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‘US halted drone attacks from Pak 3 months ago’

July 4, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

ISLAMABAD: The US has halted the launch of Predator drone strikes against al-Qaida and other militant leaders from an airbase in Pakistan after a dispute over a CIA contractor who shot dead two Pakistani citizens in Lahore in January, a US newspaper quoted Pakistani and US officials as saying.

The Shamsi airbase in Baluchistan has been one of the facilities that Pakistan provided to the US for its counter-terrorism operations in the region. Under a secret arrangement, Islamabad had allowed the US to use the Shamsi airbase for its covert drone operations inside Pakistan’s tribal areas.

The US has been using the place for more than seven years to launch Predator and Reaper drone strikes against al-Qaida and Taliban hideouts. The CIA presence at Shamsi was detected in 2004, when the first drone strikes were launched from the base. Google Earth images showed Predator drones parked on the runway at the base.

In recent days, Pakistan claimed that it had asked the US to close its operations from Shamsi following the secret commando raid in Abbottabad in May in which al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was killed.

The Washington Post reported on Saturday that the US stopped drone strikes from Shamsi in April after a diplomatic row over a CIA contractor who killed two Pakistani nationals in Lahore, weeks before the raid on bin Laden’s safe heaven.

“US personnel and Predator drones remain at the facility, in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, with security provided by the Pakistani military,” officials told the Post, adding that the US drone strikes inside Pakistan in the past three months have been launched from an airbase in Afghanistan. The latest drone strike was on June 20 in Pakistan’s Kurram Agency.

Although Pakistan had tacitly allowed the US to launch drone strikes, the country’s civilian leadership always condemned such attacks to avoid public wrath.

According to revelations by WikiLeaks, Pakistani leaders told the US to continue its strikes in the tribal areas against al-Qaida and Taliban and assured them that they will handle the situation in the country by condemning and protesting the lethal attacks.

In another version of the story, Pakistan’s civilian officials recently said that they closed the Shamsi base in retaliation for an American reduction in coalition support funds, a multibillion-dollar subsidy for Pakistani military operations.

Pakistan’s defence minister Ahmed Mukhtar said on Wednesday “the US had been told to stop launching strikes from Shamsi”. The US personnel had already started to shift equipment from the base, he added.

The US officials, however, rejected the claim and said: “This is news to us. American operations against terrorists in Pakistan are continuing.”

Pakistan’s senior air force official told the country’s legislators in a briefing after bin Laden’s killing that Shamsi Airbase was built by the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The area was sold to them by the government in late 1990′s. The Arab Sheikhs use the base for facilitating their trips of hunting falcons.

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Qaeda-backed LeT set for series of terror attacks in India, warns Israel’s NSC

September 19, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Tel Aviv, Sep.18 (ANI): Israel’s National Security Council’s Counter-Terrorism Bureau has issued a terror warning for India, saying a Pakistani terror group, having close links with Al-Qaeda, is planning to carry out series of strikes across the country.

“A Pakistani terror organization affiliated with al-Qaida and responsible for the attacks in Mumbai last year is planning to carry out a string of attacks throughout the Indian subcontinent,” the notice issued by the bureau stated.

The warning said that though foreigners, especially from western countries could be targeted, and that Israelis and places where Israelis usually assemble in large numbers are on top of the terror outfit’s hit list.

The bureau rated the threat as ‘imminent and concrete’ and emphasized on the Jammu and Kashmir region, The Jerusalem Post reported.

This is probably the first time that such a warning has been issued regarding threat to Israelis in India, as India is considered a friendly country with thousands of Israelis living in different part of the nation. (ANI)

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CIA operated drones from two Pakistan air force bases: Experts

August 21, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Aug.21 (ANI): The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is alleged to have operated Predator drones out of two bases in Pakistan.

According to the New York Times and The Guardian newspapers, the CIA had in 2004 hired outside contractors from the private security contractor Blackwater USA as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of al-Qaida.

Current and former government officials have reportedly confirmed that remotedly drones were moved out of a remote base in Shamsi and an air base in Jalalabad with the help of Blackwater.

From a secret division at its North Carolina headquarters, Blackwater assumed the role of Washington’s most important counter-terrorism program.

The division’s operations were carried out at hidden bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the company’s contractors assemble and load Hellfire missiles and 500-pound laser-guided bombs on remotely piloted Predator aircraft, work previously performed by CIA employees.

They also provide security at the covert bases, the officials said.

The role of the company in the Predator program highlights the degree to which the C.I.A. now depends on outside contractors to perform some of the agency’s most important assignments.

A spokesman for the C.I.A. declined to comment for this article.

CIA officials, however, said that the spy agency did not dispatch Blackwater executives with a “license to kill.” Instead, it ordered the contractors to begin collecting information on the whereabouts of Al Qaeda’s leaders, carry out surveillance and train for possible missions.

“The actual pulling of a trigger in some ways is the easiest part, and the part that requires the least expertise,” said one government official familiar with the canceled CIA program.

“It’s everything that leads up to it that’s the meat of the issue,” he added.

Any operation to capture or kill militants would have had to have been approved by the C.I.A. director and presented to the White House before it was carried out, the officials said.

The agency’s current director, Leon E. Panetta, canceled the program and notified Congress of its existence in an emergency meeting in June.

The extent of Blackwater’s business dealings with the C.I.A. has largely been hidden, but its public contract with the State Department to provide private security to American diplomats in Iraq has generated intense scrutiny and controversy.

The company lost the job in Iraq this year, after Blackwater guards were involved in shootings in 2007 that left 17 Iraqis dead. It still has other, less prominent State Department work. (ANI)

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US should support Pashtun demands to merge NWFP, FATA: Expert

May 12, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 12 (ANI): The United States should support Pashtun demands to merge Pakistan’s NWFP and FATA, and follow it up by a consolidation of those areas and Pashtun enclaves in Baluchistan and the Punjab into a single unified “Pashtunkhwa” province that enjoys the autonomy envisaged in the inoperative 1973 Pakistan constitution, feels a US expert on South Asian affairs.

In an article for the Washington Post, Selig Harrison, the author of the report “Pakistan: The State of the Union,” based on a six-month study of ethnic tensions in Pakistan, says: “To American eyes, the struggle raging in Pakistan with the Taliban is about religious fanaticism. But in Pakistan it is about an explosive fusion of Islamist zeal and simmering ethnic tensions that have been exacerbated by U.S. pressures for military action against the Taliban and its al-Qaida allies.”

Therefore, he says there is a need to understand the ethnic dimension of the conflict if Washington wants to evolve a successful strategy for separating the Taliban from al-Qaida and stabilizing multiethnic Pakistan politically.

He also is critical of sending a Punjabi-dominant Pakistani army to an area that is entirely Pashtun.

“Sending Punjabi soldiers into Pashtun territory to fight jihadists pushes the country ever closer to an ethnically defined civil war, strengthening Pashtun sentiment for an independent “Pashtunistan” that would embrace 41 million people in big chunks of Pakistan and Afghanistan,” he warns.

“While army leaders fear the long-term dangers of a Taliban link-up with Islamist forces in the heartland of Pakistan, they are more worried about what they see as the looming danger of Pashtun separatism,” he adds.

So how should the Obama administration proceed?

Militarily, Harrison says the United States should lower its profile by ending air strikes and politically, U.S. policy should be revised to demonstrate that America supports the Pashtun desire for a stronger position in relation to the Punjabi-dominated government in Islamabad.

The Pashtuns in FATA treasure their long-standing autonomy and do not like to be ruled by Islamabad. Conventional wisdom suggests that either Islamist or Pashtun identity will eventually triumph, but it is equally plausible that the result could be an “Islamic Pashtunistan.” (ANI)

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US to press Pakistan, Afghanistan on Taliban

May 6, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 6 (ANI): When President Barack Obama meets both Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari and Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai here today, he will stress that both are facing the same enemy and need to overcome their mistrust to ensure that joint efforts against the Taliban are not hampered.

Obama administration officials say their approach toward Pakistan and Afghanistan differs from the Bush administrations’ in important ways.

“We’d like an alliance with these two countries against this common threat. It’s very simple, but very profound,” an official said at a briefing for reporters on Tuesday.

Another senior official said Washington would be watching Pakistan closely to see if it pulls back after the concerted effort against militants.

“The past week has reflected a considerable degree of seriousness. We’ll see what follows after this. We’ll be watching intently,” the official said.
American officials are worried that the urgency among Pakistani officials for taking far-reaching steps against the Taliban will also shrivel as the immediate crisis fades.

“We have seen – I have certainly seen – over the last couple of years, bursts of fighting and engagement … and they are not sustained,” Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters Monday after a recent visit to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The administration also played down reports it was losing faith in Zardari. “We are working very hard to help the Pakistani government in its hour of need,” said a senior administration official. “We are not abandoning them. Nor are we distancing ourselves from Asif Ali Zardari.”

In preparation for the three-way meetings, aides have been discussing the details of an expanded U.S. aid program aimed at encouraging Pakistan not to slip back into ignoring the militant threat it faces.

U.S. officials in recent years have used a combination of encouragement and pressure aimed at Pakistan government in hopes of heading off efforts to reach short-term peace deals with the militants.

U.S. officials have also signaled their interest in reaching out to Zardari’s political opponents, a move apparently aimed at reminding him ahead of his meeting with Obama that support from Washington should not be taken for granted.

Obama has made dealing with the Taliban and al-Qaida sanctuaries in Pakistan the centerpiece of his strategy for stabilizing Afghanistan. (ANI)

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Obama did not change anything: Zawahiri

April 21, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

WASHINGTON: The second-ranking leader of the al-Qaida network, Ayman al-Zawahiri, said in a new video that US President Barack Obama “did not
change anything” in the Muslims’ perception of the United States, al-Qaeda monitors said.

“The new President Obama did not change anything of the image of America towards Muslims and the oppressed,” according to excerpts of Zawahiri’s statement released by the SITE Intelligence Group.

“It is America that is still killing Muslims in Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan,” the al-Qaida’s number two continued in the video that was released today.

“It is America that steals their fortunes, occupies their land, and supports the thieving, corrupt, and traitor rulers in their countries,” Zawahiri insisted. “And consequently, the problem is not over. Rather, it is likely to deteriorate and escalate.”

Earlier this month, Obama used his visit to Turkey to declare that the US is not and never will be at war with Islam.

But according to the monitoring group, Zawahiri insisted that the Obama administration was just conducting the same policies as the administration of former president George W Bush, but with a different face.
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TV show exonerates Osama bin Laden

April 12, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

BERLIN (Hollywood Reporter) – A Dutch TV jury has found Osama bin Laden not guilty of the September 11 attacks.

In the conclusion Wednesday night to the show “Devil’s Advocate” on Dutch public broadcaster Nederland 2, the jury of two men and three women, along with the studio audience, ruled that there was no proof bin Laden was the mastermind behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001.

The Netherlands, home to “Big Brother” creator Endemol, is known for being on the cutting edge of format-based television. But even for Dutch standards, “Devil’s Advocate,” from Amsterdam production house AVRO, pushes the envelope.

The show features star defense attorney Gerard Spong standing up for some of the world’s worst criminals.

In the latest show, Spong was able to convince the jury that bin Laden’s connection to September 11 was a product of “Western propaganda.” The jury also ruled there was insufficient evidence to prove bin Laden was the real head of terrorist network al-Qaida. The jury did rule, however, that bin Laden is a “terrorist who has misused Islam.”

The show is certain to provide further ammunition in the already heated Dutch debate over immigration and the country’s large Muslim minority. The Netherlands saw a sharp rise in anti-immigration and anti-Islamic sentiment after the 2004 murder of Dutch director Theo Van Gogh by a Muslim extremist.

Spong has been at the center of the debate, supporting legal action against anti-immigrant politician Geert Wilders.

(Editing by Sheri Linden at Reuters)

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Obama to seek $83.4 billion for Iraqi, Afghan wars

April 10, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama is seeking $83.4 billion for US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, pressing for a war
supplemental spending bill like the ones he sometimes opposed when he was senator and George W. Bush was president.
Obama’s request would push the costs of the two wars to almost $1 trillion since the September 11, 2001, terror attacks against the United States, according to the Congressional Research Service. The additional money would cover operations into the latter months of this year.

Budget office spokesman Tom Gavin said the White House would send an official request to Congress Thursday afternoon. Congressional aides briefed on the request revealed its overall cost on condition of anonymity since the briefing was private.

Obama was a harsh critic of the Iraq war as a candidate, a stance that attracted support from the Democratic Party’s liberal base and helped him secure the party’s nomination. He opposed two infusions of war money in 2007 after Bush used a veto to force Congress to remove a withdrawal timeline from the $99 billion measure.

He supported a war funding bill last year that also included about $25 billion for domestic programs; he also voted to pay for the wars in 2006, before he announced his candidacy for president.

The coming request will include $75.8 billion for the military and more than $7 billion in foreign aid. Pakistan, a key ally in the fight against al-Qaida, would receive $1.8 billion in aid.

The measure would also finance Obama’s recently-announced plan to boost troop levels in Afghanistan.

The White House wants the bill sent to Obama for his signature by Memorial Day, May 25, said a House of Representatives Democratic aide.

Obama announced plans in February to withdraw US troops from Iraq on a 19-month timetable, with all troops to be out of Iraq by the end of 2011.

Obama’s request would push the amount approved for 2009 to about $150 billion, a drop from the $171 billion cost incurred in 2007 and the $188 billion approved for 2008, when Bush increased the tempo of military operations in a generally successful effort to quell the Iraq insurgency.

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Pakistan a thriving sanctuary for Afghan, al-Qaida militants’

April 7, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

WASHINGTON: Noting that Pakistan “is a thriving sanctuary” for both Afghan and al-Qaida militants operating in Afghanistan, a leading US think
tank says Washington needs to get Pakistan on board with its new Af-Pak strategy, though progress is nowhere near assured.

To give its strategy of negotiating with Afghan Taliban even a remote chance of success, “involvement in Pakistan is both a headache and a necessity for the United States,” Stratfor, a global intelligence company, said in an analysis as two senior officials headed to the region.

This is so as Pakistan “is a thriving sanctuary for both Afghan and al-Qaida militants operating in Afghanistan,” the think tank noted. “At the same time, Pakistan contains the primary supply lines for US and NATO troops fighting those militants in Afghanistan.”

US special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen arrive in New Delhi on Tuesday for high-level talks on US Af-Pak strategy after visiting Islamabad and Kabul.

Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaida forces are now focusing much of their attention on attacking NATO supply convoys inside Pakistan, while at the same time the US is trying to beef up its military presence in Afghanistan by another 21,000 troops.

Unless something changes in Pakistan, the US plan for Afghanistan will be riddled with strategic flaws, the think tank said.

The Pakistani government is aware of the dangers posed to the country by the jihadist insurgency, particularly as attacks spread beyond the Pashtun borderlands and reach deeper into the Pakistani heartland of Punjab province, Stratfor said.

“Nonetheless, the Pakistanis do not appear to be any closer to seeing eye-to-eye with the Americans on how to manage the jihadist problem,” it said noting the US “strongly disapproves of Pakistani military and political leaders’ decision to strike deals with the Pakistani Taliban that aim to redirect the group’s focus from Pakistan back to Afghanistan.”

But the Pakistani intelligence apparatus has a history with these militants, and is not convinced that the United States, despite its promised commitment to Pakistani and Afghan development, will keep its troops in South Asia for the long haul, Stratfor said.

At the end of the day, Islamabad wants to keep its options open. That means not alienating these jihadist groups, as Islamabad fears US drone attacks in the tribal regions might do.

Thus, as the United States tries to convince allies and adversaries alike that negotiating with pragmatic Afghan Taliban is the key to winning the war, the Pakistanis will maintain that their own method of negotiating with the Pakistani Taliban and their jihadist allies is the only way to hold the Pakistani state together.

This is a major gap that Holbrooke and Mullen will attempt to bridge during their visit to Pakistan, though progress is nowhere near assured, Stratfor said.

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Pak, Afghanistan will have to pay a price for the US aid

March 29, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, Mar. 29 (ANI): Hamid Karzai and Asif Ali Zardari may have welcomed US President Barack Obama’s new strategy on Afghanistan and Pakistan (now called AfPak in Washington), but experts have warned that both the South Asian countries will have to pay a fair price in exchange of the US aid.

According to Afghan President Karzai, the proposal for increased civil and military aid was “better than they were expecting.”

However, the new American policy of reaching compromises with Taliban in Afghanistan, though touted as the best way of avoiding more civilian casualties, will surely invite criticism from those who say the loss of hundreds of Western troops has been in vain, The Independent reports.

Meanwhile, Pakistan President Zardari too backed the new US strategy, which will give his country 7.5 billion dollars in non-military aid in exchange of not letting terrorists use Pakistan as safe havens.

Zardari also accepted US suggestion of ending the political uncertainty in Pakistan by welcoming the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz Party’s return in the key province of Punjab.

Yet the Obama administration’s proposals are far from uncontroversial, the reports claims.

“We have a clear and focused goal to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaida in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future,” The Independent quotes Obama, as saying on Friday.

Obama administration is believed to extend the contentious use of drone missiles into Baluchistan province, which is believed to be the base of many senior militants.

Expert claimed, in the report, that such a move would increase anti-American feeling, and would be very damaging for the civilian government.

“At this point the Americans feel that paying off Pakistan has not helped. So it’s time to use the other tactic, and raise the cost for Pakistan of non-cooperation,” said Ayesha Siddiqa, a military analyst. (ANI)

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UK fully backs renewed military offensive in Pak: Minister

March 29, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, Mar.29 (ANI): Britain has offered its full backing for a renewed military offensive inside Pakistan.

British Defence Secretary John Hutton said his country supports targeting Pakistan-based Taliban and al-Qaida positions and urged Europe to begin offering assistance to eradicate insurgents in the tribal regions bordering Afghanistan.

Confirming that Britain was being drawn into a widening regional conflict, The Guardian quoted Hutton as saying that the time had come to target Taliban and al-Qaida havens inside Pakistan.

Hutton said the military objectives in the region must now have “an equal focus on both countries”.
He added: “AQ [al-Qaida] is in retreat, scuttling across the border into Pakistan. Trying to buy time. Desperate to regroup. That is why there must be no let-up … there can be no escape, no hiding place.”

He indicated that Britain, which has deep historical ties with Pakistan and remains its largest trading partner in Europe, must play a principal role in supporting the American military effort in the region.

An MoD spokesman said that Britain was ready to offer military, political and diplomatic support to a renewed offensive in Pakistan’s tribal lands, but what precisely that entailed was dependent on the resources other NATO members were prepared to offer.

The most recent evidence that Pakistan was becoming an increased focus of concern surfaced last week when Prime Minister Gordon Brown pinpointed al-Qaida in Pakistan as the greatest threat facing the UK in his national security strategy. Two thirds of terror plots uncovered by British intelligence agencies have a Pakistani connection.
Additional military resources are also likely to be deployed to the region once Britain withdraws its 4,000-strong force from Iraq this July, with moves to increase troop numbers in Afghanistan from 8,300 to potentially above 10,000 within a year.

The new found focus on Pakistan will dominate NATO’s 60th anniversary summit in Strasbourg this week, in which Britain and the US will attempt to drum up more support for the twin Afghanistan and Pakistan mission. (ANI)

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Obama reads the riot act to Pak to perform against terror safe havens

March 28, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Mar 27 (ANI): President Barack Obama’s new Afghanistan and Pakistan policy will not only step up the military offensive against the Taliban and al-Qaida in both Afghanistan and the tribal areas of north Pakistan, but will also make Islamabad accountable for appropriate action taken against militants.

The Obama Administration intends to focus new efforts on Pakistan, principally involving regular diplomatic engagement led by special envoy Richard Holbrooke and conduct bi-lateral talks with Islamabad every six-to-eight weeks and US-Pak-Afghan meetings once every three months.

“That’s a fundamental shift,” one senior official said, describing the new strategy as one that defines the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban as a two-nation conflict that requires intensive military and diplomatic efforts.

“We recognize Pakistan has a complex, complicated relationship with some of these terrorists groups. Some of these terrorists groups have grown up within the Pakistani system, but many of them have now become Frankensteins which threaten the freedom of Pakistan,” FOX News quoted the official, as saying.

The new strategy will also seek to increase US economic aid to Pakistan’s new civilian government. Obama tomorrow will ask Congress to commit 1.5 billion dollars a year for each of the next five years to economic development aid to Pakistan.

The US President will also seek to “increase Pakistan’s capabilities against insurgents, terrorists and militants.” As an example, one official said, Obama will try to increase Pakistan’s “air mobility capability to control their western border.”

Even with these new initiatives, senior officials admitted they are still not completely comfortable that some elements of Pakistan’s military or intelligence forces are not aligned with or sympathetic toward al Qaeda or the Taliban.

“All of this, of course, is going to have to be done in a way in which we are ensured that Pakistan will take the appropriate measures against militancy, terrorism, and insurgency,” one official said.

“We’ve made that very clear in our conversations with the Pakistanis,” the official added. (ANI)

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UK to unveil most comprehensive anti-terror strategy in world

March 22, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, Mar. 22 (ANI): United Kingdom’s new anti-terror strategy, which will be unveiled by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith next week, is claimed to be the most comprehensive counter-terrorism approach issued by any government in the world.

According to a Home Office spokesman, Smith wants the paper to go into more detail than ever before about how the authorities are seeking to prevent atrocities from happening and respond to attacks which take place.

The strategy will reflect security services’ judgment that the most serious terror threat to the UK continues to come from Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida network, the Daily Star reports.

Experts have spent a year preparing the document, known as Contest Two, to take into account lessons learnt from recent Mumbai terror attacks.

The new paper, to be published on Tuesday, will update the Contest strategy developed by the Home Office in 2003 and detailed in the Countering International Terrorism document in 2006.

Earlier, UK’s anti-terror strategy has been based o four Ps— Prevent, Pursue, Protect and Prepare, which ensured that the country was ready for the consequences of any attack.

The Home Office spokesman said the new paper would take account of the way the terror threat has evolved and how the authorities are learning lessons from events.

Since 2007, the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre has termed the terrorism threat level as “severe”, which means that future terrorist attacks are highly likely but not thought to be imminent.

By 2011, Britain will be spending 3.5 billion pounds a year on counter-terrorism.

Between 2001 and 2008, almost 200 people have been convicted of terror-related offences. (ANI)

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Obama’s call for working with a “moderate” Taliban will fail: Critics

March 9, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, Mar 9 (ANI): Leading Afghanistan opposition figures have opposed US President Barack Obama’s call for “moderate” Taliban members to be brought into the mainstream, and warned that co-opting fighters would fail as long as Hamid Karzai’s government is weak and corrupt.

Obama floated the idea of appealing to Taliban adherents who are alienated by the extremism of al-Qaida fighters and might be prepared to switch sides after repeating a successful strategy in Iraq, The Guardian reported.

But opposition figures warned that insurgents groups rarely ceded ground when they thought they were winning.

Former Afghanistan Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani, who is to stand as presidential candidate in the elections in August against Karzai, said: “I don’t know of a single peace process that has been successfully negotiated from a position of weakness or stalemate.”

A Taliban spokesman, who said that the US president’s overture was a sign of weakness, poured cold water on the notion that “moderate” fighters could be easily turned.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yusuf Ahmadi said: “They say they want to speak to moderate Taliban, but they will not be able to find such people because we are united around the aim of fighting for freedom and bringing an Islamic system to Afghanistan.”

He added that Obama’s comments were a reflection of the fact that the Americans had become tired and worried.

Political analyst Haroun Mir said that even small-time insurgents would not be persuaded to lay down arms at a time when the Taliban was scenting victory over the Afghan Government and its foreign backers. (ANI)

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Pak situation really ‘scares’ Obama

February 9, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, Feb 9 (ANI): Pakistan is the nation that really “scares” US President Barack Obama and, it will be his administration’s greatest foreign policy challenge: A nuclear-armed country hurtling towards chaos.

According to Obama’s aides, Pakistan is the nation that really “scares” him. The country is threatened by a growing Islamist insurgency, economic collapse and a crisis of governance as it struggles to establish democratic rule, The Guardian reported.

The Obama Administration believes Pakistan is the key to its objective of pacifying Afghanistan and going after al-Qaida.

Pakistan is the most urgent foreign policy challenge for the Obama Administration, according to the US Central Command study.

The Centcom, which is directly responsible for all American military activities in the Afghan-Pakistan region, is expected to submit the report to President Obama in a few days.

Pakistan is al-Qaeda’s headquarters, while its tribal territory, which runs along the Afghan border, is used by the Taliban to launch attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan.

Some Pakistani extremists, who previously focused on Afghanistan, have now turned inwards, spawning a vicious Pakistani Taliban movement, which challenges the writ of the state.

Obama warned in a television interview this month that the spillover of the war in Afghanistan risks “destabilising neighbouring Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons.”

The top priority for Washington will be getting Pakistan to take more concerted military action in the tribal areas.

The deep confusion in Pakistan also envelops the role of the US and other western powers, who many believe are secretly supporting the extremists, in order to destabilise Pakistan. (ANI)

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‘Obama is the biggest ever assassination target in American history’

January 20, 2009 By Rajesh Leave a Comment

London, Jan 20 (ANI): Barack Obama, who will become the 44th President of the US today, is the biggest ever assassination target in American history.

According to the Daily Star, the 47-year-old has taken the responsibility of doing the most important job in the world, which is to save the global economy from meltdown, but it is also the most dangerous.

He will enter the White House as the first black president knowing that white supremacists have vowed to kill him.

And therefore, security-surrounding Obama has been stepped up.

CIA chiefs are throwing a ring of steel around his inauguration to make sure he does not meet the same fate as assassinated 1960s president John F Kennedy.

They have turned Washington DC into an impenetrable fortress for the historic ceremony. It will be guarded by 45,000 soldiers, police, secret agents and National Guards.

Jet fighters will also be on standby for the ceremony.

Obama will be protected behind bullet-proof glass and ride in a bomb-proof limo with the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and al-Qaida all gunning for him.

US military leaders have tried to cater for every possible type of terror strike from a gunman to a chemical attack.

Intelligence chiefs, who have reported a huge increase in threats running up to inauguration day, have placed snipers on every rooftop around Washing-ton’s Lincoln Memorial and Capitol Hill, where Obama will deliver his first speech as US head of state.

Leaders of the racist KKK have issued a call for members to wear black armbands and fly the US flag upside down in protest at him taking office.

And FBI assistant director Joe Persichini confirmed the white supremacy movement is itching to take out Obama.

“We have seen a lot of chatter. We have seen a lot of discussions and we have seen some information via the Internet,” Persichini said. (ANI)

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