Group items tagged

The United States should not put conditions on an expected substantial increase in U.S. aid to its ally Pakistan, Pakistan's prime minister told visiting U.S. Senator John Kerry on Monday.

Pakistan is struggling to stem surging Islamist violence and put back on track an economy being kept afloat with the help of a $7.6 billion International Monetary Fund loan. Pakistan is due to make its case for help to allies and donors at meetings in Tokyo on Friday, where it hopes to win $4 billion in aid over the next two years to fill a financing gap.

The United States is expected to make a pledge of substantial help although U.S. President Barack Obama has said the release of additional aid would depend on how Pakistan tackled terrorism. Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani told Kerry, chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that Pakistan needed unconditional help. "The U.S. should not attach conditionalities to the assistance," Gilani's office quoted him as saying. "Aid with strings attached would fail to generate the desired goodwill and results."

PIEGEL: Pakistan is in a major state of crisis. Close to 2.5 million people have fled the areas of fighting in the northwest and the Swat Valley. There are attacks almost daily. Is Pakistan on the verge of collapse? Musharraf: This is wrong. Nothing can happen to Pakistan as long as the armed forces are intact and strong. Anyone who wants to weaken and destabilize Pakistan just has to weaken the army and our intelligence service, ISI, and this is what is happening these days. Lots of articles have been written claiming that Pakistan will be divided, that it will fall apart or become Balkanized. I personally feel there is some kind of conspiracy going on with the goal of weakening our nation.

Musharraf: I won't tell you exactly because then you will ask me for evidence. I can only tell you that India, for example, has 16 insurgencies going on and nobody is making a big thing out of it. But the West always focuses on Pakistan as the problem.

Musharraf: I am totally against the term AfPak. I do not support the word itself for two reasons: First, the strategy puts Pakistan on the same level as Afghanistan. We are not. Afghanistan has no government and the country is completely destabilized. Pakistan is not. Second, and this is much more important, is that there is an Indian element in the whole game. We have the Kashmir struggle, without which extremist elements like Lashkar-e-Taiba would not exist.

SPIEGEL: Is Pakistan now paying for its earlier failures? Why didn't you eliminate the Taliban leadership when they came to Pakistan at the end of 2001 -- above all the so-called Quetta Shura, the Taliban's highest decision-making council, in the Pakistani city Quetta? Musharraf: The Quetta Shura never existed. Do you really think there is an assembly in a kind of a house where they come and discuss things in something like a regular consultation? Mullah Omar never was in Pakistan and he would be mad if he appeared there. He is much safer in Afghanistan.

SPIEGEL: Over the last eight years, Pakistan has received about $10 billion in military aid from the US. Apparently you didn't spend all that money on the war on terror -- some went to secure your eastern border with India. Is that true? Musharraf: Half of it, $5 billion, was reimbursed to us for services we had already rendered to the US. You have to understand how the Pakistan army operates: The divisions keep moving. If we buy new tanks for $250 million, then they will be deployed in Peshawar as part of the war on terror, but they will also go to the eastern border. But why do you care about that? Why, for heaven's sake, should I tell you how we spent the money? SPIEGEL: The American government would surely be interested in knowing. Musharraf: I also told the Americans that it has nothing to do with them. We are not obligated to give out any details. Maybe I should have said at the time: Ok, you want us to support you, give us $20 billion a year and don't ask what we are doing with it.

Musharraf: I do agree, they do not accept this war as their war. This has something to do with history. Please understand the reason, and you should blame the US for it. From 1979 to 1989, we fought a war with the US in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union. And we won mainly because of ISI. Otherwise, the Soviet Union could not have been defeated in Afghanistan. But then the US left us all alone with 30,000 mujahedeen brought by them. Even Osama bin Laden was brought by the US, who else? They all came to fight the Soviet Union. So, did anybody in Washington develop a strategy for what to do with these people after 1989? No, nobody helped Pakistan for the next 12 years until 2001. We were left high and dry, with 30,000 mujahedeen holed up, no rehabilitation, no resettlement for them. No assistance was given to Pakistan -- instead sanctions were imposed against us. Fourty F-16s, for which we had paid money, were denied to us. Four million Afghan refugees had also come to Pakistan. The mujahedeed coalesced into al-Qaida and our social fabric was being completely destroyed. This is why the people of Pakistan felt used by the Americans, and this is why Pakistanis dislike the US and this war.

Pakistan is continuing to expand its nuclear bomb-making facilities despite growing international concern that advancing Islamist extremists could overrun one or more of its atomic weapons plants or seize sufficient radioactive material to make a dirty bomb, US nuclear experts and former officials say.

David Albright, previously a senior weapons inspector for the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency in Iraq, said commercial satellite photos showed two plutonium-producing reactors were nearing completion at Khushab, about 160 miles south-west of the capital, Islamabad.

Albright warned that the continuing development of Pakistan's atomic weapons programme could trigger a renewed nuclear arms race with India. But he suggested a more immediate threat to nuclear security arose from recent territorial advances in north-west Pakistan by indigenous Taliban and foreign jihadi forces opposed to the Pakistani government and its American and British allies.

It was only a few years ago that Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani diplomat who recently became ambassador to Washington, wrote a brilliant book arguing that the Pakistani government—despite public and private claims to the contrary—continued "to make a distinction between 'terrorists' … and 'freedom fighters' (the officially preferred label … for Kashmiri militants)." He added: "The Musharraf government also remains tolerant of remnants of Afghanistan's Taliban regime, hoping to use them in resuscitating Pakistan's influence in Afghanistan." The Pakistani military's world view—that it is surrounded by dangers and needs to be active in destabilizing its neighbors— remains central to Pakistan's basic strategy.

While President Musharraf broke with the overt and large-scale support that the military provides to the militant groups, and there have continued to be some moves against some jihadists, there is no evidence of a campaign to rid Pakistan of these groups. The leaders of the Afghan Taliban, headed up by Mullah Mohammed Omar, still work actively out of Quetta. The Army has never launched serious campaigns against the main Taliban-allied groups led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar or Jalaluddin Haqqani, both of whose networks are active in Pakistan. The group responsible for the Mumbai attacks, Lashkar-e-Taiba, has evaded any punishment, morphing in name and form but still operating in plain sight in Lahore. Even now, after allowing the Taliban to get within 60 miles of the capital, the Pakistani military has deployed only a few thousand troops to confront them, leaving the bulk of its million-man Army in the east, presumably in case India suddenly invades.

The rise of Islamic militants in Pakistan is not, Ambassador Haqqani writes, "the inadvertent outcome of some governments." It is "rooted in history and [is] a consistent policy of the Pakistani state." The author describes how, from its early years, the Pakistani military developed "a strategic commitment to jihadi ideology." It used Islam to mobilize the country and Army in every conflict with India. A textbook case was the 1965 war, when Pakistan's state-controlled media "generated a frenzy of jihad," complete with stories of heroic suicide missions, martyrdom and divine help.

s Pakistani forces continue to battle an advancing Taliban, the leading senators on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee introduced legislation Monday tripling aid to the country.

Speaking at a news conference capping his 100th day in office, Obama said the United States has "huge national security interests in making sure that Pakistan is stable" and doesn't end up a "nuclear-armed militant state."

The $1.5 billion per year would triple U.S. non-military aid levels, currently at $500 million per year. The legislation also would separate military from non-military aid, promising that economic aid "is no longer the poor cousin to military aid."

As the insurgency of the Taliban and Al Qaeda spreads in Pakistan, senior American officials say they are increasingly concerned about new vulnerabilities for Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, including the potential for militants to snatch a weapon in transport or to insert sympathizers into laboratories or fuel-production facilities.

The officials emphasized that there was no reason to believe that the arsenal, most of which is south of the capital, Islamabad, faced an imminent threat. President Obama said last week that he remained confident that keeping the country’s nuclear infrastructure secure was the top priority of Pakistan’s armed forces.

Pakistani officials have continued to deflect American requests for more details about the location and security of the country’s nuclear sites, the officials said. Some of the Pakistani reluctance, they said, stemmed from longstanding concern that the United States might be tempted to seize or destroy Pakistan’s arsenal if the insurgency appeared about to engulf areas near Pakistan’s nuclear sites.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has accused Pakistan of abdicating to the Taleban by allowing them to control parts of the country. Mrs Clinton told a congressional panel the situation in Pakistan posed a "mortal threat" to world security.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has accused Pakistan of abdicating to the Taleban by allowing them to control parts of the country.

Mrs Clinton told a congressional panel the situation in Pakistan posed a "mortal threat" to world security. She said extremists were being allowed to control territory such as the Swat Valley, in north-western Pakistan. She also called Pakistan's judicial system corrupt, adding that it has only limited power in the countryside.

It was a signal moment in Pakistan’s political development: A huge demonstration forced the restoration of a dismissed chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, a symbol of democracy and the rule of law. The army did not stage a coup, but insisted that the government accept a compromise.

President Zardari has been severely weakened by his efforts to squelch a national protest and faces defections from the usually cohesive Pakistan Peoples Party. His opponent, Mr. Sharif, emerged as a leader in waiting, but with no clear path to power.

Mr. Sharif, often held in suspicion in Washington because of his leaning toward Islamic conservatives, was more cooperative than had been thought, some United States officials suggested. In Washington, there was an awareness that Mr. Sharif’s reputation from the Bush administration of being too close to the Islamists might be overdrawn, and that his relationships with some of the Islamic parties and with Saudi Arabia could be useful, said a foreign policy expert familiar with the thinking of the Obama administration on Pakistan.

The chief of the Pakistani Taleban, Baitullah Mehsud, has told the BBC his group was behind Monday's deadly attack on a police academy in Lahore. He said the attack was "in retaliation for the continued drone strikes by the US in collaboration with Pakistan on our people".

Baitullah Mehsud said the attacks would continue "until the Pakistan government stops supporting the Americans".

Baitullah Mehsud is the supreme commander of the Tehrik-e-Taleban Pakistan group (Movement of Taleban in Pakistan). He operates out of a stronghold in the Pakistani tribal region of South Waziristan and the US state department recently issued a $5m (£3.5m) reward for his capture.

In December 2007, the smattering of bearded, black-turbaned, AK-47-toting gangs in FATA and NWFP announced that they would now answer to a single name, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Pakistani Taliban Movement. For decades, Pakistani jihadists have used such fancy names to declare splinter groups (many of which go unnoticed), but some analysts latched onto the TTP as gospel and postulated that, overnight, the Talibs had become disciplined and united. In the process, such analysts have overlooked important distinctions and divisions within the pro-Taliban groups operating in Pakistan.

n 1996, Mullah Mohammed Omar and his band of “Taliban” -- defined in Urdu, Pashto, and Arabic as “students” or “seekers” -- conquered Afghanistan.

Pashtuns ignore the border separating Afghanistan and Pakistan, named the Durand Line after the Englishman who drew it in 1893; the Pashtun “nation” encompasses wherever Pashtuns may live. Fighting the Americans, therefore, was seen as self-defense, even for the residents of FATA.

Pakistan is "battling for its own survival", its president, Asif Ali Zardari, has told visiting US special envoy for Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke.

Mr Zardari said Pakistan needed "unconditional support" to fight terrorism and extremism.

Mr Holbrooke, the joint US envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrived in Islamabad after talks with Afghan leaders in Kabul.

Members of Congress have been told in confidential briefings that Pakistan is rapidly adding to its nuclear arsenal even while racked by insurgency, raising questions on Capitol Hill about whether billions of dollars in proposed military aid might be diverted to Pakistan’s nuclear program.

Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed the assessment of the expanded arsenal in a one-word answer to a question on Thursday in the midst of lengthy Senate testimony. Sitting beside Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, he was asked whether he had seen evidence of an increase in the size of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal.

Bruce Riedel, the Brookings Institution scholar who served as the co-author of Mr. Obama’s review of Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy, reflected the administration’s concern in a recent interview, saying that Pakistan “has more terrorists per square mile than anyplace else on earth, and it has a nuclear weapons program that is growing faster than anyplace else on earth.”

As the Taliban tightened their hold over newly won territory, Pakistani politicians and American officials on Thursday sharply questioned the government’s willingness to deal with the insurgents and the Pakistani military’s decision to remain on the sidelines.

Some 400 to 500 insurgents consolidated control of their new prize, a strategic district called Buner, just 70 miles from the capital, Islamabad, setting up checkpoints and negotiating a truce similar to the one that allowed the Taliban to impose Islamic law in the neighboring Swat Valley.

As they did, Taliban contingents were seen Thursday in at least two other districts and areas still closer to the capital, according to Pakistani government officials and residents.

Iran remains the "most active state sponsor of terrorism" in the world, a report by the US state department says.

Iran remains the "most active state sponsor of terrorism" in the world, a report by the US state department says. It says Iran's role in the planning and financing of terror-related activities in the Middle East and Afghanistan threatens efforts to promote peace.

Al-Qaeda remains the biggest danger to the US and the West, the annual report states, noting that terror attacks are rising in Pakistan.

Initially, Buner was a hard place for the Taliban to crack. When they attacked a police station in the valley district last year, the resistance was fearless. Local people picked up rifles, pistols and daggers, hunted down the militants and killed six of them.

But it was not to last. In short order this past week the Taliban captured Buner, a strategically vital district just 60 miles northwest of the capital, Islamabad. The militants flooded in by the hundreds, startling Pakistani and American officials with the speed of their advance.

That Buner fell should be no surprise, local people say. Last fall, the inspector general of police in North-West Frontier Province, Malik Naveed Khan, complained that his officers were being attacked and killed by the hundreds. Mr. Khan was so desperate — and had been so thoroughly abandoned by the military and the government — that he was relying on citizen posses like the one that stood up to the Taliban last August.

After a week of strong criticism here and abroad over its inaction, the Pakistani military claimed on Wednesday to have reasserted control of a key town just 60 miles from the capital in the strategic district of Buner which was overrun by hundreds of Taliban militants last week.

Pakistan also agreed to move 6,000 troops from its Indian border to fight militants on its western border with Afghanistan, according to a Pakistani official who did not want to be identified discussing troop movements in advance.

But American officials, who welcomed the redeployment, said Pakistan was still not doing enough to fight the insurgents, who are tightening their hold on the country. The Americans expressed frustration that Pakistan was still rebuffing their offers to train more Pakistanis to fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

US envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke is holding talks in India on regional security issues. Mr Holbrooke and Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrived in Delhi after talks with Pakistani leaders in Islamabad.

Mr Holbrooke, along with Adm Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, have met Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee and foreign secretary Shivshankar Menon.

Analysts say India is uneasy with Mr Obama's strategy in Pakistan and Afghanistan and say it does not address New Delhi's concerns over what it calls Pakistan's backing of militants. There are concerns that the US is "tilting towards" Pakistan, an old ally, rather than India which has moved closer to the US in recent years. "The US is more receptive to Pakistan's concerns, which is worrying India," analyst Bharat Karnad told Reuters news agency.