US urges Pakistan to stamp out terror groups

bhramos

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WASHINGTON: The United States is now urging Pakistan to strike at the groups that hunt for disgruntled Pakistanis living abroad and then use them for plotting terrorist activities in Europe and North America.

This is the message that two senior aides of US President Barack Obama, who arrived in Islamabad on Tuesday, are believed to have brought with them.

Media reports earlier claimed that US National Security Adviser Gen James Jones and CIA Director Leon Panetta had come to Islamabad to investigate the May 1 bomb plot, which has been blamed on the Pakistani Taliban.

Before flying out of Washington on Monday night, Gen Jones spoke with Pakistan's Ambassador Husain Haqqani and is believed to have discussed with him the outlines of Mr Obama's informal message with him as well.

Official sources familiar with the Obama administration's approach to this issue, meanwhile, rejected the suggestion that Mr Obama had sent two senior aides to explore the links between the TTP and Faisal Shahzad, the main suspect in the May 1 bombing plot.

"This is not such a sophisticated or complicated case that the White House should send its national security adviser and the CIA chief all the way to Islamabad," said one such source. "They are there to look at the bigger picture and to discuss with Pakistani officials the greater context of this issue."

According to sources familiar with US investigations into recent terrorist activities in Europe and North America, what has really alarmed Washington is the determination that all those involved in these acts have had some links to Pakistan.

"Either they are from there, have travelled to Pakistan, have friends in that country or have been trained by those living there," said one official source.

"Whether these were the Sept 11 attacks in the US or those in London, Mumbai or the recent attempt to bomb New York's Times Square, they all have a Pakistan link."

In the message sent to Pakistan, the Obama administration is also believed to have conveyed its concern over how easily people like Faisal Shahzad are able to connect to Al Qaeda and its offshoots.

"The Americans also have pointed out how such groups are able to send these recruits to their training camps in Fata, bring them back and send them out to their destinations without ever being detected by the Pakistani authorities," said a source.

The basic concept of the message that Gen Jones and Mr Panetta are believed to have brought with them is the same as that of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's.

In a recent television interview, she warned that Pakistan would have to face "very severe consequences" if an attack on the US, planned on the Pakistani soil, was to succeed.

But the tone of the new message is different. Instead of threatening Pakistanis with severe consequences, the two senior officials are telling their Pakistani interlocutors that if an attack planned in Pakistan succeeded, no US administration will be able to control the American public opinion.

To avoid such a situation, they are offering to work with the Pakistanis for stamping out the groups that recruit overseas Pakistanis and other Muslims for carrying out terrorist attacks.

"There's no threat, no do-mores or if-nots," said an official familiar with the new US approach. "The message is: Let's take our cooperation to the next level and work together to obliterate this threat."
The official said that the Americans were not asking for a military offensive in North Waziristan either.

Instead, they were offering to enhance Pakistan's ability to deal with such groups and are willing to work with them for stamping out terrorism from this region, the official said.

Meanwhile, Ambassador Haqqani told Dawn that he had conveyed to the Americans that "the Faisal Shahzad case should not become a basis for bashing Pakistan or Pakistani Americans".

He said that three Pakistani men arrested in New England last week as part of the investigation into the attempted Times Square bombing did not appear to have any involvement in terrorism.

Mr Haqqani said that US law-enforcement agencies cast a wide net during the investigation and that the three men were only taken into custody because alleged immigration violations were discovered during interrogation.

"I'm a little critical of law-enforcement personnel who ran to the press first, because you can actually destroy people's lives. So far, there is nothing that implies anything of a terrorist nature," he said.

On Monday, Pakistan's consul general in Boston, Barry Hoffman, visited one of the men, 27-year-old Aftab Ali Khan, at the Suffolk County House of Correction for about an hour and said, "He's proclaiming his innocence."

http://beta.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connec...urges-pakistan-to-stamp-out-terror-groups-950

again its the matter of security of EU or US,
why does nobody talks or speak about POK or India targeting Terrorists.
 

Sikh_warrior

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bhramos, you seem inactive in MPnet!

well its nothing but a way for pakistan to ask for more $$ and hardware with spares!

yanks will gain nothing out of pak, its still the same since last 8 years!
 
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bhramos

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Thanks mate,
but does US has any more options other then Trusting Pak?
 

nandu

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US: Addressing Intelligence Gaps in Pakistan


Gen James Jones, the National Security Adviser to President Barack Obama, and Mr Leon Panetta, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), reached Pakistan from Washington DC on May 18, 2010, for talks with President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Miniater Mr.Yousef Raza Gilani, Gen.Asfaq Pervez Kayani, the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), and senior intelligence officials of Pakistan. They are also to hold discussions with US intelligence officials based in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

b-ramanWhile the visit has been projected by the Pakistani authorities as one of the periodic consultations on intelligence-sharing and liaison between the two countries, it is reliably learnt from Pakistani sources that the visit has been sparked by US concerns over serious gaps in intelligence coverage, which made possible a successful suicide bomber attack through a Jordanian double agent on a group of seven CIA officers based in the Khost area of Afghanistan on December 30,2009, and the attempt of Faisal Shahzad, a US citizen of Pakistani origin, to make an incendiary attack in the Times Square of New York on the evening of May 1, 2010. Shahzad had almost completed the task which he had been given by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) during his training in the North Waziristan area. The Times Square escaped a major disaster partly due to the malfunctioning of the incendiary car bomb left by Shahzad and partly due to the alertness of a T-Shirt vendor, who had alerted a policeman after noticing smoke coming out of the car.

The TTP headed by Hakimullah Mehsud had been involved in the successful strike against the CIA officers in the Khost area and in the failed attempt in the Times Square. In both cases, US intelligence was badly caught napping. Human intelligence (HUMINT) has always been a weak point for the US despite the recent improvement which has made possible some successful Drone (pilotless plane) strikes on terrorist suspects in the two Waziristans, but the technical intelligence coverage of the US was of a high order. It was the better TECHINT coverage by the National Security Agency (NSA) which led to the arrests of many Al Qaeda operatives in the Af-Pak region since the US forces went into action in Afghanistan in October, 2001.

Both HUMINT and TECHINT agencies of the US failed to detect the preparations of the TTP for the Khost attack and the attempt in the Times Square. According to the Pakistani sources, the NSA failed to pick up any intercept even remotely connected to the two incidents in Khost and New York. Faisal had been frequently visiting Pakistan and was in Pakistan for about five months the last time during which he underwent training and went back to the US to launch the attack. Neither the HUMINT agencies nor the NSA picked up any piece of intelligence related to his being groomed by the TTP for the Times Square attack. The US immigration too failed to notice anything worrisome about his frequent travels to Pakistan despite the financial difficulties faced by him.

How to address these serious gaps in intelligence coverage? One way is by the US strengthening its intelligence presence in Pakistan for which a request is to be made to the Pakistani authorities by the visiting officials. They are unlikely to reject this request. A more difficult proposition is to make the Pakistani intelligence agencies improve their intelligence coverage not only in the tribal belt, but also in Karachi and other cities. A nagging question without answer is whether the Pakistani intelligence had noticed the suspicious activities of Faisal, but refrained from alerting their US counterparts.

One could understand the poor intelligence coverage of the Pakistani agencies in North Waziristan, but their coverage ought to be better in Karachi, where Faisal initially met elements in the Jaish-e-Mohammad and took their help for going to the TTP camp in North Waziristan. Jihadi elements in Karachi seem to have played an important role in assisting Faisal in obtaining money for his attempted attack and in contacting the TTP just as jihadi elements of Karachi had played an important role in assisting Richard Reid, the thwarted shoe bomber, in 2001. It was to identify the Karachi elements that Daniel Pearl, the journalist of the "Wall Street Journal", went to Karachi from Mumbai, where he was based, in the beginning of 2002 and paid with his life.

Under US prodding, the Gilani Government has strengthened the intelligence collection role of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) under the Pakistani Ministry of the Interior, and restored the leadership role of the police officers in the IB. The IB does not have much of a capability in the tribal belt where one has to depend on the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), but one would have expected the IB's coverage to have been better in Karachi through the local police, but even the IB seems to have missed the contacts of Faisal with the JEM elements in Karachi before he went to Peshawar and from there to Noth Waziristan.

By B Raman

http://www.indiandefencereview.com/2010/05/us-addressing-intelligence-gaps-in-pakistan.html
 

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