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WakeUp Karachi – The Full Video
Pak overture to Turkey for attack drones worries India
NEW DELHI: Finding the US not overly helpful on arming it with drones and drone technology, Pakistan has now made overtures to the Turkish army
During his recent visit to Islamabad, US defence secretary Robert Gates promised the gift of 12 drones for surveillance. But the 12 RQ-7 Shadow drones cannot send in Reaper or Hellfire missiles which would make them truly lethal and would have provoked an immediate outcry from India. However, experts believe this is dangerous stuff anyway, and it will not take much for Pakistan to reverse engineer them or tailor them for needs other than spying on the Taliban, in other words, to target India.
Needless to add, Pakistan was less than overwhelmed by the offer. Therefore, Indian sources said, Pakistan is now approaching their its friends in the Turkish army for this technology. The Turks were given drones, both attack and surveillance ones, by the Israelis as they battle the Kurds. Whether they are persuaded to part with these for the Pakistanis is another matter, and likely to involve a lot of pre-emptive Indian diplomacy.
India is finding less and less to be positive about in the Pakistan-Afghanistan theatre.
Apart from gifting surveillance drones to Pakistan, the US may be winking at a more robust reconciliation policy with the Taliban in Afghanistan. This will include a greater Pakistani role in the mediation process, which means the ISI will be able to give them greater say in what kind of Taliban gets to be in power in Kabul. This, Indian officials argue, will happen despite US and British “oversight” on Pakistani efforts.
“Their knowledge is pretty flawed, and they remain beholden to the ISI. This is likely to influence their decisions,” said sources. The Pakistani presence in the negotiations comes despite Afghan evidence that attacks like the one in Kabul last week was done by the ISI-friendly Haqqani network.
The reconciliation programme has acquired urgency in the backdrop of President Barack Obama’s withdrawal strategy for 2011. This is of greater concern to India, because it could put a huge question on India’s own participation and future in Afghanistan. Ahead of the London conference on Afghanistan starting on Thursday, foreign minister S M Krishna will try and get a sense from other leaders about the US-led western presence in Afghanistan.
A glimpse of how things may turn out was given by US general David Petraeus when he said, “The concept of reconciliation, of talks between senior Afghan officials and senior Taliban or other insurgent leaders, perhaps involving some Pakistani officials as well, is another possibility.”
Gen Stanley McCrystal, in an interview to Financial Times, said he hoped increased troop levels would weaken the Taliban enough for its leaders to accept a peace deal.
India is increasingly coming round to accepting the reality that some sort of a peace deal could be made. In recent statements, Indian officials have admitted the possibility that people who renounce violence and the Taliban as well as disarm, could be accommodated into Afghanistan’s establishment.
Peace enjoyed by Pakistan is peace of Turkey and unease of Pakistan is unease of Turkey: Turkish PM Erdogan
ISTANBUL (Turkey): President Asif Ali Zardari urged the international community on Sunday to help Pakistan and Afghanistan overcome problems of the region, observing that Turkish-inspired Trilateral Summit could serve as useful model in this behalf.
The President stated this during a meeting with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan who promised that his country would soon deliver spare parts of Cobra helicopters to Pakistan free of cost, underlining the growing cooperation between the two countries in different fields.
Pakistan today is facing different challenges arising from the conflict in the region and it is incumbent upon the international community to step forward and help both the countries in tackling these challenges, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Malik Ammad Khan, quoted the President as saying in a briefing to reporters after the meeting.
The challenges we face in Pakistan today are of international, albeit world, magnitude and we need regional as well as international support to tackle these challenges, Minister of State, who was part of the delegation, quoted the President as saying.
Zardari said the conflict in Afghanistan had spreaded the menaces of terrorism, drugs etc. across its borders and countries of the region required active cooperation from all the friendly nations and states of the Western world to root out these problems.
In this behalf, he emphasized that Pakistan at this stage needed trade, and not aid, from the concerned countries to come out of its present difficulties. “For this purpose, we introduced the concept of Friends Of Democratic Pakistan (FODP) so that more access could be obtained for Pakistan to international markets.”
He said he was visiting Turkey for the fourth time in the last 18 months because the two countries enjoyed close relations and he wanted to further consolidate these ties as the head of a democratic state.
Welcoming the Trilateral Summit, being held on Monday among Pakistan, Afghanistan and Turkey, President Zardari remarked that it gave the opportunity to his country to draw attention of the world to our case and to send a strong message to the people of the world that we want to curb terrorism but to do that we need to empower ourselves by getting access to global markets.
He said the proposed Islamabad-Istanbul-Tehran rail project would also greatly facilitate expansion in trade volume not only between the two countries but also among other countries of the region. He sought public-private partnership for this project.
He lauded support of Turkey to Pakistan on Kashmir issue, contribution in providing succour to the effectees of 2005 earthquake.and its offer to build a football stadium in Muzaffarabad.
In his remarks, Prime Minister Erdogan promised that Turkey would soon deliver – free of cost – spare parts to Pakistan under the agreement already signed.
Defence Minister Ch. Ahmed Mukhtar, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Malik Ammad Khan, Railways Minister Ghulam Ahmed Bilour, Secretary Foreign Affairs and Secretary Railways were members of President delegation.
The Turkish PM said business communities of the two countries should also get together in commerce and trade activities.
During the meeting, the two sides pledged to soon introduce visa-free travel between the two countries while Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar informed the Turkish PM that Pakistan was looking into possibility of more Turkish Airlines flights to Islamabad and other cities.
Erdogan said the Turkish Deputy PM would attend the coming FODP conference in Dubai.
Peace enjoyed by Pakistan is peace of Turkey and unease of Pakistan is unease of Turkey, he said. We need joint international struggle against terrorism and hence fourth trilateral summit is being hosted here to take positive steps against the threat of terrorism and the entire Turkish will do anything to curb terrorism.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul hosted a dinner in honour of President Zardari and Afghan President Karzai at the historic Sait Halim Pasa Palace. Turkey to provide Cobra spares to Pakistan.
US supports Pakistan’s Taliban plan–India livid
WASHINGTON — The White House on Monday was noncommittal but did not rule out Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s plan to ask for Taliban names to be removed from a UN blacklist to spur reconciliation.
Karzai said before heading for a major international conference on Afghanistan in London this week that he would also seek Western support for a plan to offer money and jobs to cajole Taliban fighters into laying down arms.
“I will be making a statement at the conference in London to the effect of removing Taliban names from the UN sanctions list,” Karzai told reporters in Istanbul.
The idea had previously met resistance but “as we are talking today, there is more willingness that this can be reconsidered,” he said.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs noted that top US generals David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal had drawn parallels between Afghanistan and reconciliation schemes that had worked with factions in Iraq.
Gibbs did not comment in detail on Karzai’s plan.
But he said Washington was open to “a similar path to what happened in Iraq… provided that whoever this is accepts the Afghan constitution, renounces violence, and publicly breaks with groups that advocate violence.”
“That’s, I think, what people expect under the notion of reconciliation.”
Karzai wants to bring low- and mid-level fighters into mainstream society to end the gruelling insurgency, but the leadership of Islamist insurgent groups active in the battered country is hostile to negotiations.
McChrystal, the NATO military commander in Afghanistan, has voiced support for negotiated peace.
“As a soldier, my personal feeling is that there’s been enough fighting,” US General Stanley McChrystal said in an interview with Britain’s Financial Times published Monday.
“I believe that a political solution to all conflicts is the inevitable outcome. And it’s the right outcome.”
The White House has several times brought up the tactics of then US-Iraq commander Petraeus, who worked with local Sunni leaders fed up with Al-Qaeda after the Iraq war troop surge.
Karzai was in Istanbul for talks with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari on Monday, to be following by a meeting with leaders of his country’s neighbors on Tuesday.
Under a plan announced by US President Barack Obama in December, 30,000 extra US troops will be in Afghanistan this year — on top of more than 70,000 already there — before they begin withdrawing in July 2011.
Karzai will fly on to Berlin and then London, where the conference will focus on corruption, security, good governance and reconciliation with the Taliban. US does not rule out Karzai’s Taliban plan
What Robert Gates Didn’t Say – And US Media Hides – About Blackwater In Pakistan
Two Pakistani employees of an American defense contractor engaged by the US Embassy in Islamabad have been linked to two attacks on Pakistani military and the assassination of a Brigadier. If this is not alarming, then consider that US Ambassador Anne Patterson’s name has come up in an investigation where thousands of dollars were paid in bribes to Interior Ministry to smuggle illegal weapons into Pakistan. Not to mention how Washington is empowering India in Afghanistan at Pakistan’s cost. When Pakistan takes countermeasures, US officials like Mr. Gates and Mr. Holbrooke accuse Pakistan of ‘anti-Americanism’ and harassing US diplomats. Time for some straight talk.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—US Defense Secretary Robert Gates admitted during an interview with a Pakistani TV station that Blackwater [now ‘Xe International’] and DynCorp are operating in Pakistan. Immediately after the statement, Pentagon tried to put a spin on his words.
But US meddling inside Pakistan –by posting private US defense contractors under diplomatic cover of the US embassy – is a reality for most Pakistanis. Some of these Americans have been caught disguised as Taliban right in the heart of Islamabad. Some Pakistanis were manhandled by some of these American militiamen on the streets of at least two Pakistani cities in recent months. Since Pakistan is not Iraq or Afghanistan despite all the US direct and indirect misinformation, these US covert operators were arrested on several occasions.
The mainstream US media continues to keep the good American people and the world opinion in the dark about this. But this is probably one of the biggest untold stories in America’s war on terror. This is about United States trying to put boots on the ground inside Pakistan through the help of a pro-US government in Islamabad that shares [or at least key figures in it] the US objective of containing and limiting the ability of Pakistan’s military to influence the country’s foreign policy. This is about Pakistan wanting to keep an independent foreign policy versus Pakistan blindly serving US policy on Afghanistan, India and China.
Mr. Gates tried to put a gloss on this US covert meddling when he said, ‘Well, they’re [Blackwater and DynCorp] operating as individual companies here in Pakistan, in Afghanistan and in Iraq.’
Not true. The truth is that the issue is so serious that, according to Pakistani investigators, US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne W. Patterson is a suspect in a case of bribes amounting to little over US $ 270,000 paid by DynCorp in 2009 to senior officials at the federal Interior Ministry in Pakistan. The money went in exchange for allowing illegal weapons into Pakistan to be used by private US defense contractors without informing the country’s security departments and intelligence agencies. Ms. Patterson personally lobbied Pakistani officials for this concession to DynCorp. She even wrote a letter to Pakistani officials, followed by a letter by her Deputy Head of Mission Mr. Gerald Feierstein, asking Pakistani Interior Ministry officials to issue permits for weapons to be used by DynCorp in the ‘entire territory of Pakistan.’ The US ambassador is directly linked to the probe, which has resulted in the arrest of a key aide to Pakistan’s Minister of State for the Interior. But the government of President Zardari will not dare allow Pakistani investigators to pursue US Ambassador’s role in the scandal.
A key question in the probe is how the US Embassy and DynCorp allowed the cargo of illegal weapons into Pakistan. According to one lead, a huge cache of weapons reached a Pakistani tribal leader on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, who in turn wrote to the Interior Ministry announcing he was ‘gifting’ the weapons to a Pakistani subcontractor of DynCorp.
Incidents like this and others raised alarm bells inside Pakistani security departments and the intelligence community. In effect, key figures in President Zardari’s government were found to have given approval for the entry of a large number of US citizens into Pakistan for ‘official US government business’ without explaining what that is. When Pakistani authorities tried to get to the bottom of how private US defense contractors ended up inside Pakistan in large numbers and what they were exactly doing here, US officials and media launched what appears to be a media trial of Pakistan, accusing the country of ‘harassing’ US diplomats and denying visas to them because of alleged anti-Americanism.
The unwillingness of the Zardari government to confront Washington and Pakistan’s generally weak media outreach skills allowed Washington to pain this as a case of anti-Americanism fueled by war on terror.
‘Conspiracy theories’ is another label that US officials and media have increasingly used recently as a cover to hide serious violations of diplomatic norms and sovereignty involving undercover private US operatives inside Pakistan. This is how the Wall Street Journal tried to delegitimize serious Pakistani concerns raised during Mr. Gates’ visit in a report filed from Islamabad whose opening line read as follows, “U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates is overseeing wars with Sunni militants in Iraq and Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. In Pakistan, he’s facing a different foe: the pervasive conspiracy theories that fuel widespread anti-American feelings here.”
The truth is that there are no conspiracy theories but real events, reported and documented, that raise questions over US political, diplomtic, and covert meddling inside Pakistan. Here is a list:
1. NUCLEAR ESPIONAGE: In July 2009, four US ‘diplomats’ were arrested inside the maximum security perimeter around Pakistan’s premier nuclear facility at Kahuta. They failed to tell Pakistani investigators what they were doing there and how they managed to slip through the security checkpoints in the area. US Embassy intervened to rescue the four ‘diplomats’ after almost three hours in detention, citing diplomatic immunity. President Zardari’s government refused to let Pakistani security authorities press charges.
2. SUSPICIOUS CONDUCT: On Oct. 6, 2009, Pakistani police arrested two Dutch diplomats roaming the streets of Islamabad without a number plate carrying advanced weapons. Pakistani police were surprised when security personnel from the US Embassy reached the scene to rescue the Dutch. The Americans used their contacts within the Zardari government to get everyone released. Later, Pakistan Foreign Office summoned US and Dutch diplomats for a private meeting over the incident. But the Pakistani government refused to demand a public explanation from US and Dutch diplomats despite recommendations from police and security officials.
3. FACILITATING INDIAN ACTIVITIES: In this high profile case in May 2009, a US diplomat arranged a small meeting between an Indian diplomat and several senior Pakistani federal government officials at a private house. The invited Pakistanis worked in civilian positions, including one with access to Prime Minister’s Office. It appeared that the US diplomat was basically facilitating the Indian to meet senior officials who otherwise would be inaccessible for him. Pakistan Foreign Office took serious exception to the meeting, publicly reprimanded the Pakistani officials who attended the meeting but stopped short of seeking explanation from the US embassy. According to Pakistani investigators, for a US diplomat to indulge in facilitating possible espionage linked to an Indian diplomat was a matter of grave concern. It also fitted with the US policy of exercising tremendous pressure on the pro-US government in Islamabad to give concessions to India at the expense of Pakistani strategic interests.
4. COVERT US MILITIAS IN THE HEART OF PAKISTAN: In September 2009, undercover US agents were found to have recruited a total of 100 former elite Pakistani military commandos to create rapid-intervention teams for unknown purposes. A 100 more were under training at a secret facility camouflaged as a workshop on the outskirts of the Pakistani capital when it was raided by Pakistani police. It turned out that DynCorp was training the men. US Ambassador Anne W. Patterson brought DynCorp to Pakistan by telling Pakistani officials that the private defense contractor would provide security to embassy buildings. But she never explained why DynCorp was secretly raising private militias on Pakistani soil without informing the Pakistani government or military or the intelligence agencies. Some of those who were under training at the time of the raid said that DynCorp focused on recruiting retired officers who had links and contacts within the Pakistani military and could glean information from their sources. [See video and pictures]
5. PUSHY US DIPLOMATS: The US Embassy in Islamabad has made it its business to mount pressure on owners of Pakistani newspapers to curtail or expel columnists and commentators critical of US policy. Of special target are those who expose how US Embassy is meddling in Pakistani affairs and expanding the US footprint inside Pakistan. Last year, Ambassador Patterson sent a letter to one of the largest Pakistani media groups accusing a columnist of endangering American lives and succeeded in pushing her out. The US Embassy is also recruiting opinion makers within the Pakistani media, academia and military in order to promote the US agenda even at the cost of Pakistani interests, dismissing critics as ‘conspiracy theorists’ and accusing them of anti-Americanism. A senior Pakistani journalist Syed Talat Hussain exposed US activities in the following words, “Pro-American lobby in Pakistan is growing in direct proportion to the scaling up of suspicions about the US. The main task of this lobby is to reduce the complexity of the US’s objectives towards Pakistan to romantic levels of trust (…) A motley crew of former diplomats, retired generals, socialites, slick civil society begums, self-styled analysts, businessmen, journalists, and now also lawyers — they are the darlings of the US embassy staff. They are the instruments of positive outreach and public diplomacy that US diplomats are so keen to expand in Pakistan.”
6. HARASSING PAKISTANIS: Private US security contractors, or militiamen, have been involved in at least three incidents registered by the Pakistani police where armed Americans physically assaulted unarmed ordinary Pakistanis in public places. In one case, the nephew of a senior member of President Zardari’s own government was manhandled and locked up in the toilet of a gas station by men described as armed military-looking civilian Americans.
7. RESISTING POLICE CHECKS: In at least five incidents, US ‘diplomats’ disguised as Taliban, complete with beards and Pashto language skills, were stopped at several police checkpoints in Islamabad and Peshawar. In some cases, these American ‘diplomats’ tried to speed through police barriers. In one recent case, this resulted in a brief police chase, where a Pakistani officer dragged the US ‘diplomats’ back to the police picket and forced the Americans to apologize to Pakistani police officers. Again, no charges were pressed because these private US agents carried diplomatic passports.
8. ENGINEEING DOMESTIC POLITICS: As recently as December 2009, US ambassador in Islamabad was found meeting senior Pakistani politicians at private homes of mutual friends in unannounced meetings restricted to 3 to 4 persons. The ambassador asked her guests to publicly support the embattled pro-US President Zardari. US diplomats in Islamabad and officials in Washington have been blatantly interfering in Pakistani politics. In addition to helping form the incumbent coalition government in Islamabad, made up of pro-US parties, US officials have been busy trying to save both Mr. Zardari and his key political adviser and ambassador to Washington Husain Haqqani. US officials in Washington have been briefing sympathetic US journalists about this. In one case, columnist Trudy Rubin had this to say while discussing Pakistan in an article published last month: “Here is the first piece of good news: Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari seems to have weathered a campaign by opponents, including the military, to force him out of office. Zardari has deep flaws, but his ouster would have hampered efforts to fight the jihadis. So would the removal, now averted, of Pakistan’s effective ambassador to Washington, Husain Haqqani, whom the Pakistani military had unfairly blamed for conditions that Congress imposed on aid to Pakistan.”
9. BRIBES AND ILLEGAL WEAPONS: This case is stunning because of the direct involvement of US Ambassador Anne W. Patterson in lobbying for DynCorp. The company ended up bribing Interior Ministry officials to smuggle banned weapons into Pakistan and then went on to raise private militias and hire retired Pakistani military officers to run rapid deployment teams and possibly even spy on the Pakistani military.
10. DEMONIZATION OF PAKISTAN: Since 2007, US officials and US media has systematically demonized Pakistan worldwide, creating false alarm over Pakistan’s strategic arsenal. US officials and media have also pushed to bracket Pakistan along with Iraq and Afghanistan in order to justify a possible military intervention. When Pakistan resisted US meddling recently, US media again went on rampage, accusing Pakistan of ‘anti-Americanism’ and harassment of US diplomats. Additionally, there has been a marked increase of lectures and studies by US think-tanks inviting unknown separatist individuals and groups to speak and fan ethnic separatism inside Pakistan and theorize on the breakup of the country.
11. ABETTING TERROR INSIDE PAKISTAN: The suspicions about why DynCorp was secretly raising private militias inside the federal Pakistani capital almost turned real when a suspect in the attack on the Pakistani military headquarters in October 2009 was allegedly found to have been recruited by DynCorp. In a second case, another suspected DynCorp recruit was found involved in assassinating a senior Pakistani military officer as he drove to work. In other words, two Pakistani employees of a US defense contractor engaged by the US embassy have been linked to two terrorist attacks on the Pakistani military. Add to this that Pakistan’s military and intelligence are a favorite punching bag for the United States and its allies, like India and Britain, and the picture of what the US is doing in Pakistan becomes even more disturbing.
These points explain how ill-motivated the US complaints about delaying visas and alleged anti-Americanism in Pakistan are. This is what US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Mr. Holbrooke and Mr. Gates are loath to share with the American people and the world public opinion.
302 Pak students not paid stipend in China since April
PAKISTANI students, studying in China under the Cultural Exchange Scholarship Programme of the federal government, are finding themselves stranded as they have not been receiving their monthly stipend for almost nine months.At present, over 300 Pakistani students are enrolled in various Chinese universities and institutes of higher education for masters and doctoral degrees in various fields, including engineering, sciences, medicine and social sciences.
In an email to this correspondent, some students mentioned plight of the Pakistani students, saying the delay in monthly stipend was creating problems for them. The students said they were scrutinised from across the country through a testing process to get the cultural Exchange Scholarship?for higher studies and they were also entitled to get the per month stipend of US $200 for masters and US $300 for doctoral programmes. They said the monthly stipend was stopped without any intimation from April 2009 and despite repeated attempts, they were unable to have a clear picture of the whole situation.
But for the last intake, September 2009 onwards, it was announced that we were entitled to get US $ 300 and US $ 400 per month according the revised project,?they said, adding: However, the announcement has been materialized.? The students said that despite repeated attempts, they never received a satisfactory answer from the Ministry of Education, adding people at Pakistani Embassy in China were so cooperative?that they never bothered to receive the phone calls and by chance when they receive they utter the same words which we anticipate before calling them.?
The, Pakistani students envy other students of different countries who get the stipends from their respective countries smoothly and on time,?commented Mudassar Shah, a student of Journalism and Information Communication at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China. Khalid Khan, a PhD candidate at the Chemistry Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China, and Zahoor Ahmed from the Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, said most of the students belonged to middle class families and many of them were even married. He cannot ask for our monthly spending from our families back in our country,?they said, adding: Although our prime duty is research but most of the time we have to cope with financial matters that deal with our daily food and clothing.?
It may be astonishing for you to know that few of us even take one time meal in a day to survive the life,?they added.
Particularly during winter, China experiences the worst cold and temperature goes -10, so we think hundreds of times before buying warm clothes to protect ourselves,?commented Mudassar Shah.
He said it was compulsory for doctoral degree candidates to publish or present their scientific research work in esteemed and scholarly conferences and journals but unfortunately, the financial constraints did not allow him and his fellows to fulfill the basic requirements of the doctoral degree.
The Pakistani students have also appealed to President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry to take notice of the situation and provide them relief.
Talking to The News, Muzaffar Aman Zia, Deputy Education Advisor from the Ministry of Education, said the delay was partly because of approval process of the revised project under which the amount of stipend had been increased. He said the ministry was trying hard to get the required funds released, adding that the ministry had to receive funds for this particular project from the Higher Education Commission (HEC). He said the last batch, sent to China, was informed that they might face delay in connection with the stipend. He, however, said the stipend problem had started from July 2009, adding that a total of 302 Pakistani students were enrolled in institutes of China at present.
When contacted, HEC Executive Director Dr Sohail H Naqvi said the revision of the project took time owing to which the students had to face the delay. He said so far the HEC had received only 30 percent of the development funds, adding as soon as the funds were released the students studying on scholarships abroad would be the priority.
By Khalid Khattak
Received via email
Blackwater in Pakistan: Gates Confirms
JEREMY SCAHILL
On Thursday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates confirmed that Blackwater is operating in Pakistan. In an interview on Express TV, Gates, who was visiting Islamabad, said, “They [Blackwater and another private security firm, DynCorp] are operating as individual companies here in Pakistan,” according to a DoD transcript of the interview. “There are rules concerning the contracting companies. If they’re contracting with us or with the State Department here in Pakistan, then there are very clear rules set forth by the State Department and by ourselves.”
Today, the country’s senior minister for the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), Bashir Bilour, also acknowledged that the company is operating in Pakistan’s frontier areas. Bilour told Pakistan’s Express News TV that Blackwater’s activities were taking place with the “consent and permission” of the Pakistani government, saying he had discussed the issue with officials at the US Consulate in Peshawar, who told him that Blackwater was training Pakistani forces.
When Gates was asked what the US response would be if the Pakistani parliament passed a law banning private security companies, Gates said, “If it’s Pakistani law, we will absolutely comply.”
As Gates’s comments began to make huge news in Pakistan, US defense officials tried to retract his statement. As the Wall Street Journal reported, “Defense officials tried to clarify the comment Thursday night, telling reporters that Mr. Gates had been speaking about contractor oversight more generally and that the Pentagon didn’t employ Xe in Pakistan.”
Bilour’s statements are consistent with what a former Blackwater executive and a US military intelligence source told me in December–that Blackwater is working on a subcontract for Kestral, a Pakistani security and logistics firm. That contract, say my sources, is technically with the Pakistani government, which helps cloak Blackwater’s presence. From my article in The Nation:
Blackwater owner Erik Prince is close with Kestral CEO Liaquat Ali Baig, according to the former Blackwater executive. “Ali and Erik have a pretty close relationship,” he said. “They’ve met many times and struck a deal, and they [offer] mutual support for one another.” Working with Kestral, he said, Blackwater has provided convoy security for Defense Department shipments destined for Afghanistan that would arrive in the port at Karachi. Blackwater, according to the former executive, would guard the supplies as they were transported overland from Karachi to Peshawar and then west through the Torkham border crossing, the most important supply route for the US military in Afghanistan.
According to the former executive, Blackwater operatives also integrate with Kestral’s forces in sensitive counterterrorism operations in the North-West Frontier Province, where they work in conjunction with the Pakistani Interior Ministry’s paramilitary force, known as the Frontier Corps (alternately referred to as “frontier scouts”). The Blackwater personnel are technically advisers, but the former executive said that the line often gets blurred in the field. Blackwater “is providing the actual guidance on how to do [counterterrorism operations] and Kestral’s folks are carrying a lot of them out, but they’re having the guidance and the overwatch from some BW guys that will actually go out with the teams when they’re executing the job,” he said. “You can see how that can lead to other things in the border areas.” He said that when Blackwater personnel are out with the Pakistani teams, sometimes its men engage in operations against suspected terrorists. “You’ve got BW guys that are assisting…and they’re all going to want to go on the jobs–so they’re going to go with them,” he said. “So, the things that you’re seeing in the news about how this Pakistani military group came in and raided this house or did this or did that–in some of those cases, you’re going to have Western folks that are right there at the house, if not in the house.” Blackwater, he said, is paid by the Pakistani government through Kestral for consulting services. “That gives the Pakistani government the cover to say, ‘Hey, no, we don’t have any Westerners doing this. It’s all local and our people are doing it.’ But it gets them the expertise that Westerners provide for [counterterrorism]-related work.”
When I tried to get confirmation of Blackwater’s work with Kestral, I was bounced around from agency to agency. Eventually, a spokesman for the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC), which is responsible for issuing licenses to US corporations to provide defense-related services to foreign governments or entities, would neither confirm nor deny that Blackwater has a license to work in Pakistan or to work with Kestral. “We cannot help you,” said department spokesman David McKeeby after checking with the relevant DDTC officials. “You’ll have to contact the companies directly.” Blackwater’s spokesman Mark Corallo said the company has “no operations of any kind” in Pakistan other than one employee working for the DoD. Kestral did not respond to my inquiries.
Kestral’s lobbyist, former assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roger Noriega, who served in that post from 2003 to 2005, would not provide comment on the contract either. Noriega, according to federal lobby records, was recently hired by Kestral to lobby the US government, including the State Department, USAID and Congress, on foreign affairs issues “regarding [Kestral's] capabilities to carry out activities of interest to the United States.”
All of this appears to be a contradiction of previous statements made by the Defense Department, by Blackwater, by the Pakistani government and by the US Embassy in Islamabad, all of whom claimed Blackwater was not in the country. In September the US ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson, denied Blackwater’s presence in the country, stating bluntly, “Blackwater is not operating in Pakistan.” In December in The Nation, after I reported on Blackwater’s work for JSOC and Ketral in Pakistan, the Pentagon did not issue any clear public denials, and instead tried to pass the buck to the State Department, which in turn passed it to the US Embassy, which in turn issued an unsigned statement saying the story was false. Shortly after my story came out in The Nation, ABC News reported that in 2006, “12 Blackwater “tactical action operatives” were recruited for a secret raid into Pakistan by the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command, according to a military intelligence planner. The target of the planned raid, code-named Vibrant Fury, was a suspected al Qaeda training camp, according to the planner.”
In Pakistan, there appears to be egg on the face of the country’s Interior Minister Rehman Malik, who has said on numerous occasions that he would resign if it is proven that Blackwater is operating inside Pakistan. Today, Express TV rebroadcast Malik saying in November, “There is no Blackwater.”
What’s that old saying? “Never believe anything until it has been officially denied.”
Kashmiris, Nagas and Sikhs demand end to Indian Imperialism
On the occasion of India’s Republic Day, a powerful joint appeal Tuesday to the international community by key Kashmiri, Naga and Sikh leaders has highlighted the fundamental conflicts and contradictions at the heart of the Indian state, as well as the unwavering intent of their nations to secure freedom in accordance with their right to self-determination as enshrined in international law.
They issued a call to the international community to play a constructive role in dismantling India’s unlawful hold on their territories, which has been maintained purely by military means at the cost of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives since 1947, and to restore fundamental freedoms, democracy and the rule of law in the most volatile region of the world. The leaders included Syed Ali Shah Gilani, Chair of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference in Kashmir, Naga leader Th. Muivah, General Secretary of the NSCN-IM and Kanwarpal Singh of Dal Khalsa in Punjab.
Their message was endorsed by leading organisations based in the respective Diaspora communities which held demonstrations outside the Indian High Commission in London and elsewhere to once again publicly reject the Indian constitution as being applicable to their territories.
Rubbishing India’s claims to be a democratic, secular, peaceable state which complies with its international obligations, they pointed to the reality of a belligerent, militaristic state which oppresses the minorities and nations under its control, which has become a serial violator of international law and human rights.
They said Indian armed forces chief Deepak Kapoor’s recent public comments about bringing both China and Pakistan to their knees within 96 hours of a war betrays the dangerous and aggressive mindset of the Indian establishment which has already conducted undeclared wars on the Naga, Sikh, Kashmiri and other nations using brutal means, systematically violating basic human rights, as routinely pointed out by the world’s leading human rights organisations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty international.
Pending India’s compliance with the international standards the Naga, Kashmiri and Sikh leadership urged the international community to robustly dismiss India’s pretensions to a permanent seat at the UN Security Council.
“It would be the height of folly indeed to reward a serial violator of basic international norms by giving it the means to frustrate the one international body that can hold it to account,” they observed.
They pledged to work together, along with their friends in the region and beyond, in order to promote a peaceful transition from the current unjust framework of Indian colonialism to a new order in South Asia where freedom, peace and security and justice would prevail.
The withdrawal of Indian forces from these occupied territories would be a pre-requisite for that transformation. Instead of indulging itself in Republic Day posturing, India would do better to reflect on the crimes it has committed and its own inherent contradictions.
Threatening its neighbours and inhumanly oppressing minorities may have become the raison d’etre for ‘Hindutva,’ but these policies offend the very notion of religion and will surely ultimately prove suicidal for the Indian state.
It demanded ejecting India from all the UN’s humanitarian bodies until it improves its appalling record of mistreating its religious minorities. In August 2009, the United States Commission for International Religious Freedoms put India on its ‘watch list’ of states that fail to protect such groups.
In the UK, Muhammad Ghalib, Chair of the All Party Kashmir Co-ordination Committee, Amrik Singh Sahota , President of the Council of Khalistan, and the Naga Support Centre all pledged to continue their campaign to enlist international support for the peaceable implementation of their national rights.
Lord Nazir Ahmed, Chair of ‘Parliamentarians for National Self-Determination’, the cross party group at the Westminster parliament which promotes national self-determination, endorsed these demands. Having been recently denied a visa to visit India specifically because of his support for these causes, he castigated the ongoing oppression of these freedom loving nations and urged the international community to hold India to account for its crimes. Reflecting on India’s refusal to grant him a visa, he noted the move was consistent with India’s attempts to conceal its record by denying human rights groups, UN officials and independent observers access to conflict zones.
He remarked that all this was futile with the true picture is becoming ever more apparent to the global community which will be forced to act sooner or later.
