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War, War, War See other War, War, War Articles Title: Pakistan Loses Control (SCOTT HORTON ON ISI) Pakistan Loses Control A recent poll suggests that half of Pakistan’s population believes that Pakistani strongman Pervez Musharraf, or military leaders very close to him, had something to do with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Pakistan may be the world’s center of wacky conspiracy theories, but this public perception should not be lightly dismissed. In fact the Pakistani military and its intelligence arm have deep ties in to the Islamic militants who considered Bhutto their greatest threat on the Pakistani political stage. For those trying to make sense out of the tremendously complex, and tremendously important threads in Pakistan and Afghanistan that tie together Musharraf, the Pakistani senior military establishment, Pakistan’s Interservice Intelligence (ISI), the Taliban in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, tribal chiefs and groups, and various terrorist groups which float in the shadows between all of these players, Carlotta Gall and her colleague David Rohde offer an important contribution in today’s New York Times. I first met Gall more than ten years ago when she was working for the BBC covering Central Asia. Even then she was a very rare figure, a Westerner who tenaciously dug in to learn what was going on. Gall never thought the answers were to be found in the lobbies of the Sheratons and Intercontinentals, which is where the bulk of the press corps seem to hang out to pick up their scoops. She went to the villages and small towns to form a solid picture of the situation and she probed insistently into the shadowy world of the Pakistani intelligence service and its various cat’s paws. Her article today gives one of the best accounts of the relationship between ISI and their radical agents, and the ambiguity of much of this relationship. It’s mandatory reading. The growing strength of the militants, many of whom now express support for Al Qaeda’s global jihad, presents a grave threat to Pakistan’s security, as well as NATO efforts to push back the Taliban in Afghanistan. American officials have begun to weigh more robust covert operations to go after Al Qaeda in the lawless border areas because they are so concerned that the Pakistani government is unable to do so. The unusual disclosures regarding Pakistan’s leading military intelligence agency — Inter-Services Intelligence, or the ISI — emerged in interviews last month with former senior Pakistani intelligence officials. The disclosures confirm some of the worst fears, and suspicions, of American and Western military officials and diplomats. The ISI is the critical prop to Musharraf’s reign. It was responsible for his rigged election successes in the past and certainly will play the same role in the coming election. The Times piece goes on to offer specific detail on an internal review of the agency and its relationship with radicals, which leaves many asking who is guarding whom? Barney Rubin goes on to link this report with the alarming bombing attack on Kabul’s luxury Serena Hotel. I am sure that the people of Kabul don’t want more violence in their city. They were badly frightened by the riots in 2006. But there is huge resentment and anger building up at the overbearing foreign presence. The May 2006 riots were sparked by an accident where US military vehicles killed a pedestrian. Afghans see and often do not distinguish among the “Chinese restaurant” brothels and the glittering restaurants (by Afghan standards, not ours) serving luxuries, including alcohol, to foreigners, some of whom are being highly paid to destroy Afghanistan’s opium livelihood, which Afghan Islamic figures say is no worse than the alcohol they drink at night after destroying farmers’ poppy crops. So, no ambiguity here: Westerners are now being targeted, and the Taliban’s reach is right into their ultimate luxury sanctuary in Kabul. This development opens the year in Kabul on an appropriate note of alarm. Afghanistan is not Iraq, and the prospects for success of the Western effort there are considerably higher than in Iraq. The stakes are also higher, I believe. This is the challenge at center stage of the current conflict: the amorphous borderlands between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the ultimate growth matrix of the terrorist threat that manifested itself on 9/11, and which is, six years later, stronger than ever.
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#1. To: aristeides (#0)
No surprise; create a monster for selfish reasons, and then wonder when it turns around and bites you? What goes around, comes around. Kind of reminds me of the US backing the Afgan freedom fighters.... and now they complain cause they have to fight those they created. What goes around, comes around.
When a man who is honestly mistaken hears the truth, he will either quit being mistaken or cease to be honest.
What utter bull$h!t. The 9/11 matrix is about 1,000 miles west of there in the bowels of the Mossad.
“I would give no thought of what the world might say of me, if I could only transmit to posterity the reputation of an honest man.” - Sam Houston
Whoever hatched 9/11, there certainly seems to be strong evidence that he or they used ISI and the Islamist terrorists as his/their instruments.
To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and, as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections. - Macaulay, "History of England," Vol. 1, Chapter 6, on James II.
that rank odor of success
Ron Paul for President - Join a Ron Paul Meetup group today! I don't think ISI rigged the towers for demolition. Only criminal American neocons jonesing for regional war in the Middle East and their Mossad compatriots had the wherewithal to "pull it" (as Silverstein, would say) off.
“I would give no thought of what the world might say of me, if I could only transmit to posterity the reputation of an honest man.” - Sam Houston
You seem to think only one group was involved in pulling off 9/11. If you think ISI did not wire money to Atta and that Atta was not involved in 9/11, you're blinding yourself to a lot of evidence.
To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and, as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections. - Macaulay, "History of England," Vol. 1, Chapter 6, on James II.
I am saying that it was a coordinated effort and that rogue Israelis and their neocon compatriots here played a key role. I also believe that the airliners were remote-controlled. I do not know if the so-called 19 hijackers were actually on the airliners or not.
“I would give no thought of what the world might say of me, if I could only transmit to posterity the reputation of an honest man.” - Sam Houston
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