “It also shows that they have become more powerful and sophisticated in their planning and attacks.”
Americans, Chinese

Six Americans, working as trainers and technicians, and 11 Chinese nationals were inside the base at the time of the attack, Malik said today, adding all were rescued early on. Two militants may have escaped, he said, putting at six the total number of guerrillas who could have participated, far fewer than claimed by the Taliban.

“Fifteen of our fighters entered the naval air base and we don’t expect them to return,” Ehsanullah Ehsan, a spokesman for the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, said earlier by telephone from an undisclosed location. “They are there to kill. Our issue with Pakistan is its secular policies and friendship with America.”

Last night’s strike began with several explosions at the Mehran naval base around 11 p.m., followed by gunfire. Malik said that militants entered from the back of the base by cutting through wire, before attacking like “movie stars.”
Surveillance Role

Trucks carrying soldiers entered the base soon after. Black smoke rose into the air and dozens of ambulances waited outside the base.

Two P-3C Orions, a maritime surveillance aircraft, were targeted and damaged in the attack, Haq said. The U.S. handed over the aircraft to the Pakistan navy in April 2010 and said it will give a total of eight by 2012, according to the U.S. Central Command website.

The Taliban may have hit the navy station for its role in helping conduct surveillance against movements by militant groups along Pakistan’s coast, said Bahukutumbi Raman, an Indian security analyst and retired counter-terrorism chief of India’s main intelligence agency.

Pakistan’s naval air unit, including the U.S.-supplied Orion aircraft, has been providing “air surveillance to prevent any sea-borne intrusions of al-Qaeda and to detect any terrorist plans for attacks on ships bringing supplies for the NATO forces in Afghanistan,” Raman wrote in an e-mailed analysis.

The security forces had to clear all the base structures. 13 soldiers were killed, 14 injured, and at least 8 Taliban terrorists were killed. There is the possibility that at least some of the Taliban attackers may have escaped and there are discrepancies between the numbers the Taliban claims to have been involved in the attacks and those being reported by Pakistani news reports. At least some of the terrorists wore suicide vests.

US Consulate Officials Attacked In Car Bombing In Pakistan

Pakistani Taliban terrorists carried out a car bombing against a US consulate convoy in Peshawar, Pakistan, apparently detonating 110 pounds of explosives in the process. Two officials were lightly injured and a Pakistani bystander was killed and 11 others wounded, as the attack was claimed by the Taliban to be in response to the US killing of Osama bin Laden.



It's the first such attack against US interests since bin Laden's death, and not surprisingly the Taliban are taking credit for the attack as revenge - not that the Taliban need an excuse to cause murder and mayhem.

Peshawar is home to many Afghan refugees, and the Taliban are frequently attacking Pakistani forces there as well:

“The attack was deliberately targeted against consulate vehicles,” he said.

“It was a bomb blast. We are still investigating.” The Pakistani Taliban swiftly claimed responsibility, in a telephone call to the AFP news agency, and threatened further attacks against Western targets.

"Our first enemy is Pakistan, then the United States and after that, other NATO countries,” said spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan.

Police in the city said 11 people were hurt, including two foreigners who were slightly injured.

"A man on a motorbike who was passing by was killed in the blast, which was caused by a car bomb,” said one intelligence official on the scene.

The US maintains a small presence in Peshawar, despite a high security risk — heightened by America’s unilateral raid to kill the al-Qaeda leader.

The city is home to thousands of Afghan refugees and serves as a cross-border smuggling hub for insurgents.

On Wednesday, swarms of militants attacked a police checkpoint just outside the city. Two officers and 15 attackers died in a fire fight that lasted hours through the night.

It's not like the Taliban need excuses to murder people or cause mayhem. It's what they do.

Fallout from Bin Laden's Death and What Did Pakistan Know?

Fallout from the death of Osama bin Laden continues to ripple throughout the world. Bin Laden's burial at sea has been criticized, even though that's a far better fate than the nearly 3,000 who were murdered at the World Trade Center. Some criticize that the US was too respectful, while others claim the US was not respectful enough. To me, that says that the US got it right - and I believe that the burial at sea was necessary to eliminate any possibility that his burial site could be treated as a rallying point.

As new details of the raid continue to leak out, the real questions are being pointed in the direction of Pakistan. What did they know and when did they know that bin Laden was living large in their country?

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari submitted an op-ed in the Washington Post today in response to the US mission that killed Osama bin Laden in the town of Abbotabad, just miles from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad.

Let us be frank. Pakistan has paid an enormous price for its stand against terrorism. More of our soldiers have died than all of NATO’s casualties combined. Two thousand police officers, as many as 30,000 innocent civilians and a generation of social progress for our people have been lost. And for me, justice against bin Laden was not just political; it was also personal, as the terrorists murdered our greatest leader, the mother of my children. Twice he tried to assassinate my wife. In 1989 he poured $50 million into a no-confidence vote to topple her first government. She said that she was bin Laden’s worst nightmare — a democratically elected, progressive, moderate, pluralistic female leader. She was right, and she paid for it with her life.

Some in the U.S. press have suggested that Pakistan lacked vitality in its pursuit of terrorism, or worse yet that we were disingenuous and actually protected the terrorists we claimed to be pursuing. Such baseless speculation may make exciting cable news, but it doesn’t reflect fact. Pakistan had as much reason to despise al-Qaeda as any nation. The war on terrorism is as much Pakistan’s war as as it is America’s. And though it may have started with bin Laden, the forces of modernity and moderation remain under serious threat.

My government endorses the words of President Obama and appreciates the credit he gave us Sunday night for the successful operation in Khyber Pakhtunkhawa. We also applaud and endorse the words of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that we must “press forward, bolstering our partnerships, strengthening our networks, investing in a positive vision of peace and progress, and relentlessly pursuing the murderers who target innocent people.” We have not yet won this war, but we now clearly can see the beginning of the end, and the kind of South and Central Asia that lies in our future.

Only hours after bin Laden’s death, the Taliban reacted by blaming the government of Pakistan and calling for retribution against its leaders, and specifically against me as the nation’s president. We will not be intimidated. Pakistan has never been and never will be the hotbed of fanaticism that is often described by the media.

Zardari is in a real tough position right now. He's got to simultaneously defend his country from claims that he was harboring al Qaeda's top dog, claiming that he was providing assistance (unidentified and uncorroborated by US officials who have studiously stated that they shared no aspects of this mission with any other country, including Pakistan), and has to be worried that the Islamists will try to topple his government because of its existing ties with the US (a belief that the government is complicit with the US even if there was no actual). Given the way that Pakistanis love their conspiracy theories (even more than the nutjobs who think Osama wasn't real, wasn't killed, or any permutation thereof), all kinds of speculation is rampant in Pakistan right now over what Pakistan's government knew and when did they know of it.

Fact is, no one really knows what the Pakistani government knew about bin Laden's location, but it is highly suspicious that he was able to live in relative comfort in a compound just yards from the country's military academy and where military personnel go to retire. It is plausible that members of the military or the ISI were complicit in keeping bin Laden's whereabouts hidden but it once again indicates the difficulty of trusting the Pakistani government to reveal key details. Those questions are being asked by members of Congress on both sides of the aisle - and they have good reason to ask those questions. Similar questions are being asked by other countries, including the UK.

Zardari is right to state that his country has been ravaged by Islamic terrorists, particularly Taliban and al Qaeda. Yet, each time the Pakistani government (whether under Zardari or his predecessor, Pervez Musharraf) cracks down, it doesn't go far enough to eliminate the threat. It does just enough - anything more and the Islamists in the Pakistani government (Parliament, military, ISI) would thwart further action.

He further claims that radical Islamist parties make up a small fraction of his government, but that overlooks those other groups that lean towards radicalism and who do not condone crackdowns against the Islamists.

Pakistan barely maintains control over the frontier provinces, which are overrun with Taliban and have hosted al Qaeda for years on end. Efforts to thwart the Taliban have met with mixed success - and the body count among Pakistani soldiers is quite high and

The country can't align itself too greatly with the US for fear of assassinations or coups to install a more Islamist government, but doing nothing allows the Islamists free reign in the frontier provinces.

The question of what Pakistan knew and who knew might be revealed in the treasure trove of intel captured by the special forces team that carried out the mission. They recovered numerous computers, hard drives, thumb drives, and other intel that can be critical to unraveling the logistical network and other contacts, as well as identifying other key members and locations. It could also shed light on other planned or contemplated targets.

Bin Laden's death may also result in a reappraisal of ongoing military operations by the ISAF in Afghanistan, including the possible withdrawal of troops earlier than 2014. I think that would be a serious mistake, considering that al Qaeda and the Taliban remain a serious threat, and allowing them safe haven is a mistake.

Great Escape: Taliban Carry Out Massive Prison Breakout

In a scene straight out of the movie The Great Escape, Taliban thugs tunneled hundreds of feet into a prison compound in Kandahar, Afghanistan and hundreds of prisoners were able to escape.

Officials at Sarposa prison in Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban, say they only discovered the breach at about 4 a.m., a half hour after the Taliban said they had gotten all the prisoners out.

The militants began digging the tunnel about five months ago from a house within shooting distance of the prison guard towers. It was not immediately clear whether they lived in the house while they dug. They meticulously plotted the tunnel's course around police checkpoints and major roads, the insurgent group said in a statement.

The diggers finally broke through to the prison cells around 11 p.m. Sunday night, and a handful of inmates who knew of the plan unlocked cells and ushered hundreds of inmates to freedom without a shot being fired.

Later on Monday, reporters were taken into the prison to view the opening of the tunnel in one of the cell blocks.

Reuters photographs showed a hole, several feet deep, cut into the concrete floor of one of the cells. The hole, big enough to allow one man to climb down at a time, appeared to be connected to a tunnel.

To say that this was a huge failure of Afghan security at the prison complex is an understatement. It would further appear that members of the Afghan security at the prison looked the other way as the prisoners were able to escape from the compound as the Taliban claimed that they had obtained keys to prison gates from "friends".

Failed Pakistani Suicide Bomber Hopes To Try Again

A teenage Pakistani suicide bomber whose bomb failed to detonate hopes to have the opportunity to try again. He and his cohorts had planned to blow up parishioners at a Sufi shrine and while the teenager's bomb didn't detonate, several others did - killing 42 people and wounding 100 more:

A teenage suicide bomber who failed to blow up pilgrims at a shrine in Pakistan stunned his captors when he made clear how desperate he was to die for his cause.

"Let me go, I want to be a martyr," 14-year-old Fida Hussain screamed as policemen led him away. "I want to send all you policemen to hell."

While Hussain was unable to detonate the bomb strapped to his chest, others succeeded Sunday, killing 42 people and wounding 100 more among the thousands gathered at a Sufi shrine near Dera Ghazi Khan.

A second suspect was also detained alive at the shrine, but police revealed no details about him.

Both apparently hail from an area known for breeding militants.

With his strikingly boyish face, Hussain represents the most insidious practice of the Taliban in recruiting young, uneducated boys to carry out suicide attacks.

Experts say young boys are not only less suspicious, but they are easier to indoctrinate into the cause.

"You are all accomplices of the enemies of Islam who are bent upon eliminating Islam and Muslims," Hussain yelled, according to police officer Khalid Mahmood.

The Taliban and al Qaeda recruit from those who are wholly ignorant and are impressionable in order to indoctrinate them into a nihilistic worldview where those who do not practice Islam as they do are worthy targets and that promises of paradise in the afterlife are sufficient to lure them into becoming suicide bombers.

This is the face of evil in Pakistan, and the Islamists in Pakistan have created a monster in which they backed the Taliban and protect those who are enabling these extremists to indoctrinate many more to their cause. Anyone who speaks out against laws like the anti-blasphemy laws, is targeted for assassination. Non-Muslims are targets, and anything that can be used to whip their fellow Islamists into a violent frenzy is seized upon, including the idiot Florida Pastor Terry Jones, whose exhortations to burn a koran and hold a mock trial of Mohammad has led to multiple days worth of rioting and more than a dozen dead.

Pakistan Still Playing Both Sides In Afghanistan

The Washington Post has reported that Pakistan's ISI (its intelligence service) has managed to provide medical assistance to Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban that controlled Afghanistan and gave shelter to Osama bin Laden before 9/11. Of course, the Pakistani government and the ISI deny the report:

Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar was treated in hospital with the help of Pakistan's intelligence agency after suffering a heart attack earlier this month, the Washington Post reported.

Citing "The Eclipse Group," a private network run by ex-CIA, State Department and military officials, the newspaper said the elusive Taliban chief spent several days at a hospital in Karachi, Pakistan.

Most of the senior members of the Afghan Taliban, including Mullah Omar, fled to neighboring Pakistan when U.S.-backed Afghan forces toppled their strict Islamist regime in late 2001.

'Some brain damage'
The firm said its source was a doctor, who was not identified. According to the report, Mullah Omar was "rushed" to hospital by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency on Jan. 7.

"While I was not personally in the operating theater, my evaluation based on what I have heard and seeing the patient in the hospital is that Mullah Omar had a cardiac catheter complication resulting in either bleeding or a small cerebral vascular incident, or both," the Post quoted the doctor as saying.

"After the operation, there seemed to be some brain damage with Mullah Omar having slurred speech," he added.

The Eclipse Group's report said that "after 3-4 days of post-operative care in the hospital, he was released to the ISI and ordered to take absolute bed rest when at home for at least several days."

It said that Mullah Omar was staying at "an ISI 'guest house' in Karachi under ISI guard."

Pakistan continues to play the US for foreign assistance and military aid despite continuing to provide safe havens for al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists. They utilize the frontier provinces with impunity and carry out attacks inside Afghanistan and repeatedly threaten US and ISAF supply lines inside Pakistan.

US Seeks To Expand Military Strikes In Pakistan

NYTimes: U.S. Military Seeks to Expand Raids in Pakistan. The US is looking at expanding raids in Pakistan to deal with the ongoing Taliban threat. It is one of the policies and hallmarks of the Obama administration that has carried out UAV airstrikes more frequently than his predecessor. However, Pakistanis aren't likely to go along with the change unless additional aid is forthcoming. It is also likely to result in additional problems for Pakistan in the frontier provinces where the Taliban maintain their safe havens.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

UPDATE:
These raids wouldn't be the UAV airstrikes we've seen in the past, but special forces operating deep behind the national boundaries of an official ally, even though Pakistan doesn't maintain strict and authoritative control over the frontier provinces. It's a sticky wicket that deserves closer scrutiny and the issue has come up numerous times in the past few years, including during the 2008 presidential campaign when then candidate Barack Obama called for invading Pakistan. Now, some of his military commanders are pushing for that very strategy to go and eradicate the Taliban threat posed by those safe havens. Pakistan has long refused to go fully after the Taliban clans that frequently cross the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan and the last time they made a concerted effort, the Pakistani military didn't come off very well.

This news may be an effort to spur the Pakistani government to once again take more action against the Taliban.

The Times report is most notable for a new development on the fight against the Taliban and al Qaeda - the US has been backing Afghan militias that carry out cross-border raids:

Additionally, in recent years, Afghan militias backed by the C.I.A. have carried out a number of secret missions into Pakistan’s tribal areas. These operations in Pakistan by Afghan operatives, known as Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams, have been previously reported as solely intelligence-gathering operations. But interviews in recent weeks revealed that on at least one occasion, the Afghans went on the offensive and destroyed a militant weapons cache.

This latter bit may prove to be quite problematic since it shows that the US is backing groups that attack those living on the Pakistani side of the border, and Pakistan may not take kindly to such actions in their official response even if they give them a wink and nod unofficially because the Pakistani government in Islamabad can't directly deal with the Taliban or al Qaeda for fear of upsetting the Islamists who dominate the country.

UPDATE:
The Christian Science Monitor reports that NATO is denying the reports that the US wants to expand special forces operations into Pakistan.

A spokesperson for the US-led coalition in Afghanistan today rebuffed a report that senior US military officials in Afghanistan are seeking to expand raids into Pakistan’s tribal areas.

"There is absolutely no truth to reporting in The New York Times that US forces are planning to conduct ground operations into Pakistan," Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, deputy chief of staff for communication for NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), said in a statement from Kabul, according to Reuters.

The Los Angeles Times adds that Smith's "sharply worded statement underscored the extreme sensitivities surrounding the subject of militant sanctuaries in Pakistan."

US allies are wary of potential repercussions because their logistics are so thinly stretched and are reluctant to engage in directly fighting the Taliban - leaving those efforts up to the US. Supply lines in Pakistan have come under attack on numerous occasions in the past couple of years, destroying convoys of vehicles and equipment destined for NATO troops in Afghanistan. It is possible that the Times report was accurate, but efforts to win NATO commanders over to the idea hasn't gained traction, which is why the denial was issued.

Reflecting on the Death of Richard Holbrooke

Yesterday, veteran US diplomat Richard Holbrooke died at the age of 69 from a torn aorta. My sympathies go out to his friends and family. He is best known for brokering the Dayton Accords which ended the conflict in Bosnia.

While his family will mourn his loss and are directly affected by his death, so too is the US foreign policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Holbrooke had been on President Obama's vanguard of trying to deal with the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan's longstanding support of the Taliban and ongoing crossborder actions enabling the Taliban to regroup and rearm. Frankly, he had more foreign policy experience than most everyone else around him, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Indeed, Clinton got the job that Holbrooke had sought for himself - primarily because Holbrooke had backed Clinton during the 2008 primary race. However, Clinton took Holbrooke on to her staff and put him in a position to deal with the most intractable problems facing the new Administration - dealing with the situation in Afghanistan.

While Holbrooke's last words were reportedly to his Pakistani doctor telling him to end the fighting, the words of Afghan leader Hamid Karzai are far more troubling and relevant. Despite years of cajoling and propping up Karzai as the leader of the Afghans, Karzai still thinks that the country might be better off with the Taliban.

For more than an hour, Gen. David H. Petraeus, U.S. Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry and other top Western officials in Kabul urged Karzai to delay implementing a ban on private security firms. Reconstruction projects worth billions of dollars would have to be shuttered, they maintained, if foreign guards were evicted.

Sitting at the head of a glass-topped, U-shaped table in his conference room, Karzai refused to budge, according to two people with direct knowledge of the late October meeting. He insisted that Afghan police and soldiers could protect the reconstruction workers, and he dismissed pleas for a delay.

As he spoke, he grew agitated, then enraged. He told them that he now has three "main enemies" - the Taliban, the United States and the international community.

"If I had to choose sides today, I'd choose the Taliban," he fumed.

After a few more parting shots, he got up and walked out of the wood-paneled room.

The riposte, and the broader fight over private security contractors, prompted deep alarm among senior U.S. officials in Kabul and Washington. The Obama administration had been trying for the better part of a year to cast aside earlier disputes and make nice with Karzai. But it clearly was not working. Eikenberry told colleagues at the embassy that the relationship had hit its lowest point in years.

As President Obama and his national security team assess the war this week, a central element of the discussion will be their difficulties in building a partnership with Karzai. Despite a concerted effort by top diplomats and commanders, the United States has been unable to achieve more than ephemeral bonhomie with the Afghan leader.

How is it that Karzai has come to view the US as a greater enemy than the Taliban, who routinely murders and butchers Afghans without concern for human rights or remorse? And how is it that relations have declined in the past year. Part of that stems from the approach taken by the White House and its foreign policy objectives - which include withdrawal from the country under a misguided notion of timelines.

Karzai can read the political situation in Afghanistan better than President Obama and his foreign policy staff. Karzai has to live in Afghanistan. The diplomats can go back home to the safety of Foggy Bottom. He knows that the Taliban can reassert themselves the moment the US leaves, and he's not about to signal to the Taliban that he intends to cross paths with them. He will make accommodations so as to remain in power. Instead of showing that the US will commit to a lengthy period of rebuilding and nation-building that would go a long way to assisting the Afghan nation and undermine the Taliban threat, Karzai views the US as another obstacle to his hold on power because aligning with the US as the US withdraws is tantamount to a death sentence.

Secret NATO-Taliban Talks Included Taliban Imposter

Secret talks between Taliban leaders and NATO and Afghan forces turned into a farce when it was revealed that one of the so-called Taliban leaders was an imposter.

For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the repeated appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement.

But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all. In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little.

“It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.”

So, no one knows who the guy really was, and what he has done with the money.

Classic.

And what should really be noteworthy is just how much contact this guy had with top level Afghan and NATO commanders and political leaders, including Afghan President Hamid Karzai and had been flown around in NATO aircraft. This represents a serious flaw and failure in the intel on Mansour and the Taliban.

Times Square Bomber To Be Sentenced Today; UPDATE: Life In Prison

Faisal Shahzad will learn his punishment today when the court announces his sentence. Shahzad had already entered a guilty plea on 10 counts relating to his attempted bombing in Times Square. The bomb failed to detonate properly, which meant that New Yorkers and visitors to the area were spared a gruesome fate:

A dramatic videotape of the FBI-staged test blast in June has become a key piece of evidence against Shahzad, who faces a mandatory life prison term at his sentencing Tuesday in Manhattan federal court.

Technicians studied Shahzad's design before using it to build a working model they say demonstrated his deadly intent.

"Had the bombing played out as Shahzad had so carefully planned, the lives of numerous residents and visitors of the city would have been lost and countless others would have been forever traumatized," prosecutors wrote in court papers.

Shahzad's bomb fizzled before it could do any harm, doomed by faulty wiring and ingredients such as a low-grade fertilizer that couldn't explode.

The Pakistan-born Shahzad hasn't disputed the allegations while under interrogation and taking a guilty plea.

In fact, "he spoke with pride" about the scheme, in which he bragged that he wanted to kill at least 40 people, the government said in a sentencing memo. If he escaped arrest, he added, he hoped to set off another bomb two weeks later in a second, undisclosed location.

"While it is impossible to calculate precisely the impact of Shahzad's bomb had it detonated, the controlled detonation ... demonstrated that those effects would have been devastating to the surrounding area," prosecutors wrote.

Calling himself a Muslim solider, a defiant Shahzad pleaded guilty in June to 10 terrorism and weapons counts, some of which carry mandatory life sentences.

Shahzad had received terror training and financial assistance overseas. He claims that the Pakistan Taliban provided him with more than $15,000 and five days of explosives training late last year and early this year, months after he became a U.S. citizen. He had planned the attack using widely available web feeds and had planned the attack to coincide with when the area would be heavily trafficked with tourists.

The sentencing comes just a day after a UAV airstrike apparently killed a German terror cell that was in the Pakistani frontier province of Waziristan in the town of Mir Ali. Pakistan continues to be a hub of terrorism, and the latest European travel warnings are related as well. Al Qaeda has mutated its efforts to strike at targets around the world to try and carry out attacks. No high level al Qaeda or Taliban were killed in the latest strike, but the elimination of the German cell could have thwarted a major attack down the road. Western intel agencies are concerned that al Qaeda will attempt to carry out Mumbai-style attacks (using a cadre of terrorists to attack hotels and other soft targets to inflict maximum casualties).

UPDATE:
Shahzad has gotten life in prison. He was unrepentant to the last - he said: "Brace yourselves, the war with Muslims has just begun," just before the judge handed down the six life sentences.

Shahzad, like many other Islamic terrorists, ignores that the bulk of victims of their terror campaigns are fellow Muslims, but they chalk it up to acceptable losses in a larger campaign of jihad against the West as they promote their version of fundamentalist Islam.

UAV Airstrike Kills German Militants In Pakistan As Unrest Continues

A United States UAV airstrike in the Waziristan town of Mir Ali appears to have taken out a bunch of German militants. The exact number of casualties is not yet known, but it is highly unusual for such a large concentration of foreign terrorists to congregate in the area.

Pakistani intelligence officials say five German militants are believed to have been killed in an American missile strike close to the Afghan border.

The officials say the missiles hit a house in the town of Mir Ali in North Waziristan region late Monday.

Two say the victims were believed to be German citizens in the region for terrorist training.

A third says they were believed to be foreigners, but gave no details.

A Reuters report said eight militants of German nationality were killed by missiles from a pilotless aircraft.

The officials spoke anonymously because their agency does not permit operatives to be named in the media.

This comes on the heels of NATO convoys to Afghanistan being repeatedly attacked in Pakistan, which has put the NATO efforts under considerable strain.

It's also on the heels of alerts in Europe over potential terror attacks. The US State Department issued warnings to those Americans visiting Europe to be vigilant (as if that isn't what people should be doing generally).

There were 21 UAV airstrikes this past September - the most for any month.

The CIA has been trying to eliminate leaders of the Haqqani network, an Afghan Taliban faction operating out of North Waziristan which is seen as one of the most effective forces fighting U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

North Waziristan is home to a variety of militant groups, some fighting the Pakistani government, others battling U.S.-led NATO troops in Afghanistan.

Some militants are foreigners who have taken up the cause of holy war against the West and see North Waziristan as a safe haven or training ground.

U.S. and British alerts about possible attacks in Europe highlight concern that growing numbers of militants are going from the West to remote war zones for training in answer to al Qaeda's online call for violence.

The immediate trigger for Sunday's travel alerts was intelligence about a plot against European targets reportedly originating with a group of individuals in mountainous northern Pakistan, some of them believed to be European citizens.

Few details of the conspiracy are known. But the plot appears to be of the kind that Western officials believe poses the most significant danger today -- the use of so-called self-radicalized militants with no previous record of extremism.

This area has been the focus of military action for quite some time. Mir Ali was the scene of a major Pakistani military action in 2007, where Pakistani troops killed nearly 200 people, most of whom were terrorists, though the Pakistani forces got bloodied in the process. Quite a few of the UAV airstrikes have been directed in the vicinity of Mir Ali.

Taliban Murder 10 Medical Workers In Afghanistan

It's little wonder that charitable groups are unwilling to go to places like Afghanistan that are so sorely in need of medical services. They're likely to be attacked and killed by the Taliban.

Here, 10 medical workers were murdered, six of them Americans, by the Taliban who claimed that they were proselytizing Christianity.

t least 10 medical personnel, including six Americans, were murdered in northern Afghanistan on Thursday, officials confirmed Saturday. A Taliban spokesman, reached by cellphone, claimed responsibility for the killings.

The bodies from the group, which had been on an expedition to bring eye care and other medical services to remote areas, were found shot to death in a mountainous area of Badakhshan Province, according to the provincial police chief, Aka Noor Kentoz.

The International Assistance Mission, a group that last month had a fund-raiser in Kabul for a medical expedition to Nuristan Province, said six of the dead were Americans, one was German and one was British. Dirk Frans, the executive director of the I.A.M., said the team was headed by Tom Little, an American opthamologist with four decades experience in Afghanistan and a fluent Dari speaker. Mr. Frans said the team numbered 12, including four Afghans, two of whom were killed.

The victims’ bodies were stripped of all belongings, making identification difficult and suggesting robbery as a motive. However, Taliban insurgents are known to be active in the area, and the attackers allowed at least one Afghan to leave the scene unharmed. The survivor, an Afghan driver named Saifullah, told police he was let go because he recited verses from the Koran.

A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabiullah Mujahid, claimed that the medical team were shot because they ignored an order from the insurgents to stop. Afterwards, he said, they found evidence that the group were American spies and were preaching Christianity. He said they had maps showing their bases, and a Bible in Dari. Although I.A.M. is a Christian-supported group, Mr. Frans said, it does not engage in proselytizing.

Who suffers most when these charitable groups are attacked and deterred from further involvement? The Afghans themselves.

12 Year Old Afghan Jihadi Murders 40 At Wedding Party

Try wrapping your mind around that one. A 12-year old boy is turned into a suicide bomber and succeeds in murdering 40 people and wounding many more in a heinous attack on a wedding party.

The boy, dressed in white and thought to be no older than 13, appeared amid the din of a wedding party in a small southern Afghan village and walked up to within 15 feet of a cluster of tables where everyone was eating. As he prepared to detonate his suicide bomb vest, the gathering flew into a panic.

"Everyone immediately tried to escape," said Abdullah Jan, a guest at the wedding. But there was no time.

The boy's suicide vest packed with explosives detonated, killing more than 40 people and wounding at least 80, said Zemarai Khan, a local police chief who was at the wedding and witnessed the attack.

That had to be some serious amount of explosives to kill that many people.

Some Taliban are scoffing at the idea that the kid carried out the attack, but who else in the region but the Taliban and al Qaeda train suicide bombers and indoctrinate kids from an early age to glorify in the role of martyr. The notion that murdering dozens of people doesn't even enter their minds (or the minds of those training the suicide bombers).

This is barbarism and this is the kind of ideology that the world must resist. It means supporting those in Afghanistan and Pakistan that fight against these barbarians and supporters of jihad.