202 Blackwater personals, fluent in "Urdu" with no baggage checking enter Pakistan

The foreigners affiliated with the notorious private military contractor Blackwater, whose security company Blackwater was later renamed as Xe Services LLC, arrived in Islamabad on Tuesday through a PIA flight, sources told TheNation.

“Of the 274 passengers, who boarded Pakistan’s national flag carrier-PIA, flight PK-786 from Heathrow Airport UK, 202 were foreigners but they were fluently speaking Urdu language,” disclosed the sources.

The officials on duty at Shaheed Benazir International Airport Islamabad said, “We had instructions to allow the foreigners entry without custom procedure.”

The sources said that the plane reached the Islamabad airport at 4:08am, and they had received the official instructions from the authorities not to inspect any of them and clear them immediately from the airport.

An official of PIA confirmed that the PIA flight PK-786 from Heathrow reached Islamabad at its destination at 04:08 am and said that the plane had the capacity of 358 passengers but total 274 passengers travelled on the flight.

He declined to comment the presence of large number of foreigners in the flight saying that they had no information in this regard.

Former Chief of Army Staff Mirza Aslam Beg claimed that former President Pervez Musharraf had given Blackwater the green signal to carry out its terrorist operations in the cities of Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Peshawar and Quetta.

He also claimed that the Blackwater was directly involved in the murder of Benazir Bhutto and Lebanese Rafiq Hariri.

According to the New York Times August 20, 2009 report by Mark Mazzetti, the Central Intelligence Agency in 2004 hired contractors from the private security contractor Blackwater USA as part of a secret programme to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al-Qaeda.

“It has also drawn a controversy. Blackwater employees hired to guard American diplomats in Iraq were accused of using excessive force on several occasions, including shootings in Baghdad in 2007 in which 17 civilians were killed. Iraqi officials have since refused to give the company an operating licence.”

“Several current and former government officials interviewed for this article spoke only on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing details of a still classified programme,” the NYT reported.

The newspaper report said that despite publicly breaking with it, the State Department continued to award the company, formerly known as Blackwater, more than $400 million in contracts to fly its diplomats around Iraq, guard them in Afghanistan, and train security forces in anti-terrorism tactics at its remote camp in North Carolin

FLASHBACK – India, Israel linked to Pakistan plot

KARACHI – For the past 23 years, Afghanistan has served as a proxy military playing field for different countries, including the former Soviet Union, the United States and Pakistan. Now, after a year of the US-led war on terrorism, a new proxy war has begun in Afghanistan, this time aimed at Pakistan and involving the intelligence networks of India and Israel.

It has been learned from highly placed intelligence sources that India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and Israel’s Mossad are collaborating to train several hundred militants to be used in an attempt to destabilize the administration of President General Pervez Musharraf.

The sources say that training camps have been established near the southern

Afghan city of Kandahar, and the eastern city of Jalalabad, which lies close to Pakistan’s western tribal areas. It is said that RAW has arranged most of the “human resources”, while training is the responsibility of the Special Operations Division (Metsada) of Mossad. Metsada generally conducts highly sensitive assassination, sabotage, paramilitary and psychological warfare projects.

Once trained, the recruits will infiltrate the border areas of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Balochistan Province, where they will attempt to forge links with local tribespeople and militants in an effort to rally support for an uprising against Musharraf, who is widely discredited in these regions for abandoning the Taliban and siding with the US in its war on terror. These provinces have a strong pro-Taliban history.

Musharraf’s decision to throw in his lot with the US resulted in pressure from Washington to clamp down on militant organizations and to stem the flow of jihadis from Pakistani soil into Indian-administered Kashmir. And since Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had strong (albeit covert) links with the militant organizations, it was able to bring pressure to bear on the leaders for them to back off for the interim.

However, while most of the leaders of these groups have been ready to cooperate with the military government, some of the rank and file have been less accommodating. Although their numbers are not great – a matter of hundreds – they are still a source of concern to Musharraf as they are fully equipped and trained. Nevertheless, the chaos that had been predicted by many for Pakistan, with disgruntled militant groups causing mayhem, never materialized, largely because of the understanding between the militant groups and the ISI.

The move by RAW and Mossad, as indicated by the intelligence sources, will tap into a large section of the population in NWFP and Balochistan that feels betrayed by Musharraf over his ditching of the Taliban. For India’s part, it hopes to stoke the fires of unrest by using those militants who refuse to muzzle their guns despite the entreaties of their leaders. It has long been India’s desire to portray Pakistan as an unstable country that supports cross-border terrorism into Kashmir in order to gain international support for Delhi’s position on Kashmir – that of staging elections.

In recent times, little-known organizations such as the al-Iqwan and the al-Faran have been the brainchild of RAW, the sources said. These groups have carried out a number of relatively minor incidents in Indian-administered Kashmir, such as kidnapping foreign tourists, which New Delhi has used to back its claim that Kashmiri fighters are international terrorists. These organizations have not been heard of since.

RAW has not been capable of setting up groups to carry out larger incidents without its hand being shown, hence its collaboration with Mossad, which is undoubtedly thoroughly professonal and which is thought to have carried out a number of high-profile incidents without leaving a trail.

Within Pakistan, a few small groups are known to be beyond the control of the Pakistani government. Two of them, the al-Saiqa and the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen al-Alami, have revealed themselves through fax messages to newspaper offices in which they have claimed responsibility for incidents.

Al-Saiqa comprises only a handful of men and is based in NWFP. It has claimed responsibility for various attacks on members of different security agencies early this year. More recently, it owned up to an attack on foreign tourists visiting a Buddhist site in NWFP in which a German citizen was killed.

The Harkat-ul-Mujahideen al-Alami is based in the Pakistani port city of Karachi and also comprises only a handful of youths. It is thought to be behind plots to assassinate Musharraf and interior minister Moinuddin Haider.

Similar small groups in Pakistan share the vision of once again turning Pakistan into a paradise for militant groups, and they all operate beyond the apparatus of the Pakistani intelligence network, as well as beyond the control of the mainstream militant groups. All have a footing of some sort in the tribal areas and remote rural regions.

It is into these groups that the new alliance between RAW and Mossad will feed their trained men in the hope of keeping the wheels of unrest moving sufficiently until popular unrest is strong enough to create anarchy in the country.

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India is trying to separate Balochistan from Pakistan

The News Reports

The leading newspaper of Sri Lanka, Daily Mirror, in its editorial has criticised the role the Indian intelligence agency (RAW) is playing in the regional countries to destabilise them. The editorial has specially referred to Pakistan.

It said: “Among its (RAW’s) most ambitious operations that are currently underway, is the move to separate Balochistan province from Pakistan by supporting (the) Balochistan Liberation Army.”
The newspaper wrote: “It certainly is a monumental task for the informed Sri Lankan or for that matter anyone in the neighbourhood of India to keep a straight face when talking about the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) in India.”
It said that formed in 1968, the predatory operations carried out by this external intelligence agency of India in the neighbouring countries were perhaps the best example as to how the country bullied its neighbours.
Commenting on the RAW’s role in Sri Lanka, it said: “The RAW in Sri Lanka has a pretty colourful record. Having raised, nursed and fortified the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, it later went through phases where it adopted “rock the baby, pinch the baby” approach towards the LTTE.”
While many thought the assassination of former Indian premier Rajiv Gandhi would have hardened the approach of the RAW towards the LTTE, it really did not happen that way, it wrote.
“While New Delhi was shattered by the death of Nehru’s grandson, the less emotional RAW moved on with rest of operation,” it said.
The newspaper wrote: “In 2007, ripples were created in the spy agency when one of its Colombo-based officers, Ravi Nair of 1975 batch, was found allegedly carrying on an affair with a woman working for another country’s spy agency.
‘ The “crime” was considered only second to what was committed by the RAW Joint Secretary, Rabinder Singh, in 2004 when he escaped with copies of several highly-confidential documents and is believed to have passed them on to the CIA. This was after Singh’s superiors confronted him with evidence that he had spent time with a Delhi-based female US embassy officer at a resort down (the) New Delhi-Jaipur highway.”
The newspaper said the incident really rocked the RAW and forced it to go for several reforms, which included tougher counter-check measures on its officers.
Following the embarrassment caused by Ravi Nair in Colombo, the RAW recalled the officer and made it a point to post a lady officer to Colombo, probably thinking that was the best way to discourage other countries, it wrote.
Reports that the RAW was out to create mischief in the backdrop of the recent military victories by the Sri Lankan troops surfaced days after media reports that Pottu Amman, who was pulled up by Prabhakaran over the recent debacles, had slipped off to India, the daily wrote.

Why Pakistan Will Never Catch Terror Leader Alive

Updated 07 Aug 09

Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan chief Baitullah Mehsud. — Photo by Reuters

DERA ISMAIL KHAN: Pakistan’s Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, who led a violent campaign of suicide attacks and assassinations against the Pakistani government, was killed in a US missile strike and his body has been buried, three Pakistani intelligence officials said Friday.
But one of the three said no intelligence agent had actually seen Baitullah Mehsud’s body.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said intelligence sources have confirmed Baitullah’s death. more

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The mess in Pakistan’s western areas is not just a battle with religious extremism. A larger part is a battle of proxies. There are credible reports that Indian and Israeli intelligence involvement in U.S.-controlled Afghanistan has deepened in the past seven years. American military and intelligence officials are impressed with the record of both countries in fighting Islamic groups in Kashmir and the Mideast. Israel invested heavily in establishing schools that study the art of Islamic indoctrination. These schools were used to learn how clerics can brainwash recruits and then exploit them politically. Israeli spymasters have used this knowledge to penetrate Islamic groups and plant agents. They have passed this technique on to the Indians to help them counter pro-Pakistan religious groups in Kashmir. In the Kargil war in 1999, Pakistanis and Kashmiris faced a direct Israeli special operations intervention on the side of the Indian military.

By Ahmed Quraishi

Wednesday, 24 June 2009.

WWW.AHMEDQURAISHI.COM

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—Pakistan will probably never catch terrorist leader Baitullah Mehsud alive. Why? For the same reason that we will never really know why uncircumcised dead fighters have been turning up from the bunkers of what is supposed to be Pakistani Taliban. Or why alcoholic beverages were found from some of their hideouts. Or why citizens of China and Sri Lanka – two close military allies of Pakistan – were brutally attacked on Pakistani soil by people claiming to be fighting America. Or why this new Taliban is so eager to kill ordinary Pakistanis and harass anti-India Kashmiri activists and demand they fight Pakistan.

Similarly we will never know why listed companies like Google and Facebook are speeding up Persian translations of their sites when no profit is involved. [Will their stockholders accept democracy instead of profits?] Or why the government of President Zardari exerted pressure for the removal of the Saudi ambassador in Islamabad. And why the government did not object when the U.S. and other allied donors tried to create a special fund for Balochistan and NWFP with the condition that it operate outside Pakistan’s control. And why the Saudi ambassador strongly opposed the plan when Mr. Zardari’s team almost endorsed it. Could this be one of several reasons why the Saudi ambassador became unwelcome here, received threats to his life and then was unable to meet the President before leaving despite several attempts?

The popular Pakistani understanding of the battle against Baitullah Mehsud is more American than Pakistani. This prevents us from accepting that this insurgency is wrapped in multiple layers of deceit. The entire prevailing narrative of the situation is exclusively American, tailored to suit Washington’s worldview. It talks about a uniform threat of Taliban and al Qaeda with no distinction made between the Afghan Taliban and the new Pakistani version; the American narrative does not explain how or why the ranks of the Pakistani Taliban have been swelling steadily when the Afghan Taliban is not experiencing a similar surge; and why the American narrative suppresses any discussion of Pakistani grievances about an organized anti-Pakistan terror wave emanating from Afghanistan.

The Pakistani counter narrative is missing on the government level and is probably limited to some circles within the Pakistani strategic and intelligence communities. The impression is that the Pakistani government is essentially bartering silence for U.S. aid.

This is a dangerous bargain.

It means that Pakistani officials won’t take a stand on the use of Afghan soil to export terror to Pakistan. In fact, there are strong grounds to conclude that while other parts of the U.S. government engage Pakistan, freewheeling elements within the Central Intelligence Agency are probably conducting their own foreign policy on the ground in the region. The simultaneous trouble in both the Pakistani and Iranian parts of Balochistan is but one case in point.

Another downside to our enthusiasm for U.S. aid money at any cost is our waning ability to resist the upcoming American plan to install India as the resident guardian over Pakistan and Afghanistan. A senior US national security official is expected to bring this plan to Pakistan in the next few days. Islamabad’s obsession with US aid while staying mum on vital Pakistani interest is absurd. Why is Prime Minister Gilani complaining now about the US ‘surge’ in Afghanistan when Mr. Zardari and his foreign minister wasted no time in warmly welcoming it when Mr. Obama unveiled the plan in March?

This explains why Mr. Zardari signed an American-proposed agreement to give India overland trade routes to Afghanistan. No wonder U.S. diplomats in Islamabad are so emboldened that recently some of them spent half the day camped at the federal petroleum ministry to force a rollback of the Iran gas deal.

There are also fresh questions on the extent of support the United States is getting from two of its closest allies India and Israel in Afghanistan. There are credible reports that Indian and Israeli intelligence involvement in U.S.-controlled Afghanistan has deepened in the past seven years. Some American military and intelligence officials are impressed with the record of both countries in fighting Islamic groups, especially the Indian experience in occupied Kashmir. The Israelis have invested heavily in establishing schools that study the art of Islamic indoctrination. These schools were used to learn how clerics can brainwash recruits and then exploit them politically. Israeli spymasters have used this knowledge to penetrate Mideastern Islamic groups. They have passed this technique to the Indians to help them counter pro-Pakistan religious groups in Kashmir. In the Kargil war in 1999, Pakistanis and Kashmiris faced a direct Israeli special operations intervention on the side of the Indian military.

The mess in Pakistan’s western areas is not just a battle with religious extremism. A larger part is a battle of proxies. None of this means that we should treat Washington as an enemy. But it does have an agenda that is increasingly diverging from Pakistan’s strategic interests.

Irrefutable Evidence: Israel, India Fomenting Trouble In Pakistan’s Tribal Region

There are credible reports that Indian and Israeli intelligence involvement in U.S.-controlled Afghanistan has deepened in the past seven years. American military and intelligence officials are impressed with the record of both countries in fighting Islamic groups in Kashmir and the Mideast. Israel invested heavily in establishing schools that study the art of Islamic indoctrination. These schools were used to learn how clerics can brainwash recruits and then exploit them politically. Israeli spymasters have used this knowledge to penetrate Islamic groups and plant agents. They have passed this technique on to the Indians to help them counter pro-Pakistan religious groups in Kashmir. In the Kargil war in 1999, Pakistanis and Kashmiris faced a direct Israeli special operations intervention on the side of the Indian military.

By JANG

Wednesday, 1 July 2009.

Pakistan’s mass-circulation Urdu-language newspaper Roznama Jang quotes senior Pakistani military officials as saying that Israel and India are fomenting trouble in Pakistan’s Baluchistan and Waziristan region.

According to the report, senior military and national security officials have submitted to the Pakistani government “irrefutable evidence” of the involvement of Indian and Israeli secret agencies in Baluchistan and the tribal region of Waziristan and Malakand.

The Urdu daily did not disclose the names of the Pakistani officials, but added that there is irrefutable evidence that Indian and Israeli agencies are providing financial aid and modern weapons to the militants in the tribal region.

According to Roznama Jang, the military leadership has urged the civilian government to take up the issue at diplomatic levels with the nations whose secret agencies are supporting Taliban commanders Baitullah Mehsud and Maulana Fazlullah.

The agents of India’s external intelligence agency Research & Analysis Wing (RAW) are operating from the Indian consulates in many Afghan cities and militants in Pakistan are being supplied with weapons from there, the report added.

According to a similar report carried by the Urdu-language newspaper Roznama Express, “The majority of the staff in the Indian consulates in Afghan cities including Kandahar and Herat belongs to RAW. They are not only supplying weapons to extremists from there but the RAW agents are also visiting training centers of terrorism.”

Evidences of Taliban commanders Maulana Fazlullah and Baitullah Mehsud’s meetings with RAW agents have also be ascertained, the report said, adding: “It is being stressed that either India should close these consulates or it should be stopped for using them against Pakistan.”

“The security officials have also confirmed that the weapons seized [from militants recently] were Russian, Indian and U.S.-made, while Israel provided them modern technology. Evidences have also been secured regarding the use of such technology in the installation of FM Radio by Maulana Fazlullah,” it concluded.

Translated by MEMRI, first published on June 24, 2009 in Urdu language by Jang, Pakistan’s largest circulating newspaper.