View Full Version : Al Qaeda Camps in Pakistan?? Nahhh.. say it ain't so!
interesting article here... An alleged terrorist cell in California apparently was broken up.. BUT WAIT... what's this??
One of the allegations is that the ringleader attended terrorist camps IN PAKISTAN... IN 2003 and 2004.
What?? I thought Pakistan wasn't harboring Al Qaeda???
But let me guess.. Pakistan didn't know about those camps, right?? THEN HOW DO WE KNOW that this guy was there????
Think about it
Copyright 2005 The Chronicle Publishing Co.
The San Francisco Chronicle
JUNE 8, 2005, WEDNESDAY, FINAL EDITION
Al Qaeda probe reported -- Lodi father, son arrested;
Federal complaint says 22-year-old trained in Pakistan on 'how to kill Americans'
Chronicle Staff Writer
Henry K. Lee
Federal agents have broken up what they say was an al Qaeda terrorist cell operating in the San Joaquin County city of Lodi, arresting two men, one of whom admitted attending training camps in Pakistan to learn "how to kill Americans," according to published reports.
A joint terrorism task force, including agents from the FBI, arrested Hamid Hayat, 22, and his father on Sunday, less than a week after the younger man was found aboard a San Francisco-bound plane even though his name appeared on a no-fly list of suspected extremists, the Los Angeles Times reported in today's editions.
Hayat was trained to use explosives and weapons and practiced by using photographs of President Bush and other high-profile U.S. political figures as targets, the Times reported, citing court documents.
The suspect, who allegedly initially lied to FBI agents about whether he had received training, had his pick of where to carry out a terrorist attack, which potentially could have targeted hospitals and large food stores, the Times said, citing court documents.
The task force arrested Hayat's father, Umer Hayat, 47, a Lodi ice cream truck driver, on charges that he lied about his son's involvement and his own financing of the terror camp, the Times said. Umer Hayat reportedly paid $100 each month to his son.
The father told FBI agents that his son became interested in attending a terrorist training camp as a teenager after being influenced by a classmate in Pakistan and an uncle who had fought with the mujahedeen in Afghanistan, the newspaper reported.
After denying any involvement, Hamid Hayat told FBI agents that he had attended al Qaeda training camps in Pakistan for six months in 2003 and 2004, the Times reported.
Both men live in Lodi, where family members denied to the Times that the father and son had any links to terrorism. Several phone numbers listed for Umer Hayat were disconnected Tuesday night.
The two made a brief appearance Tuesday before U.S. Magistrate Peter Nowinski in Sacramento and are being held in Sacramento County Jail.
Umer Hayat is charged in a federal complaint with lying about his son's involvement in the terror camp. His attorney, Johnny Griffin III, called the allegations shocking but said his client "is charged with nothing more than lying to an agent," the Sacramento Bee reported.
The complaint accuses Hamid Hayat of training to learn "how to kill Americans" and then lying to FBI agents about it, the Bee reported.
The Bee reported that investigators also detained Muhammed Adil Khan and Shabbir Ahmed for questioning and that both are being held on immigration violations.
Ahmed was imam of the Lodi Muslim Mosque, the Lodi News-Sentinel reported on its Web site.
Khan was a former imam who is leading efforts to build the Farooqia Islamic Center, including a school for children up to fourth grade, south of Lodi on Lower Sacramento Road, the News-Sentinel reported.
On Tuesday, FBI agents searched Ahmed's house on Poplar Street, next door to the mosque, and another house on the 300 block of Acacia Street, about four blocks from the mosque, the Lodi newspaper reported.
An FBI spokesman in Sacramento was unavailable for comment Tuesday night.
Lodi Mayor John Beckman confirmed to The Chronicle that the FBI had made some arrests and served some search warrants in the case.
"Having the FBI issue search warrants and make arrests in your town is always a little bit surprising," Beckman said of the agricultural city of 60,000 residents. "I'm glad to hear that the FBI is staying on top of federal criminal issues, no matter the size of the community."
E-mail Henry K. Lee at hlee@sfchronicle.com.
SmokedYourDSM
06-08-2005, 09:21 AM
bman, the lackawana seven also had EXTENSIVE ties to pakistan, i believe 2-3 of them were actually pakistani naturalized citizens....
i really dont wanna go digging for links, and don't think anyone needs us to.
But still, people go on thinking it's those bad Iraqi's and Afghanis that want us dead, not those great pakistanis or saudis, right?
Fat Tone
06-08-2005, 09:26 AM
OBL is running the place. Waddya expect ??
bman, the lackawana seven also had EXTENSIVE ties to pakistan, i believe 2-3 of them were actually pakistani naturalized citizens....
i really dont wanna go digging for links, and don't think anyone needs us to.
But still, people go on thinking it's those bad Iraqi's and Afghanis that want us dead, not those great pakistanis or saudis, right?
Right, but the Lackawana seven allegedly went there BEFORE 9/11
All of the Musharraf ass-kissers will tell you that things have CHANGED now in Pakistan
only, this report is saying they haven't
interesting article here... An alleged terrorist cell in California apparently was broken up.. BUT WAIT... what's this??
One of the allegations is that the ringleader attended terrorist camps IN PAKISTAN... IN 2003 and 2004.
What?? I thought Pakistan wasn't harboring Al Qaeda???
Don't know about 'harboring' but it's been a known fact they have wasps nests of Al Qada in certain areas. Why is this big news to you??
Don't know about 'harboring' but it's been a known fact they have wasps nests of Al Qada in certain areas. Why is this big news to you??
If we KNOW that, why not BOMB them, like we did in Afghanistan?????
Why isn't this obvious to you?
SEVIL DOG
06-08-2005, 09:49 AM
hmmm... Didn't the USA sell some F-16's to Pakistan? Don't they have weapons of mass destruction? Don't they support terrorists who kill people in India? Does not Pakistan have honnor killings of their mothers, daughters, wives? Bush is in for 2 1/2 more years, and the Dems & repubs better get their shit together. This will come back and bight us in the ass! :mad_08:
PROGENY
06-08-2005, 09:51 AM
When I heard the story on the news, I was thinking, "Links to Pakistan? Really, wow." :rolleyes:
It's a joke, a serious one, but a joke nontheless. Pakistan is a terrorist supporting state, an we SUPPORT them!
This particuler operation possibly couldn't have been done without the Patriot Act. I wish I could support it, especially with results like this, but our rights and freedoms are at stake. Maybe a reform of the Patriot Act would be appropriate, while still maintaining operational validity in the War on Terror.
hmmm... Didn't the USA sell some F-16's to Pakistan? Don't they have weapons of mass destruction? Don't they support terrorists who kill people in India? Does not Pakistan have honnor killings of their mothers, daughters, wives? Bush is in for 2 1/2 more years, and the Dems & repubs better get their shit together. This will come back and bight us in the ass! :mad_08:
Yes, Musharraf's rape rooms are legendary.. So is his proliferation of WMD, his support for Al Qaeda, and his atrocious treatment of women...
In fact, I believe Musharraf was the "real life" role model for the "fictitious" Saddam that was presented to the US prior to the build up to the Iraq war..
especially the WMD and support of Al Qaeda stuff
If we KNOW that, why not BOMB them, like we did in Afghanistan?????
Why isn't this obvious to you?
So, now you want to bomb everyone that has terrorist camps? :eek:
So, now you want to bomb everyone that has terrorist camps? :eek:
UMMM.. yeah... Don't you?
That's always been my position
Take them out with cruise missiles
Remember the Bush Doctrine????
Remember the Bush Doctrine????
I think Pakistan does just enough as it needs to do to 'convince' the powers that be, they are cooperating in the war on terror. IMHO, of course.
BTW, you'd have to bomb many other countries, and have damned good intel on location of training camps, in lieu of bombing aspirin factories.
BTW, you'd have to bomb many other countries, and have damned good intel on location of training camps, in lieu of bombing aspirin factories.
Well, if they're charging this guy with the crime of attending and Al Qaeda camp in Pakistan, I assume they know where it is... LOL
its funny how people will come to the defence of Pakistan yet support the war on Iraq, yet when was the last time the US was worried about a terrorist nation that got its weapons' technology from Iraq?
When was the last time a terrorist cell in the US was arrested after attending a terrorist camp in Iraq????
Who is defending Pakistan?
Maybe training camps in iraq don't offer USA travel packages.
Who is defending Pakistan?
Maybe training camps in iraq don't offer USA travel packages.
YOU are defending Pakistan
in your first post in this thread you tried to downplay it:
"Don't know about 'harboring' but it's been a known fact they have wasps nests of Al Qada in certain areas. Why is this big news to you??
Hey.. what's the big deal?? Everyone knows there are training camps in Pakistan... Nothing to see here, right?
Then when I suggested taking those camps out with cruise missiles you seemed shocked:
So, now you want to bomb everyone that has terrorist camps?
I just find it a strange reaction from someone who thinks the war on Iraq was justified
latent aaaack
06-08-2005, 06:23 PM
As alarming as Pakistan's extremism is, one foriegn policy template can't be stamped onto every country the same way because there are too many nuances. After 9/11 the US needed to put all it's focus on Afghanistan and that meant buddying up to Pakistan for a while. The US could not easily have taken on both countries and maintained such support and low body counts.
But in the near future I do agree that more pressure should be put on Pakistan in light of all this suspicious activity.
Bman were you serious about reports of Musharaf's 'rape rooms?'
candypreet
06-09-2005, 11:40 AM
good thread . Bman, whish could rep you now. I wnder what bigeart will say tho this?
Bman were you serious about reports of Musharaf's 'rape rooms?'
Not in the sense that the allegations were made against Saddam.. that his sons were running "rape rooms"
But in Pakistan, there was the case a year or two ago where a women was sentenced by some sort of local court to a punishment of "GANG RAPE" for the crime of being having a brother who was seen with a woman who wasn't his wife.. or some such nonsense
The men who did it were caught and tried and convicted, but I believe the highest court in Pakistan (remember, this is a kangaroo court under an absolute dictator) overturned the conviction of the men
To my knowledge they are free..
I'll see if I can find an update
Bman
This is how Musharraf treats women
NEWSDAY
March 29, 2005 Tuesday
ALL EDITIONS
REPORT FROM PAKISTAN;
PAKISTANI WOMEN: A CRUEL REPRESSION
James Rupert
MULTAN, Pakistan
Tabasum, an impoverished, illiterate folksinger, sat on the concrete rooftop where she lives these days and wept behind her veil as she told how six police officers raped her and her 18-year-old sister in May. The women were returning home from singing at a wedding, Tabasum said, when the men arrested them, hauled them to a house opposite the New Multan police station and raped them until dawn.
Tribal traditions in Pakistan dictate that a raped woman is "dishonored," cannot marry and so should be discarded, if not killed, by her family. Tabasum said she thought about suicide, the remedy for rape taken by many Pakistani women. But she is angry as well as humiliated.
"If these men are hanged, nobody else will do such things," said Tabasum, who, like many Pakistanis, uses one name. With help from human rights lawyers, she is trying to force a court to investigate the police in the rape.
Pakistani women, who human rights groups say face some of the world's cruelest repression, increasingly are resisting. In recent years, public activism has spread from a handful of educated elite women in the major cities to many in the middle class, and even a handful of poor and vulnerable women in villages and towns. But both in Pakistan and worldwide, women's rights activists say, their achievement in the past decade has been simply to turn what was a hidden issue into a public one. They lament that, for the most part, widespread talk about violence against women has failed to reduce it.
A galvanizing case
Women's activists here say the fragility of their campaign is underscored by turmoil this month in the country's biggest women's rights scandal - the gang rape of Mukhtar Mai at the order of elders in her village southwest of Multan. Mai fled her home after an appeals court freed four of the six men convicted of the rape. Since then, the Supreme Court has had the men re-arrested and is considering the case, which often dominates the news in Pakistan.
Courts and the government of President Pervez Musharraf have taken steps to buttress some women's rights: to vote, run for office and marry men of their choice, for example. But actually enforcing those rights would push Musharraf into politically costly confrontations with Islamic fundamentalist parties and other conservatives, something he has avoided.
"Despite the many commitments made at the official level to act against 'honor' killings, domestic violence and other crimes against women ... realities for most women in the country remained unaltered" in 2004, said the latest annual report of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, an independent group. "Indeed there were indications an increased number faced violence ... with authorities failing to provide protection," it said.
Police often refuse to accept women's complaints of rape, activists say. In 670 rape cases noted by the commission in the first 10 months of last year, half of them gang-rapes, a total of 84 suspects were arrested, the report said. No data were available on how many were tried or convicted, but human rights monitors say it would have been a small percentage.
A feudal system
Men's treatment of women like property is nowhere more routine than in southern Punjab province, a flatland of vibrant green cotton and wheat fields dotted with mud brick villages. Here, a man controls the lives of his daughters or sisters, and often marries them off to other men to resolve debts, land disputes or family feuds.
"We have a saying that a woman is like a pair of shoes - you can change her any time," said Rashid Rehman, a human rights lawyer in Multan, southern Punjab's main city.
Abusive men commonly kill or mutilate their wives on mere suspicion that the women might have "dishonored" them by speaking or meeting with another man. Attacks in which men use acid to disfigure a woman's face have been "growing alarmingly over the past three years ... most notably in southern Punjab," the human rights commission report said.
Rape rises in the cotton-picking season, when poor sharecroppers rely on a few months of hard field labor for the bulk of their annual earnings, said Asim Tanveer, a Multan-based journalist who has reported on such cases. Women among them can be summoned by a powerful landlord who will demand sex as the price for letting them remain on the farm, he said.
Pakistani men's power over women is enforced by traditions of tribe, clan and caste. Tribal elders, wealthy landlords and hereditary feudal lords form an elite class that normally rules the countryside, including the police force, far more than does any law established by the government. Among thousands of crimes against women, a few particularly dramatic cases draw public attention and intervention from Musharraf or other top officials. As in the case of Mukhtar Mai, only such outside intercession gives a woman a chance of winning a case in court, human rights activists and scholars say.
Pakistan's press is full of 200-word horror tales that make the news for a day, only to disappear. "A 15-year-old girl, resident of Usman Alishah village, daughter of a laborer, Mumtaz Ahmed, was abducted and gang raped by a group of landlords here," a state-owned news agency reported from Punjab last summer. "The raped girl has still not been recovered. ... The girl's parents, demanding justice, have threatened to commit self immolation in front of the ... [local police] office if the culprits are not caught and hanged for their despicable crime."
Mind control
For the most part, the greatest obstacle to women's rights is planted in their minds, said Tahir and Umi Kalsoom Seyal, a husband and wife who head a Punjab-based foundation that promotes rural education and women's rights. "When a girl grows up seeing her mother beaten, and her sisters married and sent away at the order of her father ... she learns nothing else but submission" to males, Tahir Seyal said.
Many men may show kindness and mercy to women in their charge, the Seyals said, but the notion of men and women as equals remains limited to a Westernized fringe of the elite. Especially in rural Pakistan, millions of women are taught never to complain about anything a man does and never to envision that they have a right to life or liberty, much less to the pursuit of happiness, according to the Seyals and others.
Pakistan's Islamic faith is made to cut both ways on women's issues.
Across much of Central and South Asia, male religious leaders who dominate in interpreting Islam often use the Quran's injunction that women dress modestly to enforce an all-enveloping "purdah," or isolation, of a woman from the world outside her immediate family. But women's rights advocates quote many of the same scriptural verses and note that women in the Quran, including a wife of the prophet Muhammad, had prominent public roles.
Several trends are prying open the psychological vise of tradition. Pakistan has the smallest percentage of female workers in South Asia, but the rate crept up from 5.4 percent of women in 1999 to 8 percent by 2003, and is thought still to be rising.
Satellite TV dishes, common in cities, are spreading slowly to prosperous homes in the countryside. The most popular programs are films from neighboring India that show women working outside the home, falling in love and battling for the right to marry as they choose.
While Musharraf's government has avoided direct confrontation with conservatives over women's rights, it passed a law in 2001 that gives women a third of seats on local councils and 22 percent of seats in provincial and national legislatures. Many localities, especially in Punjab and the North-West Frontier Province, have blocked, threatened or beaten female voters and candidates. In one local election last year, two female candidates disappeared, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan reported.
Women say their presence in parliament has yielded few laws to protect them. In a political brawl last year, the government pushed through a bill to outlaw so-called honor killings, but human rights advocates said it leaves big loopholes that let men get away with murder by paying blood money.
Still, the presence of thousands of women in legislative offices has offered many Pakistani women their first direct access to the government. In Muzaffargarh, a district west of Multan, a woman managed to smuggle a note to local female council members saying she was being held prisoner by her parents for leaving her abusive husband. The councilors, one of them Umi Kalsoom Seyal, visited the home "and the woman was sitting in the courtyard with her ankles chained," Seyal said. The councilors summoned police, who freed the woman.
More than anyone, the person who has electrified the women's movement in Pakistan has been Mukhtar Mai. Elders of the Mastoi tribe, which dominates her village, ordered her gang-raped in 2002 in revenge for her brother's supposed affair with a Mastoi woman. The resulting uproar led Musharraf to order a quick trial.
Mai's decision to press charges against her attackers, despite threats of death from traditionalist men, "has begun to give women the courage to speak," said Umi Kalsoom Seyal. "They think that, if Mukhtar Mai can do this, why can't I do it?"
In Mai's village, Meerwala, the case has brought physical changes. Mai refused a government offer to move her out of her village and used compensation money she received to build the village's first schools: one for girls, one for boys.
So many official delegations and foreign visitors have trekked to Meerwala to meet Mai that the government paved the dirt road leading there. In mid-March, concrete poles stood waiting for cables that will bring electricity.
But "ideas here have begun to change only a little," Mai said in an interview. She still needs a police guard. She has visited hundreds of homes in Meerwala on what has become her mission: "I asked them, please send your daughters; I don't want to repeat this incident [the rape], so I want our girls literate. I want them to know their rights." Many of her neighbors "asked me, what will girls do with this knowledge?" she said. About 200 girls now study at Mai's school, including a daughter of one of the men convicted of raping her.
Mai's status as the icon of Pakistan's women's struggle now fills her days. She is learning to read and write. She teaches sewing at her school, meets with dignitaries who come to offer support and with women from neighboring villages who come to her with reports of abuse. She has rejected numerous offers of marriage, saying she cannot be sure she is not now sought for her fame and her access to money.
On the day this month that the convicted men returned to the village, freed by an appeals court, Mai seemed emotionally empty. "Before the criminals were freed, I thought I had the chance to change something," she said. "Now I can't see any chance."
A few miles away, hundreds of men crowded into the courtyard of Faiz Bakhsh Mastoi to congratulate him and his fellow convicts. Even there, Meerwala was divided by the rape case. Two Mastoi tribesmen sought out visiting journalists to whisper warnings. "For these men, rape is nothing," said one dissenter. "You've come about one case, but there are hundreds more like it."
In a few days' visit to southern Punjab, stories of rape emerged at every stop. In the village of Dirpur, Jaafar Hussein Bhutta, principal of a secondary school, pulled journalists in to meet his 18-year-old wife. In January, after Bhutta slapped a student at the school over his poor performance on an exam, the youth and three of his friends gang-raped Bhutta's wife.
Medical evidence confirmed the rape, and after intercession by politicians from Islamabad, the case is in court. But the student's family is rich and powerful, local people said, and they have a good chance of bribing their way out of a conviction. In case they don't, Bhutta said, they have threatened to kill him.
In New Multan, where the six policemen are accused of raping Tabasum, the folk singer, police have resisted an investigation at every stage, said Shahzeb Khan Afshar, a human rights lawyer who is representing Tabasum without pay. They rejected her initial complaint as well as Afshar's request that officers at the New Multan station be tested against DNA samples from the rapists' semen.
Police say that, to the contrary, they have solved the case. While Tabasum, her sister and her mother say it was policemen who abducted the two younger women, the rickshaw driver who was driving them that night supports the police account that no officers were involved. Two local merchants have been arrested and face trial.
The intense publicity and government support for Mukhtar Mai let her escape some of the traditional rejection that society here pours on rape victims. So far, Tabasum is not as lucky. Her case has gotten less attention, and "everyone - the judiciary and the police - has been doing all possible to protect the policemen in this case," Afshar said.
While hoping for justice, Tabasum is living as anonymously as she can in Multan's congested old city. Twice she has moved, at least once, neighbors said, because police pressed her landlord to kick her out. She no longer sings at weddings and survives by scrubbing clothes for a family that doesn't know about the rape case.
Of the policemen, she said, "We pray to God that they die like dogs. We cannot face the community otherwise."
So,
who wants to talk about Saddam's rape rooms, as a reason to launch a war??
Who wants to talk about links to the 9/11 attack at the highest levels of government?
Who wants to talk about support for Al Qaeda and the Taliban?
Who wants to talk about proliferation of WMD to terrorist nations?
anyone?
and again.. yet another story of government sponsored rape in that fine country of Pakistan... A country that YOU AND ME gave $1 BILLION DOLLARS out of our tax money...
Money well spent? You decide
This girl was gang raped.. went to the police and told them, and they raped her too
Now she's threatening to set herself on fire, if there isn't justice
I hate to say it, but in Pakistan.. Musharraf will probably hand her the match
The Calgary Herald (Alberta)
April 29, 2005 Friday
Rape victim threatens to set herself on fire: Woman says police assaulted her after she fled abductors
Zahid Hussain, Times of London
ISLAMABAD
A young victim of gang rape has threatened to set herself on fire in front of Pakistan's parliament if her attackers are not brought to justice. Nazish Bhatti, 17, told journalists in Islamabad that she escaped from her abductors and fled to a police station, but was raped again -- by two officers.
"I prefer death over the life I'm enduring after being dishonoured," she said.
Thousands of women are raped each year in Pakistan and many commit suicide out of shame. But some are now daring to speak out, inspired by the example of Mukhtaran Mai, a teacher who was gang-raped on the orders of a tribal council, but took her case to the courts and won.
Bhatti, a student and the daughter of a factory worker in the city of Sialkot in central Punjab, said she was abducted by three men as she walked to college. She said she was kept in a house for more than a month where she was repeatedly gang-raped.
The rapists also tried to kill her by forcing her to drink insecticide. She survived. But when she went to the police, she says she was raped by two policemen. She was threatened with dire consequences if she reported the incident, but eventually went to hospital and was treated for 10 days. Instead of charging the rapists, the police threatened to register a case of adultery against her.
Bhatti said she and her parents would commit suicide by setting themselves on fire if her attackers were not brought to justice within 48 hours. The deadline was postponed until Thursday after the authorities promised to investigate her case.
She alleged that Sialkot police were protecting her rapists because they were "influential men." Osama Raja, the local police chief, denied the claim, but said investigations were continuing. He said three of the five accused have been arrested, but denied that Bhatti was raped by the police.
good thread . Bman, whish could rep you now. I wnder what bigeart will say tho this?
well, Candy.. it looks like its only you and me who care to learn about these things
The Bush supporters in the US are too ashamed to post in a thread like this... They realize ALL the things Saddam was accused of (support for Al Qaeda, allowing terrorist camps, developing and spreading WMD, allowing institutionalized rape, etc) ARE TRUE WHEN IT COMES TO PAKISTAN/ MUSHARRAF. In addition, Musharraf even tops Saddam when it comes to persecuting Christians.. Saddam tolerated christians, Pakistan charges them with "blasphemy", which is a severe crime punishable BY DEATH in that backwater hellhole of a nation.
Yet, Mr. Bush sends billions of US tax dollars to Pakistan and advanced strike/fighter aircraft.. go figure
Pakistan: FBI IS LYING.. there are no Al Qaeda camps here
Copyright 2005 Agence France Presse
All Rights Reserved
Agence France Presse -- English
June 9, 2005 Thursday 1:11 PM GMT
No Al-Qaeda camps in Pakistan, Islamabad says after two seized in US
ISLAMABAD June 9
Pakistan Thursday denied claims that one of two terror suspects arrested in California had received training at an Al-Qaeda camp in the South Asian country.
"There are no training camps in Pakistan," senior foreign ministry official Naeem Khan told AFP in Islamabad when asked to comment on reports in a number of newspapers in the United States and Pakistan.
"We are the frontline state in the fight against terrorism. How could we allow such camps in our country?" Khan said, adding that Islamabad had asked its embassy in Washington to get details of the charges from US authorities.
The Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had arrested a Pakistani American father and son with suspected links to Al-Qaeda in Lodi, California.
The son, Hamid Hayat, 23, said he had trained at an Al-Qaeda camp in Pakistan for six months in 2003 and 2004 to learn "how to kill Americans," US authorities cited by the daily said.
The US daily said Hamid's father, Umer, 47, who drives an ice cream truck, had acknowledged having sent nearly 100 dollars a month to his son while he attended the terrorist training camp.
Hamid was arrested upon returning to the United States from Pakistan on May 27, it said.
According to an affidavit cited in the newspaper report Hamid, who was arrested on May 27, admitted to having returned to carry out attacks against US installations, including "hospitals and large food stores."
The men's family denied that the pair had any links to Al-Qaeda. A cousin told the Times that Hamid had made his most recent visit to Pakistan with his mother to arrange marriages and to visit relatives.
Hamid told FBI agents he trained at a camp near Rawalpindi, Islamabad's twin city, according to a report in Dawn, an English language daily in Pakistan.
Pakistan, which abandoned the Taliban regime in neighbouring Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks on the United States, has arrested more than 700 Al-Qaeda suspects.
Most have been handed over to Washington, including alleged Al-Qaeda number three Abu Faraj al-Libbi, who was captured in Pakistan last month and was flown out last week.
US President George W. Bush and other senior administration officials have praised Pakistan for its role in the fight against global terrorism.
Al Queada was giving children lunch food and school books using fundalmentalist teachings in Pakistan.
At least 20% of the people there follow fundalmentalism. The way to peoples minds is through food and books. If liberty takes root it would require people that can teach and lead with it.
where are all the human rights activists who argue so passionately that Saddam had to be removed??
Why don't they address Pakistan??
I've documented it right here... I've already done the research.. Its all right here
Ponder
06-09-2005, 02:17 PM
where are all the human rights activists who argue so passionately that Saddam had to be removed??
Why don't they address Pakistan??
They're busy confronting the world's ultimate human rights transgressor, the United States of America. Surely Pakistan is not truly as bad as the evil U.S.. If that were true, human rights organizations such as AI would be focusing more of their efforts in that direction........wouldn't they?
They're busy confronting the world's ultimate human rights transgressor, the United States of America. Surely Pakistan is not truly as bad as the evil U.S.. If that were true, human rights organizations such as AI would be focusing more of their efforts in that direction........wouldn't they?
So you support US military action to bring about regime change in Pakistan?
If so, why not?? What about the terrible conditions there??
Copyright 2005 HT Media Ltd.
All Rights Reserved
Hindustan Times
April 21, 2005 Thursday 12:07 PM EST
LENGTH: 257 words
HEADLINE: Pak panchayat weds two-year-old girl to 40-year-old man
Hindustan Times
Lahore
Lahore, April 21 -- In a bizarre incident, a two year old girl has been promised in marriage to a 40 year old man, in Pakistan.
If that seems odd enough, the reason is obviously more absurd.
Rabia's fate has been decided by the panchayat, which had pronounced the verdict after finding her uncle Muhammad Akmal guilty of sleeping with another man's wife. The panchayat imposed a fine of 230,000 rupees on Akmal, and ordered him to marry Rabia to the wronged man, 40 year-old Altaf Hussain.
If the verdict goes through, Rabia will marry Hussain, once she crosses 14. Rabia's mother, Maqsood Mai, who is separated from her husband, had no say in the matter, though her other uncles are furious, the Daily Times reported a report in the Guardian as saying.
"This is a terrible crime. This is the first time in the history of our tribe that such a thing has happened," the paper quoted Muhammad Nawaz as saying, adding that he would move the family before Rabia could be taken away.
Officials from Pakistan's Human Rights Commission say that jirgas or punchayats still hold sway in the country's rural heartland. The justice is often rough and generally in favour of the rich, fuelling medieval notions of bloody revenge and feudal inequalities.
"They nearly always decide in favour of the most powerful. In these areas the people are living in the 16th century. And still the state is sleeping. Why?" added Rashid Rehman from the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
Strike4ce
06-09-2005, 02:31 PM
UMMM.. yeah... Don't you?
That's always been my position
Take them out with cruise missiles
Remember the Bush Doctrine????
Who is going to do the ground intel? Even with drones its not good enough intel. You have to have men on the ground to verify a succesful mission.
Who is going to do the ground intel? Even with drones its not good enough intel. You have to have men on the ground to verify a succesful mission.
"Our allies", the Pakistanis of course
Right?
Strike4ce
06-09-2005, 02:37 PM
"Our allies", the Pakistanis of course
Right?
:add09: :happy_01:
Strike4ce
06-09-2005, 02:38 PM
Im all for covert ops by our own people. Lasing the target.
Im all for covert ops by our own people. Lasing the target.
I"m actually OK with that..
People think I'm against the military or against the CIA or against use of force
I'm NOT.. I'm all for it.. WHEN ITS AGAINST TERRORISTS
Let's hit the terrorists and keep hitting them from all different angles.. cruise missiles, Hit and run operations using covert ops... Hire mercenaries from Pakistan itself to do it... Predator drones...
hell if they can rig up a laser from Space, ala "Moonraker", I'm all for using that too... Maybe have one the can fire from the Space Shuttle.. LOL
I...
hell if they can rig up a laser from Space, ala "Moonraker", I'm all for using that too... Maybe have one the can fire from the Space Shuttle.. LOL
:add09:
Strike4ce
06-09-2005, 02:44 PM
I"m actually OK with that..
People think I'm against the military or against the CIA or against use of force
I'm NOT.. I'm all for it.. WHEN ITS AGAINST TERRORISTS
Let's hit the terrorists and keep hitting them from all different angles.. cruise missiles, Hit and run operations using covert ops... Hire mercenaries from Pakistan itself to do it... Predator drones...
hell if they can rig up a laser from Space, ala "Moonraker", I'm all for using that too... Maybe have one the can fire from the Space Shuttle.. LOL
How about sharks with Freakin laser beams?
http://radek.czar.pl/binladen/dr_evil_laden.jpg
Strike4ce
06-09-2005, 02:45 PM
Or?
http://radek.czar.pl/binladen/Taliban-Hunter.jpg
Make a reality TV show out of it
Call it Billion Dollar Bounty
the premise is simple.. offer $1 billion to the first person who brings back Osama's head.. or part of his head...
Then stick a TV camera with everyone that registers and send them off on their way
Ponder
06-09-2005, 04:35 PM
So you support US military action to bring about regime change in Pakistan?
No, and I've already stated my reasons a million times. It's an incredibly unrealistic suggestion.
If so, why not?? What about the terrible conditions there??
What "terrible conditions", Bman? You seem to be focusing on their treatment of women. That, as I've said before, is a cultural issue, an issue you don't go to war over.
No, and I've already stated my reasons a million times. It's an incredibly unrealistic suggestion.
What "terrible conditions", Bman? You seem to be focusing on their treatment of women. That, as I've said before, is a cultural issue, an issue you don't go to war over.
Did you read the article I posted in this thread about the institutionalized rape in Pakistan, much of it by the police and goverments themselves???
In a dictatorship, who do you think controls the police?
Its pretty funny.. people like you point to Saddam's rogue sons who undoubtedly raped some women in Iraq as a justification for war on Iraq.... yet this article that I posted (which I doubt you even read) describes a much more dire situation in Pakistan.. A situation where a woman can be "sentenced" to the punishment of gang rape.. .A situation where even if she does report it to the police, they then rape her themselves and warn her not to keep talking about it, lest they charge her with the crime of "ADULTERY"
The 17 year old girl in the article has become so despondent and so desperate that she has threatened to set her self on FIRE in front of the Parliament building.. Yet who controls Parliament in Pakistan?? HINT: Who controlled the Iraqi Parliament???
Other articles I have posted about Pakistan address the legalized selling of women.. I just posted one about a 2 year old "married" to a 40 year old man (Guess you missed that one) as payment for some wrong committed by the girls UNCLE!!
Recently in Pakistan the GOVERNMENT severely beat woman and women's rights proponents who were trying to run in a road race... Guess you missed that.
In Pakistan recently the HIGH COURT (who of course answers to the dictator) set free the men responsible for carrying out a sentence of "gang rape" on a woman who's brother committed some offense.... I guess they were 'only following orders', eh??
Recently, I posted an article about CHILDREN who were charged with the crime of "blasphemy" in Pakistan because they allegedly said something bad about Muhammad's relatives or something to that effect... Of course "blaspheme" is against the LAW in Pakistan.. and you can be punished by death
We're not talking about CULTURE here.. we're talking about LAW..
People like you are the ones who justified lynchings and the burning of crosses in the south 50 years ago... You said, "well... that's the culture and we can't change that through making laws"...
Well you know what?? YOU CAN change it..
THE WORST part about your argument is that you SUPPORT trying to change Iraq's culture through the use of military force, yet you state outright in this thread, that it can't be done....
You are a hypocrite and a fake.. You wring your hands over the plight of women in Iraq.. .OH BOO HOO.. THEY HAD IT SOOO BAD.. .and perhaps they did, yet you come here and defend the HIDEOUS, ATROCIOUS and LEGALIZED abuses in Pakistan
Shame on you. SHAME ON YOU!
There is a distinct possibility that Pakistan is telling the truth here.. that perhaps there REALLY WEREN'T ANY AL QAEDA camps in Pakistan in 2003 or 2004...
this might be a setup by the FBI to allege false charges against these two guys... so the President could trump the merits of the "PATRIOT ACT", which is going to expire....
The timing seems interesting, to say the least
Copyright 2005 Gannett Company, Inc.
USA TODAY
June 10, 2005, Friday through Sunday, FINAL EDITION
FBI looks for terror ties among Calif. suspects
Toni Locy
The FBI said Thursday it is examining possible terrorist connections among five men being held in California amid an investigation into potential al-Qaeda attacks in the USA.
Three of the men are being detained by immigration authorities while two have been charged with lying to the FBI. One of the men charged with lying, Hamid Hayat, 22, has now admitted that he trained at an al-Qaeda camp in Pakistan and learned paramilitary skills to be used on a "jihadi mission" in the USA, an FBI affidavit said.
"Potential targets for attack would include hospitals and large food stores," the affidavit said.
The investigation has focused on the small city of Lodi, Calif., 40 miles south of Sacramento, where FBI agents served several search warrants on property connected to the Lodi Muslim Mosque. Two imams at the mosque -- Shabbir Ahmed, 42, and Mohammad Adil Khan, 47, both citizens of Pakistan -- were arrested Monday. The FBI said they overstayed their religious worker visas.
Khan's son, Mohammad Hassan Adil, 19, was arrested Tuesday on administrative immigration violations. The elder Khan faces a hearing in San Francisco's immigration court on July 1.
FBI Agent John Cauthen said numerous federal and local investigators are conducting interviews and examining evidence seized during searches of homes and property.
"The investigation, at this point, consists of identifying and nailing down the connections between the people in custody and anyone else," Cauthen said.
Cauthen said the investigation of possible terrorist activity in Lodi has been going on for two or three years.
"We are taking this very seriously," he said. "We are doing a very thorough, meticulous job."
The arrests were prompted by Hayat's return May 29 to the USA after what the FBI affidavit suggests was a two-year absence.
FBI agents in California questioned Hayat and his father, Umer Hayat, last Friday and Saturday. During the interviews, both Hayats denied that Hamid had attended the al-Qaeda camp, the affidavit said. Umer Hayat has also been charged with lying to the FBI.
According to the affidavit, Hamid Hayat later admitted that he spent six months in a camp where al-Qaeda instructors trained recruits at shooting ranges that used targets bearing photos of President Bush and other U.S. officials.
Hamid Hayat told the agents that he saw hundreds of recruits rotate through the camp, the affidavit said.
Ponder
06-10-2005, 12:33 PM
THE WORST part about your argument is that you SUPPORT trying to change Iraq's culture through the use of military force, yet you state outright in this thread, that it can't be done....
Shame on you. SHAME ON YOU!
You just don't listen to me. :)
Toppling Saddam was, in my opinion, an action that serves America's long term interests. It has absolutely NOTHING to do with Iraqi culture, unless of course, you consider such oppressive dictatorship part of Iraqi culture.
Just curious.....have you ever heard of the Hammorabi Code?
Shameful, you say? I think it's shameful that any of these criminals are allowed to stay in power. It would be nice if the UN were an organization that recognized the right of people to have representative government, and enforced it. Unfortunately, these dictators are allowed membership. THAT'S what's shameful to me! :mad:
You just don't listen to me. :)
Toppling Saddam was, in my opinion, an action that serves America's long term interests. It has absolutely NOTHING to do with Iraqi culture, unless of course, you consider such oppressive dictatorship part of Iraqi culture.
Just curious.....have you ever heard of the Hammorabi Code?
Shameful, you say? I think it's shameful that any of these criminals are allowed to stay in power. It would be nice if the UN were an organization that recognized the right of people to have representative government, and enforced it. Unfortunately, these dictators are allowed membership. THAT'S what's shameful to me! :mad:
SHAME ON YOU, for spreading these lies.... Its ok to prop up Musharraf, since this abuse is part of the culture in Pakistan, but not in Iraq
WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR INFORMATION, FOR CHRIST'S SAKE ???
Copyright 2003 Gale Group, Inc.
Contemporary Women's Issues
Copyright 2003 Isis International
We!
July 2003
SECTION: No. 33; Pg. 4; ISSN: 0118-3389
Rape, abductions increasing in post-war Iraq--HRW report.
Increasing incidences of abduction and rape of young girls in post-war Iraq are alarming parents of late.
A new report released by the U.S.-based group Human Rights Watch (HRW) allege that incidences of rape and abduction have increased in Iraq after the war. According to the report, the outbreak of anarchy on the streets after the U.S.-led war against Iraq last March 2003 is a major factor in the increase of child abductions and rape. Also, the breakdown of the Iraqi government after the war makes any crime hard to quantify, and the lack of law enforcers' presence on the streets encourage Iraqi criminals to carry on with their plans.
The report was based on more than 70 interviews with law enforcement officials, victims and their families, medical personnel and members of the coalition authority. Conductors of the interviews found 25 credible reports of abduction and sexual violence since the war ended. However, people living in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad believe that there are more undocumented cases since the stigma of rape limits the victim's role in the capital's economic, social and political life.
Existing biases against victims of rape in Iraqi society also contribute to the problem. This is because traditional notions of honour are upheld, and the sense of shame in families with rape victims is so strong that victims are further punished for "humiliating" the family. Fathers or brothers often beat raped or abducted relatives as if the crime was the woman's doing. There have also been cases where family members kill female relatives who have been raped or abducted. Outside the family, victims seeking medical and police assistance are further shamed in the process.
The growing problem has caused a new panic for Iraqi families. The HRW reports it is not uncommon to see family members dropping off their girl relatives to school and waiting outside the premises until dismissal.
Families are afraid their girls will be abducted and raped if they are not guarded all the time. Girls are also prohibited from going out of the house alone. Hanny Megally, executive director of the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch, said this new panic should also be a cause of alarm for women helping rebuild post-war Iraq. "Women and girls today in Baghdad are scared, and many are not going to schools or jobs or looking for work. If Iraqi women are to participate in post-war society, their physical security needs to be an urgent priority."
Source: "Rape (And The Silence About It) Haunts Baghdad" by Neela Banerjee as circulated last 15 July 2003 by the Atrocities newsletter of the Feminist Peace Network <fpnatrocities§lists. feministpeacenetwork.org>.
DavesGirl
06-10-2005, 12:46 PM
There is a distinct possibility that Pakistan is telling the truth here.. that perhaps there REALLY WEREN'T ANY AL QAEDA camps in Pakistan in 2003 or 2004...
this might be a setup by the FBI to allege false charges against these two guys... so the President could trump the merits of the "PATRIOT ACT", which is going to expire....
The timing seems interesting, to say the least
Copyright 2005 Gannett Company, Inc.
USA TODAY
June 10, 2005, Friday through Sunday, FINAL EDITION
FBI looks for terror ties among Calif. suspects
Toni Locy
The FBI said Thursday it is examining possible terrorist connections among five men being held in California amid an investigation into potential al-Qaeda attacks in the USA.
Three of the men are being detained by immigration authorities while two have been charged with lying to the FBI. One of the men charged with lying, Hamid Hayat, 22, has now admitted that he trained at an al-Qaeda camp in Pakistan and learned paramilitary skills to be used on a "jihadi mission" in the USA, an FBI affidavit said.
"Potential targets for attack would include hospitals and large food stores," the affidavit said.
The investigation has focused on the small city of Lodi, Calif., 40 miles south of Sacramento, where FBI agents served several search warrants on property connected to the Lodi Muslim Mosque. Two imams at the mosque -- Shabbir Ahmed, 42, and Mohammad Adil Khan, 47, both citizens of Pakistan -- were arrested Monday. The FBI said they overstayed their religious worker visas.
Khan's son, Mohammad Hassan Adil, 19, was arrested Tuesday on administrative immigration violations. The elder Khan faces a hearing in San Francisco's immigration court on July 1.
FBI Agent John Cauthen said numerous federal and local investigators are conducting interviews and examining evidence seized during searches of homes and property.
"The investigation, at this point, consists of identifying and nailing down the connections between the people in custody and anyone else," Cauthen said.
Cauthen said the investigation of possible terrorist activity in Lodi has been going on for two or three years.
"We are taking this very seriously," he said. "We are doing a very thorough, meticulous job."
The arrests were prompted by Hayat's return May 29 to the USA after what the FBI affidavit suggests was a two-year absence.
FBI agents in California questioned Hayat and his father, Umer Hayat, last Friday and Saturday. During the interviews, both Hayats denied that Hamid had attended the al-Qaeda camp, the affidavit said. Umer Hayat has also been charged with lying to the FBI.
According to the affidavit, Hamid Hayat later admitted that he spent six months in a camp where al-Qaeda instructors trained recruits at shooting ranges that used targets bearing photos of President Bush and other U.S. officials.
Hamid Hayat told the agents that he saw hundreds of recruits rotate through the camp, the affidavit said.
You know, as I read your opening post, I wondered to myself and was going to ask how do we KNOW for certain that there was actually training camps in Pakistan? Because these guys said so? Because we have intelligence? If we have intelligence, how come the rest of America knows it too? I doubt its true, its likely a cover up for something else. Maybe a training camp somewhere they don't want you to know about. When I say "they" I mean the US govt OR those who took the training.
Ponder
06-10-2005, 01:20 PM
Oh good grief! The reports about the camps are in Pakistani news sites, Indian news sites, Asian news sites, and every other news organization in the freaking world!
Your reply to my last post was odd, Bman. For some reason, we just aren't communicating. My writing skills obviously need work. I just don't get your connection of women's rights and the invasion of Iraq. Saddam was a proven aggressor towards other nations. I don't recall Pakistan acting the same. Of course, the Kashmir issue is a problem for Pakistan and India, but other than that, I don't think other nations are terribly concerned with Pakistani aggression.
I find lots of good info about the area here...
http://www.southasianmedia.net/index_opinion4.cfm?id=33069
Shadow Wight
06-10-2005, 01:24 PM
Oh good grief! The reports about the camps are in Pakistani news sites, Indian news sites, Asian news sites, and every other news organization in the freaking world!
Your reply to my last post was odd, Bman. For some reason, we just aren't communicating. My writing skills obviously need work. I just don't get your connection of women's rights and the invasion of Iraq. Saddam was a proven aggressor towards other nations. I don't recall Pakistan acting the same. Of course, the Kashmir issue is a problem for Pakistan and India, but other than that, I don't think other nations are terribly concerned with Pakistani aggression.
I find lots of good info about the area here...
http://www.southasianmedia.net/index_opinion4.cfm?id=33069
The connection is that since we haven't found WMD's in Iraq, the Bush administration is now trying to spin this war as a war to spread freedom and democracy. Women's rights is just one item on a huge list of violations of "freedom and democracy" charged to Pakistan.
Ponder
06-10-2005, 01:29 PM
The connection is that since we haven't found WMD's in Iraq, the Bush administration is now trying to spin this war as a war to spread freedom and democracy. Women's rights is just one item on a huge list of violations of "freedom and democracy" charged to Pakistan.
Gotcha. :)
The connection is that since we haven't found WMD's in Iraq, the Bush administration is now trying to spin this war as a war to spread freedom and democracy. Women's rights is just one item on a huge list of violations of "freedom and democracy" charged to Pakistan.
Right on the money
the "connection" is that I have heard justifications of the invasion because "Saddam ran rape rooms" and further justifications of the war in the form of reports that girls are going to school in Iraq (as if they weren't before)
Iraq was a PARADISE for women's rights compared to Pakistan.. can we not agree on that??
Also, do you agree that claims that the war in Iraq was necessary because of Saddam's cruel treatment of his own people are ludicrous?
candypreet
06-12-2005, 06:00 AM
Al-Queda’s clandestine banking operations in Pakistan and other Islamic countries– terrorists’ secret moves
Balaji Reddy
Jun. 12, 2005
http://www.indiadaily.com/images/editorial/3122_320.jpg
Al-Queda has become the loan provider for certain people in Pakistan and other Islamic countries. First they provide the loan and then when the borrower faces difficulty in repayment, they make them follow Al-Queda agenda. The concept came from age-old Afghanistan when men from Kabul used to travel to India and loan Indians money at very high interest rates.
The next wave of terrorism from Al-Queda can involve these secret clandestine Banking operations. People who cannot repay the loan can be made to provide shelter and do thinks that Al-Queda asks them to do.
According to media sources, Pakistan Army paid a massive sum of 32 million Rupees to some most-wanted militants in the tribal areas of South Waziristan to buy peace and enable them pay off debts taken from al-Qaeda, a media report said.
When Pakistani authorities initiated a dialogue with the tribesmen several months ago to buy peace and fight the al-Qaeda, they learnt that the tribals were "compelled to fight for al-Qaeda and against the Pakistan army because they had obtained huge loans from al-Qaeda," Pakistani magazine Newsline said in a report.
It said the tribesmen of South Waziristan had "no option but to offer its (al-Qaeda) militants shelter or work for their interests in the region."
Over 32 million Rupees were paid to some most-wanted militants to enable them pay off their al-Qaeda debts and surrender and sign peace deals with the army, the monthly said.
It quoted Peshawar Corps Commander Lt Gen Safdar Hussain, in charge of the military operations in Waziristan, as saying the payments were made as part of a package after the militants said they needed "to settle debts with al-Qaeda".
Hussain said two of the militants, Haji Sharif and Maulvi Abbas, received 15 million Rupees each, while Maulvi Javed and Haji Omar were paid one million each. Another tribal militant, Nek Mohammad, who was killed in a rocket attack last year, is believed to have earned a fortune by providing logistic support to al-Qaeda militants in the tribal zones.
The magazine said documents seized from arrested Taliban leaders indicated that Nek Mohammad had distributed over 100 million Rupees to militants and arms suppliers to disrupt the afghan elections last yearhttp://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/3122.asp
Copyright 2005 Scripps Howard, Inc.
Scripps Howard News Service
June 13, 2005, Monday 10:42 AM Eastern Time
Inquiry highlights Pakistan's complex role in war on terrorism
San Francisco Chronicle
TERESA CASTLE
A federal investigation into possible links between a California man arrested last week and a terrorist camp in Pakistan has raised questions about the involvement of America's principal ally in the region in networks that train terrorists.
According to the FBI affidavit outlining charges against Hamid Hayat, the 22-year-old said he was trained "to kill Americans" - even using photos of President Bush and other U.S. officials as target practice - at a camp called Tamal near Rawalpindi, a city just outside the capital of Islamabad.
That assertion raised eyebrows among terrorism experts because Rawalpindi is home to the Pakistani army's general headquarters and also is the site of President Pervez Musharraf's official residence.
A Pakistani senior foreign ministry official, Naeem Khan, rejected the assertion. "There are no training camps in Pakistan," he said. "We are the frontline state in the fight against terrorism. How could we allow such camps in our country?"
But a number of experts on Pakistan said such training camps - many of them formed to feed insurgencies in Afghanistan and Kashmir - do exist in some parts of the country and in the part of Kashmir under Pakistan's control even as the Musharraf government works with the United States to combat terrorists.
Michael Krepon, director of the South Asia project at the Henry L. Stimson Center, a Washington, D.C., think tank that studies international security issues, said "many thousands" of young would-be recruits to al Qaeda and other extremist groups cycle through camps in various parts of the country.
Al Qaeda has long maintained a support network in Pakistan's remote, mountainous border with Afghanistan, and most experts believe that clandestine training sites operated by different jihadi organizations are concentrated in the fiercely independent North-West Frontier Province, in Waziristan, in the Punjab and in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.
The government, which has carried out highly visible campaigns to smoke out terrorists near the border with Afghanistan in the past year, "may allow the camps to remain open so they can have the militants in a known place and keep an eye on them so they don't engage in mayhem elsewhere in the country," said Krepon.
However, Husain Haqqani, a former senior adviser to Pakistan's government who is now a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, said recent arrests and killings in such Pakistani cities as Mardan, Faisalabad and Gujarat, far from the border, show that terrorist groups have extended their presence in the country.
Michael Weinbaum, a Pakistan expert at the Middle East Institute in Washington and former State Department analyst, expressed skepticism about the assertion in the original FBI affidavit, deleted from a later affidavit, that Hamid Hayat had been given a first-class tour of all the inner workings of terrorist camps and had seen "hundreds of attendees from various parts of the world."
The presence of so many Arabs and Muslims from outside the region would be hard to hide, Weinbaum said. He also questioned the assertion that Hamid's father, Umer Hayat, had visited "several operational training camps" and "observed weapons and urban warfare training, physical training and classroom education."
"You don't share that information with trainees. You create tight cells," Weinbaum said. In addition, he said, "it is very difficult to approach these camps." But he added that there are Al Qaeda cells all over the country as well as militant training camps run by Pakistani and Kashmiri jihadi groups.
purple unicorn
06-15-2005, 01:32 AM
http://www.vdare.com/guzzardi/050610_terrorists.htm
June 10, 2005
Home, Sweet, Home: Is Lodi, California A Terrorist Hot Bed?
By Joe Guzzardi
I was 3,000 miles away from my home in Lodi, CA. when the word reached me that the F.B.I. is holding five local men on possible terrorist related charges and immigration violations.
Within hours of the breaking news, I received e-mails from VDARE.COM readers wanting to know if I was surprised that Lodi—an agricultural community of 62,000 residents—might be a hot bed of terrorist activity.
My answer in a word: NO!
By now, the details of the on-going investigation are well known. The principal suspect in the case, 24-year-old U.S. born Hamid Hayat, is said to have received training on "how to kill Americans" in an Al Qaeda camp and then lied about it to federal officials.
And Hamid’s father Umer allegedly financed his son’s travels to Pakistan with the proceeds from his business selling ice cream from a cart.
Additionally, two imams and one of their sons—all citizens of Pakistan and affiliated with Lodi Muslim Mosque—are being questioned regarding the status of their visas.
Why wasn’t I surprised?
Lodi, with its well-established community of 2,500 Pakistanis is, in fact a perfect breeding ground for terrorists.
Pakistanis have been coming to Lodi for decades. Despite cultural differences that include arranged marriages, second class status for Pakistani women, and the resistance of many adults to learn English or to enroll their children in K-12 schools, the Lodi city fathers have unquestioningly embraced them.
Pakistani Independence Day, celebrated on August 14th, gets as much coverage in the Lodi News-Sentinel as the Fourth of July.
An August 18th 2003 News-Sentinel story, "Hundreds Celebrate Pakistani Independence Day in Lodi" ran on the front page above the fold and was accompanied by five color photos.
The News-Sentinel also publishes a weekly opinion column written by prominent Muslim leader Taj Khan. The subject of Khan’s columns is frequently Muslim concerns and views.
But Khan’s take on the recent events in town is curious...and telling.
USA Today, in its June 9th story titled "California Man Tied To Terrorist Camp," quoted Khan that
"We will work with the FBI to roust out any rascals."
To Khan, individuals who train in Al Queda camps for six months to learn how to blow up U.S. supermarkets and hospitals are merely "rascals".
What the politically correct Lodi environment means is that for those so inclined—as the Hayats may have been—would-be terrorists can go about their business with little concern that their actions may draw attention.
Why bother planning jihad in well policed locations like New York, San Francisco or Washington D.C. when small towns like Lodi afford you so much more freedom?
Through my job as an instructor at the Lodi Adult School, I interact daily with Pakistanis. My concerns have remained the same for nearly twenty years.
Although some Pakistanis assimilate while still remaining faithful to their Muslim beliefs, the vast majority shows little interest in becoming Americans—or in adopting American ways.
In fact, American traditions are ignored or rejected.
I recall one ESL student I had who invariably signed the daily roll with a single word:
"ISLAM"
As the investigation continues, Lodi Mayor John Beckman is holding meetings with Muslim religious leaders to ensure them that the town will take all precautions to avoid backlash.
But while it is important to acknowledge, as Lodians do, that most of the Pakistanis in our town are law-abiding residents, it is more urgent to recognize that one mistake in character evaluation can lead to the deaths of thousands of innocent people.
Let’s keep our focus where it belongs—not on whether some unenlightened Lodian might utter a vulgarity but whether some Muslim residents have ties to Al Queda.
The main reason we need to be ever vigilant is because of the intense hatred Pakistanis, and the other Middle Easterners, harbor for Americans.
A deadly incident last week in Karachi proves my point. Shiites, blaming Americans for a suicide bomb that destroyed their mosque, retaliated by setting fire to a KFC franchise. Six employees were killed.
Munawer Abbas, an Urdu literature teacher, referring to the U.S. as "the great Satan" told New York Times reporter Somini Sengupta that even though a Pakistani owned the KFC:
"It is not important who owns it. This is just because of American policies. People hate America."
And nearby hung a banner that said:
"We want to warn America: Martyrdom is our heritage. We will protect Islam until the last drop of blood."
(New York Times, June 8, 2005, "Colonel Sanders Finds Himself Under Fiery Siege in Pakistan")
Two months after 9/11, I wrote a column for the News-Sentinel that asked an important fundamental question.
Why, I asked, would Muslims who claim that Islam is the most important thing in their lives migrate to a Christian country?
The column, also posted on VDARE.COM, generated the predictable mail charging me with racism. But no one answered my question.
In light of this week’s events in Lodi, Americans have to face ugly facts that may be hard for many to accept.
But according to retired FBI agent Nick Boone, Lodi and the surrounding area have had links to terrorism for years.
Said the Los Angeles-based Boone, who spent over 30 years fighting terrorism:
"I found numerous, numerous connections to that area. That entire region, all of the area around there, became a very big area of Arab settlement." [Arrests in Lodi may not be over, By Dan Thompson, Associated Press]
We’re foolish if we ignore the truth: Some Muslims come to the U.S. to kill us.
And the sooner the U.S. formulates an immigration policy that reflects the undeniable, the safer we will all be.
Joe Guzzardi [email him], an instructor in English at the Lodi Adult School, has been writing a weekly newspaper column since 1988. This column is exclusive to VDARE.COM.
But... but... .. I thought Pakistanis were our friends??
I thought it was the IRAQIS that hated Americans and supported Al Qaeda
If what you're saying is true, makes you wonder why we're attacking Iraq and sending weapons and cash to Pakistan....
:add25: :add03:
purple unicorn
06-16-2005, 02:44 AM
CAIR weighs in:
http://www.cair-net.org/default.asp?Page=articleView&id=36947&theType=NB
Muslims Endure FBI Persistence in Lodi
Source: Contra Costa Times
Click here to view full text ...
LODI - Mohammad Saddiq Khan, after repeated, insistent phone calls from FBI agents, went down to the Lodi police station Friday afternoon to answer a few questions about a cousin in Pakistan. Khalid Khan, 32, another cousin, submitted to a lie detector test earlier in the week in Sacramento. He said agents, through an Urdu interpreter, asked him where his family was, whom he meets at the local mosque and if he was a trained terrorist. The Pakistani-American welder, a third-generation resident of this working-class farming community south of Sacramento, calmly said, "no" to the last question and passed the test. "They're just fishing," Khan said, sipping sweet milky tea Thursday night, surrounded by his cousins and other family. Earlier in the week, federal agents arrested a father and son from Lodi after the son failed a voluntary polygraph test and allegedly confessed to training at a terrorist camp in Pakistan in 2003 and 2004.
Hamid Hayat, 22, and his father, Umer Hayat, 47, who the FBI says changed his story after viewing a video of his son's confession, are being held on suspicion of lying to agents about their knowledge of terrorist training camps. Immigration officials then detained two local imams and one of their sons on suspicion of immigration violations. The arrests have sent waves of worry through the tight-knit Pakistani community in Lodi as federal agents expand their questioning to Bay Area Muslims. Hundreds of men gathered at the Poplar Street mosque for Friday afternoon prayers and heard a sermon focusing on Koranic views of humanity and unity. After the service, worshippers filed out shaking hands, and returned to their homes, many with shades drawn, to await calls from the FBI in what Muslim leaders describe as a divisive federal investigation. Muslims in the community now joke that they have their own special agents, said Basim Elkarra, director of the Sacramento chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations. (MORE)
Date:26/06/2005 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2005/06/26/stories/2005062605701200.htm
------------------------------------------------------------------------
International
"Pakistan a source of terrorists"
Vladimir Radyuhin
MOSCOW: Pakistan and Afghanistan are sources of terrorists for Central Asia, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said.
Mr. Lavrov said Russia had information that militants trained in Afghanistan and Pakistan were periodically sent to mount terrorist attacks in Central Asia.
"On the territory of Afghanistan and the territory of Pakistan adjacent to the Afghan border terrorists are being trained with the participation of former members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the Taliban and those who engaged in terror in Russia," he said at a joint press conference with visiting NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.
"We have information that militants are being sent from Afghan territory to the Fergana Valley," Mr. Lavrov said.
Mr. Lavrov said earlier that Moscow had evidence the Taliban, as well as Uzbek and Chechen extremists had been involved in violence in Uzbekistan's Andizhan last month.
© Copyright 2000 - 2005 The Hindu
Copyright 2005 McClatchy Newspapers, Inc.
Sacramento Bee
July 8, 2005, Friday METRO FINAL EDITION
Lodi terror probe grows List of men who may have attended camps in Pakistan rises to 7.
Stephen Magagnini and Dorothy Korber Bee Staff Writers
The FBI is investigating the possibility that six other Lodi-area men attended terrorist training camps in Pakistan in addition to Hamid Hayat, the initial suspect arrested in the government's ongoing probe of al-Qaida connections in the San Joaquin city.
According to federal court documents obtained by The Bee, Hamid Hayat and his father, Umer, claimed the suspected Lodi jihadists reported to Muhammed Adil Khan and Shabbir Ahmed, two imams they say came to the Lodi Muslim Mosque from Pakistan to groom students for terrorist training camps.
Khan and Ahmed are being held for allegedly violating immigration laws, and through their attorney have denied being involved in terrorist activities.
Ice cream vendor Umer Hayat, 47, and his son Hamid, 22, have been charged with lying about their involvement in an al-Qaida training camp near Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
Though neither has been charged with terrorism, the government claims Hamid Hayat - with financial help from his father - attended the camp for six months in 2003-04. The Hayats first denied, then admitted, and now deny the charges, according to prosecutors. The Pakistani government has steadfastly denied there are terrorist training camps in Pakistan.
The documents lay out interviews with the Hayats that allegedly detail the younger Hayat's transformation into a jihadist - a warrior against the enemies of Islam.
The attorneys for the Hayats, Johnny L. Griffin and Wazhma Mojaddadi, have dismissed much of the evidence against their clients as "fluff," but said Thursday a federal judge has prohibited them from discussing the documents.
In the documents, the Hayats are said to have outlined the following chain of command:
The alleged Lodi-area jihadists "would take their direction" from Shabbir Ahmed, who answered to his former madrassah (religious school) teacher in Pakistan, Adil Khan. Khan, in turn, took orders from the operator of the terrorist training camp near Rawalpindi, Fazler Rehman - whose "boss" is Osama bin Laden.
Saad Ahmad, the attorney for Shabbir Ahmed and Adil Khan, has described his clients as men of peace who are not associated with Rehman, bin Laden or any other anti-American terrorists.
Before coming to Lodi, Adil Khan was a teacher and administrator at the Jamia Farooqia School, a madrassah with 4,000 students in Karachi founded by his father, Salimullah Khan.
Bin Laden, in a 1998 news conference, counted the scholars of the Farooqia school among his supporters, according to the documents.
The documents say Umer Hayat alleged "that Jamia Farooqia prepared its students for jihadist training camps" and that "Adil Khan's purpose in America is to develop a U.S.-based madrassah which would serve the same purpose as the madrassahs in Pakistan."
According to the documents, Adil Khan first came to America in the 1980s to raise money for his father's Jamia Farooqia school. The highly educated, urbane Khan soon became a welcome speaker at mosques across the country, including the one in Lodi.
In the late 1990s, Adil Khan acted to create his own school in America, and set up the nonprofit Jamia Farooqia Islamic Center. He told supporters the school would be open to boys and girls, Muslims and non-Muslims.
When he learned the Lodi mosque had bought 7 acres to establish its own school and Islamic center, he formed a collaboration.
In the spring of 2001, Adil Khan moved to Lodi to serve as imam. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he reached out to Christians and Jews, signing a joint declaration of peace.
In early 2002, he recruited a former student from Pakistan, Shabbir Ahmed, to take over as imam while Adil Khan concentrated on developing the Lodi school.
Ahmed, 39, has admitted that, while he was an imam in Islamabad, he gave several fiery anti-American speeches after Sept. 11 in protest of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. But, at his June 24 immigration hearing, he denied urging people to kill Americans.
"Having come here I see human value and respect for human life - even animals are taken care of here," he told the immigration judge.
The documents claim Hamid Hayat "advised he would get his Jihadi mission orders from Shabbir Ahmed, who would get the initial order from Muhammed Adil Khan." Hayat refused to say how he knew this, or what such a "mission" might entail.
During his own interrogation, Hayat's father identified several additional members of the Lodi mosque trained in jihadi camps who "take direction from Shabbir Ahmed" and who were taught to target financial institutions and government buildings in the U.S., according to the documents.
The documents claim Hamid Hayat initially denied any connection to jihadis, and on June 4 volunteered to take a polygraph test. "His answers to relevant questions were found to be indicative of deception," according to the documents.
After about two more hours of questioning, Hamid Hayat admitted he attended a training camp in Pakistan run by al-Qaida for approximately six months in 2003-04, according to the documents.
Hamid Hayat said the camp provided training in weapons, explosives and hand-to-hand combat and added that photographs of President Bush and other high-ranking U.S. officials were used for target practice, according to the documents.
Hamid Hayat said the camp trained hundreds of people who were allowed to choose where to carry out "their jihadi mission. ... Hamid advised that he specifically requested to come to the United States."
His father, Umer Hayat, at first claimed there were no such training camps in Pakistan, but after seeing his son's videotaped confession, admitted he paid for his son's flight to Pakistan to attend the camp and gave him a $100-a-month allowance, according to the documents.
Hamid Hayat was born in the United States and at age 9 moved to Pakistan for about nine years before returning to Lodi, relatives said.
According to the documents, his father said Hamid first became interested in attending a jihadi training camp as a young teen after being influenced by a classmate at a madrassah in Rawalpindi and an uncle who fought with the mujahedeen in Afghanistan against the Soviet occupation.
The madrassah Hamid allegedly attended is operated by Umer Hayat's father-in-law, who Umer Hayat said is a close personal friend of Rehman. Rehman ran the al-Qaida training camp Hamid eventually attended, according to the documents.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Umer Hayat's father-in-law, Qari Saeed-ur Rehman, leader of the Jamia Islamia madrassah in Rawalpindi, said his grandson Hamid "never received religious education at my madrassah. There is no terrorist camp here ... all allegations leveled against (the Hayats) by the FBI are a pack of lies."
But according to the documents, Umer Hayat said that thanks to his family connections, he was assigned a driver and invited to visit several training camps that taught everything from urban warfare to classroom instruction.
The Hayats' trial is scheduled for Aug. 23, but federal prosecutors Wednesday filed a motion seeking to have it postponed while they canvass 40 government agencies for any information on the Hayats.
Prosecutors said they need more time to go through the Hayats' computer, cell phone and 2,000 pages of documents seized in a search of their Lodi home.
In the motion, prosecutors said a scrap of paper found in Hamid Hayat's wallet at the time of his arrest said, in Arabic, "Lord let us be at their throats, and we ask you to give refuge from their evil."
Hamid Hayat's attorney, Mojaddadi, said her interpretation is that the note is "a prayer you say when you're afraid for your safety, and just carrying it with you is supposed to make you feel protected."
She said the note "has absolutely nothing to do with the United States."
Mojaddadi and Umer Hayat's attorney, Griffin, said they had reviewed the documents seized from the Hayats' home and dismissed them as "fluff."
The seizures so far have not produced additional charges against the Hayats, and federal officials have not characterized them - or the imams - as part of an al-Qaida sleeper cell.
But federal officials indicate they are investigating possible violations of Patriot Act provisions that make it a crime to give "material support" to foreign terrorist organizations. Under these statutes, such support includes money, weapons, lodging or training.
The statutes outlawing material support were key to the prosecution and convictions of six young men from Lackawanna, N.Y., who admitted attending al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan in April 2001. While there, they said, they received weapons training and met bin Laden.
In early 2003, all six pleaded guilty and were each sentenced to between seven and 10 years in prison.
Officials close to the Lodi investigation say that they are building a similar case but are not yet ready to file charges on the material support grounds.
They indicated it could take months before the CIA and other intelligence agencies provide evidence that could be used to make material support charges stick - if those agencies have such evidence.
The Bee's Stephen Magagnini can be reached at (916) 321-1072 or smagagnini@sacbee.com.
The New York Times
July 26, 2005 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
Two Militants Place Suspect At a Camp In Pakistan
BYLINE: By ARIF JAMAL and SOMINI SENGUPTA
LAHORE, Pakistan, July 25
Two experienced militants, both veterans of the war in Afghanistan, told an independent Pakistani journalist here last week that they had met one of the July 7 London bombing suspects, Shehzad Tanweer, on a trip to a known militant training camp north of the capital, Islamabad.
One of the militants interviewed said Mr. Tanweer struck him as ''a good Muslim'' who was eager to assassinate the Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. ''I wish I could do that,'' he recalled Mr. Tanweer as saying.
The militants, both members of Jaish-e-Muhammad, an organization officially banned by the government and implicated in two assassination attempts against General Musharraf, spoke on condition that their names not be used because they do not want to be apprehended by the government. They said they met Mr. Tanweer, 22, a Briton of Pakistani descent, last winter, but they would not be more specific on dates for fear of revealing their own identities.
Their statements could not be independently confirmed, and a senior government official who is following the investigation said he had ''no knowledge'' of such a visit. The militants were not interviewed by a correspondent for The New York Times, but spoke extensively on two occasions to a journalist working on contract for this newspaper.
The two men said they had all traveled together from Rawalpindi, a garrison town adjacent to the capital, to the Shah Ismail Shaheed Madrasa in Mansehra, a heavily forested mountainous district where guerrilla training camps continue to operate, said diplomats and militants interviewed by The New York Times.
Mr. Tanweer, the two militants said, was at the madrasa, which doubles as a training camp, on a short ''study tour,'' which is akin to an orientation session for potential guerrilla recruits. He was accompanied by two other men: a Pakistani and another Briton of Pakistani descent, they said. None of them were there to receive arms training, they said. Mr. Tanweer and his companions left after four or five days; the two men would not say where the three went.
Its remoteness and landscape have made Mansehra, situated on the ancient Silk Route, an ideal address for jihad training. For at least 15 years, it has housed a number of rotating makeshift camps for fighters eventually dispatched to Kashmir and Afghanistan.
Mr. Tanweer, along with another bombing suspect, Mohammad Sidique Khan, also a Briton born to Pakistani parents, visited Pakistan between November 2004 and February of this year, according to Pakistani immigration records. They arrived in Karachi, a sprawling Arabian Sea coast city, but it is unclear where they went from there and whom they saw.
Mr. Tanweer's maternal uncle, Tahir Pervez, said Mr. Tanweer had visited the family home in a dusty village, Kota Chotiya, near the central Pakistani city of Faisalabad. Mr. Pervez had recounted his nephew's admiration for Osama bin Laden, a Pakistani newspaper reported.
But in an interview with The New York Times last week, he denied that report and characterized Mr. Tanweer as a deeply religious young man who spent over a month in the village, doing little other than praying and playing cricket.
A third bombing suspect, Hasib Mir Hussain, had also been reported to have visited Pakistan last July, according to Pakistani immigration records. It later turned out that the immigration records actually referred to another young man by the same name, not the bombing suspect.
Pakistani officials have maintained that no arrests have been made in connection with the July 7 attacks, but that hundreds have been picked up in an intensified campaign against banned militant organizations.
Franco
07-26-2005, 12:41 PM
bman, the lackawana seven also had EXTENSIVE ties to pakistan, i believe 2-3 of them were actually pakistani naturalized citizens....
i really dont wanna go digging for links, and don't think anyone needs us to.
But still, people go on thinking it's those bad Iraqi's and Afghanis that want us dead, not those great pakistanis or saudis, right?
yes sir.
they tend to ignore reality don't they?
interesting article here... An alleged terrorist cell in California apparently was broken up.. BUT WAIT... what's this??
One of the allegations is that the ringleader attended terrorist camps IN PAKISTAN... IN 2003 and 2004.
What?? I thought Pakistan wasn't harboring Al Qaeda???
But let me guess.. Pakistan didn't know about those camps, right?? THEN HOW DO WE KNOW that this guy was there????
Think about it
Copyright 2005 The Chronicle Publishing Co.
The San Francisco Chronicle
JUNE 8, 2005, WEDNESDAY, FINAL EDITION
Al Qaeda probe reported -- Lodi father, son arrested;
Federal complaint says 22-year-old trained in Pakistan on 'how to kill Americans'
Chronicle Staff Writer
Henry K. Lee
Federal agents have broken up what they say was an al Qaeda terrorist cell operating in the San Joaquin County city of Lodi, arresting two men, one of whom admitted attending training camps in Pakistan to learn "how to kill Americans," according to published reports.
A joint terrorism task force, including agents from the FBI, arrested Hamid Hayat, 22, and his father on Sunday, less than a week after the younger man was found aboard a San Francisco-bound plane even though his name appeared on a no-fly list of suspected extremists, the Los Angeles Times reported in today's editions.
Hayat was trained to use explosives and weapons and practiced by using photographs of President Bush and other high-profile U.S. political figures as targets, the Times reported, citing court documents.
The suspect, who allegedly initially lied to FBI agents about whether he had received training, had his pick of where to carry out a terrorist attack, which potentially could have targeted hospitals and large food stores, the Times said, citing court documents.
The task force arrested Hayat's father, Umer Hayat, 47, a Lodi ice cream truck driver, on charges that he lied about his son's involvement and his own financing of the terror camp, the Times said. Umer Hayat reportedly paid $100 each month to his son.
The father told FBI agents that his son became interested in attending a terrorist training camp as a teenager after being influenced by a classmate in Pakistan and an uncle who had fought with the mujahedeen in Afghanistan, the newspaper reported.
After denying any involvement, Hamid Hayat told FBI agents that he had attended al Qaeda training camps in Pakistan for six months in 2003 and 2004, the Times reported.
Both men live in Lodi, where family members denied to the Times that the father and son had any links to terrorism. Several phone numbers listed for Umer Hayat were disconnected Tuesday night.
The two made a brief appearance Tuesday before U.S. Magistrate Peter Nowinski in Sacramento and are being held in Sacramento County Jail.
Umer Hayat is charged in a federal complaint with lying about his son's involvement in the terror camp. His attorney, Johnny Griffin III, called the allegations shocking but said his client "is charged with nothing more than lying to an agent," the Sacramento Bee reported.
The complaint accuses Hamid Hayat of training to learn "how to kill Americans" and then lying to FBI agents about it, the Bee reported.
The Bee reported that investigators also detained Muhammed Adil Khan and Shabbir Ahmed for questioning and that both are being held on immigration violations.
Ahmed was imam of the Lodi Muslim Mosque, the Lodi News-Sentinel reported on its Web site.
Khan was a former imam who is leading efforts to build the Farooqia Islamic Center, including a school for children up to fourth grade, south of Lodi on Lower Sacramento Road, the News-Sentinel reported.
On Tuesday, FBI agents searched Ahmed's house on Poplar Street, next door to the mosque, and another house on the 300 block of Acacia Street, about four blocks from the mosque, the Lodi newspaper reported.
An FBI spokesman in Sacramento was unavailable for comment Tuesday night.
Lodi Mayor John Beckman confirmed to The Chronicle that the FBI had made some arrests and served some search warrants in the case.
"Having the FBI issue search warrants and make arrests in your town is always a little bit surprising," Beckman said of the agricultural city of 60,000 residents. "I'm glad to hear that the FBI is staying on top of federal criminal issues, no matter the size of the community."
E-mail Henry K. Lee at hlee@sfchronicle.com.
Musharefs new solution to terrorism-- deny that it's their.
Voice of Reason
07-26-2005, 02:42 PM
Well Bman I'm about halfway ready to come along with you on this one. I'm deeply suspicious about the quality of Pak's cooperation in the WoT.
First, we chased bin Laden out of Afgh and the Paks were supposed to get him coming across their border. Somehow they missed. What's up with that?
2nd, we think he's in the 'tribal areas' of Pakistan, but nobody can go there because it's either 'too wild' or somehow connected with national sovereignty. Huh?
3rd, they have those madrassas where they still seem to be pumping out tons of radical Islamic stuff.
4th, Abdul Qadeer Khan. Reckless international proliferation of nukes that don't even have elementary safeguards built into them like our bombs, with the complex codes and other devices to (try to) prevent accidental or rogue detonation. They are not helping there.
5th, they still appear to be sheltering the Taliban, at least some elements of their ISI do anyway. How come nothing can be done about that?
Hmmm. I wonder why I'm saying I'm only halfway ready to come with you on this one! People I talk to about these issues say we can't attack them or say anything because, they've got nukes, and we're afraid. So it's a problem.
Musharraf immediately after 9/11 made a snap decision to be on our side. I think that was wise of him, but his trustworthiness seems a real issue.
center
07-26-2005, 02:51 PM
Im going to have to agree with Representive Curt's source Ali on that Bin Laden is opperating out of Iran
Associated Press Worldstream
February 17, 2006 Friday 2:16 AM GMT
Prosecutors say California man trained in Pakistan to commit jihad in U.S.
By DON THOMPSON, Associated Press Writer
SACRAMENTO California
A man accused of attending an al-Qaida training camp is a trained terrorist intent on attacking Americans, prosecutors alleged, but his attorney called him just a directionless young man prone to wild storytelling.
In opening statements at Hamid Hayat's federal trial on Thursday, prosecutors said the 23-year-old Lodi, California man visited a Pakistan camp in 2003 and 2004, then returned to his family's home in California's farm country and awaited information about potential terrorist targets.
"Hamid Hayat talked about jihad before he even left the United States. He talked about acts of violence, he talked about training camps. He received weapons training while he was there," prosecutor Laura Ferris said in opening statements. "He admitted he went to a jihadist training camp, not once but twice. ... He returned to the United States to commit jihad, and he was waiting for orders."
Hayat, who was born in the United States, is charged with supporting terrorists by attending the camp, and with lying about it to the FBI. He faces up to 39 years in prison if convicted.
Hamid Hayat's attorney, Wazhma Mojaddidi, said the government has no proof that her client attended a terrorist camp, despite information agents received from a paid informant.
She said Hayat had only an elementary school education and was prone to exaggeration and "has made statements that are just simply not true." His statements to the FBI will expose contradictions and inaccuracies, she said.
The paid informant, who grew close to Hamid Hayat before he departed to Pakistan in May 2003, recorded hundreds of hours of audiotapes. In them, Mojaddidi said, jurors will hear the informant describe Hayat as lazy, lacking ambition "and just a big storyteller."
Hayat and his father have been in custody since their arrests last June. Umer Hayat is charged with making false statements to FBI agents about his son's activities and could face 16 years in prison if convicted.
They are being tried together before separate juries. Opening statements in Umer Hayat's portion of the trial are scheduled for Feb. 28.
Fears of a local terror cell grew in the agricultural town of Lodi when two Islamic clerics and one of the cleric's sons were taken into custody and later deported to Pakistan on immigration violations.
In earlier court testimony, family members said they sent Hamid Hayat to Pakistan to find direction in life and a wife. The FBI questioned him after he returned to the U.S. in May 2005. According to the government, Hamid Hayat told the agents that he had gone to Pakistan to play cricket and to be with his mother, who had traveled there seeking alternative treatments for a severe case of hepatitis C.
Hamid Hayat failed a lie detector test and confessed to attending the al-Qaida camp after FBI agents suggested they might have a satellite image placing him there. Agent Harry Sweeney testified Thursday that agents actually had no such picture.
In the videotaped confession played to jurors Thursday, Sweeney is seen asking Hamid Hayat what he did at the camp.
"Training," he responded. "Just jihadi training."
"What they're doing is teaching people to kill American troops," the agent said.
"Of course," Hayat replied.
He told agents that he attended one camp in 2000 but "escaped" after only a few days and took a bus back to his village. Hayat also said he attended a second camp for a few months in 2003, training with a pistol while others practiced with rifles and explosives, Sweeney said.
On the videotape, Hayat was seen showing Sweeney the rough location of the camp. He described reaching the camp after a seven-or eight-hour bus ride from Rawalpindi, Pakistan followed by a three-hour hike through mountainous terrain.
Hayat told agents that in both cases "he thought he would be attending religious education training," Sweeney said.
Mojaddidi, however, said her client was without a lawyer during the interrogation and grew tired as the FBI kept pushing him to confess.
"He said what he said because he thought he was telling the government what they wanted to hear," she said.
candypreet
02-21-2006, 01:56 AM
Afghan cartoon protesters threaten to join al Qaeda
Afghan cartoon protesters threaten to join al Qaeda
Mon Feb 20, 2006 6:31 PM GMT
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-02-20T183010Z_01_L19108349_RTRUKOC_0_UK-RELIGION-CARTOONS.xml&archived=False
Vancouver
02-21-2006, 02:26 AM
This Hayat guy sounds like a clown, but there are definitely some madrassas in Pakistan that do just the same program of brainwashing as did the Taliban madrassas. (The Taliban originated in such schools during the Soviet years, among refugees on the Pakistani side of the border. "Taliban" is the plural of "talib", which means "student".) And Mulla Omar still has friends and backers in Pakistan and Arabia, no question about it.
candypreet
02-22-2006, 09:28 AM
This Hayat guy sounds like a clown, but there are definitely some madrassas in Pakistan that do just the same program of brainwashing as did the Taliban madrassas. (The Taliban originated in such schools during the Soviet years, among refugees on the Pakistani side of the border. "Taliban" is the plural of "talib", which means "student".) And Mulla Omar still has friends and backers in Pakistan and Arabia, no question about it.
good post
candypreet
02-23-2006, 04:29 AM
bman, the lackawana seven also had EXTENSIVE ties to pakistan, i believe 2-3 of them were actually pakistani naturalized citizens....
i really dont wanna go digging for links, and don't think anyone needs us to.
But still, people go on thinking it's those bad Iraqi's and Afghanis that want us dead, not those great pakistanis or saudis, right?
why canht I rep him
Wow.. those "crazy" Jurors agreed UNANIMOUSLY in a court of law, that Pakistan is hosting al Qaeda camps
But.. but... I thought they were our friends??? :add09:
Tough day for the Pakistan apologists.
The Associated Press
April 26, 2006 Wednesday 2:23 AM GMT
Jury finds Calif. man guilty in federal terrorism case
By DON THOMPSON, Associated Press Writer
SACRAMENTO Calif.
A federal jury on Tuesday convicted a 23-year-old man of supporting terrorists by attending an al-Qaida training camp in Pakistan three years ago.
Hamid Hayat, a seasonal farm worker in Lodi, an agricultural town south of Sacramento, was convicted of one count of providing material support to terrorists and three counts of lying to the FBI.
His attorney said she would seek a new trial. "Hamid Hayat never attended a terrorist training camp. This fight is not over," Wazhma Mojaddidi said.
The verdicts came hours after a separate jury hearing a case against the man's father deadlocked, forcing the judge to declare a mistrial.
The father, 48-year-old ice cream truck driver Umer Hayat, is charged with two counts of lying to the FBI about his son's involvement in the training camp. Defense attorneys and prosecutors will meet in court May 5 to decide whether he will be retried.
Both men are U.S. citizens and stood trial in federal court before separate juries. They have been in custody since last June.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales praised the verdicts, saying in a statement that Hamid Hayat "supported and trained with our terrorist enemies in pursuit of his goal of violent jihad."
Defense attorneys tried to persuade jurors that they should acquit the two because the government had provided no clear evidence that the son had attended a camp. But prosecutors characterized their case as pre-emptive.
"This case is important because it shows that we can prevent further acts of terrorism by winning convictions against those who would plot deadly acts against our citizens before they can act," U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott said at a news conference.
The investigation into potential terrorist activities in Lodi is continuing, Scott said. He would not rule out further charges.
The case initially generated wide interest because it raised concerns about a potential terrorist cell in the wine-producing region about 35 miles south of the state capital. But the government presented no evidence of such a network.
Instead, the case centered on videotaped confessions the men gave to FBI agents and a government informant who secretly recorded conversations but whose credibility was challenged by the defense.
Prosecutors described Hamid Hayat as having "a jihadi heart and a jihadi mind," and who returned from a two-year visit to Pakistan intent on carrying out attacks. Possible targets included hospitals, banks and grocery stores, but prosecutors presented no evidence in the nine-week trial that such attacks were imminent or planned.
The prosecution's biggest hurdle was trying to persuade jurors to discount the men's videotaped confessions. The statements were given separately last June during lengthy interrogations by the FBI in Sacramento.
Defense lawyers said the confessions were made under duress, after the men had been questioned for hours in the middle of the night.
The father and son eventually told the agents merely what they thought they wanted to hear, without realizing the legal consequences, their lawyers argued.
The government's investigation into Lodi's 2,500-member Pakistani community began after agents received a tip in 2001 that area businesses were sending money to terrorist groups abroad.
That investigation ultimately fizzled, but it did lead agents to Naseem Khan. The 32-year-old former Lodi resident was working service jobs in rural Oregon when agents approached him in October 2001.
Khan, a Pakistan native who moved to the United States as a teenager, was recruited to infiltrate Lodi's Pakistani community.
He initially investigated the money laundering allegations and then targeted a pair of local imams before finally befriending Hamid Hayat.
After Hamid Hayat left for Pakistan in spring 2003, Khan kept in touch and recorded their telephone calls in some of which Khan urged Hayat to attend a jihadi camp.
In one conversation, Khan exhorted Hayat to "be a man do something!"
Hamid Hayat's lawyers seized on such conversations in an effort to show that the FBI informant pushed Hayat to attend a training camp.
They also questioned the informant's credibility. Khan testified that just before he was recruited, he told FBI agents he had seen Osama bin Laden's physician and two other international terrorists living in Lodi during the late 1990s. At the time, they were wanted for attacks in the Middle East and Africa.
Defense attorneys and terrorism experts said it was highly unlikely they would have been in the country at that time, a point prosecutors conceded later in the trial.
Hamid Hayat faces a minimum of 30 years in prison, prosecutors said. His sentencing is scheduled for July 14.
Associated Press Writer Juliet Williams contributed to this report.
candypreet
05-03-2006, 01:13 AM
good one there
Voice of Reason
05-03-2006, 02:14 AM
So who votes 'yes' for invading Pakistan?
Ethyl
05-03-2006, 02:17 AM
So who votes 'yes' for invading Pakistan?
better to have a wild card dictator *coff Iraq* than a wingnut master manipulator *coff Iran*
You would think Americans would have learned their lessons about uprooting dictators who, for better or worse, weren't necessary to accomplishing goals in the short term.
What's this ????
Oh no.. bad news for the Paki apologists.... seems yet ANOTHER PERSON is being charged with attempting to go to Pakistan... to (alas!) receive training at one of the AL QAEDA CAMPS, LOCATED THERE...
hmmm.. seems if the FBI knows about these camps, they could call up old Musharraff, who could have them shut down.... IF HE WANTED TO.
What am I missing here???
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
April 22, 2006 Saturday
Main Edition
Path traced in suspects' terror case
BILL TORPY, JEREMY REDMON
In March 2005, two young Muslims from the Atlanta area rode a Greyhound to Toronto. There, they met with "like-minded Islamic extremists" and allegedly plotted locations for possible terror attacks, including oil refineries and military bases, according to court documents released Friday.
The affidavit outlines the alleged activities of Syed Haris Ahmed, a 21-year-old Georgia Tech mechanical engineering student, and Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, a recently married 19-year-old man from Roswell. The two are at the center of what authorities say is the first international terrorism case filed in Georgia.
The men and others in Canada "developed a plan for traveling to Pakistan where they would attempt to receive military training at one of the several terrorist-sponsored camps. Ahmed later traveled to Pakistan in an attempt to receive such training," FBI agent Michael Scherck alleged in the affidavit in support of a warrant to arrest Sadequee.
Sadequee is accused of making false statements to law enforcement officers, while Ahmed is charged with giving "material support" to a terrorist organization. Ahmed has been cooperating with federal authorities since his arrest last month, according to the affidavit.
"He acknowledged that the purpose of the trip was for Sadequee and Ahmed to meet with like-minded Islamic extremists," the agent wrote. There "they met regularly with at least three subjects of an FBI international terrorism investigation.
"Ahmed further explained that during some of these meetings, he, Sadequee and the others discussed strategic locations in the United States suitable for a terrorist strike, to include oil refineries and military bases. They also plotted how to disable the Global Positioning System in an effort to disrupt military and commercial communications and traffic."
Met at mosque
Ahmed and Sadequee met at Al-Farooq Masjid, the mosque just north of Georgia Tech, Ahmed told authorities.
David Nahmias --- the U.S. attorney in Atlanta who is prosecuting Ahmed and previously held one of the Justice Department's most sensitive positions overseeing terrorism investigations --- said earlier this week that "this is a very big case."
But, he said, "we are not alleging [Ahmed] was involved in a terrorism act."
Jack Martin, Ahmed's court-appointed attorney, said his client "has neither been charged with nor has he ever committed any act or terrorism.
"When he was first questioned by the FBI, long before he was arrested, he answered all their questions about all his activities," Martin said Friday. "He has never done anything that would be of any meaningful assistance to any terrorist orgnization. At worst, he's guilty of imprudent talk."
After waiving his right to a public hearing three times, Ahmed pleaded not guilty Wednesday in a closed hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Joel Feldman. Ahmed was ordered to be held in custody pending trial and faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted.
Feldman said U.S. marshals taped newspapers to the window on the courtroom door so no one could peer inside.
"It's extremely rare," said Feldman, a judge for 32 years. "I can't remember, if ever, where we sealed off a courtroom like that."
Ahmed, a Pakistani native who is a U.S. citizen, has been held in federal custody since March 23. His family lives in Dawsonville and immigrated to the United States in 1997. His father, Syed Riaz Ahmed, is a computer science professor at North Georgia College in Dahlonega.
Sadequee, a U.S. citizen born in Fairfax, Va., was arrested this week in Bangladesh, where his family said he had gone to get married.
Sadequee was detained by as many as 10 agents while shopping Monday in the city of Dhaka, according to his attorney, Shereef Akeel.
"These individuals identified themselves an intelligence agents from the Bangladesh government," said Akeel, who is based in Birmingham, Mich. "He was basically abducted right in front of his wife while they were shopping.
Akeel said Sadequee's family hired him after the arrest. He has not yet spoken with his client and doesn't know where he is being held. The family contacted the U.S. Embassy in Bangladesh about locating their son but had no luck, he said.
"The family has no clue of his whereabouts," Akeel said. "They are very fearful of what he could be subjected to by someone other then the U.S. government.
"Once you travel overseas, it doesn't mean you leave your rights at the door. They stay with you," said Akeel, who has represented other Arab and Pakistani Muslims since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, including some who say they were tortured in Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison. "You can't just get snatched here like this and it shouldn't apply elsewhere. I have concerns about how all this came about."
CNN has reported that Sadequee is being brought back to New York. Federal officials there did not respond to phone calls.
Conflicting answers
The federal arrest affidavit, filed in U.S District Court for the Eastern District of New York, says Sadequee lied to federal agents in August when he was questioned at New York's JFK Airport. He was flying to Bangladesh to get married, he said. Authorities asked him about his trip earlier in 2005 to Canada. Agents say Sadequee told them he had traveled to Canada alone and stayed with an aunt there.
However, Ahmed, who had been under federal surveillance since March 2005, told authorities he had traveled to Canada with his friend "Shifa" Sadequee and stayed with another unnamed co-conspirator, court papers said.
Agents questioning Sadequee in New York checked his suitcase, where they found two CD-ROMS, one with encrypted files that FBI experts haven't been able to decode and the other "an apparent bootleg copy of a hard-core pornographic film." Along with the CDs was a Fairfax County Visitor's Center map of the Washington, D.C., area.
Sadequee's sister said the family had been questioned several times at their Roswell home since last August and their mother was arrested by immigration officials last December and was later released. Right now, his case is being handled by federal authorities in New York.
Sadequee and his new wife, who is from Bangladesh, were planning to return to the United States and attend college together, his attorney said. Sadequee was interested in studying literature, he said.
He previously worked at Raksha, an Atlanta-area nonprofit organization that addresses family violence, divorce and other social issues in the South Asian-American community.
Akeel said the allegations are "very shocking to the family. It is very uncharacteristic of Mr. Sadequee."
"He is a very sensitive young man. He has always tried to do the right thing. This is deeply shocking to the family. They are in a state of great grief right now."
candypreet
05-19-2006, 09:02 AM
good post
All Rights Reserved
Associated Press Worldstream
May 21, 2006 Sunday 8:55 AM GMT
Afghanistan claims Taliban commanders live, coordinate terror attacks from Pakistan
By DANIEL COONEY, Associated Press Writer
KABUL Afghanistan
Afghanistan's foreign minister Sunday claimed that Taliban leaders are living in Pakistan and coordinating terrorist strikes in Afghanistan from there the latest barb between the neighbors who are both U.S. allies in the war on terror.
The comments by Rangeen Dadfar Spanta at a press conference in Kabul came after some of the deadliest violence here since the ouster of the Taliban in 2001, including a suspected suicide car bombing in Kabul on Sunday that killed at least three people.
"The leadership of the Taliban and other terror groups are living in Pakistan," he said.
Asked by The Associated Press if the rebel commanders were coordinating attacks inside Afghanistan from there, Spanta said, "Exactly, that is the case.
"The movement and the communication during these terrorist attacks is from the other side" of the frontier, he said.
Pakistan's Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao contested the allegation.
"We deny the Taliban leaders are here," he said. "These kind of allegations will not help relations" between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Afghan-Pakistan relations soured earlier this year amid Kabul's accusations that Pakistan was doing too little to stop Taliban and al-Qaida militants hiding on its side of the border from crossing into Afghanistan to attack Afghan and U.S.-led coalition troops.
Pakistan and Afghanistan share a long border where Afghan and U.S. officials say elements of the ousted Taliban regime are hiding. Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden is also believed to be hiding in the mountainous region.
Spanta's comments came three days after President Hamid Karzai claimed Pakistani students were being taught to go to Afghanistan to burn down schools or medical clinics.
The often touchy relations between the neighbors deteriorated in February after Karzai gave Pakistan a list of Taliban figures supposedly hiding inside Pakistan and the locations of alleged terrorist training camps.
After Afghan officials publicized that they had shared the intelligence, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf retorted that the information was outdated and maintained that Pakistan a former supporter of the Taliban militia was doing all it could to stop militants from launching cross-border attacks.
Another guy goes on trial for attending TERRORIST TRAINING CAMPS IN PAKISTAN, after 9/11
say it ain't so, Mushy!
The Washington Post
May 23, 2006 Tuesday
Final Edition
Jurors Hear Clashing Profiles Of Accused Jihad Member;
Md. Teacher Didn't Aid Foreign Group, Defense Says
Jerry Markon and Mary Beth Sheridan, Washington Post Staff Writers
The last man charged as a member of the "Virginia jihad network" went on trial yesterday, with prosecutors saying Ali Asad Chandia trained at a terrorist camp and helped a foreign terrorist group, while defense attorneys portrayed him as a kindly third-grade teacher who did nothing wrong.
Chandia, 29, is accused of helping Lashkar-i-Taiba acquire an electronic autopilot system and video equipment for use on model airplanes. The group, which the U.S. government has designated a terrorist organization, is battling the government of India and runs terrorist camps in Pakistan. Prosecutors said Chandia trained at one of those camps in late 2001 or early 2002, although they acknowledged that they have no eyewitnesses to that.
"He is a radical Islamic jihadist who glorified the use of lethal violence against non-Muslims whether they be in India or the United States," Assistant U.S. Attorney David Laufman said in opening statements at Chandia's trial in U.S. District Court in Alexandria. He said a search of Chandia's College Park home found materials praising the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, including "images of our fellow citizens jumping from the burning towers to their deaths." Chandia was indicted in September.
Defense attorney Marvin Miller said that Chandia, who teaches at a Muslim school in Maryland, is "a scholar in his Islamic faith." He denied that Chandia trained at a Lashkar camp, saying he was in Pakistan to attend his brother's wedding.
"He is not on trial for what he thinks -- or he shouldn't be. And he is not on trial for what he believes," Miller told the 10-woman, four-man jury, which includes two alternates. "He is on trial for you to decide whether or not he did anything."
The trial brought back some of the emotion surrounding what prosecutors called the jihad network case. Over the past several years, 10 Muslim men have been convicted of training for holy war against the United States or inspiring others to do so. The training included playing paint ball in the Virginia countryside, and some of the defendants attended Lashkar camps in Pakistan.
Federal officials have described the case as one of the most important domestic terrorism prosecutions since Sept. 11, but some Northern Virginia Muslims have accused prosecutors of targeting their religious community.
About a dozen supporters of Chandia's were in court yesterday. One Maryland man, Steve Lapham, briefly disrupted jury selection by yelling: "I object to these show trials against my Muslim American neighbors!" As court security officers led him away, he added: "It's a joke!"
Tanweer Ahmad, whose daughter attends Dar al-Huda school in College Park, where Chandia works, said in an interview that he views the case as "just the government, again, trying to play on people's fears."
Chandia is charged with four counts of providing or conspiring to provide material support to Lashkar. If convicted, he faces up to 60 years in prison. Also named in the indictment is Mohammed Ajmal Khan, a British national whom prosecutors called a top Lashkar official. He is serving a prison term in Britain for terrorism offenses.
Prosecutors said Chandia traveled to a Lashkar office in Lahore, Pakistan, in November 2001 shortly after resigning from his job at a Costco store. He is accused of working with other defendants to help Khan obtain equipment for the group. The equipment allegedly included 50,000 paint balls and components of an "electronic automatic pilot system" that can be installed on a small remote-controlled airplane using Global Positioning System coordinates.
It is unclear whether any of the equipment was used by Lashkar -- or if any was intended for use in the United States. "Nobody knows where it is. It's never been seen," Miller told the jury.
Buffalo News (New York)
June 8, 2006 Thursday
FINAL EDITION
Toronto cell had global ties;
Two arrests in Britain point to far-reaching web
By Maki Becker and Jerry Zremski1 - NEWS STAFF REPORTERS
The arrest of 17 terrorist suspects in the Toronto area appears to be tied to radical Islamic activity on three continents, all inspired by al-Qaida and linked via the Internet.
Terrorism experts and worldwide media reports have increasingly focused on those likely international links since the weekend arrests. Underscoring that point, British authorities arrested a 21-year-old man late Tuesday and a 16-year-old youth Wednesday on terrorism charges that could be connected to the alleged terror conspiracy in Canada.
Those arrests follow FBI allegations that one of the two U.S. Muslims from Georgia, who traveled to Toronto to meet with some of the Canadian suspects, attended a terror training camp in Pakistan. Meanwhile, Canada's National Post reported that the Canadian suspects and the Georgia men were also in contact with a London-based jihadist recruiter.
The suspected global connections of the Canadian suspects -- and the absence of any direct ties to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden -- come as no surprise to terror experts. They said Islamic terrorism has evolved into something more amorphous and difficult to trace in the five years
since the twin towers collapsed in flames.
"What we've generally been seeing is an added dimension to the radical militant Islamic threat," said Rep. John McHugh, a Watertown Republican who serves on the House Intelligence Committee. "There's less operational day-to-day control and more of a philosophical allegiance."
McHugh's comments echoed the State Department's latest annual report on terrorism. Released on April 28, the report emphasized "the proliferation of smaller, looser terrorist networks that are less capable but also less predictable."
The State Department also noted "an increased capacity for acts of terror by local terrorists with foreign ties."
The Toronto suspects appear to have plenty of foreign ties of their own.
Security sources told the British Broadcasting Corp. that the two suspects arrested in northern England this week are being questioned in connection with the Canadian case.
The 21-year-old, who was arrested at the Manchester Airport, is believed to have traveled recently to Pakistan, the BBC said. The man is from Bradford, which is northeast of Manchester, and the 16-year-old arrested Wednesday is from nearby Dewsbury.
The two U.S. Muslims from Georgia, who are believed to have met with the Canadian suspects, also appear to have international connections.
Syed Haris Ahmed, 21, is a native of Pakistan who traveled to his home country to attend a terror training camp, an FBI affidavit said.
And Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, who was born in Fairfax, Va., traveled to Bangladesh in August, five months after he and Ahmed took a Greyhound bus to Toronto.
Ahmed told the FBI that he and Sadequee traveled to Toronto "to meet with like-minded Islamic extremists." They met with "three subjects of an FBI international terrorism investigation," the FBI affidavit said.
The pair met with the Toronto "extremists" to discuss "strategic locations in the United States suitable for a terrorist strike, to include oil refineries and military bases," the FBI said.
Those revelations follow a report in Canada's National Post that the Toronto terror suspects and the Georgia men were in touch with Younis Tsouli, suspected of being a shadowy Internet-based terrorist recruiter dubbed "Ihrabi 007."
When police searched Tsouli's bedroom and arrested him last November in London, they found video slides showing "a number of places in Washington, D.C.," according to the British charges against him. The Post said authorities believe those images were filmed by the two Georgia men who visited the Toronto-area suspects.
Even before the Canadian arrests, Canadian authorities were increasingly stressing the complex international webs that terrorists appear to be weaving.
"The threat of this variant of terror is global, complex and sophisticated," Jack Hooper, deputy director of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Services, told a Canadian Senate committee on May 29. "The individuals and groups involved are often internationally interconnected and highly mobile."
Like the terrorists who struck commuter trains in Spain and subways in London in recent years, the Toronto suspects appear to have no direct ties to bin Laden, terrorism experts said.
Instead, while bin Laden is believed to be holed up in tribal areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan, all of those suspected terrorists merely appear to be inspired by his vision of violent Muslim resistance to Western ways and political policies.
"I think al-Qaida's objective was to serve as an example," said McHugh, who, as an Intelligence Committee member, attends classified briefings with top U.S. intelligence officials. Al-Qaida's quest for "jihad on a global scale" now "may be getting beyond their control in ways beyond how they imagined," he said.
At the same time, though, terrorists have always tended to favor loose command structures, said Mike German, a former FBI counterterrorism agent who is now a senior fellow at Globalsecurity.org, a Washington think tank.
"It's a concept called leaderless resistance," German said. "It's a means to protect the leadership so they can continue to spread."
The splintered nature of these groups poses serious challenges to authorities trying to track them down before they strike.
"It is much more difficult to penetrate the various cells, even identify the cells," German said. "Frankly, until they strap the bombs on their back and walk into the subways, they're not seen as part of a group."
Such terrorist groups often come together and hone their trade via the Internet. McHugh noted there are now more than 5,000 radical Islamic Web sites, which "suggests a lot more activity" than prior to the Sept. 11 attacks.
Hooper, meanwhile, portrayed the Internet as a one-stop shop for would-be terrorists.
"You can become radicalized and committed to the al-Qaida ideology without ever having been to an al-Qaida training camp in Pakistan or Afghanistan," he said. "You can do all of that over the Internet. You can learn techniques, and you can acquire materials over the Internet. You can assemble an operational cell over the Internet."
In general, the current-day al-Qaida should be seen as a "franchise operation" that's operating worldwide, said Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
Asked if those franchises appear to be growing in number, Pletka said, "I don't think we have any idea."
However, she stressed that while such terrorists killed more than 200 people in the London and Madrid bombings, no such attack has occurred in the United States since 9/11.
"It is remarkable and a very good thing; we shouldn't underestimate it," Pletka said. "We're fighting back. We've got people off balance." News Staff Reporter Michael Beebe contributed to this report.
e-mail: jzremski@buffnews.com and mbecker@buffnews.com.
Yes, Musharraf's rape rooms are legendary.. So is his proliferation of WMD, his support for Al Qaeda, and his atrocious treatment of women...
In fact, I believe Musharraf was the "real life" role model for the "fictitious" Saddam that was presented to the US prior to the build up to the Iraq war..
especially the WMD and support of Al Qaeda stuff
LOL.. Shit, that's some funny shit.. I forgot I had written it
Well, if they're charging this guy with the crime of attending and Al Qaeda camp in Pakistan, I assume they know where it is... LOL
its funny how people will come to the defence of Pakistan yet support the war on Iraq, yet when was the last time the US was worried about a terrorist nation that got its weapons' technology from Iraq?
When was the last time a terrorist cell in the US was arrested after attending a terrorist camp in Iraq????
hammer, meet nail..
well, Candy.. it looks like its only you and me who care to learn about these things
The Bush supporters in the US are too ashamed to post in a thread like this... They realize ALL the things Saddam was accused of (support for Al Qaeda, allowing terrorist camps, developing and spreading WMD, allowing institutionalized rape, etc) ARE TRUE WHEN IT COMES TO PAKISTAN/ MUSHARRAF. In addition, Musharraf even tops Saddam when it comes to persecuting Christians.. Saddam tolerated christians, Pakistan charges them with "blasphemy", which is a severe crime punishable BY DEATH in that backwater hellhole of a nation.
Yet, Mr. Bush sends billions of US tax dollars to Pakistan and advanced strike/fighter aircraft.. go figure
oh, we should add "TESTING ICBMs and NUCLEAR CAPABLE CRUISE MISSILES" and "THREATENING THEIR NEIGHBOR WITH NUCLEAR WAR" to that already impressive list!!!
who dares to deny that Pakistan is a STATE SPONSOR of terrorism??
Come forth and present your evidence, as I have done here in this thread.
National Post (f/k/a The Financial Post) (Canada)
July 5, 2006 Wednesday
All but Toronto Edition
Pakistani player steps up jihad: Militant group has been linked to arrests in Canada, U.K., U.S.
Stewart Bell, National Post
TORONTO
Recent anti-terrorism arrests in Canada, Britain, Australia and the United States involve an array of allegations, but all have one thing in common: Lashkar-e-Tayyiba.
The Pakistani militant group may not have the name recognition of al-Qaeda, but it has emerged since 9/11 as a significant player in the global jihad, with a growing presence in Western Muslim communities.
Some believe Lashkar has now assumed a role that al-Qaeda had fulfilled before losing much of its leadership and its sanctuary in Afghanistan: training radicalized foreign Muslims at remote paramilitary camps.
Just as the terrorists captured before and immediately after 9/11 had almost all passed through Osama bin Laden's boot camps in Afghanistan, today suspects targeted by Western intelligence agencies are increasingly graduates of Lashkar camps in Pakistan.
From the Virginia Jihad Network in the United States to an Australian cell broken up by police and arrests last month in the United Kingdom, a common denominator has been Lashkare-Tayyiba. A number of suspects associated with the alleged Toronto cell are also thought to have links to prominent members of Lashkar and a few may have travelled to Pakistan for training.
In addition, an al-Qaeda recruiting DVD that witnesses have said was handed out at the Salaheddin Islamic Centre by alleged Toronto terror ringleader Fahim Ahmad makes mention of "our brothers" in Kashmir.
Lashkar was also a topic of discussion on Al-Tibyyan, a jihadist Internet forum that was used by several of the Canadian suspects.
Postings on the password-protected site refer to Lashkar as "the best group in Kashmir" and note that "to their credit they have helped, at times, the Taliban and al-Qaeda."
Allegations by Crown prosecutors that some of the accused Toronto terrorists had used pictures of Hindu gods for target practice at their training camp in Washago, Ont., is also viewed by some as a sign of possible Lashkar involvement.
Lashkar is one of the main armed groups fighting what they consider a jihad in Kashmir, the disputed mountain region where Pakistani Muslims have long been at war against predominantly Hindu India.
The LeT is "the best organized and the best led of the Pakistani mujahedin organizations, but over the years the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba has invited a number of foreign nationals to train with this group, so it has developed a global reach as a result of that," said terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna.
"We have seen that since 9/11, of the Pakistani groups, this particular organization has had its members arrested in Australia, in the UK, in France and in the United States.
"So it is one of the local jihad groups that had developed in a very short period of time after 9/11 a very global outreach and a very global capability," said Dr. Gunaratna, head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
The LeT was formed as the armed wing of Markaz Da'wa wal-Irshad, an Islamic centre established in the 1980s by, among others, Abdullah Azzam, who was also a co-founder of al-Qaeda.
During the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, Lashkar shared training camps with al-Qaeda, and according to Canada, bin Laden was one of the LeT's chief financial backers.
While its main focus is Kashmir, Lashkar also sent fighters to Bosnia in the 1990s to participate in the Balkans civil war and has played an active role in Afghanistan in co-operation with the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
When the Pakistani government banned Lashkar, it folded but resurfaced the next day as Jamaat-ud-Dawa. It also operates an alleged charitable front group called Idara Khidmat-e-Khalq.
Despite the ban imposed by Islamabad, Lashkar continues to operate in Pakistan, some believe with the tacit support of rogue elements in the military who approve of its guerrilla campaign in Kashmir.
"The government is kind of turning a blind eye to some of their activities and their leader is quite influential," Dr. Gunaratna said.
With the Taliban gone from power and Afghanistan no longer hospitable terrain for foreign militants, Lashkar has opened its camps in Pakistan to fleeing al-Qaeda members, the Pakistani diaspora and Muslims in general.
There are "a number of training camps" now in Pakistan as well as in Pakistani-controlled sectors of Kashmir, one near the city of Mansehra, Dr. Gunaratna said. "There were Britishers, Europeans and Americans and Canadians who went and trained."
Graduates of these camps have returned home to the West to serve either as support cells that provide money and recruits for the Lashkar cause, or to plot terror attacks, he said.
One of the most significant Lashkar cells was led by Frenchman Willie Brigitte. Arrested in 2003 in Australia, he was returned to Paris under police escort and placed under arrest.
"It is clear that Brigitte traveled to Australia intending to do us harm," the Australian Security Intelligence Organization said in its annual report. Two of his associates were late arrested in Australia, Izhar ul Haque and Faheem Khald Lodhi.
The plot to attack targets in Australia was linked to Lashkar-e-Tayyiba through Brigitte and Lodhi, both of whom had allegedly trained at a Lashkar camp. Lodhi was accused of recruiting ul Haque into the LeT. Lodhi was recently convicted of plotting attacks in Australia.
One possible link between Lashkar and Western terror conspiracies is believed to be a British man known as "Abu Omar," who visited Canada last year and knows some of the Toronto suspects.
He was arrested last month at Manchester Airport after returning to Britain from Pakistan and has since been charged with several terrorism offences including conspiracy to murder. He is believed to have played a role in facilitating training for Western Muslims at Lashkar camps.
According to the FBI, discussions about training in Pakistan at "terrorist-sponsored camps" took place in Canada in March 2005 when two Atlanta men, Ehsanul Islam Sadequee and Syed Haris Ahmed, traveled to Toronto to meet with local extremists.
Mr. Ahmed later flew to Pakistan in an attempt to train at a camp, the FBI says. Jahmaal James of Toronto also went to Pakistan to marry. Their visits took place during the same period that Abu Omar would have been in Pakistan.
The Canadian investigation is just one of several internationally in which links to Pakistan have been discovered, going back to the arrest of Momin Khawaja of Ottawa in 2004.
"Currently, much of the research focus is on South Asia, and in particular Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Kashmir region between India and Pakistan," said Tom Quiggin, a former RCMP terrorism expert.
"The American led attack on Afghanistan in October 2001 compounded the problem, as many of the escapees fled to other areas in Pakistan and the Kashmir," said the researcher at the Centre of Excellence for National Security in Singapore.
sbell@nationalpost.com
sidthereal
07-06-2006, 12:37 PM
There was an Lashkar E tayba cell disrupted in Iraq as well.
Less than three months after The Hindu broke the news of the detention of a top Lashkar-e-Taiba commander in Iraq, information is emerging that the Pakistan-based terrorist organisation may have set up a full-blown unit for suicide squad operations against Western forces.
Up to 2,000 men, mainly between the ages of 18 and 25, are believed to have signed up for the Lashkar-e-Taiba's armed operations in Iraq. Most come from towns in the Pakistani province of Punjab, where the Lashkar-e-Taiba's overground political patron organisation, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, wields considerable influence. Most Lashkar suicide squad volunteers come from the ranks of seminary students at Muridke, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa's main centre. However, some have also been raised from the Binori Town seminary in Karachi, which used to be run by the fundamentalist cleric, Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai, until he was assassinated.
At a recent meeting, the Lashkar-e-Taiba's overall head, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, told followers that "Islam is in grave danger, and the Mujahideen are fighting to keep its glory. They are fighting the forces of evil in Iraq in extremely difficult circumstances. We should send Mujahideen from Pakistan to help them." Dr. Saeed's comments were made at a private meeting in the Jamia al-Qudsia mosque in Lahore late last month. Sources close to him told The Hindu that the Lashkar hoped to be able to send at least some suicide squad members to Iraq overland through the porous Iran-Pakistan border.
In April, this newspaper reported that a key Lashkar commander, Danish Ahmad, had been held by allied troops in Iraq. Mr. Ahmad played a central role in the organisation's operations in Jammu and Kashmir from at least 1999, operating under the nom de guerre of Abdul Rehman al-Dakhil. Mr. Ahmad was first held by British forces in the southern city of Basra, and has since been interrogated by Central Intelligence Agency personnel. Western intelligence experts initially dismissed Mr. Ahmad's initiative in Iraq as a one-off enterprise, but the new information emanating from Pakistan may force a re-think.
Interestingly, Mr. Ahmad may have trained many of the men now being prepared for combat in Iraq. Islam-ud-Din, a Lashkar operative arrested in 1999, told Indian intelligence that Mr. Ahmad had trained hundreds of cadre at the Lashkar's Maskar Abu Bashir camp in the use of arms and explosives. In 1999, the Karachi-based newspaper, The Dawn, quoted Lashkar spokesperson Ghulamullah Azad as saying that Mr. Ahmad had led "dozens of fresh fighters of our outfit [who] have reached the Kargil sector to continue the jihad."
While the Lashkar-e-Taiba has historically backed sectarian violence against Pakistan's Shia minority, Dr. Saeed attempted to break with the past at the recent meeting. "America has failed to divide Shia and Sunni Muslims despite masterminding sectarian violence in Pakistan," he told followers. "America is now bending over backwards to foment a Shia-Sunni divide in Iraq. But we should not forget that Muqtada al-Sadr is a hero of Islam. Forget that he is a Shia. He is a great Mujahid because he is fighting the worst devil on earth, that is, America. It is our religious duty to support him," Dr. Saeed told the gathering.
Dr. Saeed's tone on events in Iraq has intrigued observers, given his historically comfortable relationship with the military and intelligence establishments in Pakistan. "The U.S. and Britain are raping our mothers and sisters," the Jamaat-ud-Dawa leader said. "In this situation jihad becomes mandatory against them. The Mujahideen are our last hope. If they are not supported today, then tomorrow, Islam will be erased from the map of the world." Referring to possible Pakistani troop commitments in Iraq, Dr. Saeed said that he would support President Pervez Musharraf "if he sends troops to Iraq to fight against the U.S. and Britain. If he sends them to support the U.S., then we will spearhead a countrywide campaign against him."
Despite its venomous polemic against General Musharraf, and its presence on a Pakistani Government terrorism watch-list, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa has enjoyed considerable freedom to raise funds and recruit cadre in recent months. General Musharraf declared the Lashkar-e-Taiba a terrorist outfit on January 13, 2002 following the attack on the Indian Parliament on December 13, 2001. The Jamaat-ud-Dawa, however, escaped censure by changing its name, which was earlier the Markaz Dawa wal'Irshad.
If Dr. Saeed's claims to have prepared two brigade-strength forces for Iraq are true — or even close to the true scale of recruitment — there could be serious trouble ahead for the beleaguered Western forces in Iraq. His organisation was among the pioneers in the use of suicide bombings in Kashmir, which started in 1999. The Lashkar-e-Taiba claims to have orchestrated around 200 suicide attacks between 1999 and 2002. Although India has been pushing for greater restrictions on the activities of Jihadi groups, Pakistan has been reluctant to go beyond curbing cross-border infiltration, for fear of provoking a backlash from the Islamist Right.
http://www.hinduonnet.com/2004/06/13/stories/2004061306050100.htm
knightroar
07-06-2006, 12:42 PM
Lashkar-e-Tayyiba ???
they'll never be a serious threat.
Bush won't be able to pronounce their name.
I mean, come on, abu gareeba, abu grib, abu grub, abu yabba dabba doo?
He can't be that embarassed again with mid terms coming up
Bitch
07-06-2006, 12:43 PM
Lashkar-e-Tayyiba ???
they'll never be a serious threat.
Bush won't be able to pronounce their name.
I mean, come on, abu gareeba, abu grib, abu grub, abu yabba dabba doo?
He can't be that embarassed again with mid terms coming up
Bwahahahahaha :add09: :happy_01: :love_08:
I'd green you if I could but apparently, I can't.
Lashkar-e-Tayyiba ???
they'll never be a serious threat.
Bush won't be able to pronounce their name.
I mean, come on, abu gareeba, abu grib, abu grub, abu yabba dabba doo?
He can't be that embarassed again with mid terms coming up
Its not like I haven't been warning the dumb fucks on this board for years now, that Pakistan is hosting terrorists.
Terror in Bombay
By Robert Spencer
FrontPageMagazine.com | July 12, 2006
On Tuesday evening, eight bombs, carefully arranged to explode in sequence, exploded along the commuter railroad system of Bombay (now commonly known as Mumbai), killing at least 147 people and wounding hundreds more. The Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh, said that “terrorists”' were behind the attacks. Intelligence agents said that the jihad terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, or Army of the Righteous, coordinated the attacks, along with the Students Islamic Movement of India. Lashkar-e-Taiba is closely allied with Al-Qaeda, from which it receives financial support.
Indian intelligence officials had been aware than an attack was in the offing: jihadists had been stockpiling explosives and weapons. However, Indian Home Minister Shivraj Patil said that officials knew the jihadists were planning to strike, “but place and time was not known.”
Bombay is India’s financial center. The bombings, according to the Hindustan Times, were “methodically executed to shock the country’s financial capital and hurl it into chaos.” Most of the bombs went off in the first-class sections of the trains, where businessmen would be congregated. All the stations in which bombs exploded were located in Bombay’s wealthy suburbs. Besides wresting Kashmir from Indian rule and establishing Islamic Sharia law there, Lashkar-e-Taiba has as one of its long-term goals the establishment of an Islamic state in India, and the subjugation of the Hindus. (One of the group’s mottos is “Killing Hindus is the way forward.”) The Indian financial class is overwhelmingly Hindu; the plotters clearly were well aware that Muslims in India generally don’t travel in first-class compartments.
While the Lashkar-e-Taiba jihadists hoped to strike a deadly blow to India’s economy with the Bombay bombings, the group apparently has numerous allies among Muslims in Western countries, who are supporting the jihad financially and in other ways. In May 2005, two men and a woman were arrested in Britain for conspiring to provide Lashkar-e-Taiba with money and weapons. Five weeks ago, on June 6, Ali Asad Chandia, a Pakistani Muslim who has lived in the United States for twelve years and who taught third grade at an Islamic school in Maryland, was convicted of providing support to Lashkar-e-Taiba as a member of the “Virginia jihad network” – a group of young Muslims who were training to go to Afghanistan to wage jihad against American troops there. He faces up to 45 years in prison.
Nor has Lashkar’s involvement in Western countries been only financial. Lashkar operatives sent a French convert to Islam, Willie Brigitte, to Australia, allegedly to target military bases in Sydney. Brigitte also seems to have recruited Faheem Khalid Lodhi, a jihadist recently convicted on terror charges related to his possession of bomb-making materials and maps of Australia’s electricity grid. In January 2003, a young Pakistani Muslim in Australia named Izhar ul-Haque, “fed up with Westerners,” made his way to a Lashkar training camp, but later had a change of heart.
Of course, the support for Lashkar-e-Taiba doesn’t come only from the West. In November 2003, the Daily Times of Pakistan reported:
LAHORE: Tehrik Khuddamul Islam Ameer Maulana Masood Azhar on Friday was given millions of rupees by businessmen from Lahore's posh and industrial areas for Kashmiri mujahideen. Maulana Azhar said he would personally deliver the donations to the mujahideen. “He took four sacks full of rupees with him,” a TKI source told Daily Times. He met with businessmen after the Friday prayers and asked them to give zakat to mujahideen. He also visited the industrial areas of Lahore on Sheikhupura Road and addressed people at an iftar dinner at a factory.
Support for Lashkar-e-Taiba is quite widespread in Pakistan. At one fundraising rally for Lashkar, a woman came up to a Lashkar representative with her two-year-old son. “I am donating him for jihad!" she exclaimed; the Lashkar operative politely turned her away, saying, “We appreciate your donation. But he is too young. Keep him with you as our trust. When he would be a grown up boy, we will train him for jihad and he will earn a good name for you.” The woman responded, “I am the mother of four sons. What happens if I donate one son for jihad, he embraces martyrdom and earns heaven for all of us!”
With such attitudes quite alive and well in Pakistan, the immediate condemnation of the Bombay bombings by the Pakistani government Tuesday evening is welcome, but is not nearly enough. Pakistani and Western officials need to watch the financial trail of the jihad closely – despite the best efforts of the New York Times -- for Tuesday’s bombings show the end point of that trail. The sophisticated planning of the Bombay attacks and the global reach of Lashkar-e-Taiba indicate that Western authorities underestimate such a group at their own peril. Moreover, the continued proliferation of the jihad ideology that fuels Lashkar’s activities as unmistakably as does the money that pours into its coffers from Pakistan and the West also cannot be ignored indefinitely. The Bombay bombings may well establish Lashkar-e-Taiba in the public consciousness as a fearsome terror group; we may hope that this will move anti-terror officials to shed more light on its international terror-recruitment and terror-financing activities also, and move to end them.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23326
who dares to deny that Pakistan is a STATE SPONSOR of terrorism??
Come forth and present your evidence, as I have done here in this thread.
National Post (f/k/a The Financial Post) (Canada)
July 5, 2006 Wednesday
All but Toronto Edition
Pakistani player steps up jihad: Militant group has been linked to arrests in Canada, U.K., U.S.
Stewart Bell, National Post
TORONTO
Recent anti-terrorism arrests in Canada, Britain, Australia and the United States involve an array of allegations, but all have one thing in common: Lashkar-e-Tayyiba.
The Pakistani militant group may not have the name recognition of al-Qaeda, but it has emerged since 9/11 as a significant player in the global jihad, with a growing presence in Western Muslim communities.
Some believe Lashkar has now assumed a role that al-Qaeda had fulfilled before losing much of its leadership and its sanctuary in Afghanistan: training radicalized foreign Muslims at remote paramilitary camps.
Just as the terrorists captured before and immediately after 9/11 had almost all passed through Osama bin Laden's boot camps in Afghanistan, today suspects targeted by Western intelligence agencies are increasingly graduates of Lashkar camps in Pakistan.
From the Virginia Jihad Network in the United States to an Australian cell broken up by police and arrests last month in the United Kingdom, a common denominator has been Lashkare-Tayyiba. A number of suspects associated with the alleged Toronto cell are also thought to have links to prominent members of Lashkar and a few may have travelled to Pakistan for training.
In addition, an al-Qaeda recruiting DVD that witnesses have said was handed out at the Salaheddin Islamic Centre by alleged Toronto terror ringleader Fahim Ahmad makes mention of "our brothers" in Kashmir.
Lashkar was also a topic of discussion on Al-Tibyyan, a jihadist Internet forum that was used by several of the Canadian suspects.
Postings on the password-protected site refer to Lashkar as "the best group in Kashmir" and note that "to their credit they have helped, at times, the Taliban and al-Qaeda."
Allegations by Crown prosecutors that some of the accused Toronto terrorists had used pictures of Hindu gods for target practice at their training camp in Washago, Ont., is also viewed by some as a sign of possible Lashkar involvement.
Lashkar is one of the main armed groups fighting what they consider a jihad in Kashmir, the disputed mountain region where Pakistani Muslims have long been at war against predominantly Hindu India.
The LeT is "the best organized and the best led of the Pakistani mujahedin organizations, but over the years the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba has invited a number of foreign nationals to train with this group, so it has developed a global reach as a result of that," said terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna.
"We have seen that since 9/11, of the Pakistani groups, this particular organization has had its members arrested in Australia, in the UK, in France and in the United States.
"So it is one of the local jihad groups that had developed in a very short period of time after 9/11 a very global outreach and a very global capability," said Dr. Gunaratna, head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
The LeT was formed as the armed wing of Markaz Da'wa wal-Irshad, an Islamic centre established in the 1980s by, among others, Abdullah Azzam, who was also a co-founder of al-Qaeda.
During the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, Lashkar shared training camps with al-Qaeda, and according to Canada, bin Laden was one of the LeT's chief financial backers.
While its main focus is Kashmir, Lashkar also sent fighters to Bosnia in the 1990s to participate in the Balkans civil war and has played an active role in Afghanistan in co-operation with the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
When the Pakistani government banned Lashkar, it folded but resurfaced the next day as Jamaat-ud-Dawa. It also operates an alleged charitable front group called Idara Khidmat-e-Khalq.
Despite the ban imposed by Islamabad, Lashkar continues to operate in Pakistan, some believe with the tacit support of rogue elements in the military who approve of its guerrilla campaign in Kashmir.
"The government is kind of turning a blind eye to some of their activities and their leader is quite influential," Dr. Gunaratna said.
With the Taliban gone from power and Afghanistan no longer hospitable terrain for foreign militants, Lashkar has opened its camps in Pakistan to fleeing al-Qaeda members, the Pakistani diaspora and Muslims in general.
There are "a number of training camps" now in Pakistan as well as in Pakistani-controlled sectors of Kashmir, one near the city of Mansehra, Dr. Gunaratna said. "There were Britishers, Europeans and Americans and Canadians who went and trained."
Graduates of these camps have returned home to the West to serve either as support cells that provide money and recruits for the Lashkar cause, or to plot terror attacks, he said.
One of the most significant Lashkar cells was led by Frenchman Willie Brigitte. Arrested in 2003 in Australia, he was returned to Paris under police escort and placed under arrest.
"It is clear that Brigitte traveled to Australia intending to do us harm," the Australian Security Intelligence Organization said in its annual report. Two of his associates were late arrested in Australia, Izhar ul Haque and Faheem Khald Lodhi.
The plot to attack targets in Australia was linked to Lashkar-e-Tayyiba through Brigitte and Lodhi, both of whom had allegedly trained at a Lashkar camp. Lodhi was accused of recruiting ul Haque into the LeT. Lodhi was recently convicted of plotting attacks in Australia.
One possible link between Lashkar and Western terror conspiracies is believed to be a British man known as "Abu Omar," who visited Canada last year and knows some of the Toronto suspects.
He was arrested last month at Manchester Airport after returning to Britain from Pakistan and has since been charged with several terrorism offences including conspiracy to murder. He is believed to have played a role in facilitating training for Western Muslims at Lashkar camps.
According to the FBI, discussions about training in Pakistan at "terrorist-sponsored camps" took place in Canada in March 2005 when two Atlanta men, Ehsanul Islam Sadequee and Syed Haris Ahmed, traveled to Toronto to meet with local extremists.
Mr. Ahmed later flew to Pakistan in an attempt to train at a camp, the FBI says. Jahmaal James of Toronto also went to Pakistan to marry. Their visits took place during the same period that Abu Omar would have been in Pakistan.
The Canadian investigation is just one of several internationally in which links to Pakistan have been discovered, going back to the arrest of Momin Khawaja of Ottawa in 2004.
"Currently, much of the research focus is on South Asia, and in particular Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Kashmir region between India and Pakistan," said Tom Quiggin, a former RCMP terrorism expert.
"The American led attack on Afghanistan in October 2001 compounded the problem, as many of the escapees fled to other areas in Pakistan and the Kashmir," said the researcher at the Centre of Excellence for National Security in Singapore.
sbell@nationalpost.com
On 7/6/06, Bman warned ya
But of course no one listend. Bush has stated that Pakistan is our ally..
Bman said, NO.. .that's where the terrorist live and find support...
Five days later, they killed 170 people in India.
Oh well.
I'll resurrect this one tomorrow.
I'm off to bed
TrustButVerify
07-12-2006, 02:11 AM
On 7/6/06, Bman warned ya
But of course no one listend. Bush has stated that Pakistan is our ally..
Bman said, NO.. .that's where the terrorist live and find support...
Five days later, they killed 170 people in India.
Oh well.
And it has recently been stated that the US govt is now going to monitor blogs and forums for "intelligence" Guess they have been missing your posts :add30:
And it has recently been stated that the US govt is now going to monitor blogs and forums for "intelligence" Guess they have been missing your posts :add30:
haha....
the thing is, Bush won't crack down on Pakistan, because (in my opinion) his family and some of his close associates are involved with the militants in Pakistan who are selling heroin.
That's my opinion.
That's why its "hands off" the Pakistan/Afghanistan border, even though that is where the terrorists are.
Osama knows this as well.
hmmm. interesting silence on this board
has it come to this... terrorism no longer interests the public....
obligatory bump
what should be done about the terrorist camps in Pakistan?
Voice of Reason
07-13-2006, 12:59 AM
obligatory bump
what should be done about the terrorist camps in Pakistan?
Here's one where I agree with you Bman and disagree with Bush.
Musharraf is playing a dangerous double game. If he won't clean up the mess over there we have to do it. While I may disagree with your speculation as to the reasons Bush refuses to do the right thing here, and violate Pakistan's sovereignty and be consistent with his own 'doctrine,' I agree it needs to be done. I really have no idea why we won't though. Bush's trust in Musharraf is woefully misplaced. I'm still pissed that he let bin Laden get away. (and continues to protect him, IF he's still alive, which I doubt.)
Perhaps we aren't doing it because we just can't? It's too much? Spread too thin? They have nukes? I really don't know. But it always cracks me up when the anti-war crowd complains that we attacked Iraq when we should have been making war on Saudi Arabia or Pakistan -- as if they would suddenly turn into hawks if we did that. Yeah right.
Perhaps we aren't doing it because we just can't? It's too much? Spread too thin? They have nukes? I really don't know. But it always cracks me up when the anti-war crowd complains that we attacked Iraq when we should have been making war on Saudi Arabia or Pakistan -- as if they would suddenly turn into hawks if we did that. Yeah right.
Most folks that are against the war in Iraq (including me) fully support the war in Afghanistan and are baffled as to why it has been put on the back burner, as the senior leadership behind 9/11 continues to reside in that country, not in Iraq.
Iraq never had much to do with Al Qaeda, and certainly had nothing to do with 9/11. Iraq was a war we couldn't (and can't) afford when we should be spending our military resources fighting TERRORISTS, not on some hopeless peace keeping mission in a land who's culture we don't understand. Its like a giant Somolia.
Finally, there's significant evidence in my opinion, that Pakistan was a state sponsor of the men who pulled off 9/11
That's been discussed in other threads, so I won't even go into it here.
sidthereal
07-13-2006, 01:15 AM
Death toll over 200 people now.
Mulford says blasts, Kashmir linked
US Ambassador to India, David Mulford, who is currently in Washington, asked to react to the statement by the Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri who claimed that incidents like the Mumbai bomb blasts were linked to the non-resolution of disputes between India and Pakistan, has said that 'obviously there are linkages there', and asserted that 'we all understand that Kashmir is a key issue'.
India has blasted Kasuri for his statement made in Washington on Tuesday during an address at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, calling it 'appalling' and calling on the Pakistani government to reject his remarks.
Ministry of External Affairs spokesman Navtej Sarna said Kasuri's comments were totally unwarranted and that 'we find it appalling', that the Pakistani foreign minister had linked 'this inhuman act of terror against men, women and children to so called lack of resolution between India and Pakistan on Jammu and Kashmir'.
Mulford, in an interaction with a few journalists at the US Chamber of Commerce said, "Obviously there are linkages there. We all know that. at this point, I think it's a little early to be precise as to who did what in these attacks and I think that's also an issue for the Indian government to explore and come to its own determination on."
"But I think in principle, we all understand that Kashmir is a key issue," he added.
Asked whether the US will exert additional pressure on Islamabad if it is found that the attacks were perpetrated by the Pakistan-based Lakshar-e-Tayiba, Mulford said, [B]"The US has been willing to exert pressure all along and this is a group that's already on our anti-terrorist list. So yes, I mean, that's a foregone conclusion."
In his opening remarks, before the question and answer interaction, Mulford reiterated his own 'sense of outrage' over the attacks and reiterated Washington's commitment 'to work with India against global terrorism, making the point that terrorism wherever it occurs, is unacceptable'.
"I also would like to particularly express my personal sympathy to the people of India, especially the people of Mumbai, and to those who had family, or relatives or friends who were caught up in this disaster and to express condolences," he said.
Mulford also expressed his 'admiration for the big heart of Mumbai, their resilience, their willingness to get back right away to business as usual and to sort of just turn their nose up at these terrorists and keep their city's forward momentum going. It's very admirable'.
He said the US stands ready to immediately offer any assistance India may need, but said, to his knowledge, New Delhi had not made any such request.
"We've had cooperation all the time, we've been improving that cooperation and we always would have on offer in a situation like this any assistance that would be asked for."
Mulford said, "We would not impose that, but we have a long experience with other events like this and we think that we could bring something important to the process."
"But obviously, it's only if we are asked to and required to, because let's face it," he noted, "India is very competent in these fields themselves and they may well feel that they have entirely what they need to conduct whatever the investigations are that they need. So that will be their decision."
Why does Bush continue to arm the terrorist nation of Pakistan?
anyone??
anyone?
India warns Pakistan over terror
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said that Pakistan needs to curb terrorism if the peace process between the two countries is to make progress.
But Islamabad has rejected as "unsubstantiated" Mr Singh's claim that the Mumbai train bombers received help from within Pakistan.
Nearly 180 people died in the blasts.
"We are also certain that ... terrorist modules are instigated, inspired and supported by elements across the border," Mr Singh said.
The BBC's Sanjoy Majumder in Delhi says that Mr Singh's comments represent a hardening of positions against Pakistan for the first time since Tuesday's attacks.
With the investigations making little tangible progress, our correspondent says the Indian government is under increasing pressure to act and demonstrate that it is not a soft target.
Talks between senior Indian and Pakistani civil servants scheduled for next week are unlikely to go ahead, according to high-level sources in Delhi. There has been no official confirmation that the discussions have been put off.
Pakistan denies involvement in the Mumbai blasts and issued a swift rebuttal to Mr Singh's comments.
"These allegations are unsubstantiated, we have already rejected them," said foreign ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has condemned the loss of "precious lives" in the attacks, in which seven commuter trains were bombed in less than 15 minutes.
But in the days since, there have been sharp exchanges between government ministers in India and Pakistan.
'No stone unturned'
Mr Singh said on Friday that "acts of terrorism" were "despicable acts of desperate people".
He was speaking after visiting victims of the blasts.
"We will leave no stone unturned in ensuring that terrorist elements in India are neutralised," he told journalists at a news conference after visiting bomb victims.
Suspicions that Pakistan-based militants may have been involved have raised tensions between the two states.
Indian security officials have suggested that the Mumbai bombings bore the hallmarks of Lashkar-e-Toiba, a Kashmiri militant group operating from Pakistan.
But the Indian government has not directly accused the group which has denied any responsibility.
A Muslim organisation banned in India, the Students' Islamic Movement (Simi), has also denied involvement in the attacks.
Sketches of three men wanted over the bombings have been published in the Indian media, but officials have admitted they have been making slow progress with investigations.
Prime Minister Singh flew into Mumbai on Friday amid tight security and immediately drove to the Sion hospital where he met some of the blast victims.
"The prime minister was saying to the patients 'what you want, I will give you,'" Agnes George, who was visiting one of the injured, told the AFP news agency.
Nuclear rivals Pakistan and India began peace talks in January 2004.
They followed a prolonged period of tension after militants attacked the Indian parliament in December 2001. That attack led to both sides amassing troops along their border.
Although both sides have made some headway in improving travel and other ties between them, there has been little sign of progress in solving their core dispute over the divided territory of Kashmir, which both countries claim.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/south_asia/5180028.stm
Published: 2006/07/14 16:49:40 GMT
India: Pakistan 'Elements' Backed Bombers
BOMBAY, India, Jul. 14, 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(AP) India's prime minister said Friday the Bombay train bombers were "supported by elements across the border" and that Pakistan must rein in terrorists before a peace process can move ahead.
In Islamabad, Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said Singh's accusations were "unsubstantiated, and we have already rejected them." She urged the peace process to go forward.
The comments by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appeared to signal a reverse in warming India-Pakistan relations, and came as Indian authorities named a third suspect in Tuesday's attack and investigators cast a wide net in their hunt for assailants, scrutinizing a cross-border Islamic militant network along with smaller homegrown groups.
Speaking days after the series of carefully coordinated bombs ripped through evening rush-hour trains, killing at least 200, Singh said Pakistan assured India two years ago that its territory "would not be used to promote, encourage, aid and abet terrorism.
"That assurance has to be fulfilled before the peace process and other processes progress," he said.
Talks between the rivals scheduled for July 20 appeared to have been scuttled. Press Trust of India news agency quoted "official sources" _ a euphemism for top government officials _ as saying that there was little possibility the foreign secretaries would meet in the wake of the bombings.
On his first visit to Bombay since the attack, Singh said investigators are sure that terror cells are operating in Bombay and many other parts of India.
"We are also certain that these terror modules are instigated, inspired and supported by elements across the border, without which they cannot act with such devastating effect," he said, referring to Pakistan. "They clearly want to destroy our growing economic strength, to destroy our unity and provoke communal incidents."
After nearing the brink of war in 2002, nuclear-armed India and Pakistan launched a peace process that has brought them closer, yet concrete agreement on the most pressing and longstanding issue _ the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir _ has been minimal.
Earlier Friday, Bombay Police Commissioner A.N. Roy said a man known only as Rahil was the third person sought in connection with the blasts.
The Indian government's Anti-Terror Squad released photos Thursday night of two other suspects, Sayyad Zabiuddin and Zulfeqar Fayyaz. Their nationalities were not given, nor was it clear where the photos of the young, bearded men originated.
The investigation also spread to the neighboring kingdom of Nepal where police said they had arrested two Pakistanis in connection with the seizure of RDX explosives in the capital of Katmandu in 2001. They said the two men are also being investigated for links to the Bombay blasts.
Since the blasts, officials have been pointing to the Pakistan-based Islamic militant group Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, which operates in Kashmir. Many cited the presumed use of RDX high explosives as evidence of Lashkar's involvement.
But Lashkar denied any role, and the Press Trust of India news agency reported that forensic tests were indicating the use of lower-grade industrial explosives, such as dynamite, or even simple chemical explosives, such as ammonium nitrate.
Officials were quoted by the news agency as saying the use of such common explosives would suggest that smaller, local groups carried out the blasts _ not more sophisticated and better-equipped networks, such as Lashkar.
An Indian Home Ministry official said that among the leads investigators were pursuing was the possible involvement of the outlawed Students Islamic Movement of India, which may have been aided by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency. The official requested anonymity because the inquiry is ongoing.
Pakistan also dismissed that allegation.
"This is baseless, and we reject it," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam told The Associated Press in Islamabad.
Pakistan consistently denies stoking terror in India or fanning militancy in divided Kashmir. The rivals each claim the entire territory and have fought two wars over it since independence from Britain in 1947.
The Bombay police chief said the two suspects named Thursday had been on the run since mid-May, when authorities arrested three suspected Muslim insurgents and seized large quantities of arms, ammunition and plastic explosives after a long highway chase in western India's Maharashtra state. Bombay is its capital.
News reports at that time had said the arrested men were Lashkar-e-Tayyaba members.
Lashkar has in the past staged near-simultaneous explosions in Indian cities, including an October attack in New Delhi that killed more than 60 people. The group also was named in a 2001 attack on India's parliament.
On Thursday, a man claiming to represent al-Qaida reportedly claimed the terror network had set up a wing in Muslim-majority Kashmir, where Islamic militants have been fighting for years for independence from predominantly Hindu India or union with mostly Muslim Pakistan.
There was no way to immediately verify the al-Qaida claim. If true, it would be the first time Osama bin Laden's network has claimed to have spread into Indian territory.
___
Associated Press reporters Mujtaba Ali Ahmad in Srinagar contributed to this story.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/07/14/ap/world/printableD8IRR3K89.shtml
sidthereal
07-14-2006, 02:51 PM
PM to look into 1993 Mumbai blasts case
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday assured that he would talk to concerned authorities about the delay in the judgment of the 1993 serial blasts that had rocked Mumbai.
Dr Singh, who was in Mumbai to visit the injured of the July 11 synchronised train blasts and take note of the investigation process, was answering queries at a media conference at the airport.
"I am aware of the delay and I will talk to the concerned authorities on this issue," Dr Singh said.
Even the Bombay high court has expressed concern over the delay and written to designated Judge P D Kode asking him when the judgement would be delivered.
About 123 accused, including film actor Sanjay Dutt, are facing the trial which commenced in July 1995. More than 600 witnesses have deposed and 13,000 pages of evidence have been recorded.
Among the accused facing the trial are extradited gangsters Ejaz Pathan, Mustaffa Dossa and Abu Salem.
According to the Central Bureau of Investigation, the blasts were masterminded by underworld don Dawood Ibrahim to avenge the demolition of the disputed structure in Ayodhya.
Thirteen explosions had shattered the city on March 12, 1993, killing 257 persons and injuring 713.
Property estimated at Rs 27 crore was destroyed in the serial blasts.
About 80 accused, including Dutt, are on bail while others are in custody.
On 7/6/06, Bman warned ya
But of course no one listend. Bush has stated that Pakistan is our ally..
Bman said, NO.. .that's where the terrorist live and find support...
Five days later, they killed 170 people in India.
Oh well.
Newsweek
July 24, 2006
International Edition
More Terror on the Tracks;
Investigators say twojihadist groups, including a homegrown terroristorganization, are behind the Mumbai bombings.
By Sudip Mazumdar, Zahid Hussain and Ron Moreau
They seem to have drawn little notice as they squeezed aboard the packed first-class carriages. Most passengers were concentrating on getting home from a long, rainy Tuesday at the office in India's financial center, Mumbai. The men placed their duffel bags and metal lunchboxes on the overhead luggage racks, and then, apparently, pushed their way off again, unnoticed--until 6:24 p.m., when the explosions began. Within 11 minutes, bombs had ripped through seven suburb-bound commuter trains on the same rail line. The blasts left 197 passengers and crew dead or dying and 800 others injured.
Police investigators are convinced they know who was behind the Madrid-style bombings. Only two terrorist organizations in the region have the skills and resources for such a massive, coordinated attack--and this, police believe, was a joint operation by both networks. One alleged partner is Lashkar-i-Taiba, a Kashmiri separatist group that has been outlawed since 2002 in Pakistan, the country where it began 16 years ago. The other group is the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), a homegrown jihadist outfit that is spreading rapidly among disaffected young Muslims across much of India. Both groups are denying any involvement, but police say evidence against them is piling up.
The authorities released photos of three bearded young men in connection with the attacks. Police said one of the men was the fugitive ringleader of a dozen alleged SIMI operatives who were arrested two months ago in Aurangabad, some 350 kilometers east of Mumbai. In the course of that sweep, police seized dozens of AK-47 automatic rifles, crates of ammunition and more than 45 kilograms of RDX, a military-grade explosive. The arrests had resulted from an investigation that began earlier this year after cops apprehended a pair of suspected Lashkar operatives getting off a train in downtown Mumbai. Police said the two men were found with one kilogram of RDX.
The two organizations are united by the same wild-eyed cause: bringing the entire Subcontinent back under Muslim rule for the first time since the 19th century. As followers of a harshly intolerant strain of Saudi-style Wahhabi Islam, they reject any notion of majority rule in a land where "polytheist infidel" Hindus outnumber Muslims. The Lashkar-SIMI partnership has been growing for several years, and in the past year or so Indian police believe that the two groups have collaborated on a series of attacks, including the bombing of a temple this March in Hinduism's holiest city, Varanasi, and the October bombing of two New Delhi markets, killing more than 60. After the Varanasi blast, Indian police arrested a rabid anti-Hindu mullah, named Waliullah, who led investigators to several other militants belonging to extremist groups linked to Lashkar and SIMI.
The Indian government banned SIMI in 2001, but it continues to operate and grow, according to investigators. Indian police think SIMI may have 500 hard-core members and as many as 20,000 sympathizers who can be relied on for assistance and shelter. The group is said to have a sizable following in Maharashtra state, where Mumbai is located, as well as in the southern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala, which have significant Muslim populations. With SIMI's support, Lashkar's fighters can now operate deep inside India without a lifeline to Pakistan's side of the border.
That development has raised new fears of international terrorism on Indian soil. B. Raman, a former senior Indian intelligence official, says analysts this year have detected a Qaeda interest in disaffected Indian Muslims. "Al Qaeda is now trying to take advantage of Muslim anger for its Pan-Islamic and anti-U.S. objectives," he warns. Lashkar has always denied any ties to Al Qaeda, but their common agenda of Islamic supremacy has brought them closer together. Both Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, have lambasted Hindu India for its growing ties with America. Last week a man purporting to be a spokesman for Al Qaeda expressed "gratitude" for the bombings and said the terrorist group had established a unit in India-controlled Kashmir. If true, that is an ominous portent.
India police detail role of militants in attacks
By Anand Giridharadas International Herald Tribune
Published: July 28, 2006
MUMBAI, India A Pakistani terrorist group that the Indian police suspect had a role in the July 11 bombings in Mumbai had been operating a group here at the time of the attacks, while its members took orders and training from militants in Pakistan, a senior Indian police investigator said Friday.
After two days of what he called "sustained interrogation" of five suspects possibly linked to the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, the police investigator, Senior Inspector J.K. Hargude, laid out his findings in a 90-minute interview, leafing through interrogation logs in a leather-bound day planner to check his facts.
"They are five sleeping bombs which can be triggered anytime," Hargude said, referring to the detained suspects. "Now we have stopped it. We have defused the bombs."
India has long accused Pakistani militants of fomenting terrorist attacks on its soil with the tacit backing of the Pakistani government, which denies such a role.
But the scenario described by Hargude on Friday was even more disturbing: Pakistan-based militants are recruiting educated, radicalized Indian Muslims to establish operations on their own soil.
Hargude's interrogations allegedly reveal in fine detail a connection between the bombing suspects and Lashkar-e-Taiba, which could heighten tensions between India and Pakistan.
"India has failed to inform Islamabad of these allegations," Tasnim Aslam, a spokeswoman for Pakistan's Foreign Ministry, said by telephone. "In the case of India, not even in one case have we received any evidence. If they have something, they should share it with us and we will cooperate with them."
Shortly after the July 11 blasts, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India accused Pakistan of failing to rein in terrorists operating on its soil. The Pakistani president, General Pervez Musharraf, called the accusation "unsubstantiated."
Hargude's investigation seems to reveal the same sort of homegrown terrorism London discovered when its transport system was bombed by militants in July 2005.
"This is very shocking to us. We've never seen LeT people like this," he said, referring to Lashkar-e-Taiba.
"This is a new model - to plant people in Bombay," Hargude said, using another name for Mumbai. "Previously, we were in doubt about whether people from LeT were around us."
Following earlier arrests of lower- level operatives, the Mumbai police on Thursday arrested two brothers that they described as the most important catches to date.
They said Faisal Shaikh, 30, was the top Lashkar commander in western India and a full-time operative of the organization. His younger brother, Muzammil, 23, had a more unusual profile. Until his arrest he was working for about $900 a month as a software engineer in Bangalore for the U.S. software company Oracle. Hargude called him the "brains" of the operation, providing help with visas and logistics.
Three alleged lower-level operatives have also been arrested: Zameer Shaikh, 31, a key maker in central Mumbai; Sohail Shaikh, 30, from the nearby city of Pune; and Tanvir Ansari, 32, a doctor and practitioner of the alternative medicine known as Unani.
Hargude and his police colleagues have refused to detail the role of the Shaikh brothers and other suspects in the July 11 bombings, as the investigation is ongoing. But he described their arrest as a major turning point in the case, and said that the men were now naming more names as the police's Anti-Terrorism Squad continues interrogating.
Hargude said that all five men had told the same story of how a Pakistani militant group worked to nourish a mostly homegrown group in India.
According to Hargude, that story begins with Faisal Shaikh, the alleged local boss of Lashkar. He grew up in Mumbai and attended boarding school as his father worked as a migrant in the Middle East.
In 1996, his family moved to the city of Pune, a three-hour drive from here, and Faisal fell in with a crowd of young, pious Muslim men that belonged to the Students Islamic Movement of India, a radical group banned in 2002. By 2001, he told investigators, he had come under its influence and resolved to himself to "do something for Islam," Hargude said.
In 2002, he traveled to Pakistan on a visa he obtained by naming family members living in Lahore, Pakistan. During his two-month trip he visited the capital, Islamabad, and stayed with his family in Lahore, where he made contact with hard-line religious groups. They eventually passed him on to Lashkar-e-Taiba and one of its top leaders, Azam Cheema. Hargude said all five men confessed to meeting Cheema between 2002 and 2005 at a training camp near the city of Bahawalpur.
Faisal told investigators that he had asked Cheema to send him to the Middle East for jihad. But Cheema told Faisal that the organization needed him back in his native India, where he could be of greater service by building up a local operation. Lashkar would send money, and, as Faisal recruited operatives, he could send them to Pakistan for training.
Faisal returned to India and stayed in contact with Cheema by e-mail messages and telephone calls placed at public booths. He began receiving monthly payments of about $750 to $900 through the hawala network, an ancient and largely untraceable Islamic system of money transfer.
Once in India, Faisal tapped a pool of religious and often angry young men with an enthusiasm for radical Islam.
In addition to Faisal's monthly stipend, Lashkar-e-Taiba sent thousands of dollars, Hargude said, for operational expenses that included airline tickets and visas for new recruits to travel to Pakistan.
Faisal began sending his Indian recruits - Sohail, Muzammil, Tanvir and Zameer - to Pakistan in 2004. That year, Faisal spent six months in Pakistan, he told investigators.
All four recruits traveled to Pakistan through Iran, Hargude said. At the Tehran airport, they were met by Lashkar operatives and smuggled overland across Iran's eastern frontier into Pakistan, often by paying a bribe at the border.
Hargude said Iran's government was not believed to have played any role in the transit.
He and the recruits, visiting at separate times, went to camps in Muzaffarabad and Bahawalpur, and all met Cheema, who the men said was well known as the operation's boss.
"It's Azam Cheema who can push the button," Hargude said.
In the camps, the men learned to fire Chinese-made pistols and Chinese- made AK-56s that are copies of Russian- made AK-47s. They also learned how to build and detonate two or three different kinds of bombs.
Hargude said investigators had not determined what role this group played in the July 11 commuter blasts.
But he said there was no Lashkar operative in Mumbai more senior than Faisal Shaikh, and the orders the members of the operation confessed to receiving bore a chilling resemblance to the strategy of the July 11 strikes: to target first-class train compartments.
Somini Sengupta contributed reporting from Mumbai.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/07/28/news/blast.php
There was an al Qaeda camp in Oregon too.
There was an al Qaeda camp in Oregon too.
But none in Iraq
Interesting.
There was an al Qaeda camp in Oregon too.
BTW, do you have a link to this??
I remember hearing something about it.. but that it never actually happened.
Here's an update on the charges (Captain Hook)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=a.TCJzQA5F9Y&refer=uk
But none in Iraq
Interesting.
Well, there were camps in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak....and was directed by elite Iraqi military units. Interviews by U.S. government interrogators with Iraqi regime officials and military leaders corroborate documentary evidence. Many of the fighters were drawn from terrorist groups in northern Africa with close ties to al Qaeda, chief among them Algeria's GSPC and the Sudanese Islamic Army. Some 2,000 terrorists were trained at these Iraqi camps each year from 1999 to 2002, putting the total number at or above 8,000.
Pakistan told to shut down terror camps
Published: 31 July 2006
NEW DELHI: A stalemate in the peace dialogue between India and Pakistan will end only if Islamabad honors its pledge to stop terror groups from operating out of its territories, a top Indian official said yesterday.
Anand Sharma, India's junior minister for external affairs, said Pakistan had to show its commitment to restoring peace and normal relations with India by shutting down terrorist training camps on its soil.
It would also have to extradite suspects living in Pakistan but wanted in India for terror attacks, Sharma said in an interview with the private Times Now television channel.
"Talks can only take place when Pakistan realizes the need to take firm action," Sharma said.
India called off a scheduled meeting between top-level bureaucrats from the two sides after the July 11 train bombings in Mumbai.
Indian investigators have said Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, a Pakistan-based militant group, was involved in the series of bombings during rush hour which left more than 200 people dead and 800 others wounded.
"Pakistan has to demonstrate its commitment and sincerity. That can be only by fulfilling the assurances which they have given," Sharma said.
The minister was referring to a commitment made by Pakistan's Gen Pervez Musharraf in January 2004 that Pakistan would not allow its territory to be used by terrorist groups working against India.
That assurance marked the start of a peace dialogue between the nuclear-armed neighbors and a thaw in their decades-long hostile relations. Although progress on the central dispute over Kashmir - a Himalayan region claimed by both - was slow, India and Pakistan stepped up contacts in Kashmir with new bus and train links and an ease on visa restrictions. However, an upsurge in violence in India's part of divided Kashmir in recent weeks and the July 11 blasts have put pressure on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government.
http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Story.asp?Article=151179&Sn=WORL&IssueID=29133
On 7/6/06, Bman warned ya
But of course no one listend. Bush has stated that Pakistan is our ally..
Bman said, NO.. .that's where the terrorist live and find support...
Five days later, they killed 170 people in India.
Oh well.
Bman is warning ya, again!
Associated Press Worldstream
July 31, 2006 Monday 10:30 AM GMT
India says Pakistan-based rebel group is targeting nuclear facilities
NEW DELHI
India's defense minister on Monday repeated a warning that Islamic militants based in Pakistan were targeting Indian nuclear, military and religious sites, a news agency reported.
Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee told lawmakers that militants from Lashkar-e-Tayabba a group believed to have links to al-Qaida "are planning to carry out some strikes on critical infrastructure items, military targets and religious places," according to the Press Trust of India.
There's also intelligence reports indicating Lashkar is planning to attack nuclear installations in India, Mukherjee said.
His comments came three days after National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan issued a similar warning, which was dismissed by Islamabad as an Indian attempt to defame Pakistan.
Lashkar is among the groups suspected of taking part in a string of bombings in India, including the July 11 Bombay train bombings, which killed 207 people.
Mukherjee told Parliament the government was taking the latest threats seriously.
"Necessary steps are being taken to protect our vital installations and other high-profile targets," he said, without elaborating.
Banned in Pakistan and but reportedly still operating there openly, Lashkar is among the more than a dozen Islamic rebel groups fighting Indian rule in Kashmir. The rebels want the territory to be independent or merged with Pakistan, and New Delhi has long accused Islamabad of providing material aid and training to the insurgents. Pakistan says it only gives them diplomatic and moral support.
About 68,000 people have been killed in the conflict since it began in 1989.
Rightwingnut
07-31-2006, 01:11 PM
Thanks for the warning Bman!
Ummm...what exactly am I supposed to do about it? :D
Bman is warning ya, again!
Associated Press Worldstream
July 31, 2006 Monday 10:30 AM GMT
India says Pakistan-based rebel group is targeting nuclear facilities
NEW DELHI
India's defense minister on Monday repeated a warning that Islamic militants based in Pakistan were targeting Indian nuclear, military and religious sites, a news agency reported.
Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee told lawmakers that militants from Lashkar-e-Tayabba a group believed to have links to al-Qaida "are planning to carry out some strikes on critical infrastructure items, military targets and religious places," according to the Press Trust of India.
There's also intelligence reports indicating Lashkar is planning to attack nuclear installations in India, Mukherjee said.
His comments came three days after National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan issued a similar warning, which was dismissed by Islamabad as an Indian attempt to defame Pakistan.
Lashkar is among the groups suspected of taking part in a string of bombings in India, including the July 11 Bombay train bombings, which killed 207 people.
Mukherjee told Parliament the government was taking the latest threats seriously.
"Necessary steps are being taken to protect our vital installations and other high-profile targets," he said, without elaborating.
Banned in Pakistan and but reportedly still operating there openly, Lashkar is among the more than a dozen Islamic rebel groups fighting Indian rule in Kashmir. The rebels want the territory to be independent or merged with Pakistan, and New Delhi has long accused Islamabad of providing material aid and training to the insurgents. Pakistan says it only gives them diplomatic and moral support.
About 68,000 people have been killed in the conflict since it began in 1989.
SmokedYourDSM
07-31-2006, 01:12 PM
Thanks for the warning Bman!
Ummm...what exactly am I supposed to do about it? :D
Find Sid a vestile virgin whose willing.... STAT!
Thanks for the warning Bman!
Ummm...what exactly am I supposed to do about it? :D
Call your Congressman and President and demand that the US recognize Pakistan and a state sponsor of terrorism and ask them to enact the Bman Plan:
http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showpost.php?p=743206&postcount=90
The FIRST step, however, is to recognize Saudi Arabia and Pakistan as the "axis of evil", when it comes to WMD, and Al Qaeda and 9/11
Forget Iraq.. they're not threat. Forget Syria.. they are no threat. Iran IS a threat, but only because we allowed Pakistan to arm them. Same with North Korea... Pakistan must be disarmed, immediately.
Here is what needs to be done
Impose economic and arms sanctions and embargoes (and urge other nations to do the same) until the following steps are taken FOR STARTERS:
1. Turn Bin Laden over to the US
2. Turn AQ Khan over to the west for questioning to determine who he sold nuclear weapons technology to.
3. Allow elections and a legitimate governmet.... Bush is a laughingstock when he runs around preaching "democracy" but in the same breath calls Musharaff (recently included on a list of the 10 Ten worst Dictators in the world) our "major non NATO ally).
4. demand accountability and reparations from Pakistan for its role in 9/11
5. Full nuclear dismarment
If the sanctions don't work, enforce a no fly zone and full military blockade of the nation, as was done with Saddam... From there, continue to ratchet up the sanctions, until Pakistan comes to the table.
What's so hard about that?
Oh ,Pakistan has NUKES right?? So what?? So did the USSR but that didn't stop us from playing hardball with them and bringing about their collapse , now did it?
Rightwingnut
07-31-2006, 01:16 PM
Bman, I have already done that. Sometime ago.
And its all your fault.
Call your Congressman and President and demand that the US recognize Pakistan and a state sponsor of terrorism and ask them to enact the Bman Plan:
http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showpost.php?p=743206&postcount=90
The FIRST step, however, is to recognize Saudi Arabia and Pakistan as the "axis of evil", when it comes to WMD, and Al Qaeda and 9/11
Forget Iraq.. they're not threat. Forget Syria.. they are no threat. Iran IS a threat, but only because we allowed Pakistan to arm them. Same with North Korea... Pakistan must be disarmed, immediately.
Here is what needs to be done
Impose economic and arms sanctions and embargoes (and urge other nations to do the same) until the following steps are taken FOR STARTERS:
1. Turn Bin Laden over to the US
2. Turn AQ Khan over to the west for questioning to determine who he sold nuclear weapons technology to.
3. Allow elections and a legitimate governmet.... Bush is a laughingstock when he runs around preaching "democracy" but in the same breath calls Musharaff (recently included on a list of the 10 Ten worst Dictators in the world) our "major non NATO ally).
4. demand accountability and reparations from Pakistan for its role in 9/11
5. Full nuclear dismarment
If the sanctions don't work, enforce a no fly zone and full military blockade of the nation, as was done with Saddam... From there, continue to ratchet up the sanctions, until Pakistan comes to the table.
What's so hard about that?
Oh ,Pakistan has NUKES right?? So what?? So did the USSR but that didn't stop us from playing hardball with them and bringing about their collapse , now did it?
Bman, I have already done that. Sometime ago.
And its all your fault.
Bravo! You're a True American!
sidthereal
08-01-2006, 11:26 AM
FBI pictures spot terror camps in Pakistan (http://in.rediff.com/news/2006/aug/01terror.htm)
Pakistan's claims that it does not have terrorist training camps in its territory is being strongly contested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which has told a US court that satellite pictures pointed towards such a camp.
In the trial of 23-year-old Pakistani American Hamid Hayat, who has been accused of terrorism-related charges, Defence Intelligence Agency's expert Eric Benn has stated that there was about 70 per cent 'probability' that the satellite images pointed to a terrorist training camp in near Balakot in northeast Pakistan.
Much to Pakistan's embarrassment, Benn told the district court in California that although he did not detect any formal weapons training, including firing ranges, targets, rocket launchers or explosives testing, it did not mean they were not taking place. The structures and trail in the remote terrain fit the signature of terrorist training, as opposed to regular training of Pakistani armed forces, he said.
Hamid's sentencing has been postponed by the court by four months to November and his father Umer Hayat, who at one time was charged with lying to federal authorities, is being re-tried after the first round ended in a hung jury, according to media reports.
The allegation against Hamid has been that from California's area of Lodi, which has a small Pakistani immigrant community, the 23-year-old went to Pakistan to attend religious school and training for terrorism with the intent of returning to the US to commit violent acts.
The reports said Hamid, who was to be sentenced on July 14, is facing charges of terrorism and jihad, which can give him a jail term of as many as 39 years.
Federal prosecutors want to nail their suspect -- and indirectly Pakistan -- in the terror training camp case while the defence has argued that Hamid never attended any terror facility but only made up the story to satisfy FBI agents who grilled him in June last year.
The FBI rolled out its DIA's imagery expert Benn, who on the basis of satellite photos of areas, initially argued that there was perhaps a 50 per cent 'possibility' of a terrorist training camp in northeast Pakistan. But after viewing Hamid's confession to the FBI, the defence analyst concluded that there was as much of a 70 per cent 'probability' that the satellite images pointed to a militant training camp.
Hamid's jury was shown satellite images taken between 2001 and 2004 of a Pakistani national forest, which was on a mountainous terrain and about 10 km from Balakot. The defence intelligence analyst apparently also identified a 3 km trail linked to the main road and dotted with several structures that seemed to reflect a guard house, barracks with a tin roof and perhaps some mud houses as well, the reports said.
Hamid's initial confession was that he underwent training at a camp in Balakot with Benn stressing that the youth's descriptions of the layout were 'consistent' with the physical things he observed in the satellite images and which brought about the 60 to 70 per cent certainty of the images depicting a terrorist training camp. But later, Hamid also confessed that he was at camps in Kashmir and in the Tora Bora mountains in Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden was believed to have taken refuge at one time.
Pakistan has been attracting notoriety with regard to terrorism-related charges with federal authorities arresting persons known to have connections with terror outfits like the Lashkar-e-Tayiba, which is seen in many quarters as nothing more than an extension of the al-Qaeda.
nice find..
and yet, the Bush Administration continues to turn a blind eye to it
Amazing.. The only conclusion I can draw is that they WANT the terrorists to have a place of refuge..
Honest to God, that's the only thing I can possibly imagine to explain why Bush refuses to go after terrorist camps in Pakistan.
Atlas
08-01-2006, 12:40 PM
nice find..
and yet, the Bush Administration continues to turn a blind eye to it
Amazing.. The only conclusion I can draw is that they WANT the terrorists to have a place of refuge..
Honest to God, that's the only thing I can possibly imagine to explain why Bush refuses to go after terrorist camps in Pakistan.
Sooo..... Bman, you want us to bomb Pakistan?
SmokedYourDSM
08-01-2006, 12:42 PM
Sooo..... Bman, you want us to bomb Pakistan?
No, he has countlessly laid out what he wants us to do.... and it is a very good plan at that. Just do a post search.
edit: sorry to answer for you bman, figured I'd save you some work... ;)
No, he has countlessly laid out what he wants us to do.... and it is a very good plan at that. Just do a post search.
edit: sorry to answer for you bman, figured I'd save you some work... ;)
I know.. :)
thanks!
Sooo..... Bman, you want us to bomb Pakistan?
5 posts prior to your's (post number #106), I laid out my plan
http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showpost.php?p=758019&postcount=106
Bombing can work at some stage of the campaign... but that wouldn't be until all other options are exhausted
sidthereal
08-01-2006, 01:36 PM
Indian Anger towards US (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-1833213,curpg-2.cms)
Washington: After reviewing satellite imagery — which the US used last year to prove the existence of jehadi camps in Pakistan in connection with a case involving a Pakistani father-and-son duo — for the jury, US government expert Eric Benn had said the mountainous location and description of the camp near Balakot in northeast Pakistan are consistent with statements made by accused Hamir Hayat. Hayat had been interrogated by FBI last June, when he returned to US after two years of training and indoctrination in Pakistan.
"The kind of information I got out of the (Hayat interview) transcript... is consistent with the physical things I observed," Benn testified in US district court. "This would be a militant camp."
The testimony undermines Pakistan’s insistence that there are no terrorist camps in the country, a pro forma denial that is often buttressed by state department certification about Islamabad being a frontline ally in the war on terrorism. Pakistan has now turned around charges that it hosts terrorist groups to charge India with sponsoring terrorism in Pakistan.
It has also furnished its own list of terror suspects it wants New Delhi to apprehend and send back in lieu of India’s 20-most wanted, including Dawood Ibrahim.
Indian officials are yet to review the Lodi case fully, but they say it has not gone unnoticed in anti-terrorism circles that young men of Pakistani origin are being prosecuted on terrorism charges in places from California to New York to Florida to Georgia to Toronto, Sydney, London and other areas in Europe. "You never hear of Iranians or Syrians being charged. It is always Pakistanis who have returned from Pakistan or are heading there," said an official, who asked not to be named.
New Delhi also appears sore at US state department for underplaying the gravity of Pakistan’s role in terrorist activities to achieve its (Washington’s) political objectives. Such repeated certifications of good behaviour, even in the face of evidence to the contrary from the US defence and intelligence agencies, only serve to embolden Pakistan’s military establishment and undermine its civil institutions, Indian officials say.
Washington has also lost the plot in cases like Daniel Pearl’s murder where Pakistan’s military establishment is holding up execution of death sentence of the convict, Omar Sheikh, because of his links with the ISI, they added.
In recent months, US law enforcement authorities have cracked several cases, including the one in Virginia, of jehadis with connections to LeT. Lashkar, New Delhi now says, is more potent than the al-Qaida and virtually functions as al-Qaida’s operating arm.
:add08:
Indian officials are yet to review the Lodi case fully, but they say it has not gone unnoticed in anti-terrorism circles that young men of Pakistani origin are being prosecuted on terrorism charges in places from California to New York to Florida to Georgia to Toronto, Sydney, London and other areas in Europe. "You never hear of Iranians or Syrians being charged. It is always Pakistanis who have returned from Pakistan or are heading there," said an official, who asked not to be named. .
GOD DAMN!!! finally someone is saying it.. I've been saying that for YEARS now
You almost NEVER hear about a Syrian terrorist...even rarers is an Iraqi or Iranian
Yet, these are the "terrorist" nations, according to Bush
Most al Qaeda members are Saudi, Yemenese, Jordanian or Pakistani....
Those are all Bush's "friends"
I'll tell ya.. there is some truth to the notion that Bush actually WANTS terrorism.. that it serves him and his agenda ... The facts continue to suggest that is the case.
Oh no!! More Bad news for the IH Pakistan apologist Brigade...
Seems there are even MORE allegations now.. this time in Britain, of Pakistan's terrorist camps.
Lets see.. .men in the UK, the US, Canada, and Australia (among others) have all been accused of ATTENDING TERRORIST CAMPS IN PAKISTAN, AFTER 9/11
What?? How can that be??? I thought Musharaff was our "ally"?? Why would he allow such a thing??
Mr. Bush says we'll go after the terrorists and THOSE THAT HARBOR THEM.
Mr. Bush, it turns out.. is nothing but a liar
Daily Star
July 31, 2006 Monday
U.K. 1st Edition
BOBBY 'WENT TO AL-QAIDA CAMP'
A MUSLIM police officer faces a claim that he attended a terror camp linked to al-Qaida during a trip to Pakistan.
The officer, who denies the allegation, has been placed on restricted duties while Scotland Yard chiefs probe the allegation.
Sources say he is one of three Muslim officers being quizzed in a hunt for terror "sleeper cells".
The officer, who is in his 20s, joined the police in 2001, when he returned to Britain from Pakistan.
Police insisted that they are not investigating the backgrounds of all Muslim staff.
sidthereal
08-07-2006, 01:46 PM
Pak terror groups have 'design' against India, says US (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-1867695,curpg-1.cms)
NEW DELHI: The US on Monday acknowledged that certain terrorist groups having "designs" against India still exist in Pakistan, virtually lending support to New Delhi's contention.
US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher, who had earlier said that India had no evidence to accuse Pakistan for the Mumbai blasts, today pointed out "things have advanced" since he made such remarks weeks ago.
"We all know there is terrorism in the (South Asian) region. Some of terrorism is in Pakistan. Some of the (terror) groups that have designs against India still have pieces in Pakistan," he said at an interaction.
Boucher, who earlier held nearly three-hour meeting with External Affairs Ministry Joint Secretary (America) S Jai Shanker, said "more work needs to be done" to eliminate terrorism.
He said during his talks with Jai Shanker, the two sides felt the need to fight terrorism at "all places and in all its forms" as they discussed joint efforts to fight the scourge.
"When it comes to terrorism, there is lot more work to do," the US official said while interacting with Indian MPs and business leaders.
He, however, stopped short of directly pointing an accusing finger at Pakistan.
Describing the July 11 Mumbai blasts as a "deep tragedy", Boucher said "you (people of India) have been hurt by terrorism repeatedly. You are determined to beat that...We remain your partners."
He said the US was working with India and other countries of the region to try and beat terrorism.
"I don't see the issue of Kashmir and terrorism linked in anyway," Boucher underlined, adding "we need all to fight terrorism for variety of reasons. But it’s also good to see progress made on Kashmir. We would like to see that as well."
He said the governments of the two countries had taken steps with regard to Kashmir and added that the US would "certainly welcome" continuation of that dialogue.
He claimed that Pakistan has "turned against terrorism" and noted that terror incidents had taken place there as well as in India and Bangladesh.
"We all have not yet finished the job. There is lot more work to do," the US Assistant Secretary of State said.
Pointing out that the US had been watching the situation closely after Mumbai blasts, he said "I think, we understand the (Indo-Pak) Foreign Secretary talks being postponed."
Boucher termed as positive the comments made by Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran after his informal meeting with his Pakistan counterpart Riaz Mohd Khan in Dhaka last week.
"Both sides have in mind that at an appropriate point they will decide that they will be able to get back to discussions," he said.
Noting that there had been a lot of positive developments like confidence-building measures in Indo-Pak relations in the recent years, he said that people have thrown up "lot more ideas that might help find a solution in Kashmir".
ABC News Exclusive: Three Alleged Ringleaders ID'd
August 10, 2006 2:02 PM
Brian Ross Reports:
Three of the alleged ringleaders of the foiled airplane bomb plot have been identified by Western intelligence agencies involved in unraveling the plot.
Two of them are believed to have recently traveled to Pakistan and were later in receipt of money wired to them from Pakistan, reportedly to purchase tickets for the suicide bombers.
Sources identify the three, who are now in custody, as:
--Rashid Rauf
--Mohammed al-Ghandra
--Ahmed al Khan
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/
sidthereal
08-10-2006, 02:41 PM
Yawn.
It will never work. The Bushites will die defending their enemy.
sidthereal
08-11-2006, 02:21 PM
London plot has Pakistani stamp (http://www.ibnlive.com/news/london-plot-has-pakistani-stamp/18309-2.html)
New Delhi: The alleged plot to blow aircraft from London’s Heathrow Airport has a Pakistan link. One of the two British nationals of Pakistani origin detained in connection with the alleged plot was picked up in Karachi.
The Pakistani link is visible in several deadly attacks that have happened in recent years. Three of four bombers involved in the London tube train bombings were of Pakistani origin; the blasts in Delhi in last October is seen as the handiwork of the Lashkar-e-Taiyyaba (LeT) and the principle architect of the Madrid train blasts are allegedly hiding in Pakistan.
Pakistan's respected Herald magazine, which is based in Karachi, gave an alarming picture of terrorist activity in a recent report. The magazine says the Hizbul Mujahideen is running a training camp for 250 militants at Hisari in the North-West Frontier Province.
Three camps for some thousand militants are operational in Manshera and Abbotabad. The report also says groups such as the LeT and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen run their own smaller camps.
The Pakistan Government has been pro-active in handing over militants wanted by the US. Two weeks ago, nearly 200 odd Taliban cadre were handed over to the US. In the last three years close to 700 Al-Qaida militants have been handed over. Similar cooperation has not been forthcoming when it comes to India.
The Pakistan Government denies its nationals are linked to the alleged plot in London. “I have seen some media reports about Pakistani connection, Pakistani links. No, they are not Pakistanis; they (persons detained) are all British nationals,” said Tasnim Aslam, spokesperson for the Pakistan Foreign Ministry.
FC-UK
08-11-2006, 03:12 PM
Don't know about 'harboring' but it's been a known fact they have wasps nests of Al Qada in certain areas. Why is this big news to you??
Because he's Indian nad has biased views against certain countries
sidthereal
08-11-2006, 03:31 PM
Because he's Indian nad has biased views against certain countries
And you have a closed mind to your own.
sidthereal
08-11-2006, 05:19 PM
'Key man' held in Pakistan is brother of UK plot suspect (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2308675,00.html)
Pakistan said today that its security forces had arrested a "key person" in the alleged transatlantic terror plot, who is the brother of one of the 24 men held by police in a dramatic dawn swoop in the UK yesterday.
Rashid Rauf was arrested in the Punjab on Wednesday, hours before the simultaneous raids in Birmingham, Buckinghamshire and London that brought Britain’s airports to a standstill yesterday.
Among the two men arrested in Birmingham was Tayib Rauf, Mr Rauf’s brother.
In total, Pakistani security forces arrested seven people, including at least two British nationals, thought to be connected with the alleged plot to blow up US passenger jets heading from Britain to the United States.
John Reid, the Home Secretary, has said that the alleged plot could have been more destructive than 9/11 had it gone ahead.
A Pakistani Foreign Ministry statement named Mr Rauf as a "key person" in the plot and said that the arrests underscored "the very important role that has been played by Pakistan in breaking this international terrorist network".
Without elaborating, the Foreign Ministry said there were "indications of Afghanistan-based al-Qaeda connection".
The arrests in Pakistan came after weeks, even several months, of surveillance on the basis of information provided by MI5, which had been monitoring the UK end of the plot since last year.
Last night US officials told reporters that substantial sums of money had been wired from Pakistan to two of the alleged ringleaders in Britain, so that they could purchase airline tickets.
One report said they were planning a "dry run" to see if the mechanics of the plot worked - and hinted that this was what decided the security services and Special Branch to move in, ending a huge surveillance operation that had lasted a year.
Today further details were emerging about the 24 UK suspects being questioned by detectives at Paddington Green police high security station in West London.
The majority of those arrested in the UK are understood to be young British Asian men of Pakistani descent, many holding dual nationality.
At least two of the suspects are believed to be British males who have converted to Islam, including Umar Islam, 28, from High Wycombe, who was born Brian Young, and Abdul Waheed, 21, from High Wycombe, formerly known as Don Stewart-Whyte, who is believed to be the son of a former Conservative constituency agent.
Today the police were refusing to confirm the identities of any of those arrested, or reports that at least one is a woman. The names of 19 men aged between 17 and 36 were however released last night by the Treasury, which has frozen their assets, using United Nations powers to tackle the financing of terrorism. Several are understood to have had thousands of pounds in their bank accounts.
Meanwhile forensic officers were continuing their searches at homes and businesses in Walthamstow, High Wycombe and Birmingham. Unconfirmed sources reported that a "martyrdom" video, of the type made by suicide bombers, had been found at one address.
The Evening Standard reported that two airline tickets for United Airlines flights from London to America today and Wednesday had also been discovered, but this was not confirmed. The Standard speculated that the second ticket indicated that next Wednesday - August 16, or 16/8 - was to have been the date of the alleged plot.
Mr Reid today thanked the Pakistani authorities for their help and said today that Britain's security level would remain at "critical", the highest level. He said that although police believed they had arrested the main suspects, he could not rule out further arrests.
ABC, the US television network, was however reporting sources in Washington saying that five suspects were still at large.
Some in the British Muslim community have voiced scepticism about the existence of the plot, claiming that the timing was too convenient in drawing attention away from the crisis in the Middle East.
Mr Reid today urged all communities in Britain to make common cause against terrorism, stressing that ordinary people had shared values of tolerance, democracy, and the peaceful resolution of problems. Causing the deaths of innocent civilians was never justified, he said.
Air travellers were reported to be experiencing fewer difficulties today, although more than 300 flights from London airports were cancelled.
Airlines said that most passengers had heeded the warnings in the news media that all hand baggage had been banned, except for wallets, travel documents, and limited medicines, sanitary items and baby food carried in a clear plastic bag. As a result, the delays were much shorter.
A meeting of the National Aviation Security Committee this afternoon will discuss how long the current heightened security measures will last, and what other measures were needed to stay ahead of the terrorists, said Douglas Alexander, the Transport Secretary. He promised that the draconian measures were being kept under constant review.
Gatwick reported that 44 flights had been cancelled, British Airways cancelled 120 flights from Heathrow, including six long haul flights to the United States, EasyJet cancelled 112 flights - mainly to UK destinations that could equally be reached by train - and Ryanair cancelled more than 30 flights. Many regional airports were however reporting near normal levels of service.
The alleged plot which has been intercepted was intended to "commit mass murder on an unimaginable scale", Deputy Commissioner Paul Stephenson of the Metropolitan Police said yesterday.
Meetings of the Government’s Cobra emergency unit were told that the first wave of bombings was to have targeted five aircraft leaving British airports in the next few days. The destinations, US officials said, were New York, Washington DC, Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles. The plotters are said to have studied the timetables of three US airlines: American, Continental and United.
Security sources said that a second wave of attacks had been considered, with as many as 12 aircraft to be attacked.
Surveillance on internet traffic between the suspected terrorists indicated that they had considered setting off their devices simultaneously in mid-Atlantic but had also discussed trying to blow up the aircraft as they circled above the destination cities. The aim was to cause maximum death and destruction in the air and on American soil.
US sources said that the main fear of British authorities was that terrorists planned to hide micro-bombs in false bottoms built into opaque energy drink bottles, enabling them to still drink the contents.
The devices may have been liquid explosive but experts said that it was more likely to have been a more stable peroxide material similar to that used in the 7/7 attacks last year.
The apparent intention was to explode the device using a detonator concealed in the flash mechanism of a disposable camera to puncture a hole in the aircraft skin. MP3 players or electronic key fobs could also have been used to trigger an explosion.
Michael Chertoff, the US Homeland Security Secretary, said: "The conception, the large number of people involved, the sophisticated design of the devices that were being considered and the sophisticated nature of the plan, all suggest that this group that came together to conspire was very determined, and very skilled, and very capable."
Mr Chertoff said that the plan had many of the characteristics of an al-Qaeda operation — a so-called terrorist spectacular aimed at multiple targets. He added that it was "well advanced" and "really quite close to the execution phase".
The plot, which at first was considered too far-fetched, had echoes of an al-Qaeda plan, codenamed Bojinka and discovered in the Philippines in the mid-1990s, to use explosives in bottles in attacks on aircraft.
Reports from Pakistani intelligence, suggesting the direct involvement of senior Kashmiri militants linked to al-Qaeda, convinced British intelligence that the plot had to be taken seriously. Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist branch was brought in to the operation last December.
"We have been looking at meetings, movements, travel, spending and the aspirations of a large group of people," said Peter Clarke, Deputy Assistant Commisioner and head of the Anti-Terrorist Branch. "This has involved close co-operation, not only between agencies and police forces in the UK, but also internationally."
Pakistan has repeatedly been accused of not doing enough to stamp out terror groups, that are alleged to have provided training, expertise and support to terror cells planning atrocities in Western countries.
Several al-Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, are believed to be hiding in the lawless tribal territory in the mountains between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Their network has forged links with some outlawed Pakistani terror groups, including Jaish' e Mohammed, Harkat ul Mujahideen and Lashkar-i-Taiba.
There are strong links between Pakistani emigrant communities living in Britain and the three groups, thanks to the large Kashmiri diaspora living in Britain. A steady and substantial supply of funds flows from Britain to the banned groups, and young British-born Muslims have been recruited to carry out terror operations in Kashmir and Afghanistan.
At least two of the British Muslims involved in the 7/7 suicide bomb attacks, that killed 52 innocent people last year on the London Tube and bus network, had visited Pakistan months earlier, raising suspicions they had ties to militants in the country.
Pakistan retorts that it is co-operating fully with Western security agencies, and has arrested hundreds of al-Qaeda members since joining the US-led global war on terrorism following the 9/11 attacks. Despite those efforts, President Pervez Musharraf’s government still struggles to change perceptions that Pakistan is a haven for militancy.
Nato countries with troops in Afghanistan are frustrated that Pakistan has not done more to staunch the flow of Taleban fighters involved in a cross-border insurgency, diplomats say.
candypreet
08-12-2006, 07:35 AM
good posts sid
sidthereal
08-12-2006, 02:33 PM
good posts sid
Thanks CP
sidthereal
08-13-2006, 08:37 AM
Charities' funds diverted for aircraft plot: Report (http://in.rediff.com/news/2006/aug/13aircraft.htm)
Certain United Kingdom-based Muslim charities had transferred 'huge sums' to banks in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir to pay for the alleged airline bombing plot, a report said on Sunday. It also stated that some of the terror suspects visited al-Qaeda camps in the area, posing as quake relief workers.
Key members of the British terror gang reportedly travelled to Pakistan's lawless border region with Afghanistan to learn bomb-making techniques, the Mail on Sunday said.
It said security services and Pakistani intelligence are now trying to piece together the exact movements of several plotters over recent years.
On Thursday, British police had foiled a suspected al-Qaeda plot to blow up 10 US-bound flights using liquid explosives smuggled in handbags.
Officials believe the trips -- which the men claimed were to carry out charity work with refugees from the Afghan war and victims of the South Asian earthquake last October -- allowed them to meet terror leaders. It was during these trips that the airline plot was conceived and fleshed out, security and intelligence sources now claim, the report said.
The relief camps in PoK were run by the Lashkar-e-Tayiba, an outfit India blames for last month's train bombings in Mumbai and which has been designated a terror group by the US State Department and banned by the Pakistani government. The United Nations has classified the group as being associated with al-Qaeda.
The details emerged after it was revealed that two of the men arrested in connection with the plot -- Tayib and Rashid Rauf -- have links to a British aid organisation, Crescent Relief.
There is no suggestion the registered charity is in any way linked to the terror plot, but the two suspects' father Abdul helped set it up.
At least three suspects arrested in last week's anti-terror raids in High Wycombe have been to Pakistan in recent months, according to friends and neighbours.
Brothers Assad and Amjad Sarwar visited the country, as did taxi driver Waseem Kayani. A friend of Assad, 26, and Amjad, 28, said the visit was to help victims of the earthquake in the mountainous region of PoK and North-West Frontier regions.
"They went to help with the charity work out there like a lot of people did. I don't know exactly where they were but they were there for a couple of weeks," he said.
Meanwhile, on Saturday night, Pakistani officials linked a second British charity to the plot, the report said.
Officials in Karachi claimed the unnamed charity transferred 'huge sums' to banks in the PoK region to pay for the aircraft plot.
They said two British citizens of Pak-origin and a third man, an Islamabad-based builder, had been in receipt of 'earthquake relief' cash. All have been arrested , the report said.
Xenomorph
08-13-2006, 09:54 AM
Keep it up Sid..gigady gooo:)
candypreet
08-14-2006, 11:08 AM
just a frienddly bump
Yeah.. .that's right..I told ya so!
Pakistan: heart of darkness
By Cam Simpson
August 14, 2006 12:00
A SMALL group of American "jihadists" uses paintball guns to conduct weapons training in the woods of northern Virginia.
A Californian is convicted of providing support to terrorists. Extremists are arrested in raids across Australia before they can allegedly stage attacks in Sydney and Melbourne.
Increasingly, such seemingly disparate cases involving "homegrown" terror groups share connections to one place – Pakistan.
The alleged plot to blow up US-bound, trans-Atlantic jetliners foiled by British officials adds another and potentially more significant entry to the growing list.
It could also add a dimension not seen since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in terms of scale, sophistication and leadership being provided from abroad for a seemingly local group of terrorist "self-starters".
Until recently, many counter-terrorism officials believed that extremist enclaves in Pakistan largely offered inspiration, ideological inculcation and limited training for a new generation of militants living in the West who had become radicalised or inspired by al-Qaeda propaganda.
The danger of these cells ranged from the apparently innocuous, such as the so-called paintball jihadists in Virginia, to the extreme, including the London Underground bombers who killed themselves and 52 others last year.
But the nature of the alleged trans-Atlantic plot foiled last week, a scheme that appears to have required substantial technical expertise and detailed planning, suggests "homegrown" groups may now be receiving significant support, if not direct co-ordination, from within Pakistan.
Current and former senior US intelligence officials say Pakistan clearly serves as a bridge.
"The moment I heard the first news about the airline plot I knew it was just a matter of time until we heard the word Pakistan," a US intelligence agent told The Times.
"Whether it's 9/11, the Bali bombs, 7/7 and now this, Pakistan is always the connection. That's gotta raise some questions."
On one side are militants from the West who want to join the global jihad. On the other are more experienced extremists who can help fulfil those wishes, offer guidance or serve as conduits for al-Qaeda instructions.
With or without direct ties to Osama bin Laden's terror network, Pakistan's status as a seemingly unshakeable haven for militants taking aim at targets in the West is likely to complicate the already delicate relationship the US maintains with the regime of President Pervez Musharraf.
As the recent arrests of Rashid Rauf, a British national of Pakistani descent, and others show, Musharraf has been a key ally in fighting extremists. But those same arrests also prove his nation continues to offer sanctuary for terrorists.
US officials also are well aware that their support for Musharraf can endanger his power, or even his life.
Extremists have twice tried to assassinate him since he began targeting militants inside Pakistan.
Citing a Pakistani connection to virtually every so-called homegrown terror cell that has recently come to light, a second senior intelligence official in Washington said one significant mystery remained: Are al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan recruiting would-be terrorists or are the would-be militants going to Pakistan on their own to find guidance?
Clearly, the senior intelligence official said, there is evidence of a "reverse underground railroad" of militants flowing into Pakistan before returning home to sow mayhem.
Officials worldwide have been preoccupied for more than two years by a fear of terror groups consisting of "self-starters" – people who become radicalised on their own and decide to conduct operations without the support of an extremist network, or with only tenuous connections.
Instead of taking orders from al-Qaeda these terrorists act on what they believe is al-Qaeda's behalf.
Although bin Laden has always seen the incitement of terrorism as one of his primary roles, al-Qaeda has been viewed for the past couple of years as more of a global ideology than an actual terror network.
The March 11, 2004, synchronised bombings of trains in Madrid, attacks that left 192 people dead, were viewed as the first significant such assault.
John McLaughlin, the Bush administration's former acting chief of central intelligence, says a viable al-Qaeda network exists along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan – and is drawing militants from across the globe.
For his part, Musharraf has repeatedly dismissed ties between his nation and global terror plots, although current and former intelligence officials say his claims are politically based and demonstrably false.
In the wake of the Underground bombings he declared that his security services had "completely shattered al-Qaeda's vertical and horizontal links and smashed its communication and propaganda setup"
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/opinion/story/0,22049,20114041-5001031,00.html#
14 MONTHS after I started this thread... Right Wing Newspapers are starting to fucking FIGURE IT OUT..
Well done boys... you're doin'a "heckavajob" breaking big "news" like this
From today's Investor's Business Daily
Investor's Business Daily
August 15, 2006 Tuesday
NATIONAL EDITION
EDITORIALS
All Terror Roads Lead To Pakistan
Allies: Islamabad was quick to trumpet its help in foiling the sky terror plot. And by all accounts, it deserves some praise. But such cooperation seems to occur only when the West gets wind of another Pakistan-based plot.
This time we were lucky. Last year, Pakistani Britons trained and funded in Pakistan bombed the heart of London. As eyes fell on ally Pakistan, its government vowed to dismantle the infrastructure that gave the terrorists support in Lahore and Karachi. It never happened.
Meanwhile, some of the Pakistani Britons accused in the latest plot traveled to the same Pakistani cities where they again received terrorism training and funding. Reports say at least two of the suspects visited the same madrassas in Lahore as one of the London bombers.
The religious school is run by an al-Qaida charitable front called Jamaat al-Dawat, which allegedly has funneled money to al-Qaida in Karachi and Peshawar, and also directly to London. The charity was declared a terror group by the U.S. earlier this year.
But Islamabad never followed suit. It never outlawed the group, never froze its assets or even blacklisted it. The front has been free to operate legally in Pakistan, even though the government knew it was connected to the London bombings and other terrorism.
Islamabad has let several other militant groups, many of them al-Qaida subcontractors, operate with virtual impunity inside Pakistan. In all, they make up a farm system for al-Qaida, providing it with tens of thousands of recruits who can be trained in explosives.
They also offer spiritual guidance for martyrs, which is a highly complicated affair. Suicide bombers have to be vetted for reliability and then walked through their oath of death and final testimony, which is often videotaped for al-Qaida propaganda purposes, a process managed by al-Qaida's inner circle. All this is done in Pakistan.
In fact, Pakistan may be the new Afghanistan. Al-Qaida and its subcontractors are training, funding and exporting terrorists to the West from inside Pakistan, and Islamabad plainly can't keep up with them. They're coming off the assembly lines in Peshawar, Karachi and Lahore at a faster and faster clip, and no one in the government can seem to find the OFF switch.
Last week's London case marks the sixth terror plot or attack to be linked to Pakistan over the last three years. That's two a year.
Yet all the while Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has dismissed ties between his nation and global terrorists. And he continues to suggest al-Qaida is based in neighboring Afghanistan, which Kabul flatly denies, calling Pakistan's claim "diversionary."
After the London bombings, Musharraf declared he had "completely shattered al-Qaida's vertical and horizontal links and smashed its communication and propaganda setup. Therefore, it is absolutely baseless to say that al-Qaida has its headquarters in Pakistan and that terror attacks in other parts of the world in any way originate from our country."
All due respect to our ally, the evidence says otherwise. John McLaughlin, the Bush administration's former acting CIA chief, says there's little doubt Pakistan is the new jihad training circuit for al-Qaida and that the group's leaders have found sanctuary there.
He's persuaded by recent evidence that two of the four London train bombers got more than basic training at jihad camps in Pakistan. Martyrdom videos capturing the last wishes of two of the bombers were released by al-Qaida in July to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the attack.
They strongly suggested to McLaughlin "some role of central leadership for al-Qaida" in the plot. He figures they were in touch with someone in Pakistan who helped them carry out the plot. That someone remains at large, never captured by Pakistani authorities.
Of course, the job we've subcontracted out to Musharraf is not an easy one. He points out, reasonably, that it's impossible to keep tabs on the thousands of Islamic militants within his border, many of them in the lawless tribal areas to the north and in teeming cities like Karachi. Also, his country is twice the size of California and covers mountainous terrain.
As a military dictator unrestrained by civil-rights laws, Musharraf could easily roll up Islamic militant groups and round up al-Qaida suspects. But if he cracks down too hard, he risks being seen by the Muslim masses as a poodle of Bush or Blair. (Some already call him Busharraf.) And he has survived two assassination attempts.
But it's plain that our ally needs to do more and needs outside help. He's not doing the job we need him to do, as al-Qaida appears to be flourishing there.
As for accepting our help, Musharraf will not let us send troops to his country to help him ferret out the bad guys. U.S. troops, he argues, would only incite a revolt among the masses who would view them as infidel occupiers.
Indeed, such a revolt could risk throwing control of Islamabad and its nuclear weapons into the hands of radicals. We've already sent Islamabad more aid and military gear, and that hasn't worked.
However, Islamabad might be amenable to third-party Muslim forces aiding its own military and security forces. Egypt and Jordan, for example, have had success cracking down on radicals and terrorists inside their countries.
Whatever the answer, the White House needs to approach the Pakistan problem from a different angle -- before a terror plot is exported to our own shores.
sidthereal
08-15-2006, 12:43 PM
JUD not linked to UK bomb plot: Pak (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1895971.cms)
ISLAMABAD: Denying as "absurd" reports that Jamat-ud-Dawa, headed by Lashker-e-Taiba founder Hafeez Saeed, was involved in the plot to blow up planes, Pakistan on Tuesday said the group has no links with the conspiracy and it has no plans to ban the outfit.
"There is no link with any Pakistani entity, proscribed or not. These are all speculative stories," Pakistan Foreign Office Spokesperson Tasnim Aslam told reporters.
Aslam said there was no connection between the recent house arrest of Saeed and the plot to blow up the planes. Saeed was detained in his house in Lahore on August 10 for some comments he had made and not for any links with the terror plot in Britain, she said.
"Hafeez Saeed has not been connected with any terrorist plot or terrorist incident. Let me clarify that." She said British Al Qaeda suspect Rashid Rauf, whose arrest in Pakistan is believed to have uncovered the conspiracy, had nothing to do with the charities involved in rehabilitation work after last October's deadly quake.
"These are all absurd stories. The objective is to malign Pakistan and to cast a shadow on Pakistan's efforts to uncover and foil this terrorist plot," Aslam said.
She said it was "ridiculous" to claim that funds meant for earthquake relief had been diverted. "These are all fabricated stories, somebody is cooking them," she added.
Asked if Pakistan had any plans to ban JUD which was already outlawed in the US, Aslam said, "The US has proscribed JUD. We do not have any evidence of JUD's involvement in any terrorist activity. Neither the US government has shared any evidence with us or the reasons why they banned it."
When asked whether the Pakistan government has investigated JUD's involvement in the plot, she said Rauf has not been found involved in any relief or charity work in the earthquake-hit areas.
Aslam also denied that any foreigners who came for relief work had joined militant groups to undergo training. "It is absolutely baseless. We have not heard any such report. No there is no connection," she said.
About the plot to blow up planes, Aslam declined to reveal the number of arrests made in Pakistan. She, however, said the plot was real and the action taken was necessary.
Aslam said Pakistan's view was that the conspiracy to blow up the planes was hatched by Al Qaeda "based" in Afghanistan.
To another question, she, however, said Rauf was arrested in Pakistan's Punjab province. On whether Pakistan would extradite Rauf to Britain, she said the two countries have no extradition treaty.
But at the same time, this cannot be ruled out as he is a British citizen. An extradition treaty is being finalised with Britain but it is not yet ready.
The Washington Post said on Tuesday that an unidentified Pakistani charity which received 10 million dollars from Britain for earthquake relief had helped finance the alleged plan to blow up US-bound passenger jets.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Why in the world is the LeT founder only under house arrest? The entire world calls his group a terrorist organisation and yet he is allowed to move freely for all these years?!!!
candypreet
08-17-2006, 11:14 AM
keep it up sid:happy_01: :happy_01:
Oh boy,... more bad news for the Pro-Pakistan apologists
Seems an Australian court has CONVICTED (that's not INDICTED or ACCUSED, but CONVICTED) a pakistani born Australian citizen of a terrorist plot to blow up the electrical grid..
Yeah, he trained in Pakistan... (Where else ??? ..but you pretty much knew that already, right?)
Agence France Presse -- English
August 23, 2006 Wednesday 4:08 AM GMT
Pakistan-born man jailed in Australia for 'jihad' bomb plot
Lawrence Bartlett
SYDNEY, Aug 23 2006
A Pakistan-born architect accused of plotting a "jihad" bombing campaign in Australia was sentenced to 20 years in jail Wednesday.
Faheem Khalid Lodhi, 36, was convicted of planning to blow up the electrical grid in Australia's biggest city, Sydney. He had faced a possible life sentence.
Supreme Court judge Anthony Whealy said the attack, if carried out, "would instil terror into members of the public so that they could never again feel free from the threat of bombing attacks within Australia".
Lodhi, who denied four counts of preparing to commit a terrorist act, bowed his head but showed no other signs of emotion as he heard the sentence.
Prime Minister John Howard refused to comment directly on the outcome of the trial.
"The Australian public knows how much I am opposed to terrorism," he told reporters. "And the Australian public knows how determined I am to maintain and strengthen where necessary our anti-terrorism laws."
The indictment said Lodhi had "the intent of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause, namely violent jihad."
Prosecutors linked Lodhi, also known as Abu Hamza, to Frenchman Willie Brigitte, who was deported in late 2003 after being accused of plotting a major attack in Sydney.
Brigitte, who remains in custody in France, is suspected of links to Al-Qaeda and both he and Lodhi are alleged to have trained with Lashkar-e-Taiba, a militant Pakistani group that Australia has banned as a terrorist organisation.
Lodhi was convicted of preparing for a terrorist act by seeking information about chemicals capable of making explosives.
He was also found guilty of possessing a so-called "terrorism manual" and of buying two maps of the electricity grid in preparation for a terrorist act.
The jury acquitted him of a charge that he downloaded aerial photographs of several defence sites for a purpose connected with terrorism.
Lodhi, who has Australian citizenship, denied that he had any intention of launching an attack.
"This country is my country and these people are my people," he said while giving evidence in his own defence. "The killing of innocent people is not part of Islam."
The judge sentenced Lodhi to a maximum of 20 years jail with a non-parole period of 15 years.
Australia has not faced a terror attack on its own turf but Australian interests have been targeted elsewhere.
In Indonesia, the Australian embassy was attacked in 2004 and scores of Australian holidaymakers were killed in bomb blasts on the resort island of Bali in 2002 and 2005.
After more than 50 people were killed in July 2005 attacks in London by British-born suicide bombers, Howard pushed tough new anti-terror legislation through parliament, saying he was afraid the same thing could happen in Australia.
Shortly afterwards, in November, 18 Muslim men were arrested in raids in Sydney and Melbourne that police said had foiled a "large-scale terrorist attack". They are in custody awaiting trial.
In May 2003 a British-born former taxi driver who converted to Islam and trained in Afghanistan with Al-Qaeda, Jack Roche, was jailed for nine years for conspiring to blow up the Israeli embassy in Canberra.
In March this year an Australian convert to Islam, Joseph "Jihad Jack" Thomas, was sentenced to five years in jail for receiving funds from the Al-Qaeda terrorist network, but his conviction was quashed on appeal last week.
Treasury Department Documents and Publications
December 19, 2006
PRESS RELEASE - HP-206
Treasury Designates Individual Supporting Al Qaida, Other Terrorist Organizations
The U.S. Department of the Treasury today designated Mohammed Al Ghabra, a naturalized British citizen who provides material and logistical support to al Qaida and other terrorist organizations.
"Mohammed Al Ghabra has backed al Qaida and other violent jihadist groups, facilitating travel for recruits seeking to meet with al Qaida leaders and take part in terrorist training," said Adam Szubin, Director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). "We must act against those who fund and facilitate al Qaida's agenda of violence against innocents."
Al Ghabra has organized travel to Pakistan for individuals seeking to meet with senior al Qaida individuals and to undertake jihad training. Several of these individuals have returned to the UK to engage in covert activity on behalf of al Qaida. Additionally, Al Ghabra has provided material support and facilitated the travel of UK-based individuals to Iraq to support the insurgents fight against coalition forces.
In addition, Al Ghabra has also provided material and logistical support to other terrorist organizations based in Pakistan, such as Harakat ul-Jihad-I-Islami (HUJI). While in Pakistan, Al Ghabra met with Haroon Rachid Aswat, who is currently detained in the U.K. and subject to a U.S. extradition request on terrorism charges.
Apart from the financial and logistical support activities that led to his designation, Al Ghabra maintains contact with a significant number of terrorists, including senior al Qaida officials in Pakistan. In 2002, Al Ghabra met with and stayed at the home of Faraj Al-Libi, who, until he was detained by Pakistani authorities in 2005, served as al Qaida's Director of Operations. Al Ghabra is also in regular contact with UK-based Islamist extremists and has been involved in the radicalizing of individuals in the UK through the distribution of extremist media.
Al Ghabra also has strong links to the Kashmiri militant group Harakat Ul-Mujahidin (HuM), which has been designated a terrorist organization by the United Nations. Information shows that Al Ghabra himself has undertaken jihadi training at a HuM training camp in Kashmir. Al Ghabra intended to fight in Kashmir but was prevented from doing so by HuM as they needed individuals to return to the UK to raise funds.
Identifier Information Mohammed Al Ghabra DOB:June 1, 1980 POB: Damascus, Syria Nationality:British U.K. Passport: 094629366 Address: East London United Kingdom (UK)
Mohammed Al Ghabra was designated today pursuant to Executive Order 13224, which is aimed at financially isolating terrorists, terrorist facilitators, and financiers. This designation freezes any assets Al Ghabra may have under U.S. jurisdiction and prohibits all financial and commercial transactions by any U.S. person and Al Ghabra.
truthbtold
12-20-2006, 04:37 PM
thanks bman.
ofcourse they are in Pakistan, just like ofcourse the saudi fund jihad. Question is how do we stomp them out, these two countries IMO we have to handle different than a madman screaming I'm gonna nuke infidels! We do get some half-ass coperation from Pakistan and Saudi! Believe me I would love for those two countries to be put in their place! That would stop much of radical islam's march. Iran/Syria aren't to hard to stop, IMO.
Well maybe we could just step back and pit them all against each other. Soon they would kill each other and problem solved.
FC-UK
12-20-2006, 04:40 PM
Charities' (http://in.rediff.com/news/2006/aug/13aircraft.htm)relief' cash. All have been arrested , the report said.
What is the formal definition of Al Qaeda ?
there isn't is there, it is vague.
Anyone who opposes, the right wing western policy is considered Al Qaeda.
They oppose mass killing hence kill them lable them Al Qaeda.
Do you realise just how many people the USA7UK has killed in Afghanistan?
Do you hoestly think nothing or no reaction to that will follow?
to top it all off, we see people still baying v Al Qaeda Al Qaeda Al Qaeda Al Qaeda Al Qaeda Al Qaeda Al Qaeda Al Qaeda Al Qaeda Al Qaeda .
Give it a fucking rest!
Fat Tone
12-20-2006, 04:50 PM
What is the formal definition of Al Qaeda ?
there isn't is there, it is vague.
Anyone who opposes, the right wing western policy is considered Al Qaeda.
No...
They oppose mass killing hence kill them lable them Al Qaeda.
Absurd
Do you realise just how many people the USA7UK has killed in Afghanistan?
The USA ousted the Taliban....and liberated the country...by helping the Northern Alliance in a war that they were already fighting.
Do you hoestly think nothing or no reaction to that will follow?
wow.....so what was 911 the reaction to ?
to top it all off, we see people still baying v Al Qaeda Al Qaeda Al Qaeda Al Qaeda Al Qaeda Al Qaeda Al Qaeda Al Qaeda Al Qaeda Al Qaeda .
Give it a fucking rest!
The west will rest when Al Qaeda is no more. Hopefully soon.
But I do think that Al qaeda as a term, is more and more generic nowadays...kinda like "Kleenex" is attributed to all tissues. A terrorist asshole is a terrorist assshole...the al qaeda's just have a designer label.
truthbtold
12-20-2006, 04:57 PM
What is the formal definition of Al Qaeda ?
there isn't is there, it is vague.
Anyone who opposes, the right wing western policy is considered Al Qaeda.
They oppose mass killing hence kill them lable them Al Qaeda.
Do you realise just how many people the USA7UK has killed in Afghanistan?
Do you hoestly think nothing or no reaction to that will follow?
to top it all off, we see people still baying v Al Qaeda Al Qaeda Al Qaeda Al Qaeda Al Qaeda Al Qaeda Al Qaeda Al Qaeda Al Qaeda Al Qaeda .
Give it a fucking rest!
The Base is the name translated from Arabic. The name came about by the organization itself not others. nice try!! the group even refers to itself as Al Qaeda, give it a freakin rest!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1551100.stm
Rebel commander
As a wealthy Saudi, he stood out and acquired a following.
Egyptians, Lebanese, Turks and others - numbering thousands in Bin Laden's estimate - joined their Afghan Muslim brothers in the struggle against a Soviet ideology that spurned religion.
SHADOWY FIGURE
Born in Saudi Arabia
Fought against Soviets in Afghanistan
Ploughed inherited fortune into armed activities
Reported to have at least three wives
Suffers from kidney disease
Last video message broadcast December 2001
Whereabouts unknown
Bin Laden in his own words
Bin Laden opened a guesthouse in Peshawar - a stopping-off point for Arab mujahideen fighters. Eventually, their numbers became so large he built camps for them inside Afghanistan.
He gave the umbrella group for his guesthouse and camps a name: al-Qaeda, Arabic for "the base".
FC-UK
12-20-2006, 05:01 PM
The Base is the name translated from Arabic. The name came about by the organization itself not others. nice try!! the group even refers to itself as Al Qaeda, give it a freakin rest!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1551100.stm
Rebel commander
As a wealthy Saudi, he stood out and acquired a following.
Egyptians, Lebanese, Turks and others - numbering thousands in Bin Laden's estimate - joined their Afghan Muslim brothers in the struggle against a Soviet ideology that spurned religion.
SHADOWY FIGURE
Born in Saudi Arabia
Fought against Soviets in Afghanistan
Ploughed inherited fortune into armed activities
Reported to have at least three wives
Suffers from kidney disease
Last video message broadcast December 2001
Whereabouts unknown
Bin Laden in his own words
Bin Laden opened a guesthouse in Peshawar - a stopping-off point for Arab mujahideen fighters. Eventually, their numbers became so large he built camps for them inside Afghanistan.
He gave the umbrella group for his guesthouse and camps a name: al-Qaeda, Arabic for "the base".
They are all dead. now all the USA is doing is kiling anyone who opposes them or their plans by labeling them Al Qaeda.
Remember Al Qaeda in iraq, it is a political tool to carry out murderous policies, no wonder people want to fly planes into buildings.
The exact same could be said of Al CIAda. "They could also say the exact same tings you are saying about them.
Fat Tone
12-20-2006, 05:09 PM
The exact same could be said of Al CIAda. "They could also say the exact same tings you are saying about them.
Al CIAda ! :add09: :add09: :add09:
candypreet
12-27-2006, 12:44 PM
a bump
Agence France Presse -- English
January 12, 2007 Friday 11:33 AM GMT
Al-Qaeda strengthening from Pakistan bases: Negroponte
WASHINGTON, Jan 12 2007
The Al-Qaeda terror network is strengthening and building worldwide connections from its safe haven in Pakistan, the top US spy John Negroponte told the US Senate on Thursday.
Al-Qaeda, which launched the deadly September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, "is the terrorist organization that poses the greatest threat" to the United States, Negroponte told the Senate Select Intelligence Committee.
"We have captured or killed numerous senior Al-Qaeda operatives, but Al-Qaeda's core elements are resilient," said Negroponte, the director of national intelligence (DNI).
The terrorists are "cultivating stronger operational connections and relationships that radiate outward from their leaders' secure hideout in Pakistan to affiliates throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Europe," he said.
In prepared written remarks on his office's annual threat assessment, Negroponte praised Pakistan as "a frontline partner in the war on terror" that has captured several Al-Qaeda leaders.
"Nevertheless, it remains a major source of Islamic extremism and the home stop for some top terrorist leaders."
"Many of our most important interests intersect in Pakistan, where the Taliban and Al-Qaeda maintain critical sanctuaries," Negroponte said.
He added that eliminating "the safehaven that the Taliban and other extremists have found in Pakistan's tribal ares is not sufficient to end the insurgency in Afghanistan but necessary."
Negroponte's broad-ranging remarks also covered the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan, weapons proliferation, the growing threat from Iran, turmoil in Africa and Latin America, and potential threats from China, Russia and south Asia.
candypreet
01-15-2007, 09:34 AM
good post bman
candypreet
01-15-2007, 09:59 AM
Afghanistan welcomes "late" US comments on Al-Qaeda in Pakistan
Monday January 15, 2007 (0021 PST)
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?165991
KABUL: Afghanistan said an assertion from the US spy chief that Pakistan is harbouring the Al-Qaeda terror network had come late but would hopefully see more focus on routing the militants.
The charge by US spy chief John Negroponte to Congress this week has angered neighbouring Pakistan, which has long been accused by Afghanistan of sheltering Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders behind a nearly five-year insurgency here.
"Time-wise it was late but we consider this a good step," defence ministry spokesman Mohammad Zahir Azimi told reporters the other day.
"We wished it would have been made clear sooner that the leaders of Al-Qeada and the terrorists are operating outside Afghan borders against world security," he said.
The foreign ministry said it hoped the statement would see more cooperation from the world and Pakistan in particular against militants crossing into Afghanistan to fight.
"These comments endorse what we have been repeatedly saying -- that the sources of terrorism are across Afghan borders," foreign ministry spokesman Sultan Ahmad Baheen told med men.
"We hope this brings increased international community attention and more cooperation from Pakistan," he said.
While praising Pakistan as "a frontline partner in the war on terror" that has captured several Al-Qaeda leaders, Negroponte said it remained a major source of "Islamic extremism and the home stop for some top terrorist leaders."
Islamabad rejected the comments, its foreign ministry describing them as "questionable criticism" and urging Negroponte to acknowledge its role in breaking the back of Al-Qaeda, responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Bickering between Afghanistan and Pakistan over the insurgency has intensified over the past year, with Kabul becoming increasingly outspoken in its criticism of its neighbour's efforts to root out the militants.
Afghanistan accuses Pakistan of turning a blind eye to militant training camps and circles of support; the neighbour says Kabul should stop pointing fingers and look within its own borders for the roots of the problem.
I started this thread 18 months ago
How is it that I knew about this 18 months ago and Negroponte's just getting around to figuring it out?
or, is it that the US government has known all along, but only NOW are they admitting it to Congress and the American people?
candypreet
01-15-2007, 10:41 AM
I started this thread 18 months ago
How is it that I knew about this 18 months ago and Negroponte's just getting around to figuring it out?
or, is it that the US government has known all along, but only NOW are they admitting it to Congress and the American people?
well maybe some Indian Brainwashed you:) :)
well maybe some Indian Brainwashed you:) :)
hahah.. could be , I suppose
Edmonton Journal (Alberta)
February 20, 2007 Tuesday
Early Edition
Al-Qaida rises again in Pakistan: Small camps train operatives capable of striking targets in the West, U.S. officials say
Jim Mannion, Agence-France Press
WASHINGTON
WASHINGTON - Al-Qaida is believed to have established compounds inside Pakistan to train small groups of operatives for possible attacks in the West, a U.S. official said Monday.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the compounds had been detected over the past year in a semi-autonomous tribal area along the mountainous border with Afghanistan.
The compounds in the tribal area of North Waziristan are "not big ones. These are small," the official told AFP. "They are not like the big camps that they had seen in Afghanistan previously."
But they were being used to train groups of 10 to 20 people at a time for what were believed to be operations in the West, particularly in Western Europe, the official said.
The Pakistani ambassador to the United States, Mahmud Ali Durrani, played down the developments.
"There may be an odd place. And when we find out we take it out. We have done that recently," he said in an interview with CNN.
"But saying they have re-established themselves, and there are a lot of compounds, and they have rejuvenated. That is incorrect."
The compounds suggest that al-Qaida, once seen as having been reduced to a largely inspirational role in an increasingly dispersed, decentralized international jihadist movement, is rebuilding its capacity to mount international operations.
The U.S. government is concerned about a stream of Muslims with British passports travelling between Europe and Pakistan as a source of recruits for al-Qaida operations, the U.S. official said.
In the intelligence community's most recent public threat assessment, former director of national intelligence John Negroponte told U.S. Congress Jan. 11 that al-Qaida's core elements continue to plot attacks against the United States and other targets.
"And they continue to maintain active connections and relationships that radiate outward from their leaders' secure hideout in Pakistan to affiliates throughout the Middle East, northern Africa and Europe," he said.
A sharp increase in public messages by Ayman Al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida's No. 2, is among the indications that the group has reconstituted its command and control over networks of operatives, the official said. "That's part of his command and control -- how he communicates," the official said.
The New York Times, which first reported the new developments, said the compounds were operated under the loose command of groups of Arab, Pakistani and Afghan militants allied with al-Qaida. According to the Times, which cited U.S. analysts, they receive guidance from their commanders and al-Zawahri. Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden appeared to have little direct involvement.
Officials said U.S. and foreign intelligence services had collected evidence leading them to conclude that at least one of the camps in Pakistan might be training operatives capable of striking Western targets, the Times said.
Training camps had yet to reach the size and level of sophistication of the al-Qaida camps established in Afghanistan under Taliban rule, officials said, but the al-Qaida infrastructure in the region is gradually maturing.
Officials from several U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism agencies presented a consistent picture in describing the latest developments as a major setback to U.S. efforts against al-Qaida.
"The chain of command has been re-established," one U.S. government official told the Times, adding the al-Qaida "leadership command and control is robust."
The concern over al-Qaida's resurgence coincides with a major comeback by the Taliban, which has used safe havens in the border areas to mount its bloodiest offensive in five years in Afghanistan last year.
The U.S. official who spoke to AFP said the al-Qaida developments were separate from and not to be confused with the Taliban's activities in Afghanistan.
But the Taliban threat to Afghanistan has refocused U.S. attention on weak Pakistani controls over its tribal areas along the border. The Times said intense debate within the administration failed to resolve a dilemma over what to do.
Some in the Pentagon advocate air strikes on the camps, while others in the State Department worry too much pressure will undermine the government of President Pervez Musharraf.
U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates travelled to Islamabad last week to discuss the situation on the border with Musharraf, and how they could work together to deal a setback to both the Taliban and al-Qaida next spring.
Mystery
02-20-2007, 09:00 AM
Are the plans in place to bomb and/or invade and occupy Pakistan yet? :)
Are the plans in place to bomb and/or invade and occupy Pakistan yet? :)
The plan is to give them 3/4 of a billion dollars each year, so they can use it to buy weapons.. to use against America
you gotta love it , but only if you sell weapons!
Mystery
02-20-2007, 09:08 AM
The plan is to give them 3/4 of a billion dollars each year, so they can use it to buy weapons.. to use against America
you gotta love it , but only if you sell weapons!
And one could safely assume those weapons will be resold to Iran? Hmm. I wonder if that is part of the 30-year gas/oil supply contract that was signed last year?
And one could safely assume those weapons will be resold to Iran? Hmm. I wonder if that is part of the 30-year gas/oil supply contract that was signed last year?
Well they sold Iran centrifuges for enriching uranium... so.. yes, I can't see why they wouldn't.
candypreet
02-20-2007, 10:46 AM
The plan is to give them 3/4 of a billion dollars each year, so they can use it to buy weapons.. to use against America
you gotta love it , but only if you sell weapons!
and against India.
Actually aginst India - 100% yes
against USA maybe
against Israel - possible
and against India.
Actually aginst India - 100% yes
against USA maybe
against Israel - possible
True...
If Bush wants to "spread democracy", maybe he should start by cutting off funding and arms sales to the MILITARY DICTATOR who OVERTHREW A DEMOCRACY and now uses his secret agents to wage war with the largest democracy in the world
There's a crazy idea, huh?
sidthereal
02-20-2007, 02:07 PM
Hmm...
Read America's secret war, by George Friedman. Awesome read about Pakistan and how the Bush administration views it.
TrustButVerify
02-20-2007, 03:04 PM
Just posting my response from another thread:
No Shit!!! You don't say!!!!
Well maybe this is what Porter Goss was talking about!!!
CIA chief has 'excellent idea' where bin Laden is
Asked whether that meant he knew where bin Laden is, Goss responded: "I have an excellent idea where he is. What's the next question?"
Goss did not say where he thinks bin Laden is, nor did he name the country or countries he was referring to when he spoke of sanctuaries.
But intelligence experts have long said they believed bin Laden was probably hiding in the rugged mountainous border region of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/06/20/goss.bin.laden/
Damn....who could have seen this coming. Boy this 6'5 Osama guy sure is a slippery character....I mean our intelligence chief has known his location for the past 2 years, yet no action has been taken and in fact today a report was released that Al-Qaeda's base has regrouped and is ready to carry out attacks again!
2 years (at least) in Pakistan....yet the worlds most sophisticated military just can't seem to track him down even though the CIA has an "excellent" idea of where he is...and is in fact in our "allies" country....I'm sure the ISI and Musharraf are very eager to help us get bin laden so as to piss off the legions of terrorists and terrorist supporters within Pakistan - yep, I'm sure they are trying to get him day and night. :add24: :rolleyes:
Mars S
02-20-2007, 04:26 PM
hmmm. interesting silence on this board
has it come to this... terrorism no longer interests the public....
You're doing a fine job of ranting and raving about Pakistan all on your own. You don't need to be distracted by facts.
I don't see where the capture and conviction of terrorists in Pakistan means the entire gov't is complicit in causing terror. I don't see where the cooperation of the Paki gov't in law enforcement means they're aiding and abetting terror. I don't see where the remoteness and isolation of the border region means that the entire Paki gov't is complicit in "arming Al Qaeda."
I don't see where the presence of Al Qaeda and taliban in Pakistan means they're wanted there.
What I do see is the fact that Pakistan is still largely unsettled and undeveloped, and the islamists use that to their advantage. Crossing a border is easy enough if you're more heavily armed than the border guards. What I do see is that whereever they confront the coalition in combat, they lose. What I do see is that the Talis and AQs count their greatest victories against females going to school. They're not too good when faced with well-armed and well-trained soldiers.
I do see where Musharraf has allied himself with the US while elements of his gov't are opposed to the US. This alliance has generated a number of attempts on his life and yet, unlike Spain, he's still "on our side". I do see where the Musharraf gov't put an end to AQ Khan's arms dealing. I do see where Pakistani soldiers have died fighting the invading Taliban and AQs.
Frankly b, this sounds a lot like our gov't where a lot of our legislators want to achieve success in Iraq and some want to fail. Some even actively embolden the terrorists.
I can see the Pakis are having a tough time with border-crossing insurgents, I don't see how this means the US should invade Pakistan though any more than the presence of AQ in Saudi Arabia means we should invade them.
candypreet
02-21-2007, 07:15 AM
Pakistan needs to do more to fight terror: US
http://www.rxpgnews.com/america/Pakistan-needs-to-do-more-to-fight-terror-US_16406.shtml
candypreet
02-21-2007, 07:19 AM
It's Pakistan, Stupid
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 2/20/2007
http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=256868152570596
War On Terror: We've been warning for years that Pakistan has become the new Afghanistan for al-Qaida, and that Islamabad has not exactly been a reluctant host. Now it's front-page news.
The New York Times, quoting U.S. intelligence officials, says al-Qaida has re-established a chain of command inside Pakistan, thanks in part to cease-fire deals Islamabad has cut with local militants who protect al-Qaida. Fox News has confirmed the story, which developed from recent congressional testimony.
Last month, as we noted, departing U.S. National Intelligence Director John Negroponte dropped the bombshell that al-Qaida leaders are projecting power to the Middle East, North Africa and Europe "from their leaders' secure hideout in Pakistan."
Shockingly, Osama bin Laden and his deputies have managed to set up a training and communications infrastructure there that rivals what they lost five years ago in Afghanistan. Far from being cut off from their followers or on the run, they're calling the shots — from within the borders of our purported ally.
Last year alone bin Laden and his No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri produced and released 21 tape-recorded messages — twice as many as the year before. And their statements are more current, at times referring to events that took place just days earlier.
That suggests America's Most Wanted Terrorists are having little difficulty in Pakistan creating a secure means of distributing the tapes. They're also communicating with lieutenants through couriers and the Internet.
Meanwhile, they're training groups of up to 20 men at a time at a band of camps they've set up inside Pakistan. They've already trained and exported terrorists to Western cities, from London to Lodi, Calif., as we've also warned.
They've even trained British and American citizens — all under the nose of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who assures us he's cracking down on our enemies and earning every penny of the billions in aid we send his regime.
Some al-Qaida terrorists trained in Pakistan have carried out their assignments, others luckily were caught first, while still others are lying in wait. After foiling the plot to down 10 airliners over U.S. cities, the MI5 uncovered dozens of other terror plots with Pakistani links.
All this we've reported on these pages. Still left undebated, however, is what Washington is doing about it.
President Bush says he's leaving it up to Islamabad to crush al-Qaida central. "Mr. Musharraf assured me he will take care of leaders of the Taliban and al-Qaida," he said in a recent interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly.
This is the same Muslim ally who insists his country is free and clear of Taliban and al-Qaida leaders, who just surrendered to al-Qaida-sympathizing warlords the area of Pakistan where al-Qaida leaders are believed to be holed up and who has banned U.S. patrols inside his country.
Our Afghan-based troops not only can't conduct search-and-destroy raids on al-Qaida hideouts and camps in Pakistan. They can't even pursue al-Qaida and Taliban fighters back into Pakistan when they mount cross-border attacks on our positions in Afghanistan. The White House has agreed to these restrictions as part of our "valued partnership" with Islamabad.
But Musharraf is a reluctant partner only temporarily on our side for tactical and selfish reasons. In his recently published memoir, he suggests America is the cause of terror. And we can't win the war on terror until we make right with Muslims we've aggrieved the world over.
"Ultimate success will come only when the roots that cause terrorism are destroyed: that is when injustices against Muslims are removed," Musharraf said. "This lies in the hands of the West, particularly America."
Why are we continuing to outsource the key battle in the war on terror to this Muslim general? Now that it's clear his country is harboring al-Qaida central, how will U.S. policy change toward Pakistan? We put these questions to the White House. The response we got was not reassuring.
"We're keeping a keen eye on Pakistan," a senior West Wing official told us, adding that Pakistan is just one of many "trouble spots."
He said it only seems like nothing new is being done. "We don't call press conferences to describe everything that's going on," he said, "since to do so would tip off the very guys we're trying to defeat and work against our interests within foreign governments."
But that's what we heard after the 7/7 trail led back to Pakistan, and again after the trans-Atlantic sky terror plot traced back to Pakistan.
Every time we discover another piece of evidence that al-Qaida is thriving in Musharraf's backyard, we dispatch more high-level officials to take his temperature, hold his hand and point him in the right direction. Musharraf slaps them on the back, tells them not to worry and they go home with new promises, and nothing changes. We get no results, al-Qaida grows, new camps sprout up, and a new team of officials is sent to Islamabad to sit with Musharraf.
It's time for the administration to take a harder line. America can no longer afford to count on Pakistan as an ally. We must insist on foot patrols — U.S. boots on the ground — inside Pakistan's northern tribal areas, while allowing Musharraf the face-saving option of assuring Muslim masses that raids were being led by Pakistani forces.
We'd make it clear to Musharraf that if he resists U.S. patrols to destroy al-Qaida camps inside Pakistan, he risks losing promised reconstruction and military aid, including his coveted F-16s.
candypreet
03-03-2007, 12:34 AM
US senators call for direct strike inside Pakistan: Pressure tactics may trigger Musharraf’s ouster: ambassador
http://www.dawn.com/2007/03/03/top1.htm
By Anwar Iqbal
WASHINGTON, March 2: Members of the US Senate have urged the Bush administration to launch military strikes at alleged Al Qaeda targets inside Pakistan, prompting the Pakistani envoy in Washington to warn that such an attitude could bring down the present set-up in Islamabad.
Senior Pentagon officials added fuel to the fire by claiming that their troops have already targeted Taliban and Al Qaeda sites inside Pakistan and that they have an agreement that allows them to do so.
Senator Carl Levin, Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the panel would press the Defence and State departments to consider taking military action against alleged Al Qaeda camps inside Pakistan if they learn that attacks inside Afghanistan have been planned at these sites.
"It's a critically important point, and I think we've got to insist, on this issue, that we be given a clear answer," Mr Levin said.
Lt-Gen Douglas Lute, chief operations officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, however, told the committee US soldiers could target terrorist sites inside Pakistan if there’s an imminent threat.
“We have all the authorities we need to pursue, either with (artillery) fire or on the ground, across the border,” he said.
“If just across the border, inside Pakistan, we have surveillance systems that detect a Taliban party setting up a rocket system which is obviously pointed west, into Afghanistan, we do not have to wait for the rockets to be fired. They have demonstrated hostile intent and we can engage them,” Lt-Gen Lute said.
Retired US Marine Gen. James Jones, former top Nato operational commander in Afghanistan, also told the panel that forces under the US command called Operation Enduring Freedom have a legal right to strike across the border.
"That mission, everybody agrees, could be done," he said.
Lt-Gen Lute, however, clarified that they would have to seek the Pakistan government's permission to go after a munitions factory further inside the Pakistani border.
Pakistan remained the target throughout the debate, with both Democrat and Republican senators claiming that the country is either unwilling or unable to prevent the Taliban and Al Qaeda insurgents from establishing camps inside the tribal zone.
Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama said that if international laws allowed US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the same laws could be applied to take actions against Al Qaeda and Taliban sanctuaries inside Pakistan.
Democratic Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana said that the Pakistani leaders “need to contemplate which is harder for them -- acting to do something about this, or us acting to do something about this."
Senior US defence officials present at the hearing did little to stop the tirade against Pakistan, a country the administration describes as a close ally in the war against terror.
Instead, they complained that the North Waziristan deal has led to an increase in cross-border attacks, and joined the lawmakers in urging Pakistan to do more to address the problem.
Under Secretary of Defence for Policy Eric Edelman said the agreement led to “an almost immediate and steady increase” in cross-border infiltration and attacks.
"We've expressed, over a period of time, directly to President Musharraf and to others our scepticism and reservations about the agreement,” he said.
Mr Edelman indicated that recent visits to Islamabad by Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Robert Gates were also aimed at persuading Pakistan to do more.
"There's no question that that sanctuary exists, and that it's a major asset for the Taliban,” said Lt-Gen Lute.
The only person who spoke for Pakistan was the committee's former chairman, now senior Republican Party member John Warner.
“I think under the leadership of Musharraf, they're doing the best they can, but the realities are there's fragility in the political system in Pakistan," he explained.
Senator Warner said the situation would be much worse for the United States and its allies if Islamists came to power in Pakistan.
In an interview to a Western news agency, Pakistan’s envoy in Washington, Mahmud Ali Durrani, also warned that such pressure tactics could destabilise Pakistan and may even bring down President Musharraf.
Asked if it might trigger President Musharraf's ouster, he replied: "I don't know. Possibly it could bring him down. It could destabilise the whole country. It could cause mega problems there. That is possible."
"What I'm worried about today more than anything else is this unhinging of the cooperative relationship... In this very critical field of (cooperation on) counter-terrorist operations, there seems to be a problem. We need to fix it," Ambassador Durrani told Reuters.
The hostility against Pakistan is so strong that even the capture of senior Taliban leader Mullah Obaidullah did not help reduce the criticism.
Some media outlets pointed out that Pakistan only captures a major terrorist leader when there’s pressure, which justifies Washington’s current policy of continuing its pressure on Islamabad.
Oh dear.. another court rules that there are terrorist camps in Pakistan... Bad news for the Paki apologists
The Baltimore Sun (Maryland)
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News
April 3, 2007 Tuesday
Ex-Md. man guilty of aiding terrorism: He received training at camp in Pakistan
Matthew Dolan, The Baltimore Sun
Apr. 3--A former Baltimore man pleaded guilty yesterday in New York to conspiring to aid a Pakistan-based organization that the United States labels a terrorist group.
Prosecutors say Mahmud Faruq Brent, 32, also known as Mahmud Al Mutazzim, attended an overseas terrorist camp five years ago and took martial arts training in an effort to assist Lashkar-e-Taiba, roughly translated as "Army of the Righteous."
According to government transcripts of secret recordings made by an FBI informant, Brent called his work for the group "one of the better decisions in my life."
Brent, who has been imprisoned since his arrest in Newark, N.J., in August 2005, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Manhattan to providing "material support" for a terrorist organization. Sentencing is set for July 10.
The U.S. attorney's office declined to make a copy of the plea agreement available yesterday.
Prosecutors said Brent faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison. It was unclear whether he had agreed to testify against his co-defendants at a trial later this month.
Brent's attorney, Hassen Ibn Abdellah, was not immediately available for comment.
The former Washington cabdriver had lived in West Baltimore in a three-story, multifamily house in the 5300 block of Gwynn Oak Ave.
The 13-page criminal complaint alleged that Brent was involved with Lashkar-e-Taiba from 2001 until May 2005. He attended a training camp run by the group during a visit to Pakistan in 2002, agents said in court papers.
Federal authorities allege that Brent received martial arts training in upstate New York from Tarik Shah, a Bronx jazz musician who is under indictment on similar charges.
Shah is awaiting federal trial in New York.
Shah became an informant against Brent, his former student, according to court documents. Another confidential informant lured Shah into talking, the documents state.
"Shah informed [the confidential informant] that he had previously discussed with other 'brothers' how 'we could pass' knowledge" to others who are ready to fight a holy war, according to the criminal complaint against Brent.
Investigators said they later learned that Shah had an address book containing telephone numbers for "Mahmud Al Mutazzim." Telephone records reveal that one of the numbers listed for Al Mutazzim belonged to Brent's wife, Taisha Abdel-Aziz, at his Baltimore home, court papers show.
Shah told authorities he had trained Brent in martial arts in 2001 when they lived in Beacon, N.Y., about 55 miles north of New York City. The training ended after the Sept. 11 attacks, when officials at the local mosque essentially kicked them out, according to court papers.
Brent told Shah it was difficult to be back in the United States and not in training, according to court papers. He also told Shah that he had not been in Pakistan's cities, but was in the mountains training with "the mujahedeen."
Lashkar-e-Taiba, which sought to organize Pakistani guerrillas fighting Russians then occupying Afghanistan, later turned against India and conducted military operations over the disputed territory of Kashmir.
matthew.dolan@baltsun.com
The Associated Press State & Local Wire
April 2, 2007 Monday 9:38 PM GMT
Man pleads guilty in New York to conspiring to help terror group
By LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK
A Washington, D.C., cab driver who admitted he attended terrorism training camps in Pakistan in 2002 pleaded guilty Monday to conspiring to help a terrorist organization.
Mahmud Faruq Brent Al Mutazzim, of Gwynn Oak, Md., had been scheduled to go to trial April 24 along with a New York musician and a Florida doctor. A New York bookstore owner pleaded guilty to charges in the case in November.
Under a plea deal with federal prosecutors, Brent, 32, agreed to serve 15 years in prison rather than face a potential sentence of more than 20 years had he been convicted at trial.
He was not cooperating with the government and would not testify against his co-defendants, said his lawyer, Hassen Ibn Abdellah. Sentencing was scheduled for July 10.
Brent, born in Akron, Ohio, was arrested in August 2005 and was charged with conspiracy to provide material support to Lashkar-e-Taiba, which the United States designated a terrorist organization in December 2001.
Brent, answering "yes" to questions posed in court by his lawyer, said he attended the terrorist training camp even though he knew the sponsoring organization had been designated a foreign terrorist organization by the United States. He admitted participating in terrorist training.
Prosecutors said Brent also received martial arts training from a co-defendant, Tarik Shah, a New York jazz musician and martial arts expert awaiting trial along with Rafiq Abdus Sabir, a Florida doctor. Shah and Sabir have pleaded not guilty. A fourth defendant, bookstore owner Abdulrahman Farhane, of Brooklyn, is scheduled to be sentenced next week.
The government said Shah after his arrest agreed to meet Brent and let the FBI monitor their meeting at a Columbia, Md., hotel.
During the meeting, Brent encouraged Shah to travel overseas to the camps and told Shah it was a question of "how much" Shah was willing to "sacrifice" and whether Shah was willing to "take a risk," prosecutors said.
According to court papers, Brent also indicated he had traveled to Pakistan and into the mountains for training with fighters.
Brent said that because of "treaties with (President) Bush," it became dangerous for "foreigners" such as him to stay in the camps, so he was moved from place to place, prosecutors alleged in court papers.
Prosecutors said Brent, a former paramedic, indicated that he would never go back on his decision to go to the training camps operated by Lashkar-e-Taiba in 2002 and that it was "one of the better decisions in my life."
Several dozen family members and friends of Brent attended his plea in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. They called out to him when he entered the courtroom, drawing smiles and a wave from the defendant. As he was taken from the court, they shouted, "We love you, Mahmud!"
A woman who identified herself only as his sister Atullah questioned outside court what the word terrorism means in America.
"What is terrorism? If you step on an ant, it's terrorism," she said.
Asked what her brother's intentions were, she said: "To serve God, to pray and help mankind."
In Pakistan, British nationals met to rehearse the bombing of Britain
01.05.07
http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/04_03/pakmilitantsDM3004_468x349.jpg
Training for terror: Islamic militants, their faces hidden, on exercises near Pakistan's border with Afghanistan
The blast set off by the bombmaking instructor caused a 20ft fountain in the icy waters of the stream feeding the Swat river.
Tiny fish floated to the surface before being carried away by the fast-flowing waters in the foothills of the Hindu Kush mountains which form the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The group of British-born Pakistanis standing nearby were excited and impressed.
They had watched fascinated as chemicals they had helped buy in the bazaars were mixed together to make a series of bombs.
For two of them observing the bombmaker during the summer of 2003 there was a special significance.
Both would go on to lead Al Qaeda-linked terror cells tasked with bringing slaughter to Britain's streets.
One was Mohammad Sidique Khan, the Yorkshire teacher and leader of the four July 7 suicide bombers who claimed 52 innocent lives on the London transport system.
The other was Omar Khyam, the key member of the terror cell convicted at the Old Bailey.
Now the extraordinary story of how they and other British-born Pakistanis trained together in the terror camps of Northern Pakistan can be told.
It raises questions about whether, as officially claimed, the July 7 bombers operated alone...and underlines the pivotal role of the Pakistani camps in training and radicalising young Britons.
The terror contact for both groups is said to have been Abdul Hadi, a senior Al Qaeda leader now in Guantanamo Bay.
It was in July 2003 that Mohammad Sidique Khan travelled to Pakistan, where he attended a training camp with Khyam and other young radical Britons.
There they were trained in the skills of the terrorist...how to make bombs, fire Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenades, and use the poison ricin.
Over that summer, Anthony Garcia, Jawad Akbar, Waheed Mahmood and Salahuddin Amin, other members of the socalled "Crevice cell", attended camps with Khyam.
Waheed and Amin had moved to Pakistan by this stage and the terrorist cell began to come together in Lahore, through the Al Muhajiroun organisation founded in Britain by preacher of hate Omar Bakri.
There, the men arranged to meet ex-New York taxi driver Mohammad Junaid Babar, who had helped run the Al Muhajiroun offices in the U.S. but had left for Pakistan in 2001 after 9/11.
Babar was in regular contact with Al Qaeda operatives and had provided them with survival equipment.
He had also attended a meeting at which attacks on Britain were mooted.
He had met Amin, Garcia and Khyam in 2002 at a prayer meeting in London where he was trying to raise funds.
Reunited with Babar in Pakistan, the Britons said they wanted to fight in Afghanistan and wished to attend training camps.
He said he could help and travelled with them to Islamabad.
There, he introduced them to like-minded jihadis including one expert in remote- control detonation devices, Canadian-Pakistani Momin Khawaja.
They then moved on to Lahore, where they were booked into Soofi House, a run-down hostel used by Al Muhajiroun.
In nearby Internet cafes, they were able to communicate with fellow fanatics, and in the openfronted shops of Ferozpur Road they bought the materials to make explosives, storing them in cupboards in the hostel.
One night Khyam showed the group how to make bombs, detonating miniature devices on a barbecue in the courtyard behind the house.
Neighbours recall three small explosions and "hoots" of excitement from those watching who, they recall, spoke in English.
It is unclear whether Khan was also there. He was, however, in Pakistan at about that time and gave his contact number as that of Soofi House.
The Pakistani authorities say they passed on details to Britain of 11 men staying at or linked to the hostel that summer who they believed were associated with "bad things".
Their assessment was that they did not pose a danger to Pakistan and so they chose not to arrest them.
The action then moves to the garrison town of Kohat.
Khyam rented a two-bedroom flat there and Amin arrived in a Honda Accord with the ingredients for a fertiliser bomb.
They met an Afghan bomb maker known as Dolat Khan, who is said to have shared his expertise with the Britons and also shown them how to make the deadly poison ricin from beans.
Later they travelled by van to Peshawar, from where they walked eight hours to a mountain camp near Malakand, on the banks of the Swat.
There they were joined by Mohammad Sidique Khan.
Among the olive and pine trees above Malakand, Khan, Khyam and other Britons practised the arts of terrorism.
By then, both men had been persuaded that their true "duty" was not fighting in Afghanistan but causing mass bloodshed in Britain.
The clinching factor in their decision to turn to terrorism was the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Two men linked to Al Qaeda are also said to have convinced them.
One was a former muhijadeen fighter the Britons had first met at the Al Muhajiroun office in Luton. The second was Abdul Hadi, 46, a Kurdish-Iraqi.
A one-time financier for both the Taliban and Al Qaeda, he was one of Osama Bin Laden's senior operatives.
So great was Bin Laden's trust in him, he had been a member of the now-defunct ruling Shura Council, a ten-man panel who advised the Al Qaeda leader.
He is said to have been an important contact for Khyam, who had been anxious for further training to pass on details of bomb-making techniques to other members of his cell before he returned to the UK.
Following their camp at Malakand, Khyam made a flying visit back to Britain with Waheed Mahmood.
They returned with more than £10,000 in funds, and a set of digital scales to measure bomb-making materials. They were ready to carry out a "spectacular".
Following more explosives training, Khan had returned to Britain in mid-August.
Two weeks later Khyam flew back from Pakistan carrying aluminium powder from Ferozpur Road. Months later he was arrested.
Mohammad Sidique Khan, however, was able to return with Tanweer for further training, to make their video wills and to finalise plans, the Pakistanis believe, for the July 7 suicide attacks.
As for Hadi, he was arrested at the end of last year trying to enter Iraq where he was to head Al Qaeda operations, questioned for months by Pakistani authorities and is now said to be the 15th "high value" terror suspect in Guantanamo.
He is being questioned about a plot to launch a "large- scale" attack on Britain timed to happen before Tony Blair steps down this summer as Prime Minister.
Hadi is accused by the Pentagon of being a "key" Al Qaeda leader in Afghanistan in the late 1990s and leading attacks on British and U.S. troops there from a Pakistan base in the tribal agency areas.
He is believed to have been the contact point for many of the Britons funnelling funds through the region.
A close aide of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, Hadi set up bank accounts in Peshawar and Islamabad following 2001 through which funds were laundered.
When the Pakistani authorities raided his offices, they froze 32 bank accounts opened through fake Pakistani identity cards. Some £28million is said to have passed through them.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23394528-details/In%20Pakistan,%20British%20nationals%20met%20to%20 rehearse%20the%20bombing%20of%20Britain/article.do
candypreet
05-01-2007, 01:11 PM
good post as usual
good post as usual
Thanks! Good to see ya again
Right Wing Rag, "Investors Business Daily" is JUST NOW figuring out what I posted here nearly 2 years ago.. LOL
Perhaps if they had pulled their heads out of Bush's ass, the could have seen the light of day, back when it mattered...
From today's toilet paper (better late than never.. welcome aboard!)
Investor's Business Daily
May 22, 2007 Tuesday
NATIONAL EDITION
Have We Been Betrayed By Pakistan?
War On Terror: The truce our "ally" Pakistan made last year with pro-al-Qaida elements has turned the region into one big terrorist recruitment camp. We warned of as much. Now what?
The Los Angeles Times reports that the CIA has observed an "alarming increase in the movement of al-Qaida operatives and money into Pakistan's tribal territories." It quotes U.S. intelligence officials who blame Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's "withdrawal in September of tens of thousands of troops" from border areas where Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman Zawahri are believed to be hiding.
The truce reportedly included an underhanded deal to free jailed al-Qaida and Taliban operatives by the hundreds, with the promise not to arrest key al-Qaida figures. America's most wanted have been given a free pass to operate in the region, in effect making Pakistan the new Afghanistan.
Musharraf sold the truce to the White House as a way to stabilize Afghanistan, which had come under constant assault from Taliban and al-Qaida fighters based across the border in Pakistan. Tribal leaders protecting them pledged to stop the attacks.
Musharraf convinced President Bush in a White House meeting that the controversial "peace agreements" would work to quell border violence. In fact, cross-border attacks on our troops have tripled since the pact was signed. Worse, the pullback took significant pressure off al-Qaida leaders, who now enjoy a safe haven to operate and plan attacks. And it's now easier for young jihadists to travel to Pakistan and train as suicide bombers to attack the West.
What are we doing to shut down al-Qaida's new HQ? Besides flying Predator drones overhead to monitor camps, nothing. Our troops stationed just across the border in Afghanistan aren't allowed to operate on the Pakistani side.
The administration has agreed to Musharraf's ban on U.S. foot patrols inside his country. The CIA in recent months has deployed additional spies to Pakistan, but they are not on the ground in the tribal belt. They are stationed in Islamabad.
Most Americans are under the impression we are conducting an exhaustive hunt for Enemy No. 1, and just can't find him. That's not the case. The reality is, we've outsourced the task of house-to-house searches for bin Laden and his lieutenants to the Pakistani military, which reveres bin Laden. It was Pakistani military brass, after all, who introduced bin Laden to Taliban leaders before 9/11.
President Musharraf also heads the Pakistani army, and refuses to retire his uniform. He remains a military dictator. He could end this farce if he so chose. He has not delivered the goods, yet we have delivered him F-16 s and pumped $10 billion into his coffers since 9/11.
In many ways, his regime has reverted back to its pre-9/11 position in which it husbanded al-Qaida and the Taliban -- and we have rewarded him for it. Continuing to give Musharraf a blank-check only serves to legitimize an Islamic military junta that has given its support, tacit or otherwise, to terror activity.
It's time the White House imposed punitive costs on Islamabad, which continues to work at cross-purposes with our strategic interests. We want to stabilize Afghanistan, while Islamabad secretly works to re-Talibanize it. We want to eradicate al-Qaida from the region, while Islamabad offers it sanctuary. We want to reform warlordism, while Islamabad bribes it and allows it to coexist.
Musharraf is not an indispensable ally, as some assume. In fact, he has proven to be a liability, undermining our antiterror efforts. If he can't or won't deliver on his repeated promises to crack down on terrorists, there are other leaders less tied to Pakistan's jihadi-supporting military who are waiting in the wings.
Exiled former president Benazir Bhutto, a true friend of the West, is one such leader who would not hesitate to prove her allegiance to the U.S. We are also confident she would restore civilian rule.
It's now clear that al-Qaida's leadership is intact and operating from a secure base inside Pakistan. It's churning out new terrorists from camps inside Pakistan. Many already have been exported to Western cities including London. It has set up a well-oiled propaganda machine that is inspiring homegrown terrorists worldwide, including in the suburbs of New Jersey.
The White House needs to take a firmer position with Musharraf, applying both political and economic pressure -- and if necessary, military pressure. Allowing him to draw out this charade any longer only increases the risk that al-Qaida will launch another "blessed raid" on the U.S.
Yes, Musharraf's rape rooms are legendary.. So is his proliferation of WMD, his support for Al Qaeda, and his atrocious treatment of women...
In fact, I believe Musharraf was the "real life" role model for the "fictitious" Saddam that was presented to the US prior to the build up to the Iraq war..
especially the WMD and support of Al Qaeda stuff
Yep
bigearth
05-22-2007, 09:30 AM
Perhaps if they had pulled their heads out of Bush's ass, the could have seen the light of day, back when it mattered...
a testimony to the entire admin...
a testimony to the entire admin...
AND their supporters
bigearth
05-22-2007, 10:45 AM
AND their supporters
yup.
but when the wicked beareth rule
out of the corner of my eye, i thought that said "bigearth"...
it was like a cartoon double-take "WTF?!"
yup.
out of the corner of my eye, i thought that said "bigearth"...
it was like a cartoon double-take "WTF?!"
LOL
God help us if the "wicked Bigearth" rules!
The Daily Telegraph (LONDON)
May 31, 2007 Thursday
SPECIAL REPORT Al-Qa'eda regroups in the border lands and prepares for a new wave of terror Bin Laden and his lieutenants are extending their influence across the globe, reports David Blair
David Blair
IF international terrorism has a global headquarters, it is probably to be found in the barren mountains of Waziristan lining the ungovernable north-west frontier of Pakistan.
Here, British officials believe al-Qa'eda's core leadership, headed by Osama bin Laden and his Egyptian deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has regrouped and found refuge.
For several years after the terrorist attacks on September 11, they were engaged in little else than avoiding capture and fleeing the American-led offensive in Afghanistan.
Today, by contrast, they are probably secure enough to give strategic direction to al-Qa'eda cells across the world. Once, al-Qa'eda was best thought of as a "franchise'' operation: a brand name adopted by numerous terrorist groups operating independently of the key leaders around bin Laden, who British counter-terrorism officials call "core al-Qa'eda''.
But this assessment is probably outdated. "Core al-Qa'eda'' is believed to have reasserted itself and decided on several key objectives. First, bin Laden and his allies are actively seeking to establish networks in the Maghreb countries of North Africa.
Last September, an Algerian terrorist organisation styling itself the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, known by its French acronym GSPC, decided to merge with al-Qa'eda. Its fighters have waged a brutal Islamist insurgency in Algeria for the last 15 years.
Significantly, this move was revealed not by the GSPC but in a taped message from Zawahiri. "Osama bin Laden has told me to announce to Muslims that the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat has joined al-Qa'eda,'' said Zawahiri.
He added that France, Algeria's former colonial power, would be a key target. "This should be a source of chagrin, frustration and sadness for the apostates [in Algeria's regime] and the treacherous sons of France,'' said Zawahiri, promising a blow against the "French crusaders''.
The GSPC then said: "We pledge allegiance to Sheikh Osama bin Laden. Our soldiers are at his call so that he may strike who and where he likes.''
British officials say that "core al-Qa'eda'' regarded this move as a coup. They believe the leadership's second key objective is to expand into Turkey, Syria and Lebanon.
The sudden emergence of Fatah al-Islam, the extremist group now fighting Lebanon's army in a Palestinian refugee camp outside the city of Tripoli, could be the result. Fatah al-Islam's leader, Shaker al-Abssi, has proclaimed his support for bin Laden.
But his group has also been linked to Syria's regime, which al-Qa'eda despises as an "apostate'' dictatorship. It is too early to say whether "core al-Qa'eda's'' strategy of expansion into the Levant is bearing fruit - but British officials believe that an effort is being made. Another Sunni extremist group, styling itself Asbat al-Ansar, is active in south Lebanon and has more definite links with "core al-Qa'eda''.
The GSPC's merger with al-Qa'eda is viewed as especially significant. The Algerian diaspora is spread across Western Europe, concentrated mainly in France but with a significant presence in Britain. Officials fear that GSPC cells in these communities could be used by al-Qa'eda to strike targets in Europe.
While "core al-Qa'eda'' gives strategic direction to its followers, it does not exert day to day operational control over them. Bin Laden does not sit in a cave in Waziristan issuing orders for specific attacks on given targets. There is no centralised command structure with bin Laden at its apex.
Al-Qa'eda does not possess an equivalent of the IRA's Army Council where the formal leadership assembles. Instead, "core al-Qa'eda'' is a moving circle of people, possibly numbering in the dozens, who give general direction to cells across the globe. In particular, they decide which regions of the world to target for expansion or for attack. So bin Laden and Zawahiri were sporadically in touch with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist leader who created "al-Qa'eda in Iraq''. Until his death last year, Zarqawi seized the chance offered by the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq to open a new front against the Western allies.
One important indicator is the number of taped messages released by the two key figures. Last year, bin Laden and Zawahiri managed 21 public messages, twice as many as in 2005. Several of these missives mentioned events which had taken place a few days earlier.
Instead of living in isolation, they are secure enough to receive timely information and send regular public messages to their global constituency.
North and South Waziristan are two of Pakistan's seven "federally administered tribal areas''. These barren enclaves on the frontier with Afghanistan are beyond the control of any government, including Gen Pervez Musharraf's embattled regime in Islamabad.
Under agreements first negotiated by the British, the tribal areas are run by local chiefs from the Pashtun people and no one else. Pakistani law does not apply to them and no police or security forces are allowed to enter. By tradition, even the army is confined to main roads and agreed outposts. Pakistan has vetoed requests for US troops to enter these areas, where criminals and smugglers have found refuge for centuries.
No better sanctuary for "core al-Qa'eda'' could be imagined than this ungoverned expanse of territory covering more than 10,000 square miles of some of the world's most rugged terrain. Moreover, the tribal areas have been strongholds of Islamist extremism for decades. Many of the chiefs are natural supporters of bin Laden - perhaps explaining why the American reward of pounds 12.5 million has failed to yield any result so far.
In addition, the chiefs live by the traditional Pashtun code known as "Pashtunwali''. Once you accept a guest into your house - and bin Laden has clearly been accepted by somebody - he must be offered absolute protection.
Under American pressure, Gen Musharraf broke with tradition and sent Pakistan's army into the tribal areas last year. The only result was fierce fighting and the deaths of at least 600 Pakistani soldiers.
Gen Musharraf withdrew his troops from all but a few outposts last September in return for a vague agreement that chiefs would hand over al-Qa'eda suspects and stop the flow of Taliban fighters over the border into Afghanistan. But this deal has yielded little. Some tribal areas would be less welcoming than others for "core al-Qa'eda''. One, Kurram, has a large population of Shia Muslims with little obvious affinity for al-Qa'eda's brand of Sunni zealotry. Another, Khyber Agency, allows the army to control a chain of border outposts and the main road running through the Khyber Pass linking Pakistan with Afghanistan.
So bin Laden is thought to have headed towards the stronghold of the Waziri tribe in North Waziristan. Safely beyond the reach of both Pakistani and American forces, "core al-Qa'eda'' has staged something of a recovery.
The effects have been felt in Britain. Last month, Peter Clarke, Scotland Yard's head of counter-terrorism, said: "In case after case, the hand of core al-Qa'eda can clearly be seen. Arrested leaders or key players are quickly replaced and disrupted networks will reform quickly.'' He added that al-Qa'eda had been "able to survive a prolonged multi-national assault on its structures, personnel and logistics''. When the network was based in Afghanistan before the destruction of the Taliban regime in 2001, al-Qa'eda's key role was training recruits. It operated scores of camps where thousands of terrorists learned their skills. Now there are signs that "core al-Qa'eda'' is once again running training camps, this time in North Waziristan. Surveillance has identified compounds where recruits are thought to be gathering. Yet the blows suffered by bin Laden's network should not be underestimated. Since the attacks on September 11, al-Qa'eda's training camps in Afghanistan have all been destroyed and several key figures captured or killed. Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, two experienced operatives who specialised in planning terrorist attacks, were arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and 2003 respectively. Mohammed Atef, another of bin Laden's key lieutenants, was killed by a US air strike in Afghanistan in 2001.
Bin Laden and Zawahiri appear to have spent two or three years after 2001 doing little but evading capture. Western observers often assume that striking America or Europe is their only ambition. In fact, they view toppling Gen Musharraf in Pakistan and overthrowing the Saudi royal family as equally important. Bin Laden sees both these regimes as despicable Western puppets. But British officials say al-Qa'eda's decision to attack Saudi Arabia was a major strategic error. After the network carried out a series of attacks on foreign and economic targets in 2003 and 2004, the kingdom's security forces responded with ruthless efficiency.
At least 2,000 suspects have been arrested - 172 were rounded up in a single operation last month. In Pakistan, Gen Musharraf clings to power, despite al-Qa'eda's best efforts to assassinate him. The general, who claims to have cheated death 11 times, had his narrowest escape on Boxing Day 2004 when a suicide car bomber came within an ace of detonating alongside his limousine. So the "apostate'' general is still in office and the Saudi royal family, who have been bin Laden's sworn enemies since they invited US troops into the Kingdom in 1990 and stripped him of his Saudi citizenship, are probably more secure today than they were in 2001.
Elsewhere, al-Qa'eda's efforts to subvert Indonesia, the largest Muslim nation in the world, have been successfully countered. Jemaah Islamiyah, the Indonesian group responsible for the bombing of a nightclub in Bali in 2002, has been crippled by hundreds of arrests and its spiritual leader, Abu Bakar Bashir, is now behind bars.
Neither America nor Western Europe has suffered a mass-casualty terrorist attack since the London bombings almost two years ago. Financing terrorism has become harder and co-operation between the world's intelligence agencies is closer than ever.
But the unknown factor is whether the war in Iraq will produce a new cadre of battle-hardened al-Qa'eda recruits. The first generation of al-Qa'eda leaders had fought alongside bin Laden against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s. The next generation had combat experience in Algeria's Islamic insurgency in the 1990s, the Chechen war against Russia or the struggle against Indian rule in Kashmir.
The key question is whether a new leadership of al-Qa'eda will emerge from the furnace of Iraq. If so, they will probably be more capable than bin Laden's generation, having survived close combat against the most advanced armies in the world. Yet bin Laden is probably as far away from achieving his strategic aims as he was before September 11.
However, America, Britain and all of bin Laden's countless other enemies seem no closer to hunting him down, still less to crushing al-Qa'eda.
The probable truth is that what President George W Bush called the "war on terror'' has reached a stalemate. Neither side is close to achieving its goals.
bigearth
06-04-2007, 01:52 PM
waziristan! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waziristan)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Pakistan-Waziristan-Map.png/275px-Pakistan-Waziristan-Map.png
that's where the action is!
Monterey County Herald (California)
July 1, 2007 Sunday
Al-Qaida fighters regroup in Pakistan
By JONATHAN S. LANDAY McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON While the U.S. presses its war against insurgents linked to al-Qaida in Iraq, Osama bin Laden's group is recruiting, regrouping and rebuilding in a new sanctuary along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, senior U.S. military, intelligence and law enforcement officials said.
The threat from the radical Islamic enclave in Waziristan is more dangerous than that from Iraq, which President Bush and his aides call the "central front" of the war on terrorism, said some current and former U.S. officials and experts. Bin Laden is believed to be hiding in the region, guiding a new generation of lieutenants and inspiring allied extremist groups in Iraq and other parts of the world.
Al-Qaida, its allies in Afghanistan's Taliban movement and Pakistani radicals "have free rein there now," said Marvin Weinbaum, a former State Department intelligence analyst with the Middle East Institute, a Washington policy organization.
The remote Pakistani region "is the real heart of the war on terror, and we're losing," said a U.S. intelligence official who, like most of his colleagues, requested anonymity. "We took our eye off the ball when we went into Iraq."
A truce Sept. 5 between the Pakistani government and pro-Taliban tribes and Islamic radicals provided al-Qaida with its new sanctuary in which to plot terrorist operations and train an influx of fresh foreign recruits, U.S. officials and experts said.
Al-Qaida has been using training camps in the area to teach lessons learned from fighting the U.S.-led coalitions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the officials said.
"Al-Qaida and the Taliban have to a troubling degree been able to re-create ... the environment that existed in Afghanistan under the Taliban, to include recruiting and training foreign jihadists and financing and planning terrorist operations," a U.S. intelligence official said.
A senior State Department official, who requested anonymity so he could speak candidly, said the Pakistani army had removed some checkpoints on routes into Waziristan after the truce, allowing an influx of fresh Arab recruits into al-Qaida training camps from September to December.
"The danger is worse because they moved in, and getting rid of them is harder," the official said.
The senior State Department official said Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's military ruler, remained "a strong ally" who cooperated in the arrests of several top al-Qaida operatives, and added that Pakistan aided in the killing of two senior Taliban leaders this year in Afghanistan.
"The deal in Waziristan did not work, has not worked. The Pakistanis understand that," he said. "They are still required to kick out the Arabs and stop Talibanization ... and they are making the effort."
Some current and former U.S. officials, however, are pessimistic that Pakistan and the United States can root out the growing threat from Waziristan, a region of remote valleys and steep peaks, with a population of about 800,000.
"About the only tool we have are airstrikes, and those are blunt instruments," one U.S. intelligence official said. "A lot of the time when we hit something, we're not sure what we hit."
The tribes along the border ethnic Pashtuns linked to the Taliban by kinship, culture and a puritanical interpretation of Islam continue to host Arab fighters of al-Qaida as well as militants led by Jalalludin Haqqani, a veteran guerrilla commander and a minister in Afghanistan's former Taliban regime.
The issue has been a focus of recent talks in Washington and Islamabad between senior Pakistani and U.S. officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney.
But Musharraf is engulfed in his gravest domestic crisis since he seized power in a 1999 coup, confronting a nationwide opposition movement that opposes his plan to seek election as president while he remains army chief of staff.
Washington is working with Musharraf on a U.S.-financed scheme to build schools and roads and expand a tribal militia in Pakistan's deeply impoverished tribal areas to encourage the tribes to withdraw their protection for al-Qaida and the Taliban.
The senior State Department official said Musharraf also had been quietly shifting more troops from his eastern border with India to the western frontier with Afghanistan to clamp down on cross-border movements of arms and men.
But other U.S. officials, many experts and the Afghan government contend that Musharraf's regime is playing both sides, arming, financing and protecting the Taliban to maintain Pakistani influence in Afghanistan. Islamabad denies the charge.
bigearth
07-02-2007, 06:08 PM
send in the SAS...
send in the SAS...
Can't
That might interupt the lucrative heroin trade that our governments have worked so hard to support.
bigearth
07-03-2007, 08:15 AM
Can't
That might interupt the lucrative heroin trade that our governments have worked so hard to support.
aah, well, don't know about that :rolleyes:
anyway...if i was SAS or a ranger or (what do you cal them) pathfinder?
...NOTHING would give me greater pleasure than being dropped, along with a few thousand similar troops, into the moutainous border region and go jihadi hunting...
what fun!
aah, well, don't know about that :rolleyes:
anyway...if i was SAS or a ranger or (what do you cal them) pathfinder?
...NOTHING would give me greater pleasure than being dropped, along with a few thousand similar troops, into the moutainous border region and go jihadi hunting...
what fun!
we call them "special forces"... They sometimes have fancy names like "Delta Force" , but most of them are secret, so by the time you or I learn of their existence, they're probably ready to disband
bigearth
07-03-2007, 12:11 PM
we call them "special forces"... They sometimes have fancy names like "Delta Force" , but most of them are secret, so by the time you or I learn of their existence, they're probably ready to disband
oh, i don't know...you can't scare people unless they get some idea of what's coming...
NO WAY!!! Say it ain't so!!!
LOL
The Pakistani Road to German Terror
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted GMT 9-9-2007 23:55:20
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
KARACHI -- Once again, fingers are being pointed at Pakistan over terror suspects being trained in the country. Men linked to the July 7, 2005, attacks on the London transport system, and others in separate incidents, have been said to have ties to Pakistan, and on Wednesday German prosecutors stated that three men they had arrested on suspicion of planning "massive" attacks in the country had trained at camps in Pakistan.
Two of the men are German nationals who have converted to Islam, while the third is Turkish. German officials said they belonged to a cell of the Sunni Islamic Jihad Union, an al-Qaeda-linked group that is believed to be an offshoot of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which was active in Afghanistan. Its leader, Tahir Yuldashev, is based in Pakistan.
It is entirely possible that the men trained in Pakistan, in which case their teacher would have been al-Qaeda commander Abu Hanifah, who has a base in the town of Mir Ali in the North Waziristan tribal area.
"Abu Hanifah was commanding 27 Turks when last he was seen in Mir Ali, and if the people who were arrested in Germany are genuinely part of al-Qaeda and confessed to be trained in Pakistan, they could only be trained at Abu Hanifah's camp," a contact in North Waziristan told Asia Times Online.
The control of all foreign fighters in North Waziristan and South Waziristan from different regions of the world is generally in the hands of Arabs, the most astute and trained commanders. For example, Abu Nasir commands Chinese, Uighurs and Pakistanis; Abu Akash looks after Uzbeks and Tajiks, while Abu Hanifah takes care of Turks, Kurds and Bosnians.
Abu Hanifah was among the al-Qaeda commanders expelled from Mir Ali by the Pakistani Taliban early this year in a conflict between the local tribals and foreign fighters, whose authority the Taliban resented. Several hundred Uzbeks were massacred in the unrest. Abu Hanifah, along with Abu Akash and Abu Nasir, took refuge in the isolated and inhospitable Shawal, a no-man's land that spans the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
The three men arrested in Germany had amassed about 700 kilograms of hydrogen peroxide, the same chemical used by the suicide bombers in the 2005 London attacks that killed 56 people. Hydrogen peroxide (3% hydrogen peroxide by weight; 97% water) can easily be bought and is commonly used to bleach hair and disinfect wounds. Greater concentrations can be used as explosives.
Al-Qaeda is known to train people in explosives that contain ingredients that are easily available in the market and whose purchases don't draw attention to the buyers.
Contacts Asia Times Online spoke to who are familiar with al-Qaeda believe that if the German plot is genuine, only the United States and its strategic installations would have been the targets.
"Countries like Germany and to some extent France have not really been on al-Qaeda's radar, and if there were any strategy, it would be to only damage American interests," a contact based in North Waziristan said.
German authorities, who had been tracking the three men since December, said they had planned to target facilities visited by Americans, such as nightclubs, pubs and airports, as well as the Ramstein US air base near Frankfurt.
According to the authorities, the suspects had military-style detonators and enough material to make bombs more powerful than those that killed 191 people in Madrid in 2004 and 56 in London two years ago.
Al-Qaeda back in favor
It is precisely because of camps in Pakistan such as the one run by Abu Hanifah that the US and European countries want Islamabad to take more decisive action against them. So frustrated has the US become that it has threatened to launch its own attacks, or send in North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops from across the border in Afghanistan.
The attacks on the US on September 11, 2001, made al-Qaeda highly popular in the mountain vastness of the Waziristans, and when the Taliban retreated from Afghanistan in the face of the US invasion in late 2001, al-Qaeda, which had had bases in Afghanistan, was welcomed.
Thousands of young Waziris and Mehsud tribal youths happily accepted the command of al-Qaeda leaders in organizations such as Jundullah. They were respected as superheroes, and the young militants anticipated more al-Qaeda-led attacks against the US that would eventually destroy its might. Out of this wreckage, the belief went, an Islamic caliphate would be revived in Pakistan and Afghanistan and Muslim armies would eventually march to liberate Palestine.
However, nothing like that happened and indigenous Islamic resistance groups in Iraq and Afghanistan emerged as more successful, and the al-Qaeda heroes in Pakistan lost a lot of their appeal, leading to infighting with the Pakistani Taliban and their expulsion from the Waziristans this year.
Abu Hanifah and other al-Qaeda commanders worked hard on restoring their image and regaining respect, which they managed to do within a few months, and they began to operate again in the Waziristans.
If the suspects arrested in Germany are indeed products of Abu Hanifah's "school", his standing and al-Qaeda's will rise even further in the eyes of local militants, and the pressure on the US and it allies in the region to do something about it will grow even stronger.
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
www.atimes.com
http://www.aina.org/news/2007099185520.htm
Right, but the Lackawana seven allegedly went there BEFORE 9/11
All of the Musharraf ass-kissers will tell you that things have CHANGED now in Pakistan
only, this report is saying they haven't
June 8, 2005
That's when I posted this comment ..
haha.. Not to say, "I told ya so.. but..."
:)
NostraBman, fo' sho'.
Oh, by the way...for those of you that don't believe the Germany AQ story was made up the the bush admin:
Europeans get terror training in Pakistan
By Souad Mekhennet and Michael Moss Published: September 10, 2007
FRANKFURT: The accused conspirators in a bombing plot disrupted last week in Germany were part of what the authorities say is a small, but growing, flow of militants from Germany and other Western countries who are receiving terrorism training at camps in Pakistan.
Beginning early last year, at least five of the suspects traveled to the tribal regions of Waziristan, where they learned to prepare chemical explosives and military-grade detonators that they intended to use to build three car bombs, according to German officials and a confidential German intelligence document that details the allegations.
full story (http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/09/10/europe/10germany.php)
NostraBman, fo' sho'.
Oh, by the way...for those of you that don't believe the Germany AQ story was made up the the bush admin:
Europeans get terror training in Pakistan
There have been NO terrorist plots that have been foiled in Australia, Europe or in the US or Canada, that didnt' involved jihadis who trained in Pakistan.
I can't think of one.
There either with us or against us :rolleyes:
Yay, or Nay? :confused:
Former prime minister arrested upon arrival in Pakistan
By Salman Masood and Carlotta Gall Published: September 10, 2007
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: Nawaz Sharif, a Pakistani opposition leader and former prime minister, was arrested here Monday, after he had flown to the Pakistani capital intent on leading an effort to oust the current president, General Pervez Musharraf.
Sharif was dragged out of a lounge in the Islamabad airport by several police officers. He was being taken to prison, according to Irfan Ilahi a district coordination officer for the Pakistan police.
But Dawn News, a local television channel, reported that Sharif was being deported to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
more (http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/09/10/asia/10pakistan.php)
candypreet
09-10-2007, 12:06 PM
wow
interesting article here... An alleged terrorist cell in California apparently was broken up.. BUT WAIT... what's this??
One of the allegations is that the ringleader attended terrorist camps IN PAKISTAN... IN 2003 and 2004.
What?? I thought Pakistan wasn't harboring Al Qaeda???
But let me guess.. Pakistan didn't know about those camps, right?? THEN HOW DO WE KNOW that this guy was there????
Think about it
Copyright 2005 The Chronicle Publishing Co.
The San Francisco Chronicle
JUNE 8, 2005, WEDNESDAY, FINAL EDITION
Al Qaeda probe reported -- Lodi father, son arrested;
Federal complaint says 22-year-old trained in Pakistan on 'how to kill Americans'
Chronicle Staff Writer
Henry K. Lee
Federal agents have broken up what they say was an al Qaeda terrorist cell operating in the San Joaquin County city of Lodi, arresting two men, one of whom admitted attending training camps in Pakistan to learn "how to kill Americans," according to published reports.
A joint terrorism task force, including agents from the FBI, arrested Hamid Hayat, 22, and his father on Sunday, less than a week after the younger man was found aboard a San Francisco-bound plane even though his name appeared on a no-fly list of suspected extremists, the Los Angeles Times reported in today's editions.
Hayat was trained to use explosives and weapons and practiced by using photographs of President Bush and other high-profile U.S. political figures as targets, the Times reported, citing court documents.
The suspect, who allegedly initially lied to FBI agents about whether he had received training, had his pick of where to carry out a terrorist attack, which potentially could have targeted hospitals and large food stores, the Times said, citing court documents.
The task force arrested Hayat's father, Umer Hayat, 47, a Lodi ice cream truck driver, on charges that he lied about his son's involvement and his own financing of the terror camp, the Times said. Umer Hayat reportedly paid $100 each month to his son.
The father told FBI agents that his son became interested in attending a terrorist training camp as a teenager after being influenced by a classmate in Pakistan and an uncle who had fought with the mujahedeen in Afghanistan, the newspaper reported.
After denying any involvement, Hamid Hayat told FBI agents that he had attended al Qaeda training camps in Pakistan for six months in 2003 and 2004, the Times reported.
Both men live in Lodi, where family members denied to the Times that the father and son had any links to terrorism. Several phone numbers listed for Umer Hayat were disconnected Tuesday night.
The two made a brief appearance Tuesday before U.S. Magistrate Peter Nowinski in Sacramento and are being held in Sacramento County Jail.
Umer Hayat is charged in a federal complaint with lying about his son's involvement in the terror camp. His attorney, Johnny Griffin III, called the allegations shocking but said his client "is charged with nothing more than lying to an agent," the Sacramento Bee reported.
The complaint accuses Hamid Hayat of training to learn "how to kill Americans" and then lying to FBI agents about it, the Bee reported.
The Bee reported that investigators also detained Muhammed Adil Khan and Shabbir Ahmed for questioning and that both are being held on immigration violations.
Ahmed was imam of the Lodi Muslim Mosque, the Lodi News-Sentinel reported on its Web site.
Khan was a former imam who is leading efforts to build the Farooqia Islamic Center, including a school for children up to fourth grade, south of Lodi on Lower Sacramento Road, the News-Sentinel reported.
On Tuesday, FBI agents searched Ahmed's house on Poplar Street, next door to the mosque, and another house on the 300 block of Acacia Street, about four blocks from the mosque, the Lodi newspaper reported.
An FBI spokesman in Sacramento was unavailable for comment Tuesday night.
Lodi Mayor John Beckman confirmed to The Chronicle that the FBI had made some arrests and served some search warrants in the case.
"Having the FBI issue search warrants and make arrests in your town is always a little bit surprising," Beckman said of the agricultural city of 60,000 residents. "I'm glad to hear that the FBI is staying on top of federal criminal issues, no matter the size of the community."
E-mail Henry K. Lee at hlee@sfchronicle.com.
UPDATE:
American jailed for Pakistan camp visit
Posted Tue Sep 11, 2007 7:19am AEST
An American man has been sentenced to 24 years jail for providing material support to terrorists by attending a paramilitary training camp in Pakistan.
Hamid Hayat was sentenced by a court in California after he admitted to spending six months training with militants in Pakistan in 2003.
Federal investigators said he was part of an Al Qaeda cell in California and that he firmly believed in violent jihad against Westerners.
He is likely to spend at least 21 years behind bars.
-ABC
http://abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/09/11/2029246.htm?section=world
Expected?
U.S. official in Pakistan for talks
By Carlotta Gall Published: September 12, 2007
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, arriving Wednesday in Pakistan for two days of talks during a political crackdown and increased violence in the border areas, called for a peaceful democratic transition from military rule but pointedly did not criticize the deportation on Monday of an opposition leader.
Negroponte was attending discussions with the Foreign Ministry on strategic relations between Pakistan and the United States, covering terrorism and general assistance, but he was here at a tense political moment. Hundreds of opposition political leaders and workers have been detained in the last few days as the president, General Pervez Musharraf, prepares to register as a candidate for another term at the end of this week.
Negroponte gave a clear indication that the Bush administration continued to support a plan for a power-sharing agreement between another opposition leader and former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, and Musharraf that would allow him to continue as president for another term.
continue. (http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/09/13/asia/13pakistan.php)
Pakistan is amazing.
Much of what was falsely said about Iraq, is true of Pakistan, that is
It possesses, WMD.
Terrorist camps are located their
Terrorist have received WMD technology from them
The government was linked to the 9/11 hijackers.
In addition, much of what was TRUE of Iraq, is also true of Pakistan, such as
its ruled by a cruel dictator, who is accountable to no one
its government organizations, such as the "police" run rape rooms and torture chambers.
Human rights are nonexistent, especially for women (although Pakistani women would have considered Saddam's Iraq to be a virtual Mecca of enlightenment, compared to the hellhole they live in)
In addition, Pakistan is also a major conduit for the illegal drug trade
DarthShady
09-13-2007, 10:59 PM
And, Bin Laden has a 46% approval rating, according to the latest polls.
September 10, 2007
Europeans Get Terror Training Inside Pakistan
By SOUAD MEKHENNET and MICHAEL MOSS
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/09/10/world/10germany.600.jpg
Militants operate freely among tribesmen in Waziristan, who waited at a government roadblock
FRANKFURT, Sept. 9 — The accused conspirators in a bombing plot disrupted last week in Germany were part of what the authorities say is a small, but growing, flow of militants from Germany and other Western countries who are receiving terrorism training at camps in Pakistan.
Beginning early last year, at least five of the suspects traveled to the tribal regions of Waziristan, where they learned to prepare chemical explosives and military-grade detonators that they intended to use to build three car bombs, according to German officials and a confidential German intelligence document that details the allegations.
The authorities said the man they had identified as the leader of the plot, Fritz Martin Gelowicz, 28, apparently found his way to the camp in Waziristan through contacts he made at an Islamic center he attended in Neu-Ulm, Germany. Other suspects in the suspected conspiracy then followed Mr. Gelowicz to the camp, where their instructors included militant Islamists from Uzbekistan who are aligned with Al Qaeda, according to the confidential document.
As further evidence of traffic between Germany and the tribal areas of Pakistan, intelligence officials said six other men from Germany who had received similar training had been detained in Pakistan, and they suspect that numerous other Germans have attended the camps without being identified by the authorities.
German officials say they are troubled by evidence that Al Qaeda and other groups are training Western-born recruits whose passports allow them easy access to other Western countries.
“They started to look especially for people from Europe, because they wanted to train them and later to use them here in Germany for operations,” said a high-ranking German intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the continuing investigation.
The accusations in Germany contain similarities to two high-profile cases in Britain.
The leader of the suicide bombers who killed 52 people in the 2005 London subway and bus attacks trained at a camp in northwestern Pakistan, according to court papers. Four British men convicted in April of planning fertilizer-bomb attacks around London also trained in Pakistan camps, according to court papers in the case, known as Operation Crevice.
This summer militants released a 46-minute videotape depicting some 250 graduates of a Taliban training camp near the Afghan-Pakistan border, which included speeches in English by recruits who were grouped by the countries they had been trained to attack, including Germany and the United States.
“We are not only fighting in Afghanistan,” the Taliban leader, Mullah Mansoor, said at the end of the ceremony. “Those American, British, German, French, Canadian and others who have come to finish us, if God wills, we will destroy them with the power of strong faith in God. We will commit suicidal attacks and we will destroy their national assets.”
German officials said they were relying largely on American and Pakistani intelligence to identify men who traveled to Waziristan, and while they declined to specify the nature of that intelligence, they said it was strong.
The amount of training under way in the tribal areas of Pakistan is difficult, if not impossible, to estimate, but intelligence officials are concerned about what they see as a trend toward terrorist groups recruiting Westerners.
In a speech in New York on Friday, the C.I.A. director, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, said, “We do see them working to train people whom you and I wouldn’t raise an eyebrow about if they were getting off the plane with us at Kennedy, people whose identity makes it easier — whose persona makes it easier for them to come into America and to blend into American society.”
The Pakistani government has recently acknowledged that Al Qaeda and other militants are operating in the tribal-controlled areas on its border with Afghanistan. Pakistan had struck an agreement with leaders in the South Waziristan tribal area, giving groups there amnesty as long as they refrained from attacking government installations and vehicles. But it broke down last month when the military began a new operation against the militants, which led to the capture of close to 300 Pakistani troops by the militants.
Even as Western governments and Pakistan try to crack down on terrorist training, their efforts are clashing with human rights groups in Pakistan that are pressing for the release of terrorism suspects who have been detained without being charged.
Pakistani courts recently released two Germans, who officials say they believe received explosives training in Waziristan, including a 45-year-old gem dealer who was designated a “potentially dangerous person” by the German police for threatening statements he made three days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He is back home in Germany, where officials say he has contacts with violent Islamic cells and has made several trips to the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
He was arrested on June 18 by the Pakistani military intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, as he was boarding a plane in Lahore to fly back to Germany, and remained in detention for two months until the Supreme Court ruled there was insufficient evidence to continue holding him.
“There was no basis for the ISI to hold this man for two months,” said Amina Masood, an official with the Pakistani group Defense of Human Rights, which is pressing for the release of more than 400 people it has identified as being held by the ISI as terrorism suspects.
Ms. Masood said that the suspects included a handful of foreigners from Europe, Africa and the Middle East, and that several of the European detainees had been released in recent days, including men from Britain and Belgium.
The German intelligence document on the car-bombing plot, which was prepared by the authorities last week , details trips made by the German suspects to militant camps in Pakistan starting in early 2006.
The men trained in Waziristan with Uzbek militants belonging to a group known as the Islamic Jihad Union, which was designated a terrorist organization by the State Department in 2005.
Its predecessor, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, financed by Osama bin Laden, had been Central Asia’s largest militant group until it went to Afghanistan to help the Taliban and was decimated by the American-led campaign after the Sept. 11 attacks. The successor group still had fighters in Afghanistan and had “also been working on our common targets together with Caucasian mujahedeens,” the group’s commander, Ebu Yahya Muhammad Fatih, said in a statement posted on the Internet in May 2007.
The involvement of members of the Uzbek group in militant training is particularly troubling, intelligence officials say, because of their expertise in explosives, and their use of women in suicide missions and of men who unwittingly drove car bombs.
In Pakistan, Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad, the spokesman of the Pakistani military, acknowledged that Uzbeks were present in Waziristan, yet said the traffic of German nationals to Pakistan for terrorism training had not been confirmed.
But according to German intelligence officials, Mr. Gelowicz, who converted to Islam in his teens, most likely connected with the Uzbek group through the Multi-Kultur-Haus, the Islamic center in Neu-Ulm.
The center had close ties to the jihadist fighting in Chechnya, where three of its members died in combat. While German officials shut down the center in 2005, one of its imams, who fled to Saudi Arabia, continued to encourage jihadist activities by young men who had attended the center, German authorities say.
In Waziristan, Mr. Gelowicz formed a close relationship with the leaders of the Uzbek group, the German report says. A second man who joined him on that trip in March 2006, Adem Yilmaz, 28, who was born in Turkey, focused on bringing more men from Germany to be trained, the investigative report said.
They were followed in June by Atilla Selek, a 22-year-old man born in Ulm who the authorities say joined Mr. Gelowicz in December 2006 in scouting American military facilities in Hanau, Germany, the investigative report says. Mr. Selek, who goes by the name Muaz, is now in Turkey.
A fourth German man, Zafer Sari, 22, from Neunkirchen, went to the camps last summer, after attending a language school in Syria. Mr. Sari, who also has a Turkish passport, was in Turkey on June 21, when he left for Jordan and then Cairo. He is considered a suspect but is not in custody, according to the report and German officials.
The fifth suspect to train in the camps was Daniel Martin Schneider, 22, also from Neunkirchen. He went to Pakistan in August 2006 and also helped send other people to train there. Mr. Schneider was arrested last week as well.
The report says the Islamic Jihad Union has close ties to Al Qaeda, and evolved from a group with regional targets to sharing Al Qaeda’s goal of a worldwide jihadist movement. The Uzbeks have also been joined by militants from elsewhere in Central Asia, changing the ethnic complexion of the training camps.
Souad Mekhennet reported from Frankfurt, and Michael Moss from New York. Reporting was contributed by Mark Mazzetti and Margot Williams in New York, Salman Masood in Islamabad, Pakistan, and Ismail Khan in Peshawar, Pakistan.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/10/world/europe/10germany.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
candypreet
09-14-2007, 09:58 AM
good posts
bigearth
09-14-2007, 10:30 AM
...the tribal regions of Waziristan...
waziristan! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waziristan)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Pakistan-Waziristan-Map.png/275px-Pakistan-Waziristan-Map.png
that's where the action is!
...
bigearth
09-14-2007, 10:32 AM
Pakistan is amazing.
Much of what was falsely said about Iraq, is true of Pakistan, that is
It possesses, WMD.
Terrorist camps are located their
Terrorist have received WMD technology from them
The government was linked to the 9/11 hijackers.
In addition, much of what was TRUE of Iraq, is also true of Pakistan, such as
its ruled by a cruel dictator, who is accountable to no one
its government organizations, such as the "police" run rape rooms and torture chambers.
Human rights are nonexistent, especially for women (although Pakistani women would have considered Saddam's Iraq to be a virtual Mecca of enlightenment, compared to the hellhole they live in)
In addition, Pakistan is also a major conduit for the illegal drug trade
worrrrd!
...
Yep. Granted this is a HUGE hindsighted statment, but compare the numbers of coalition forces in Iraq, txfr that to Afghanistan -> pop in and out of Waziristan from time to tome, and this would probably be a glim memory.
Wonder why all of these guys go to Pakistan to get the training?
Why not go to Iran, or Syria??
:sad_01:
September 17, 2007
New Terrorism Case Confirms That Denmark Is a Target
By NICHOLAS KULISH
This article was reported by Nicholas Kulish, Souad Mekhennet and Eric Schmitt, and written by Mr. Kulish.
COPENHAGEN, Sept. 16 — After three terrorism cases in less than two years, including an alleged bombing plot broken up this month, intelligence officials say tiny Denmark is on the front line in the battle against Islamic terrorism in Europe.
“Even though we’ve prevented one terrorist attack, we know that there are still people in Denmark and abroad that have the capacity, the will and the ability to carry out terrorist attacks in Denmark,” Jakob Scharf, the head of Danish intelligence, said in an interview in his office here.
He was referring to predawn raids on Sept. 4 that resulted in the arrests of eight suspects, two of whom are still in custody on terrorism charges and are accused of planning a bombing attack.
American authorities helped Danish security officials locate the suspects through electronic intercepts from Pakistan, just as they did in arrests the same day in a bombing plot in southern Germany, intelligence officials in Washington said. They said one of the men in the Danish case received instruction within the past 12 months in explosives, surveillance and other techniques at a terrorist training camp in Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan.
With Europe again focused on the threat posed by terrorist plots, Denmark illustrates the powerful interplay between foreign agitation and domestic discontent. The country became a target of foreign Islamist terrorist groups two years ago after a conservative newspaper here published controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, drawing worldwide attention. At home, the children of Muslim immigrants complain of job discrimination and integration problems, feeding the disenchantment of the small but growing Muslim population.
“In the schools, Danish teachers are always talking about democracy and human rights, but now they see what Denmark is doing in Afghanistan and what they did here with the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad,” said Imran Shah, 31, who leads a youth group at a local mosque. “They ask themselves, is this a democracy or are they talking about double standards?”
While much of the world’s attention was focused on the arrests that took place that same day in Germany, but were announced one day later, intelligence officials here and in Washington said at least one suspect in the Danish group had direct ties to leading figures in Al Qaeda, which has regrouped in northwestern Pakistan.
“What’s coming from this is that they are now able to give military and terrorist training and able to plan and steer specific operations in Europe,” Mr. Scharf, the Danish intelligence chief, said. “Al Qaeda is back.”
Mr. Scharf drew a clear distinction between independent or loosely affiliated groups drawing inspiration from Al Qaeda’s ideology and specific control of plans for attack, saying the Danish bomb plot was clearly the latter. “I’m not indicating a direct phone line to Osama bin Laden,” he said, but leading members are able to “direct operations outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
This case was the first time officials here have linked an operation in Denmark to the group that masterminded the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
While Mr. Scharf underscored the threat posed by Islamic terrorism, he also differentiated between the religion of Islam and those who commit violence in its name, an important distinction in a country where debates over the role of Islam in a traditionally Christian society have often been contentious and the lines sometimes blurred.
The case in Denmark also highlights the uneasy coexistence of intelligence and prosecution. Danish authorities gave no indication of the quantity of explosive material found in Copenhagen this month, but they said suspects had begun mixing precursor chemicals for bombs. Of the eight men arrested, the authorities quickly released six of them, fueling skepticism about the strength of the case and the government’s ability to turn arrests into convictions.
In the first of the recent terrorism cases, stemming from arrests in October 2005, three of the four defendants found guilty by jurors had their verdicts overruled by a three-judge review panel. The fourth was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison on terrorism charges, and prosecutors say they will retry another. In the second case, nine suspects were initially arrested, of whom four are on trial. The court proceedings are under way in Copenhagen.
“They are manipulating the press and the public by giving the impression that they have a very serious case,” said Bjoern Elmquist, a lawyer for defendants in two of the cases, including this one. “They are scaring people.”
With a population of 5.5 million, Denmark is smaller than New York City by several million people, but it is a disproportionately large target on jihadist Web sites. Not only did Denmark achieve infamy across the Muslim world for the publication of the Muhammad cartoons, which incited violent and even deadly protests in other countries, it also has troops both in Afghanistan and Iraq.
There are no official statistics, but researchers estimate that there are roughly 210,000 Muslims in Denmark. It is not a homogeneous group but is split among Turks, Iraqis, Bosnians and others. That jihadist Web sites have been translated into Danish for such a small and disparate group demonstrates the interest and effort they are putting into the country.
Mr. Scharf said the profile of Muslim men pulled into extremism was young, “normally in the age from 16 to 25.” The young men are courted by mentors whose job is to identify those predisposed to a jihadi mind-set, radicalize them and put them in touch with others who could help them plan violent acts.
“This is not taking place when the imam is preaching in the mosque,” Mr. Scharf said. “I think that these imams play a very important role in preventing the radicalization” of young Muslims.
Mohammed el-Banna, an imam from the famous family of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, said, “They like heroes, and heroes, from their point of view, are not those who talk but those who fight.” He preaches at a mosque in Heimdalsgade that Politiken, a leading newspaper here, reported had been attended by suspects in all three of the alleged plots. “We cannot check the ID cards of people who attend the prayers,” he said.
Mr. Banna, 49, moved to Denmark from Egypt in 1985. He is a Danish citizen and has four children, the eldest of whom is studying computer science at a university in Denmark. Saying he was speaking for himself and not the mosque, Mr. Banna said that before the cartoon controversy, Denmark enjoyed a very good reputation in the Muslim world, as a nation that did business in the Middle East rather than fighting or keeping colonies there.
For second-generation Muslims coming of age after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the American-led invasion of Iraq, it is a different story. Mr. Banna said young men had come to him looking for religious justification to go and fight in Iraq. “When I told them that there is no justification, they would look for someone else to get the justification,” he said.
The generational gap is a concern not only for security officials, but for Muslim parents grappling with the anger of their children.
“Young people have a problem of identity,” said Bilal Assaad the spokesman for the Community of Islam Mosque in Copenhagen, which led the protests here against the Muhammad cartoons. “They were born in Denmark but they don’t feel Danish. They don’t have good possibilities to get jobs because their name is Muhammad. My son tells me, ‘Yes I can see that I’m Muslim, but I can’t see that I’m Danish.’ ”
Mr. Shah, the youth group leader, said, “When I’m going on a train with my backpack, people start to look at me in a different way.” He said that he appreciated the irony of the fact that, while under suspicion on his commute, he was on the way to his job as a security guard at the airport.
Of the 11 locations searched by Danish authorities in the recent raids, it was an apartment on Glasvej Street in a mixed neighborhood of Muslim immigrants and ethnic Danes where investigators say the bomb-making materials were found. The front door is cracked where it was broken open by a police battering ram.
The apartment was occupied by two brothers of Pakistani descent. Both were arrested in the raids. The older of the two, who is 24, was released after less than a day. “They came at 2 o’clock,” he said. “They broke open the door. They broke everything. They came as animals.”
He added that he had not seen his brother since going to sleep the night before their arrest. Under Danish law, the authorities do not release the names of suspects, and he asked not to have his name used. The authorities say he remains under investigation.
“I work all day,” he said in a soft voice. “I don’t know what my brother and his friends do.”
Nicholas Kulish and Souad Mekhennet reported from Copenhagen, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/17/world/europe/17denmark.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
bigearth
09-17-2007, 12:14 PM
...one of the men in the Danish case received instruction within the past 12 months in explosives, surveillance and other techniques at a terrorist training camp in Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan.
this has been going on for around 10 years.
the "war on terror" is supposed to be a war waged against these people.
they are still there.
they are still exporting death all over the world.
bu$h is the leader of the "war on terror".
he failed. america failed.
this has been going on for around 10 years.
the "war on terror" is supposed to be a war waged against these people.
they are still there.
they are still exporting death all over the world.
bu$h is the leader of the "war on terror".
he failed. america failed.
Amen
bigearth
09-18-2007, 10:09 AM
Amen
it's incredible how so many people realise this...yet so many people still support bu$h?
the words "arse" and "head" spring to mind :rolleyes:
Herald Sun (Australia)
February 28, 2008 Thursday
1 - FIRST Edition
Fanatic guilty of drive to terror
LONDON -- A Muslim fanatic who called himself Osama bin London has been found guilty of brainwashing the 21/7 terrorist plotters into becoming suicide bombers.
Mohammed Hamid, 50, a former crack addict and thief, radicalised countless young men by preaching hate and taking them on terror training camps in the countryside.
Undercover footage showed recruits using sticks as weapons and running through the New Forest.
Hamid, who was convicted at Woolwich Crown Court, South London, boasted he ran the camps, where he taught recruits military warfare for 13 years.
On one camp, after the July 7 bombings on the Tube and a bus in London in 2005, Hamid scoffed at the death toll of 52, saying: ``That's not even breakfast for me.''
The prayer meetings and courses he ran with British-born Atilla Ahmet, were the start of a conveyor belt for pupils which ended in training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. There, students would be radicalised further by al-Qaida.
Some would be sent to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq. Others, such as Hamid's protege Muktar Ibrahim, the ringleader of the failed bomb plot of July 21, 2005, would be posted back to the UK.
Ibrahim and fellow bombers Yassin Omar, Ramzi Mohamed and Hussain Osman, first came to police attention on a camp Hamid led in the Lake District in May 2004, 14 months before their failed Tube attacks.
In October 2004, Ibrahim and Hamid, a married father of six, were arrested for public order offences in London.
Hamid told officers: ``I've got a bomb -- I'm going to blow you all up.'' He gave his name as Osama bin London, and his address as Tora Bora.
Ibrahim was allowed bail, and flew to Pakistan. He and two companions had survival gear, pound stg. 5200 in cash, and a manual on treating ballistic injuries; yet an officer believed their story that they were going to a wedding.
He is suspected of plotting the July 21 attack from an al-Qaida training camp in Pakistan.
In 2005, four days before the July 7 bombings, Hamid took a group including two July 21 bombers, on a paintballing trip in Bidborough, Kent.
In September 2005, security services put his council house in Clapton under surveillance, recording his anti-Western rants.
The scale of the men's fundamentalism was exposed after an undercover officer from Scotland Yard infiltrated their inner circle and secretly recorded them over a five-month period.
Police realised Hamid, who came to the UK when he was five, was luring passers-by at a stall from where he sold extremist Islamic literature.
Hamid was found guilty of six offences including soliciting to murder and providing terrorist and weapons training. He was cleared on four other charges. Ahmet had already pleaded guilty to soliciting to murder.
They will be sentenced next month. Five other men were found guilty of various terror offences and jailed.
BBC Monitoring South Asia - Political
Supplied by BBC Worldwide Monitoring
March 10, 2008 Monday
Afghan paper urges fight against terror on Pakistani side of border
Text of article by Joyan Qarizada entitled "It is necessary to control lawless tribal areas on both sides of border" published by Afghan newspaper Payam-e Mojahed on 6 March
Efforts continue to take control of lawless tribal areas in the south. This was a quote from Michael Maples, director of the Defence Intelligence Agency, as a news headline.
He said: The Taleban and Al-Qa'idah are providing arms and supplies for and training insurgents in southern tribal areas.
Michael Maples made the remarks at a time when US intelligence experts say the Taleban controls more than 10 per cent of Afghanistan soil, the government has control of only 30 per cent and the rest lies in the control of figures and groups who are not much interested in the government. According to this report, the government only controls the surroundings of Kabul and some northeast provinces, and the rest is either in the hands of the Taleban or irresponsible figures and groups. However, the Karzai government rejects the report of the US intelligence services and says that except for a number of districts in the southern provinces other areas are all under the control of Afghan central government. It claims reports from unreliable sources have been given to US intelligence sources.
Chief of National Security Directorate Amrollah Saleh says the Afghan government does not have control over seven districts; five districts in Helmand, one in Diakondi, and one in Nuristan. According to Amrollah Saleh this forms only five per cent of Afghan soil.
Anyway, what's obvious is that the Afghan government, along with thousands of troops of NATO and the US coalition, has not been able to find the key to overcoming the Taleban and Al-Qa'idah.
There is a difference in methods between NATO and the US Coalition troops in fighting against terrorism in Afghanistan. Most NATO member states are not ready to send their troops to the southern restive areas of the country. On the other hand, Canada has warned of withdrawing its troops from the south unless other NATO members send more troops to cooperate with them.
Moreover, a number of NATO countries have distinguished between the Taleban and Al-Qa'idah. They have described the two as separate from each other. Thus, their treatment of these two terrorist groups differs, which has also created a challenge.
Britons, on the other hand, separately attempted to talk with the Taleban and merge them with the government. This created doubts, and a separation between the US and Britain, which finally lead to the withdrawal of two British officials working for the UN Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA) and the European Union.
Meanwhile, both the Americans and NATO still look to Pakistan to cooperate in the fight against terrorism and show a better way. However, experiences of the past have clearly illustrated that Pakistan either does not want to cooperate in the eradication of the Taleban and Al-Qa'idah or it does not have the capability.
Pakistan, however, under the leadership of Pervez Musharraf has received millions of dollars from the west under the pretext of cooperating to fight against terrorism and the Taleban. It has not taken actual steps in the war on terror. Pakistan has only cheated the international community in this respect. Expecting anything from the new elected government of Pakistan is also a step backward.
NATO and the Coalition troops have been talking so far about failure in the fight against the Taleban and Al'Qa'idah in Afghanistan, and say they will bring changes in their methods.
Political experts on Afghanistan's crisis believe the war on terror in Afghanistan will continue and won't reach a success point if the strategic change in methods of military war in Afghanistan is based on the idea that the Taleban and Al-Qa'idah are two different groups and they need two different ways to be fought.
Experiences have proved that the two terrorist groups are not separate from each other, but they fight to complement each other and alongside each other in Afghanistan against the government and foreign troops. And their existence depends on their cooperation.
The presence of both groups in southern Afghanistan and the north of Pakistan, as claimed by many western media and internal security services, and in particular their training centres in tribal areas of Pakistan, are big challenges for a new widespread strategy.
The Pakistani Taleban have strengthened their sovereignty in Waziristan as they are implementing their law in those areas.
The Pakistani media mostly quoting internal security services of that country describes the Taleban as extending in that county. According to the Pakistani media, the leader of the Taleban in Pakistan, Baitollah Mahsud, has 35,000 soldiers in southern Waziristan, and has trained 500 children, younger than 20, for suicide attacks. Besides, the media reports, Al-Qa'idah terrorist training camps are operating in those areas, and they jointly carry out operations either in Afghanistan or Pakistan.
According to the director of the US Defence Intelligence Agency, efforts continue to take control of lawless tribal areas in the south. If attempts are under way only on this side of Durand line, they won't bring about any success. It is more important to take control of the tribal areas and the Taleban and Al-Qa'idah on the other side the Durand line.
Source: Payam-e Mojahed, Kabul, in Dari and Pashto 6 Mar 08
rabzon
03-26-2008, 12:37 PM
The new government should be given time and the US should work with it and US MUST STOP supporting Musharraf.
candypreet
03-26-2008, 01:37 PM
The new government should be given time and the US should work with it and US MUST STOP supporting Musharraf.
is it safe for you saying this.
The new government should be given time and the US should work with it and US MUST STOP supporting Musharraf.
What new government?
Musharraff is still the dictator, isn't he?
What are you talking about ?
Mars S
03-26-2008, 04:10 PM
If it wasn't safe for people to protest Musharraf, I suspect he'd have them killed in large numbers. As it is, it looks like the main source of violence against civilians is terrorism from AQ and their ilk.
Ponder
03-26-2008, 04:52 PM
The new government should be given time and the US should work with it and US MUST STOP supporting Musharraf.
The US is already courting the new leadership. All the news outlets are reporting this.
malum
03-26-2008, 05:08 PM
What new government?
Musharraff is still the dictator, isn't he?
What are you talking about ?
Are you being serious?
rabzon
03-27-2008, 06:38 AM
is it safe for you saying this.
No it is not……… but you know what…… I don’t give a dam any more. We the people of Pakistan have lived under military dictators for almost 50 years and we are not going to tolerate any more bullshit….. enough is enough. Almost every one in Pakistan hates Musharraf, but sadly only the Bush administration still supports him.
rabzon
03-27-2008, 06:43 AM
What new government?
Musharraff is still the dictator, isn't he?
What are you talking about ?
I am talking about the democratic government the people of Pakistan have just elected, sir. The newly elected prime minister’s first order was the release from detention of all the deposed judges, who shamelessly and unconstitutionally were locked up for almost four months by the dictator, Musharraf must be pulling his hair, but he couldn’t stop the prime minister’s order. Pakistan has parliamentary system in which the prime minister is the Chief Executive, the president only has a limited role. Hopefully very soon Musharraf will be gone, just give our democratic government some time……in fact US should tell the dictators to resign.
rabzon
03-27-2008, 06:54 AM
The US is already courting the new leadership. All the news outlets are reporting this.
You should read this article.
US pressure? (http://thepost.com.pk/EditorialNews.aspx?dtlid=151985&catid=10)
Syed Yousuf Raza Gillani, a nominee of the PPP-PML-N, has taken oath as Prime Minister (PM) of Pakistan. And transition from quasi-democracy to ‘real’ democracy would be completed after the provincial assemblies also elect their leaders of the house within next two weeks. At this point in time, when the leading parties of the coalition have their own priorities vis-à-vis reinstatement of the deposed judges, pressurising the President to resign or impeachment of the president, US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher’s visit could send the wrong signals, as the US envoys have made their intent known as to what they expect from the new government.
The US officials met Asif Ali Zardari and other leaders including Mian Nawaz Sharif to seek their support in the war on terror and cooperation with President Musharraf. Rejecting the US proposal to cooperate with President Pervez Musharraf, former Prime Minister and Quaid Pakistan Muslim League-N Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif has asked the US authorities not to mount any such type of pressure on him. Talking to US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher at Punjab House on Tuesday, he made it clear to the visiting US authorities that he would not work with President Pervez Musharraf at any cost. Nawaz Sharif also said all the decisions would be taken in the parliament. One could disagree with Mian Nawaz Sharif over his inflexible approach to the restoration of the judiciary, but his stance that the parliament would decide about the foreign policy is principled one and suggestive of his unflinching urge to restore the supremacy of parliament.
Though Pakistan is a key-ally of the US in the war on terror, yet that does not give the ‘ally’ the right to show disrespect to its sovereignty, violate international borders and trample international covenants. In the past, apart from the human losses, the bombing and shelling from across the border destroyed houses, damaged vehicles and killed cattle-heads stoking anti-US feelings in Pakistan. Whereas the PPP leadership, being itself afflicted by terrorism, is all poised to take on terrorism and extremism, the PML-N has reservations. Instead of resorting to military option only, the new government may explore other solutions to what is happening in the tribal areas. If past is any guide, one is likely to reach the conclusion that the new government will continue the policy of appeasement. Since the 1950s, almost all ruling and opposition parties looked towards the US for support. The government needed aid during military dispensations. The opposition parties, on the other hand, wanted the US to help rid the country of the military regime. Barring a few proverbial exceptions, all political parties and our leaders have been looking towards the US for economic and military aid. Given the multifaceted crises Pakistan is facing, it needs the US support in the form of military equipment and resources to fight the militants in FATA, and also needs massive funding to bring about development in the area to win the hearts and minds of the people. There is every likelihood that the new government irrespective of its shade would be forced to cooperate with the US in the war on terror. Of course, there is need to review the foreign policy, and especially Pakistan’s cooperation on the war on terror.
rabzon
03-27-2008, 07:03 AM
Excellent article!!! Help Pakistanis Now or Risk Alienation ( http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2008/0313_pakistan_riedel.aspx?p=1)
Pakistan, Transnational Security Threats, Terrorism, Diplomacy, Democracy Promotion
Bruce Riedel, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Saban Center for Middle East Policy
Bangor Daily News
March 13, 2008 —
Pakistan's elections last month offer a rare opportunity to turn around a failing state, defeat al-Qaida in its lair and build a modern democracy in a major Islamic country. Ironically this opportunity has emerged despite the resistance of the Bush administration, which has sought to keep Pakistan's military dictator in power even as he has failed to fight the revival of al-Qaida in his country or to stabilize its descent into chaos. Now the U.S. should embrace the new leadership in Pakistan and provide concrete economic, diplomatic and military aid to this fledgling democracy.Gen. Pervez Musharraf alienated his people last year by subverting the judiciary and trying to suppress civil society. He made only halfhearted efforts to fight al-Qaida while his intelligence service, the ISI, maintained connections with its allies: the Taliban and various Kashmiri groups.
The lawyers’ protest that resulted from his attack on the Supreme Court caught the imagination of the country. The February vote became a referendum on Musharraf, and, as his hated rival former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has put it, "the people of Pakistan have given their verdict, which has only one meaning: Goodbye, Musharraf" (Times of India, March 27). Musharraf’s "Kings" party and its Islamist allies were swept from power in a landslide. The Islamist fell from 56 seats to five in parliament and lost control of the regional parliament in their stronghold in the North West Frontier Province.
It was also a protest vote against President Bush’s blind support for Musharraf. Pakistanis deeply resent a decade of American backing a dictator. Bush’s continued endorsement of Musharraf after the elections and the efforts of our ambassador to persuade and pressure the winners to allow Musharraf to remain as president are further alienating Pakistanis. America’s already dismal approval rating in Pakistan is falling; we risk alienating a generation permanently.
Instead of using our diplomacy to keep Musharraf in power, the U.S. should let the new government and the Pakistani people decide his fate. Our focus should be on how to help the leadership elected last month rebuild the country. Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware has proposed a multiyear, multibillion dollar economic aid program that would focus on educational reform and infrastructure development. Congress should fund this plan immediately.
U.S. diplomacy should help the new government with Pakistan’s eastern and western neighbors, India and Afghanistan. I met last month separately with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Hamid Karzai and both stressed the need to deprive al-Qaida of its safe havens in Pakistan. New Delhi and Kabul both are concerned about the ISI’s troublemaking.
U.S. military aid should also be increased to help a genuine fight against terrorism. It should be conditioned on the return of the army to its barracks for good, an end to its interference in the politics of the nation, and the end to ISI flirtation with terrorists of all kinds.
The newly elected Pakistani leadership is far from perfect. Coalition government is never easy and corruption charges surround many of the winners. Pakistanis are mad at America and their politicians will have to address that anger. But they enjoy the legitimacy of electoral victory. Rather than highlighting their weaknesses, America should help them succeed. This may be the last chance to help Pakistan avoid becoming the first weapon failed state with nuclear weapons.
candypreet
03-27-2008, 07:03 AM
No it is not……… but you know what…… I don’t give a dam any more. We the people of Pakistan have lived under military dictators for almost 50 years and we are not going to tolerate any more bullshit….. enough is enough. Almost every one in Pakistan hates Musharraf, but sadly only the Bush administration still supports him.
just be carefull my friend. troubled times we live in
rabzon
03-27-2008, 07:06 AM
just be carefull my friend. troubled times we live in
Thanks for your concerns dear! :)
rabzon
03-28-2008, 07:20 AM
Obama Is right on Pakistan!
http://www.fayobserver.com/article?id=289032 (http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/1231369/)
The following is the text to Sen. Barack Obama’s 35-minute speech, which he delivered this morning at Fayetteville Technical Community College.
Just before America’s entry into World War I, President Woodrow Wilson addressed Congress: “It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war,” he said. “...But the right is more precious than peace.” Wilson’s words captured two awesome responsibilities that test any Commander-in-Chief – to never hesitate to defend America, but to never go to war unless you must. War is sometimes necessary, but it has grave consequences, and the judgment to go to war can never be undone.
Five years ago today, President George W. Bush addressed the nation. Bombs had started to rain down on Baghdad. War was necessary, the President said, because the United States could not, “live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder.” Recalling the pain of 9/11, he said the price of inaction in Iraq was to meet the threat with “armies of fire fighters and police and doctors on the streets of our cities.”
At the time the President uttered those words, there was no hard evidence that Iraq had those stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. There was not any evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attacks of September 11, or that Iraq had operational ties to the al Qaeda terrorists who carried them out. By launching a war based on faulty premises and bad intelligence, President Bush failed Wilson’s test. So did Congress when it voted to give him the authority to wage war.
Five years have gone by since that fateful decision. This war has now lasted longer than World War I, World War II, or the Civil War. Nearly four thousand Americans have given their lives. Thousands more have been wounded. Even under the best case scenarios, this war will cost American taxpayers well over a trillion dollars. And where are we for all of this sacrifice? We are less safe and less able to shape events abroad. We are divided at home, and our alliances around the world have been strained. The threats of a new century have roiled the waters of peace and stability, and yet America remains anchored in Iraq.
History will catalog the reasons why we waged a war that didn’t need to be fought, but two stand out. In 2002, when the fateful decisions about Iraq were made, there was a President for whom ideology overrode pragmatism, and there were too many politicians in Washington who spent too little time reading the intelligence reports, and too much time reading public opinion. The lesson of Iraq is that when we are making decisions about matters as grave as war, we need a policy rooted in reason and facts, not ideology and politics.
Now we are debating who should be our next Commander in Chief. And I am running for President because it’s time to turn the page on a failed ideology and a fundamentally flawed political strategy, so that we can make pragmatic judgments to keep our country safe. That’s what I did when I stood up and opposed this war from the start, and said that we needed to finish the fight against al Qaeda. And that’s what I’ll do as President of the United States.
Senator Clinton says that she and Senator McCain have passed a “Commander in Chief test” – not because of the judgments they’ve made, but because of the years they’ve spent in Washington. She made a similar argument when she said her vote for war was based on her experience at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. But here is the stark reality: there is a security gap in this country – a gap between the rhetoric of those who claim to be tough on national security, and the reality of growing insecurity caused by their decisions. A gap between Washington experience, and the wisdom of Washington’s judgments. A gap between the rhetoric of those who tout their support for our troops, and the overburdened state of our military.
It is time to have a debate with John McCain about the future of our national security. And the way to win that debate is not to compete with John McCain over who has more experience in Washington, because that’s a contest that he’ll win. The way to win a debate with John McCain is not to talk, and act, and vote like him on national security, because then we all lose. The way to win that debate and to keep America safe is to offer a clear contrast, and that’s what I will do when I am the nominee of the Democratic Party – because since before this war in Iraq began, I have made different judgments, I have a different vision, and I will offer a clean break from the failed policies and politics of the past.
Nowhere is that break more badly needed than in Iraq.
In the year since President Bush announced the surge – the bloodiest year of the war for America – the level of violence in Iraq has been reduced. Our troops – including so many from Fort Bragg and Pope Air Force Base – have done a brilliant job under difficult circumstances. Yet while we have a General who has used improved tactics to reduce violence, we still have the wrong strategy. As General Petraeus has himself acknowledged, the Iraqis are not achieving the political progress needed to end their civil war. Beyond Iraq, our military is badly overstretched, and we have neither the strategy nor resources to deal with nearly every other national security challenge we face.
This is why the judgment that matters most on Iraq – and on any decision to deploy military force – is the judgment made first. If you believe we are fighting the right war, then the problems we face are purely tactical in nature. That is what Senator McCain wants to discuss – tactics. What he and the Administration have failed to present is an overarching strategy: how the war in Iraq enhances our long-term security, or will in the future. That’s why this Administration cannot answer the simple question posed by Senator John Warner in hearings last year: Are we safer because of this war? And that is why Senator McCain can argue – as he did last year – that we couldn’t leave Iraq because violence was up, and then argue this year that we can’t leave Iraq because violence is down.
When you have no overarching strategy, there is no clear definition of success. Success comes to be defined as the ability to maintain a flawed policy indefinitely. Here is the truth: fighting a war without end will not force the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own future. And fighting in a war without end will not make the American people safer.
So when I am Commander-in-Chief, I will set a new goal on Day One: I will end this war. Not because politics compels it. Not because our troops cannot bear the burden– as heavy as it is. But because it is the right thing to do for our national security, and it will ultimately make us safer.
In order to end this war responsibly, I will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. We can responsibly remove 1 to 2 combat brigades each month. If we start with the number of brigades we have in Iraq today, we can remove all of them 16 months. After this redeployment, we will leave enough troops in Iraq to guard our embassy and diplomats, and a counter-terrorism force to strike al Qaeda if it forms a base that the Iraqis cannot destroy. What I propose is not – and never has been – a precipitous drawdown. It is instead a detailed and prudent plan that will end a war nearly seven years after it started.
My plan to end this war will finally put pressure on Iraq’s leaders to take responsibility for their future. Because we’ve learned that when we tell Iraq’s leaders that we’ll stay as long as it takes, they take as long as they want. We need to send a different message. We will help Iraq reach a meaningful accord on national reconciliation. We will engage with every country in the region – and the UN – to support the stability and territorial integrity of Iraq. And we will launch a major humanitarian initiative to support Iraq’s refugees and people. But Iraqis must take responsibility for their country. It is precisely this kind of approach – an approach that puts the onus on the Iraqis, and that relies on more than just military power – that is needed to stabilize Iraq.
Let me be clear: ending this war is not going to be easy. There will be dangers involved. We will have to make tactical adjustments, listening to our commanders on the ground, to ensure that our interests in a stable Iraq are met, and to make sure that our troops are secure. Senator Clinton has tried to use my position to score political points, suggesting that I am somehow less committed to ending the war. She makes this argument despite the fact that she has taken the same position in the past. So ask yourself: who do you trust to end a war – someone who opposed the war from the beginning, or someone who started opposing it when they started preparing a run for President?
Now we know what we’ll hear from those like John McCain who support open-ended war. They will argue that leaving Iraq is surrender. That we are emboldening the enemy. These are the mistaken and misleading arguments we hear from those who have failed to demonstrate how the war in Iraq has made us safer. Just yesterday, we heard Senator McCain confuse Sunni and Shiite, Iran and al Qaeda. Maybe that is why he voted to go to war with a country that had no al Qaeda ties. Maybe that is why he completely fails to understand that the war in Iraq has done more to embolden America’s enemies than any strategic choice that we have made in decades.
The war in Iraq has emboldened Iran, which poses the greatest challenge to American interests in the Middle East in a generation, continuing its nuclear program and threatening our ally, Israel. Instead of the new Middle East we were promised, Hamas runs Gaza, Hizbollah flags fly from the rooftops in Sadr City, and Iran is handing out money left and right in southern Lebanon.
The war in Iraq has emboldened North Korea, which built new nuclear weapons and even tested one before the Administration finally went against its own rhetoric, and pursued diplomacy.
The war in Iraq has emboldened the Taliban, which has rebuilt its strength since we took our eye off of Afghanistan.
Above all, the war in Iraq has emboldened al Qaeda, whose recruitment has jumped and whose leadership enjoys a safe-haven in Pakistan – a thousand miles from Iraq.
The central front in the war against terror is not Iraq, and it never was. What more could America’s enemies ask for than an endless war where they recruit new followers and try out new tactics on a battlefield so far from their base of operations? That is why my presidency will shift our focus. Rather than fight a war that does not need to be fought, we need to start fighting the battles that need to be won on the central front of the war against al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
This is the area where the 9/11 attacks were planned. This is where Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants still hide. This is where extremism poses its greatest threat. Yet in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, we have pursued flawed strategies that are too distant from the needs of the people, and too timid in pursuit of our common enemies.
It may not dominate the evening news, but in Afghanistan, last year was the most deadly since 2001. Suicide attacks are up. Casualties are up. Corruption and drug trafficking are rampant. Neither the government nor the legal economy can meet the needs of the Afghan people.
It is not too late to prevail in Afghanistan. But we cannot prevail until we reduce our commitment in Iraq, which will allow us to do what I called for last August – providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our efforts in Afghanistan. This increased commitment in turn can be used to leverage greater assistance – with fewer restrictions – from our NATO allies. It will also allow us to invest more in training Afghan security forces, including more joint NATO operations with the Afghan Army, and a national police training plan that is effectively coordinated and resourced.
A stepped up military commitment must be backed by a long-term investment in the Afghan people. We will start with an additional $1 billion in non military assistance each year – aid that is focused on reaching ordinary Afghans. We need to improve daily life by supporting education, basic infrastructure and human services. We have to counter the opium trade by supporting alternative livelihoods for Afghan farmers. And we must call on more support from friends and allies, and better coordination under a strong international coordinator.
To succeed in Afghanistan, we also need to fundamentally rethink our Pakistan policy. For years, we have supported stability over democracy in Pakistan, and gotten neither. The core leadership of al Qaeda has a safe-haven in Pakistan. The Taliban are able to strike inside Afghanistan and then return to the mountains of the Pakistani border. Throughout Pakistan, domestic unrest has been rising. The full democratic aspirations of the Pakistani people have been too long denied. A child growing up in Pakistan, more often than not, is taught to see America as a source of hate – not hope.
This is why I stood up last summer and said we cannot base our entire Pakistan policy on President Musharraf. Pakistan is our ally, but we do our own security and our ally no favors by supporting its President while we are seen to be ignoring the interests of the people. Our counter-terrorism assistance must be conditioned on Pakistani action to root out the al Qaeda sanctuary. And any U.S. aid not directly needed for the fight against al Qaeda or to invest in the Pakistani people should be conditioned on the full restoration of Pakistan’s democracy and rule of law.
The choice is not between Musharraf and Islamic extremists. As the recent legislative elections showed, there is a moderate majority of Pakistanis, and they are the people we need on our side to win the war against al Qaeda. That is why we should dramatically increase our support for the Pakistani people – for education, economic development, and democratic institutions. That child in Pakistan must know that we want a better life for him, that America is on his side, and that his interest in opportunity is our interest as well. That’s the promise that America must stand for.
:happy_01:
And for his sake and ours, we cannot tolerate a sanctuary for terrorists who threaten America’s homeland and Pakistan’s stability. If we have actionable intelligence about high-level al Qaeda targets in Pakistan’s border region, we must act if Pakistan will not or cannot. Senator Clinton, Senator McCain, and President Bush have all distorted and derided this position, suggesting that I would invade or bomb Pakistan. This is politics, pure and simple. My position, in fact, is the same pragmatic policy that all three of them have belatedly – if tacitly – acknowledged is one we should pursue. Indeed, it was months after I called for this policy that a top al Qaeda leader was taken out in Pakistan by an American aircraft. And remember that the same three individuals who now criticize me for supporting a targeted strike on the terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks, are the same three individuals that supported an invasion of Iraq – a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.
It is precisely this kind of political point-scoring that has opened up the security gap in this country. We have a security gap when candidates say they will follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell, but refuse to follow him where he actually goes. What we need in our next Commander in Chief is not a stubborn refusal to acknowledge reality or empty rhetoric about 3AM phone calls. What we need is a pragmatic strategy that focuses on fighting our real enemies, rebuilding alliances, and renewing our engagement with the world’s people.
In addition to freeing up resources to take the fight to al Qaeda, ending the war in Iraq will allow us to more effectively confront other threats in the world — threats that cannot be conquered with an occupying army or dispatched with a single decision in the middle of the night. What lies in the heart of a child in Pakistan matters as much as the airplanes we sell her government. What’s in the head of a scientist from Russia can be as lethal as a plutonium reactor in Yongbyon. What’s whispered in refugee camps in Chad can be as dangerous as a dictator’s bluster. These are the neglected landscapes of the 21st century, where technology and extremism empower individuals just as they give governments the ability to repress them; where the ancient divides of region and religion wash into the swift currents of globalization.
Without American leadership, these threats will fester. With strong American leadership, we can shape them into opportunities to protect our common security and advance our common humanity – for it has always been the genius of American leadership to find opportunity embedded in adversity; to focus on a source of fear, and confront it with hope.
Here are just five ways in which a shift in strategy away from Iraq will help us address the critical challenges of the 21st century.
First, in addressing global terror and violent extremism, we need the kind of comprehensive counter-terrorism strategy I called for last August. We need to strengthen security partnerships to take out terrorist networks, while investing in education and opportunity. We need to give our national security agencies the tools they need, while restoring the adherence to rule of law that helps us win the battle for hearts and minds. This means closing Guantanamo, restoring habeas corpus, and respecting civil liberties. And we need to support the forces of moderation in the Islamic world, so that alliances of convenience mature into friendships of conviction.
Second, the threat of nuclear proliferation must serve as a call to action. I have worked across the aisle with Richard Lugar and Chuck Hagel in the Senate to secure dangerous weapons and loose nuclear materials. And as President, I will secure all loose nuclear materials around the world in my first term, seek deep cuts in global nuclear arsenals, strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and once more seek a world without nuclear weapons.
Third, the danger of weak and failed states risks spreading poverty and refugees; genocide and disease. Now is the time to meet the goal of cutting extreme poverty in half, in part by doubling our foreign assistance while demanding more from those who receive it. And now is the time to build the capacity of regional partners in conflict prevention, peacekeeping, and the reconstruction of ravaged societies.
Fourth, the catastrophic consequences of the global climate crisis are matched by the promise of collective action. Now is the time for America to lead, because if we take action, others will act as well. Through our own cap and trade system and investments in new sources of energy, we can end our dependence on foreign oil and gas, and free ourselves from the tyranny of oil-rich states from Saudi Arabia to Russia to Venezuela. We can create millions of new jobs here in America. And we can secure our planet for our children and grandchildren.
And fifth, America’s sluggish economy risks ceding our economic prominence to a rising China. Competition has always been a catalyst for American innovation, and now should be no different. We must invest in the education of our children, renew our leadership in science, and advance trade that is not just free, but fair for our workers. We must ensure that America is the economic engine in the 21st century just as we were in the 20th.
I have no illusions that any of this will be easy. But I do know that we can only begin to make these changes when we end the mindset that focuses on Iraq and ignores the rest of the world.
I also know that meeting these new threats will require a President who deploys the power of tough, principled diplomacy. It is time to present a country like Iran with a clear choice. If it abandons its nuclear program, support for terror, and threats to Israel, then Iran can rejoin the community of nations – with all the benefits that entails. If not, Iran will face deeper isolation and steeper sanctions. When we engage directly, we will be in a stronger position to rally real international support for increased pressure. We will also engender more goodwill from the Iranian people. And make no mistake – if and when we ever have to use military force against any country, we must exert the power of American diplomacy first.
Once again, Senator Clinton, Senator McCain, and President Bush have made the same arguments against my position on diplomacy, as if reading from the same political playbook. They say I’ll be penciling the world’s dictators on to my social calendar. But just as they are misrepresenting my position, they are mistaken in standing up for a policy of not talking that is not working. What I’ve said is that we cannot seize opportunities to resolve our problems unless we create them. That is what Kennedy did with Khrushchev; what Nixon did with Mao; what Reagan did with Gorbachev. And that is what I will do as President of the United States.
What I have talked about today is a new strategy, a new set of priorities for pursuing our interests in the 21st century. And as President, I will provide the tools required to implement this strategy. When President Truman put the policy of containment in place, he also invested in and organized our government to carry it out –creating the National Security Council and the CIA, and founding NATO. Now, we must upgrade our tools of power to fit a new strategy.
That starts with enhancing the finest military in the history of the world. As Commander in Chief, I will begin by giving a military overstretched by Iraq the support it needs. It is time to reduce the strain on our troops by completing the effort to increase our ground forces by 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 Marines, while ensuring the quality of our troops. In an age marked by technology, it is the people of our military – our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen – who bear the responsibility for complex missions. That is why we need to ensure adequate training and time home between deployments. That is why we need to expand our Special Forces. And that is why we must increase investments in capabilities like civil affairs and training foreign militaries.
But we cannot place the burden of a new national security strategy on our military alone. We must integrate our diplomatic, information, economic and military power. That is why, as soon as I take office, I will call for a National Strategy and Security Review, to help determine a 21st Century inter-agency structure to integrate the elements of our national power.
In addition, I will invest in our civilian capacity to operate alongside our troops in post-conflict zones and on humanitarian and stabilization missions. Instead of shuttering consulates in tough corners of the world, it’s time to grow our Foreign Service and to expand USAID. Instead of giving up on the determination of young people to serve, it’s time to double the size of our Peace Corps. Instead of letting people learn about America from enemy propaganda, it’s time to recruit, train, and send out into the world an America’s Voice Corps.
And while we strengthen our own capacity, we must strengthen the capability of the international community. We honor NATO’s sacrifice in Afghanistan, but we must strive to make it a larger and more nimble alliance. We must work with powers like Russia and China, but we must also speak up for human rights and democracy – and we can start now by speaking out for the human rights and religious freedom of the people of Tibet. And while we are frustrated by the UN, we must invest in its capability to keep the peace, resolve disputes, monitor disarmament, and support good governance around the world – and that depends on a more engaged United States.
We are at a defining moment in our history.
We can choose the path of unending war and unilateral action, and sap our strength and standing. We can choose the path of disengagement, and cede our leadership. Or, we can meet fear and danger head-on with hope and strength; with common purpose as a united America; and with common cause with old allies and new partners.
What we’ve seen these last few years is what happens when the rigid ideology and dysfunctional politics of Washington is projected abroad. An ideology that does not fit the shape of the times cannot shape events in foreign countries. A politics that is based on fear and division does not allow us to call on the world to hope, and keeps us from coming together as one people, as one nation, to write the next great chapter in the American story.
We also know that there is another face of America that we have seen these last five years. From down the road at Fort Bragg, our soldiers have gone abroad with a greater sense of common purpose than their leaders in Washington. They have learned the lessons of the 21st century’s wars. And they have shown a sense of service and selflessness that represents the very best of the American character.
This must be the election when we stand up and say that we will serve them as well as they have served us. This must be the election when America comes together behind a common purpose on behalf of our security and our values. That is what we do as Americans. It’s how we founded a republic based on freedom, and faced down fascism. It’s how we defended democracy through a Cold War, and shined a light of hope bright enough to be seen in the darkest corners of the world.
When America leads with principle and pragmatism, hope can triumph over fear. It is time, once again, for America to lead.
Mars S
03-28-2008, 07:56 AM
arms are for hugging.
Are you being serious?
Yes, I'm totally serious
Is someone here suggesting that Musharraff is no longer the absolute dictator in Pakistan??
I know all about the elections, blah blah blah.. but who's really in charge?
Didn't Musharraff sack the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court recently?
Iran has a elections, but like Pakistan's they're meaningless, as long as you have a dictator running the show
I am talking about the democratic government the people of Pakistan have just elected, sir. The newly elected prime minister’s first order was the release from detention of all the deposed judges, who shamelessly and unconstitutionally were locked up for almost four months by the dictator, Musharraf must be pulling his hair, but he couldn’t stop the prime minister’s order. Pakistan has parliamentary system in which the prime minister is the Chief Executive, the president only has a limited role. Hopefully very soon Musharraf will be gone, just give our democratic government some time……in fact US should tell the dictators to resign.
We'll see..
I agree that the dictator should go.. but he's still there for now
rabzon
03-28-2008, 01:04 PM
We'll see..
I agree that the dictator should go.. but he's still there for now
I completely agree with you, as long as Musharraf is the president, Pakistan will never become a functioning democracy.
rabzon
03-28-2008, 01:10 PM
Is someone here suggesting that Musharraff is no longer the absolute dictator in Pakistan??
I know all about the elections, blah blah blah.. but who's really in charge?
Didn't Musharraff sack the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court recently?
But that was back in Nov. 3. 2007, before the elections were held.
Undoing Musharraf in Pakistan (http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1725330,00.html)
Within moments of being chosen Prime Minister of Pakistan's newly elected parliament on Monday, Yusuf Raza Gilani enacted the first of what is expected to be many reversals of President Pervez Musharraf's actions over the past year. And it is setting the stage for what could be an ugly showdown between the country's democratic forces and the dictator, who is also a major U.S. ally.
Declaring that democratic institutions will be the bedrock of his tenure, Gilani ordered the immediate release of the Supreme Court judges who had been detained since Musharraf declared emergency rule on November 3, when he suspended the constitution. Thirteen Supreme Court judges and 48 other judges had been detained amid a crackdown on civil liberties. "I order all the detained judges to be released immediately," Gilani told the gathered parliamentarians after the national assembly voted the majority Pakistan People's Party stalwart in as premier. "Our slain leader Benazir Bhutto sacrificed her life for the cause of democracy, and now it is our responsibility to strengthen the democratic institutions in line with the aspirations of common people."
Moments later, supporters of the detained judges, which included Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, stormed the judges' residential colony in Islamabad and tore away security barricades and barbed wire, shouting "Go, Musharraf, go!" In his first appearance since his detention, Chaudhry appeared on the balcony of his house and calmly thanked the nation for the efforts to free him. His benign manner, however, could be misleading. If Chaudhry and his Supreme Court are reinstated — as the new coalition has promised it will be — Musharraf may find himself out of a job.
On Tuesday, a grim-faced Musharraf administered Gilani's oath of office at the presidential palace. For Gilani it was a moment of triumph — in 2001 Musharraf imprisoned the longtime Bhutto supporter for nearly five years on corruption charges. After the ceremony Musharraf told state-owned television that he would "always extend my fullest cooperation" to Gilani and the new government. But he may find that the new government has other plans.
Gilani is not the only member of the new power elite who has a grudge against Musharraf. Asif Ali Zardari, who heads the populist PPP, which dominates the ruling coalition and got the most votes in the February 18 elections, blames Musharraf in part for the assassination of his wife, two-time Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Nawaz Sharif, the head of the Pakistan Muslim League, which was the second largest vote gainer, was deposed by Musharraf in 1999, and forced into exile.
The new political setup appears doomed to failure, says Lahore-based political analyst and TV talk show host Haroon ur Rashid. "It seems that working between Musharraf and the new government will not be smooth. The dynamics of emerging politics may compel PPP and its allies to isolate Musharraf." If the new coalition can get a two-thirds majority, which it has demonstrated with the choice of Gilani as Prime Minister, it could move to impeach the President.
But Parliament may not even have to go that far. Earlier this month, when the major vote-winners in the parliamentary elections gathered in the resort town of Murree to hammer out a coalition government, they agreed that within 30 days of convening, the new government would restore the judiciary to its pre-November 3 status. Before it was dismissed, the Supreme Court was debating the legitimacy of Musharraf's October 7 election as President, citing a constitutional breach. If the court reconvenes in the same formation, it is likely to take up the case again, and could declare Musharraf's presidency invalid. "The Supreme Court will decide whether his election was legitimate or not," says Rashid. "Certainly, he took the wrong legal course to reelect himself. So, he has to face the music."
The potential end of Musharraf's tenure has raised alarm bells in the international community, particularly in the United States, where President George Bush has often called Musharraf his best ally in the war on terror. Many saw Musharraf — then a general, as well as President, until he gave up his army post late last year — as a one-stop shop for fighting terrorism in the lawless tribal areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan that are thought to harbor senior members of al-Qaeda. In neighboring Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai offered cautious congratulations to the new Prime Minister in a statement, but tempered his support with an admonition calling "terrorism and extremism a serious problem against stability and development in the region," and hoping that "the new Pakistani parliament and Prime Minister achieve huge success against this destructive phenomenon."
Leaders of the new government have decried Musharraf's overly militaristic approach toward fighting Islamist insurgents, calling for a review of the country's role in the U.S.-led war on terror, and saying that Musharraf's methods have only made things worse. The Urdu daily newspaper Islam echoed their statements, observing in an editorial on Monday that the "Pakistani nation got nothing except suicide attacks and destruction everywhere in the country from the military operation in tribal areas," and called for a new policy more compliant with ground realities.
The new leaders are moving in that direction. "Since 9/11 all decisions were made by one man," former Prime Minister Sharif told reporters after a meeting with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte on Tuesday. "Now the situation has changed, a truly representative parliament has come into being. Every decision will be presented before the parliament, [and] they will review Musharraf's policy in the last six years," he said, according to Agence-France Presse. Both Sharif and Zardari have suggested negotiating with some of the militants in order to come to a more peaceful resolution of the problem, without resorting to force. "We want to see peace in every corner of the world and we want to see peace in Pakistan also," said Sharif. "[But] we do not want that in order to give peace to others we turn our own country into a murder house."
But not everyone is convinced that Musharraf's departure and negotiating with the militants is going to solve all of Pakistan's problems. "Musharraf should not leave the presidency immediately," says Islamabad-based businessman Khalid Ibrahim. "Otherwise, this [new] leadership can play havoc with the war on terror and economic prosperity of the country by negotiating with the terrorists. World powers are comfortable with Musharraf and they want him to stay. If he goes maybe they will stop giving financial aid to Islamabad."
Even as Gilani and his new colleagues in power reverse Musharraf's anti-democratic moves, they may find it wise to preserve his stability-seeking measures. Figuring out how much of Musharraf's legacy to undo may be Gilani's biggest challenge as the country's new Prime Minister. With reporting by Ershad Mahmud/Islamabad
I started this thread nearly 2 years ago.. in June of 2005
Nothing has changed since then.. NOTHING.
What war on terror??? :add09:
The war on terror is a joke
Al Qaeda still in Pakistan tribal areas, report says
Al Qaeda has "succeeded in establishing a safe haven," GAO says
Report says there is no comprehensive U.S. plan for reaching security goals
Democratic critic says report is "appalling," blames administration
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Al Qaeda is still operating within Pakistan's mountainous tribal region bordering Afghanistan, and the United States lacks a "comprehensive" plan for meetings its national security goals there, said a U.S. government study released Thursday.
Despite the United States providing $10.5 billion in military and economic aid to Pakistan, a key U.S. ally, the Government Accountability Office said it "found broad agreement ... that al Qaeda had regenerated its ability to attack the United States and had succeeded in establishing a safe haven" in Pakistan's Federally Administrated Tribal Areas.
Of the $10.5 billion in U.S. aid, more than half -- $5.8 billion -- was specifically provided for the tribal region, the GAO said.
Furthermore, the report said, "No comprehensive plan for meeting U.S. national security goals in FATA has been developed, as stipulated by the National Security Strategy for Combating Terrorism [in 2003], called for by an independent commission [in 2004] and mandated by congressional legislation [in 2007]."
"Our report does not state that the U.S. lacks agency-specific plans; rather, we found that there was no comprehensive plan that integrated the combined capabilities of Defense, State, USAID [U.S. Agency for International Development], the intelligence community," GAO said.
After the September 11 terrorist attacks, U.S. officials said intelligence indicated that Osama bin Laden and other senior al Qaeda leaders, who had been based in Afghanistan before the attacks on New York and Washington, were operating in the tribal region.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has denied that claim and has said that U.S. military missions there would violate Pakistan's sovereignty.
So, since 2002, the United States has "relied principally on the Pakistan military to address U.S. national security goals" in that region, the GAO report said. Of the $5.8 billion the United States provided for aid in the tribal region, 96 percent of it reimbursed Pakistan for military operations there, the agency said.
Two of the eight lawmakers who commissioned the GAO report, Democratic Sens. Tom Harkin of Iowa and Bob Menendez of New Jersey, said it indicated a failing on the part of the Bush administration.
"The Bush administration has had six years to come up with a plan to get Osama bin Laden and his group, but it is still flying by the seat of its pants," Menendez said in a statement.
"We've dumped 10 billion American taxpayer dollars into Pakistan with the expectation that the terrorists will be hunted down and smoked out, but al Qaeda has been allowed to rejuvenate in the area that is supposed to be locked down," he said.
Harkin called the report's findings "appalling."
"The White House must propose a strategic policy in this area and follow it, especially when we have this new opportunity to forge a fresh strategic relationship with the new civilian government in Pakistan," he said in a statement.
The Defense Department said it agreed with the report's findings, according to letters attached at the end of the GAO report, but the State Department disagreed with them, saying there was a comprehensive plan in place.
A letter from Kathleen Turner, a spokeswoman for the office of the Director of National Intelligence, said that office and the National Counterterrorism Center concurred with the report's assessment that the United States has not met its national security goals in the tribal region but maintained that there was a plan in place.
USAID said that it generally agreed with the report's recommendation for a comprehensive plan but that work in the tribal areas should be guided by the Pakistani government's own FATA Sustainable Development Plan from 2006.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/04/17/gao.pakistan/index.html
Bush has no plan for dealing with Al Qaeda in Pakistan
what a surprise
What a shocker!!!!
Rab1dluc1d1ty
04-17-2008, 10:18 PM
Bush has no plan for dealing with Al Qaeda in Pakistan
what a surprise
What a shocker!!!!
You think Obama will do anything if elected?
nice find..
and yet, the Bush Administration continues to turn a blind eye to it
Amazing.. The only conclusion I can draw is that they WANT the terrorists to have a place of refuge..
Honest to God, that's the only thing I can possibly imagine to explain why Bush refuses to go after terrorist camps in Pakistan.
Reiterating this post from August of 2006.
You think Obama will do anything if elected?
Yes. That's what he said he'll do
Obama Delivers Bold Speech About War on Terror
Presidential Candidate Pushes Aggressive Stance Toward Pakistan
By JAKE TAPPER
Aug. 1, 2007 —
In a strikingly bold speech about terrorism Wednesday, Democratic presidential candidate Illinois Sen. Barack Obama called not only for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, but a redeployment of troops into Afghanistan and even Pakistan with or without the permission of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf.
"I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges," Obama said, "but let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will."
Obama's mention of an "al Qaeda leadership meeting" refers to a classified military operation planned in early 2005 to kill al Qaeda leaders including Osama bin Laden's top deputy Ayman al-Zawahri in Pakistan's tribal regions. First reported in The New York Times earlier this month, the mission was "aborted at the last minute after top Bush administration officials decided it was too risky and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan, according to intelligence and military officials."
In many ways, the speech is counterintuitive; Obama, one of the more liberal candidates in the race, is proposing a geopolitical posture that is more aggressive than that of President Bush. It comes at a time in Obama's campaign when the freshman senator is drawing more financial support from more voters than any other candidate, though he has yet to vault from his second-place position in the polls. One of the reasons for that is that the Democratic front-runner, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, is seen as more experienced and in some ways stronger, a perspective Obama wishes to change.
The speech, delivered at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., seems an attempt by Obama to ramp up his campaign to the next phase, where he hopes to seem not only a youthful idealist, but a president who would pursue a muscular foreign policy and protect the United States from terrorist attack.
One of the ways he hopes to achieve this is by pointing out the inherent flaws in the complicated U.S.-Pakistan relationship, an uneasy alliance based in part on U.S. fears of an Islamist government that might replace Musharraf. But Obama proposed in his speech a more aggressive stance with that nuclear nation, making the "hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid to Pakistan conditional, and I would make our conditions clear: Pakistan must make substantial progress in closing down the training camps, evicting foreign fighters and preventing the Taliban from using Pakistan as a staging area for attacks in Afghanistan."
Additionally Obama called for at least two additional brigades to redeploy to Afghanistan to re-enforce U.S. counterterrorism operations and support NATO's efforts against the Taliban. This would be accompanied by political and economic efforts, Obama said, pledging to increase nonmilitary U.S. aid to Afghanistan by a whopping $1 billion.
The shift from Iraq to Afghanistan and possibly even Pakistan is one of five elements he called for in his speech. The other four are improving diplomacy for the purpose of counterterrorism and counterproliferation; creating a $5 billion Shared Security Partnership Program that he will say will "forge an international intelligence and law enforcement infrastructure to take down terrorist networks around the globe; restoring our values; and securing a more resilient homeland."
The speech comes one week after Obama engaged in an increasingly heated back and forth with Clinton about whether a president should readily agree to meet with leaders of countries hostile to the United States. Obama said he would, Clinton said she wouldn't, and a forceful back and forth ensued.
Clinton fired the first salvo, calling Obama's willingness to meet with men like Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez or Cuban dictator Fidel Castro "irresponsible and frankly naive." Obama fired back, saying "If anything is irresponsible and naive, it was authorizing George Bush to send 160,000 young American men and women into Iraq apparently without knowing how they were going to get out."
At a campaign stop in New Hampshire, Obama implied her policy would be "Bush-Cheney Lite." Clinton took to CNN to respond, saying their debate "is getting kind of silly. I've been called a lot of things, but I've never been called Bush or Cheney. You have to ask what happened to the 'politics of hope.'"
In the speech excerpts, Obama makes no mention of Clinton directly, though he implicates her decision to vote to authorize use of force in Iraq as aiding al Qaeda. "By refusing to end the war in Iraq," he said, "President Bush is giving the terrorists what they really want and what the Congress voted to give them in 2002: a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences."
Obama, whose father was Muslim, makes clear that he does not share the views of Democrats who downplay the risk of Islamist terrorism. In language rare for a Democratic presidential candidate, Obama talked about Muslims who seek to create a repressive caliphate. "To defeat this enemy, we must understand who we are fighting against, and what we are fighting for."
The Obama campaign says those assisting with the speech constituted a mix of a new generation of national security and foreign policy experts such as Samantha Power, a professor of global leadership and public policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide"; Susan Rice, member of the National Security Council for President Clinton; Greg Craig, former Clinton administration undersecretary of state and director of policy planning; and more experienced old hands, such as President Clinton's National Security Adviser Tony Lake, former Clinton and Bush counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke and retired Maj. Gen. General Jonathan Gration.
Copyright © 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=3434573&page=1
Meanwhile, McCain wants to bomb Iran, where there is NO AL QAEDA
a state that is a natural enemy of Al Qaeda...
McCain = Four more years of Bush's rudderless policies
Bitch
04-17-2008, 10:28 PM
GAO: U.S. has no plan to fight al Qaeda in Pakistan. (http://thinkprogress.org/2008/04/17/gao-us-has-no-plan-to-fight-al-qaeda-in-pakistan/)
The Government Accountability Office released a report (http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08622.pdf?source=ra) today concluding that the United States has no plan to combat al Qaeda and other terrorist threats in Pakistan. The GAO found that “[t]errorists are still operating freely (http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-04-17-us-pakistan_N.htm?csp=34) in Pakistan along the country’s Afghanistan border, despite the U.S. giving Pakistan more than $10.5 billion in military and economic aid.” In a glaring rebuke (http://www.democracyarsenal.org/2008/04/gao-slams-bush.html) of President Bush’s terrorism policy, the report says that there is “no comprehensive plan” to “destroy the terrorist threat and close the safe haven in Pakistan,” and “al Qaeda had regenerated its ability to attack” the United States.
GAO: U.S. has no plan to fight al Qaeda in Pakistan. (http://thinkprogress.org/2008/04/17/gao-us-has-no-plan-to-fight-al-qaeda-in-pakistan/)
The Government Accountability Office released a report (http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08622.pdf?source=ra) today concluding that the United States has no plan to combat al Qaeda and other terrorist threats in Pakistan. The GAO found that “[t]errorists are still operating freely (http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-04-17-us-pakistan_N.htm?csp=34) in Pakistan along the country’s Afghanistan border, despite the U.S. giving Pakistan more than $10.5 billion in military and economic aid.” In a glaring rebuke (http://www.democracyarsenal.org/2008/04/gao-slams-bush.html) of President Bush’s terrorism policy, the report says that there is “no comprehensive plan” to “destroy the terrorist threat and close the safe haven in Pakistan,” and “al Qaeda had regenerated its ability to attack” the United States.
Thanks.. thats what we were talking about.. .(see my post 220)
What gets me is that I knew this 3 years ago, when I started this thread
and that means if I KNEW it, then everyone in the world knew it as well....since i get my news from the same sources as everyone else in the world
and yet, NOTHING.. Not a thing, has been done about it.. not a fucking thing
The only reasonable conclusion is that it benefits both Bush and Musharraff to have these al Qaeda folks around... and that is why they allow them a place of refuge
interesting article here... An alleged terrorist cell in California apparently was broken up.. BUT WAIT... what's this??
One of the allegations is that the ringleader attended terrorist camps IN PAKISTAN... IN 2003 and 2004.
What?? I thought Pakistan wasn't harboring Al Qaeda???
But let me guess.. Pakistan didn't know about those camps, right?? THEN HOW DO WE KNOW that this guy was there????
Think about it
Posted in June of 2005
the FBI proved in a court of law that al Qaeda was operating terrorist camps in Pakistan
if the FBI and Justice Department knew it and could prove it to a jury, so that they agreed, unanimously, then you can be sure that everyone else in the world knew it as well.
If the Justice Department knew it, then Bush knew it
rabzon
04-18-2008, 05:22 AM
U.S. faulted for lack of coherent Pakistan plan (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-pakistan18apr18,0,2607966.story)
The Government Accountability Office says the Bush administration has not monitored billions in aid to Pakistan and nor has it come up with a comprehensive plan to deal with terrorist groups there.
Critics, many of them congressional Democrats, used the report's findings in their continuing criticism of the Bush administration's counter-terrorism campaign.
Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Valley Village), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and one of the lawmakers who first ordered the GAO report, said the lack of planning was "appalling" and harmful to U.S. national security, and that he would hold hearings on them starting May 7.
Berman said the new leadership in Pakistan presents "a new opportunity to overcome the current administration's failures and to work with the Pakistani people to come up with a plan for victory over the extremist elements."
US and Pakistan definitely need a new strategy to fight al-qaida and taliban terrorists’ hiding in the border regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
As I said earlier, the new democratically elected government should be given time and the US should work with it to form a comprehensive plan to defeat the terrorists. In my opinion, no plan will be successful without tackling two very critical issues; first, Musharraf MUST GO. Second, to win this war, we have to bring people of Pakistan on board, and try to change the widespread perception in Pakistan that this is America’s war.
Mars S
04-18-2008, 05:59 AM
Its always amusing to see people whining about Bush not invading Pakistan at the same time they're whining about him invading Iraq where the war against Al Qaeda has been very effective.
Doubtless they expect Bush to attack Pakistan and clean it up on the basis of the GAO report and democratic condemnations.
pilobolus
04-18-2008, 06:15 AM
Its always amusing to see people whining about Bush not invading Pakistan at the same time they're whining about him invading Iraq where the war against Al Qaeda has been very effective.
Doubtless they expect Bush to attack Pakistan and clean it up on the basis of the GAO report and democratic condemnations.
We cautioned (not whined) that the intel on invading Iraq was lame...how did that turn out?
Bitch
04-18-2008, 08:38 AM
LMFAO the war on AQ in Iraq was successful? Um sure if you ignore the fact that AQ wasn't even IN Iraq until after we got there. Holy christ. LOL
Its always amusing to see people whining about Bush not invading Pakistan at the same time they're whining about him invading Iraq where the war against Al Qaeda has been very effective.
Doubtless they expect Bush to attack Pakistan and clean it up on the basis of the GAO report and democratic condemnations.
Dude,
If you go to the doctor because you have a broken leg, and he ignores your broken leg, but treats a cut on your finger, you're going to be pissed off at the doctor, regardless of how professionally and successfully he cures your finger.
Its always amusing to see people whining about Bush not invading Pakistan at the same time they're whining about him invading Iraq where the war against Al Qaeda has been very effective.
Doubtless they expect Bush to attack Pakistan and clean it up on the basis of the GAO report and democratic condemnations.
BWT, very few people (if any) have ever called for an invasion and occupation of Pakistan
A more successful strategy would be economic blockade, no fly zones, combined with strategic bombing, predator strikes and special forces operations...
Kinda like the wildly successful model used in Serbia.
candypreet
04-18-2008, 09:59 AM
BWT, very few people (if any) have ever called for an invasion and occupation of Pakistan
A more successful strategy would be economic blockade, no fly zones, combined with strategic bombing, predator strikes and special forces operations...
Kinda like the wildly successful model used in Serbia.
exactly
rabzon
04-18-2008, 03:31 PM
BWT, very few people (if any) have ever called for an invasion and occupation of Pakistan
A more successful strategy would be economic blockade, no fly zones, combined with strategic bombing, predator strikes and special forces operations...
Kinda like the wildly successful model used in Serbia.
You don’t think US should work with the new government and give them some time, why? Your government can work with a dictator for 6 fucking years, but you won’t give any time to the democratically elected government. I think you are just another trigger happy racist who dose not give a fuck about brown people?
Bitch
04-18-2008, 04:02 PM
You don’t think US should work with the new government and give them some time, why? Your government can work with a dictator for 6 fucking years, but you won’t give any time to the democratically elected government. I think you are just another trigger happy racist who dose not give a fuck about brown people?
Bman's not racist he just wants bin Laden and AQ brought down. Americans ahve waited a long time for that thanks to our useless president. I do think we should try to work with the new govt. I think ew should work at it diplomatically to encourage the new govt to do what needs to be done. But if they are unwilling to do what is needed and if they perhaps even can't do what is needed. Then I think sending in cia and special forces - like the initial steps used in afghanistan should be how it goes about. However, unlike afghanistan it shouldn't be long term it should be focused on the mission and done. Of course in Afghanistan it was an issue with the govt/taliban and aq. Pakistan doesn't have that issue at the moment.
Mars S
04-18-2008, 04:31 PM
We cautioned (not whined) that the intel on invading Iraq was lame...how did that turn out?
"we"?? How would you have known?
Until the Senate report came out there wasn't any public information one way or another.
Even then there's a lot more in it than ever appeared in the papers.
Mars S
04-18-2008, 04:38 PM
You don’t think US should work with the new government and give them some time, why? Your government can work with a dictator for 6 fucking years, but you won’t give any time to the democratically elected government. I think you are just another trigger happy racist who dose not give a fuck about brown people?
You have to understand that for some it is important to blame Bush and continue to blame him for the existence of unpleasant people within your national borders. They want someone to invade your country and lay waste to your countryside in order to track down and apprehend a Saudi renegade.
Personally, I imagine that our gov't will work with whoever is in charge. Unless of course you guys start selling weapons tech to bad people.
That would be provocative.
:happy_12:
spotdogg
04-18-2008, 06:06 PM
You have to understand that for some it is important to blame Bush and continue to blame him for the existence of unpleasant people within your national borders. They want someone to invade your country and lay waste to your countryside in order to track down and apprehend a Saudi renegade.
Personally, I imagine that our gov't will work with whoever is in charge. Unless of course you guys start selling weapons tech to bad people.
That would be provocative.
:happy_12:
Well, gee willickers, Marcie...Who else IS there to blame...
U.S. Lacks a Pakistan Plan, Report Finds
Warrick Page/Bloomberg News
By ERIC SCHMITT
Published: April 18, 2008
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration has failed to develop a governmentwide plan to combat terrorism in Pakistan’s unruly tribal areas, even though top American officials concede that Al Qaeda has regenerated its ability to attack the United States and has established havens in that border region, government auditors said Thursday.
In a searing report, the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, sharply criticized the administration for relying too heavily on Pakistan’s military to achieve American counterterrorism goals, while paying only token attention to economic development and improving governance.
Nearly $6 billion of the $10.5 billion in aid that Washington has provided to Pakistan since 2001 has been directed toward combating terrorism in the tribal areas, the report said. But about 96 percent of that aid has gone to reimburse Pakistan for its use of 120,000 troops in counterterrorism missions in that area that have shown little success.
In a rare acknowledgment, senior officials at the United States Embassy in Islamabad told the government auditors that they had received no strategic guidance from Washington on designing, carrying out, financing and monitoring a coordinated American strategy, the report said.
Only in March 2006, after President Pervez Musharraf asked President Bush for help with Pakistan’s wide-ranging counterterrorism plan for the tribal areas, did the American Embassy begin coordinating efforts by the Pentagon, State Department and Agency for International Development for a complementary strategy, the auditors found.
More than two years later, though, that plan to provide nearly $1 billion over four years in economic aid and reconstruction assistance in the tribal areas has not been fully approved in Washington, lacks full financing and faces uncertain support by the newly elected Pakistani government, the report concludes.
The report’s findings ignited a sharp exchange Thursday between members of Congress from both parties who commissioned the review and White House officials.
“It is appalling that there is still no comprehensive, interagency strategy concerning this critical region, and this lack of foresight is harming U.S. national security,” said Representative Howard L. Berman, a California Democrat who is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Mr. Berman said the committee would hold a hearing on May 7 to investigate the report’s conclusions.
Senior administration officials disputed many of the auditors’ central findings, and said the administration had mapped out a detailed counterterrorism strategy in coordination with the Pakistani government.
“The United States is dealing with the terrorist threat in Pakistan through a variety of means across the political, economic and security fronts,” Gordon D. Johndroe, a White House spokesman, said in a statement. “We devote resources to health, education, economic development, political reform, as well as going after Al Qaeda with the Pakistani security forces.”
Mr. Johndroe continued, “This is going to be a long battle against a determined enemy, and I can assure you that the president and his national security advisers focus on this every day and will continue to do what is necessary to protect the American people.”
But the government auditors, who reviewed administration policy documents and classified intelligence reports and interviewed American and Pakistani officials, said the administration had failed to meet its own goals to destroy the threat from Al Qaeda and close the militants’ safe havens in Pakistan.
Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said March 30 that the security situation along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border “presents clear and present danger to Afghanistan, to Pakistan and to the West in general, and to the United States in particular.”
Nevertheless, the auditors painted a portrait of the State Department, the Pentagon, the Agency for International Development and other agencies carrying out individual counterterrorism strategies for Pakistan, with little or no formal integration of the plans by the National Security Council and the National Counterterrorism Center.
“As a result, since 2002, the embassy has had no Washington-supported, comprehensive plan to combat terrorists and close the terrorist safe haven in the FATA,” the auditors concluded, referring to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan.
Without such an approach, the report found, the United States has had to rely on the Pakistani Army and the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force recruited from ethnic groups on the border.
State Department officials say that Pakistan has helped to kill or capture hundreds of suspected terrorists, including Qaeda operatives and Taliban leaders, since the Sept. 11 attacks, the report noted. Moreover, Pakistani military operations have resulted in the deaths of more than 1,400 Pakistani security forces, officials told the auditors.
But American Embassy officials told the auditors that an overreliance on military solutions to the problem stemmed from a lack of a more comprehensive counterterrorism approach.
The report concluded that there have been limited efforts to address the underlying causes of terrorism in the tribal areas, such as providing development assistance and addressing the political needs of a region still governed under administration and legal structures dating from 1901, in the region’s colonial period.
In response, the American Embassy has developed a plan in coordination with federal agencies in Washington to provide $956 million in fiscal years 2008 through 2011 for development, security and infrastructure in support of the Pakistani government, the auditors determined.
As of September, the embassy had also planned to spend $187.6 million in fiscal year 2007 money to help develop schools and hospitals in the tribal areas; to train the Frontier Corps, and equip them with night-vision goggles and radios; and to build border surveillance outposts.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/18/washington/18policy.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin
spotdogg
04-18-2008, 06:08 PM
You have to understand that for some it is important to blame Bush and continue to blame him for the existence of unpleasant people within your national borders. They want someone to invade your country and lay waste to your countryside in order to track down and apprehend a Saudi renegade.
Personally, I imagine that our gov't will work with whoever is in charge. Unless of course you guys start selling weapons tech to bad people.
That would be provocative.
:happy_12:
Well, gee willickers, Marcie...Who else IS there to blame...
U.S. Lacks a Pakistan Plan, Report Finds
Warrick Page/Bloomberg News
By ERIC SCHMITT
Published: April 18, 2008
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration has failed to develop a governmentwide plan to combat terrorism in Pakistan’s unruly tribal areas, even though top American officials concede that Al Qaeda has regenerated its ability to attack the United States and has established havens in that border region, government auditors said Thursday.
In a searing report, the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, sharply criticized the administration for relying too heavily on Pakistan’s military to achieve American counterterrorism goals, while paying only token attention to economic development and improving governance.
Nearly $6 billion of the $10.5 billion in aid that Washington has provided to Pakistan since 2001 has been directed toward combating terrorism in the tribal areas, the report said. But about 96 percent of that aid has gone to reimburse Pakistan for its use of 120,000 troops in counterterrorism missions in that area that have shown little success.
In a rare acknowledgment, senior officials at the United States Embassy in Islamabad told the government auditors that they had received no strategic guidance from Washington on designing, carrying out, financing and monitoring a coordinated American strategy, the report said.
Only in March 2006, after President Pervez Musharraf asked President Bush for help with Pakistan’s wide-ranging counterterrorism plan for the tribal areas, did the American Embassy begin coordinating efforts by the Pentagon, State Department and Agency for International Development for a complementary strategy, the auditors found.
More than two years later, though, that plan to provide nearly $1 billion over four years in economic aid and reconstruction assistance in the tribal areas has not been fully approved in Washington, lacks full financing and faces uncertain support by the newly elected Pakistani government, the report concludes.
The report’s findings ignited a sharp exchange Thursday between members of Congress from both parties who commissioned the review and White House officials.
“It is appalling that there is still no comprehensive, interagency strategy concerning this critical region, and this lack of foresight is harming U.S. national security,” said Representative Howard L. Berman, a California Democrat who is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Mr. Berman said the committee would hold a hearing on May 7 to investigate the report’s conclusions.
Senior administration officials disputed many of the auditors’ central findings, and said the administration had mapped out a detailed counterterrorism strategy in coordination with the Pakistani government.
“The United States is dealing with the terrorist threat in Pakistan through a variety of means across the political, economic and security fronts,” Gordon D. Johndroe, a White House spokesman, said in a statement. “We devote resources to health, education, economic development, political reform, as well as going after Al Qaeda with the Pakistani security forces.”
Mr. Johndroe continued, “This is going to be a long battle against a determined enemy, and I can assure you that the president and his national security advisers focus on this every day and will continue to do what is necessary to protect the American people.”
But the government auditors, who reviewed administration policy documents and classified intelligence reports and interviewed American and Pakistani officials, said the administration had failed to meet its own goals to destroy the threat from Al Qaeda and close the militants’ safe havens in Pakistan.
Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said March 30 that the security situation along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border “presents clear and present danger to Afghanistan, to Pakistan and to the West in general, and to the United States in particular.”
Nevertheless, the auditors painted a portrait of the State Department, the Pentagon, the Agency for International Development and other agencies carrying out individual counterterrorism strategies for Pakistan, with little or no formal integration of the plans by the National Security Council and the National Counterterrorism Center.
“As a result, since 2002, the embassy has had no Washington-supported, comprehensive plan to combat terrorists and close the terrorist safe haven in the FATA,” the auditors concluded, referring to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan.
Without such an approach, the report found, the United States has had to rely on the Pakistani Army and the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force recruited from ethnic groups on the border.
State Department officials say that Pakistan has helped to kill or capture hundreds of suspected terrorists, including Qaeda operatives and Taliban leaders, since the Sept. 11 attacks, the report noted. Moreover, Pakistani military operations have resulted in the deaths of more than 1,400 Pakistani security forces, officials told the auditors.
But American Embassy officials told the auditors that an overreliance on military solutions to the problem stemmed from a lack of a more comprehensive counterterrorism approach.
The report concluded that there have been limited efforts to address the underlying causes of terrorism in the tribal areas, such as providing development assistance and addressing the political needs of a region still governed under administration and legal structures dating from 1901, in the region’s colonial period.
In response, the American Embassy has developed a plan in coordination with federal agencies in Washington to provide $956 million in fiscal years 2008 through 2011 for development, security and infrastructure in support of the Pakistani government, the auditors determined.
As of September, the embassy had also planned to spend $187.6 million in fiscal year 2007 money to help develop schools and hospitals in the tribal areas; to train the Frontier Corps, and equip them with night-vision goggles and radios; and to build border surveillance outposts.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/18/washington/18policy.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin
spotdogg
04-18-2008, 06:09 PM
Oops...How the heck did that happen?...
spotdogg
04-18-2008, 07:22 PM
Bump...
Ponder
04-18-2008, 10:22 PM
Oops...How the heck did that happen?...
What is "that"?
pilobolus
04-18-2008, 10:32 PM
"we"?? How would you have known?
Until the Senate report came out there wasn't any public information one way or another.
Even then there's a lot more in it than ever appeared in the papers.
I think if you look back, there were plenty of doubters about the claims being made by the Admin and Colin Powel on the occassion of his visit to the UN.
For instance, no one needed a senate report to figure out that Iraq did not have a delivery system that would reach the US despite the claims about mushroom clouds.
Bitch
04-18-2008, 10:39 PM
What is "that"?
You didn't notice a double post they're kind of hard to miss because it's a decent size article.......
pilobolus
04-18-2008, 10:45 PM
You didn't notice a double post they're kind of hard to miss because it's a decent size article.......
'swhy Rush is so popular...it needs to be spoon fed.
Ponder
04-18-2008, 11:28 PM
I just clicked on the last page. Maybe you guys keep up with every post, but I don't.
Spot posted an article that suggested that aid to Pakistan should include more economic development and improved governance.
Schools in FATA...
http://www.usaid.gov/pk/mission/pressreleases/050322_fataschool/index.htm
Economic assistance to FATA...
http://www.paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?190816
More aid...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/17/pakistan.terrorism
As far as governance, that seems to me to be a Pakistani concern, not ours.
Our government is working with the new government just as they did the old one.
rabzon
04-19-2008, 12:17 PM
Bman's not racist he just wants bin Laden and AQ brought down. Americans ahve waited a long time for that thanks to our useless president. I do think we should try to work with the new govt. I think ew should work at it diplomatically to encourage the new govt to do what needs to be done. But if they are unwilling to do what is needed and if they perhaps even can't do what is needed. Then I think sending in cia and special forces - like the initial steps used in afghanistan should be how it goes about. However, unlike afghanistan it shouldn't be long term it should be focused on the mission and done. Of course in Afghanistan it was an issue with the govt/taliban and aq. Pakistan doesn't have that issue at the moment.
I have no doubt my country and our democratic government is ready to seriously take on the AQ, Taliban and Pakistani-Taliban traitors who shelter these terrorists. The terrorists have declared war on Pakistan and have killed many innocent Pakistanis, including former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and Lieutenant General Mushtaq Baig, and also three times they tried to kill Musharraf.
We are fed-up with these barbarians, and that’s why the people just recently voted for secular parties and totally sidelined the mullahs and the pro-military parties. I think Pakistan on its own cannot defeat them, it will need lot of American help, I’m sure the US and our government can work that out.
Pakistanis killed by AQ and Taliban Terrorist.
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2007/12/pakistan_over_50_kil.php
Pakistan: Over 50 Killed in Charsadda suicide attack
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/03/seven_killed_in_suic.php
Seven killed in suicide bombing at Pakistani Navy War College
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/02/suicide_bomber_kills_4.php
Suicide bomber kills senior Pakistani general in Rawalpindi
http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/bg2124.cfm
At least 865 Pakistani security personnel and civilians were killed by suicide bombings and IEDs in 2007, and more than 250 Pakistanis have perished in at least 18 suicide attacks in just the first three months of 2008.
rabzon
04-19-2008, 12:20 PM
You have to understand that for some it is important to blame Bush and continue to blame him for the existence of unpleasant people within your national borders. They want someone to invade your country and lay waste to your countryside in order to track down and apprehend a Saudi renegade.
Personally, I imagine that our gov't will work with whoever is in charge. Unless of course you guys start selling weapons tech to bad people.
That would be provocative.
:happy_12:
Well, I know there are some who just want to settle scores with Bush. :)
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