Pak : The ultimate terrorist haven

[Ancient Indian]

Islamic militants are obtaining ID cards in Pakistan for as little as $100 a bribe

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/ap-p...ts-get-national-id-cards-2015-9#ixzz3kl1SmSs5

Foreign Islamic militants have been able to secure Pakistani national identity cards for years in exchange for bribes as low as $100, giving them vastly greater freedom to operate

The issue of foreign jihadis operating so easily in Pakistan has regional and even global implications.

The country has long been a destination for aspiring global jihadis to receive training, some of whom are sent back abroad to conduct attacks. Foreign governments, particularly neighboring Afghanistan, have frequently accused elements of the Pakistani government of sheltering Islamic militant groups that frequent the porous and lawless tribal regions along the Afghan border.

According to the recent report by the Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI, thousands of foreigners have illegally obtained Pakistani national IDs. Most of them are Islamic militants from China, the Maldives, Uzbekistan and the United States.

Pakistani militants also often secured a second national ID card under a fake name, making it harder for local law enforcement to track and apprehend them, the report says.

"If the registration authority of any country is not corruption free, there are serious security concerns," said Pakistani Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan at a press conference in Islamabad on Aug. 23. Khan said he had set up a permanent committee of officers to work on ending the practice, adding, "We have prioritized it."

Among the most notorious beneficiaries of this system was Adnan Shukrijumah, a Saudi-born U.S. citizen and a top al-Qaida commander. Shukrijumah was killed in a Pakistani army raid in a tribal region along the Afghan border in December 2014. He was found in possession of a Pakistani national identity card under the name of Shahzaib Khan, according to the ISI report.

The vast majority of those obtaining fake national IDs were Afghan refugees seeking to extend and legitimize their presence in Pakistan. But the loophole was also regularly exploited by foreign Islamic militants. The ISI report lists more than 40 foreign militants and their family members who had lived illegally in Pakistan— some of them wanted for terrorism-related charges in Pakistan or in their home countries.

Shukrijumah was on the FBI's most wanted list with a $5 million reward for his capture offered by the U.S. government. Another example was Mohammed Amin, a native of the Maldives who was wanted by his government. Amin lived in Pakistan for four years with a fake ID; according to the ISI report, he fled the country in 2011 using a Pakistani passport.

The IDs were most useful for men like Shukrijumah, who could visually pass as Pakistanis.

But even for foreign militants who looked distinctly foreign, the IDs could be used for renting apartments and vehicles, buying cell phones and SIM cards or wiring money.

The main fault in the ID scandal seems to lie with corruption in Pakistan's National Data Registration Authority, or NADRA, the organization that issues national ID cards.

An initial NADRA probe has termed the issuance of the ID cards to foreigners "a threat to national security" and recommended a fact-finding commission.

In a second NADRA internal report, seen by the AP, a low-level Pakistani clerk was found to have made millions of rupees, equivalent to tens of thousands of dollars, stashed in multiple bank accounts, by issuing fake ID cards to local al-Qaida-linked Sunni militants.

A NADRA spokesman, Samad Khurram, said that his department had already sacked 43 officials, including one director general, three directors and several other high profile employees — some of whom were arrested and charged with crimes including fraud and forgery.

Government prosecutor Manzoor Ahmad said that a court last week in the southwestern city of Quetta sentenced two NADRA officers to 20 years in prison each. Two lower-level employees received jail sentences of seven and four years.

On Tuesday, three NADRA offices in the southern city of Karachi were shut down and sealed, said Ashfaq Aalam Khan, a Federal Investigation Agency official, who is part of the taskforce probing the issue. He said his agency had already opened several inquiries after arresting six senior NADRA officials, and nearly 500 more cases being pursued against the employees and their partners and front men outside the government.

Khurram, the NADRA spokesman, said another 120 employees were still facing an internal inquiry. More than 29,000 fraudulent ID applications from foreign nationals were found in the system, Khurram said, adding that the majority were from Afghan refugees. Khan, the interior minister, said that some 80,000 fake ID cards had been blocked in the last four years.

Khurram wouldn't say whether the removal from jobs and the inquiries were related to the ISI report. "We do not comment on an on-going inquiry," he said.

A former chief of the anti-cybercrimes division at the Federal Investigation Agency, Ammar Jaffri, said the flood of fake IDs has already hindered authorities' ability to track the communications and financial networks of terrorist groups.

"If you start tracking a terror plot or its financing in Europe or America, you may simply end up at a fake ID card issued in Pakistan," he said.

@rock127 @Blackwater @Rowdy @Mad Indian

 

[Blackwater]

And this failed state has 200 nukes . World should take notice of this rouge state

 

[rock127]

NADRA is a joke just as Pakistan is.

Recently India caught Paki terrorists alive and Pakis claimed these terrorists are not to be found in NADRA.

As per facts not even half of Pakis are registered in it.

Pakistan is a LIAR TERRORIST STATE.

 

[thethinker]

Mullah Omar disclosure is yet another case for the closure of ISI Special Wing

The recent revelation that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) gave shelter to Mullah Omar in 2001 once again confirms the theory that Pakistan is the originator of the Taliban, and is the crucible of global terror. It did not surprise anyone when news filtered through, via an email in former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email dump that after the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the Taliban leadership took shelter in Pakistan and Mullah Omar stayed in an ISI safe house in Quetta. Further details of this news can be accessed here.

That the latest bit of information has emerged soon after the deliberate release of news that Omar has been dead since 2013 should also not surprise many. After all, the US has long known that Pakistan is the point of origin for many terror organisations, including the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT). What is critical, however, is that the ISI which is the preceptor of many such organisations, remains impervious to international condemnation. This is both a matter of convenience and concern to international players like the United States.

It may be recalled that some years ago, the US had sought the closure of the Special Wing (S-Wing) of the ISI. What is so special about this wing? It is part of the covert operations wing of the ISI and undertakes black operations across South Asia and elsewhere, with a sharp focus on Afghanistan and India.

The existence of the S-Wing has been known about for some time, but it came into the open in 2011 in a Chicago court, when a jury tried a Pakistani-born businessman. He was accused of using his US visa-processing company to provide logistical cover to the terrorists who carried out the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, in which about 170 people were killed, including six Americans. The defendant, Tahawwur Rana, was accused of providing logistical support to the operations of the LeT — the Pakistan-based group that carried out the attacks in Mumbai. Subsequently, US officials revealed that it was the S-Wing that sheltered then Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.

American intelligence has long known that the ISI has had ties with both the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. It is also well known that the S-Wing is involved in arming the Taliban, which has been at war and continues to be at war with American troops in Afghanistan.

This particular S-Wing should not be confused with the Special Wing, which is responsible for all intelligence training in the Defence Services Intelligence Academy, and for liaison with foreign intelligence and security agencies.

A 2009 article in the New York Times reveals that the S-Wing is the main provider of funding, training, protection, and intelligence for the Haqqani Network, Afghan Taliban, LeT, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar groups. These groups are tipped off about planned US drone strikes and other attacks. S-Wing operatives even search radical madrassas (boarding schools) in Pakistan to find new recruits for the groups.

It is open knowledge that ISI officials regularly sit in on meetings of Taliban leaders and other militant leaders and help formulate strategy. Sources also reveal that the ISI’s S-Wing has on its rolls, a number of retired military personnel as well as terrorists

Manzoor Ijaz, a US citizen of Pakistan origin wrote exhaustively on the ISI in the Financial Times. He stated that “the finger of responsibility in many otherwise inexplicable attacks has often pointed to a shadowy outfit of ISI dubbed as S-Wing”. Back then, Ijaz argued that the time was ripe for the US State Department to declare the S-Wing a sponsor of terrorism under the designation of “foreign governmental organisations”.

The S-Wing is also identified as the logistics and military support provider to the Haqqani Network. Ijaz aptly concludes that “ISI embodies the scourge of radicalism that has become a cornerstone of Pakistan’s foreign policy.” Additionally, it was ISI’s Joint Intelligence North (JIN) division that was responsible for the proxy war in Jammu and Kashmir, and Afghanistan.

JIN controls the Army of Islam, consisting of organisations such as the Al-Qaeda, the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), the LeT, the Al-Badr and Maulana Masood Azhar's Jaish-e-Mohammad. It also controls all the opium cultivation, and heroin refining and smuggling from Pakistani and Afghan territory. But over a period of time, the connection between terrorist entities like the LeT and other groups has been kept alive through the S-Wing.

In fact, one could even propose that S-Wing recruits terrorists to its ranks, and individuals such as Hafiz Saeed could even be on the payroll of the ISI. Thus, it can be safely assumed that ISI is the real architect of global terror organisations. This leaves us with another question: Given its links to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, it is only natural that it would be in touch with terror franchisees across the world, but what about the Islamic State (IS) headed by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi?

Going on past experience, the ISI quite likely has a finger on the pulse of the IS too. It is obvious that those on its payroll like the LeT, would send feelers to the IS. For the ISI, the presence of the IS in Afghanistan provides a counter to the Afghan Taliban, which of late appears to be splintering in the aftermath of the announcement of Omar’s death.

The US would do well to take note of the role of the ISI within Pakistan and its export of terror.