Meet Jalaluddin Haqqani aka The Asset but WHOSE?

WASHINGTON: A top US senator pressed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday to add the militant Haqqani network to a formal terrorism blacklist, citing recent attacks in Afghanistan. “I request that the State Department take the additional step of listing the network as a Foreign Terrorism Organization and look forward to receiving your response,” said Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein. Feinstein, a Democrat, said “there is no question that the Haqqani network meets the standards” for joining the list. “It conducts attacks against US targets and personnel in Afghanistan, and poses a continuing threat to American, Afghan, and allied personnel and interests,” she said in a statement. Her comments came after the top US military officer, Admiral Mike Mullen, charged that the Haqqani network “acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.” Washington blames Haqqani militants for an assault on the US embassy in Kabul last week, a June attack on the Inter-Continental Hotel in Kabul, and a bloody September 10 truck bombing in Afghanistan’s Wardak province. The Haqqani network is probably the most dangerous faction in the Afghan Taliban. A CIA asset turned al Qaeda ally, the United States in the 1980s funneled arms and cash to the Haqqani faction to counter Soviet forces. REFERENCE: Key US senator says Haqqani should be on terror list AFP (3 hours ago) Today http://www.dawn.com/2011/09/23/key-us-senator-says-haqqani-should-be-on-terror-list.html 

Way back in 2008, The New York Times had quoted,

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In the 1980s, Jalaluddin Haqqani was cultivated as a "unilateral" asset of the CIA and received tens of thousands of dollars in cash for his work in fighting the Soviet Army in Afghanistan, according to an account in "The Bin Ladens," a recent book by Steve Coll. At that time, Haqqani helped and protected Osama bin Laden, who was building his own militia to fight the Soviet forces, Coll wrote. REFERENCE: U.S. attack on Taliban kills 23 in Pakistan By Jane Perlez and Pir Zubair Shah http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/09/world/asia/09iht-09pstan.15996896.html

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Way back in 2006, The PBS Frontline had said,

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Jalaluddin Haqqani posted oct. 3, 2006 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/taliban/militants/haqqani.html


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CIA Agents Reveal "Secrets of the CIA"

URL: http://youtu.be/DvRhUZnc7F0

In helping to beat the Soviet menace, Charlie Wilson unleashed a monster. The jihadi commanders who fought with the funds that he provided in Afghanistan remember the Congressman fondly. His fellow countrymen are now fighting the guerrillas that he helped to arm and the civilians who are suffering at their hands might be more reserved about his legacy. Wilson once described the warlord Jalaluddin Haqqani as “goodness personified”. Today the elderly commander is one of America’s most wanted terrorists. In Khost late last year, seven CIA operatives were killed in an audacious attack by a Jordanian triple agent. Analysts suspect that Mr Haqqani must have been complicit. In the 1980s the self-proclaimed Holy Warrior, with close links to Osama bin Laden, was getting millions of American tax dollars to send Arab and Afghan volunteers into battle against Soviet troops. The CIA were his allies. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was another Islamist commander bankrolled by Wilson’s money. Today both men are in charge of militant networks responsible for countless attacks against US, Afghan and international forces. It was fighters loyal to Mr Hekmatyar who ambushed a French patrol east of Kabul in 2008, killing nine soldiers, injuring 21 and mutilating the dead bodies. When the Russians finally left Afghanistan in 1989 the money that Wilson had secured from Congress dried up, despite his protests, and without a common enemy the commanders started fighting each other for control. Meanwhile, Pakistan was nurturing the Taleban, who swept to power in the mid-1990s, partly in protest over the infighting and factionalism of the civil war. When the US invaded in 2001, neither Mr Hekmatyar nor Mr Haqqani — their old allies — were invited to the Bonn conference where Hamid Karzai was effectively anointed as Afghanistan’s new leader. Both men promptly pledged jihad against America. “He was always trying to help Afghanistan,” Abdul Hadi Arghandiwal, the head of Mr Hekmatyar’s old Hezb-e Islami political party, said of Wilson. “He really helped the Mujahidin.” Afghan loyalties are notoriously fluid. In the new climate of reconciliation it is just possible that some of Wilson’s friends might soon be friends of America again. REFERENCE: From The Times February 12, 2010 Man with the money Charlie Wilson unleashed a monster Jerome Starkey in Kabul http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7024135.ece