Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Mansoor Ijaz, General (R) Hamid Gul & PML (Nawaz).

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court hearing the controversial memo case lifted on Monday travel restrictions imposed on former ambassador Husain Haqqani on Dec 1 last year and allowed him to go to Washington to meet his family. A nine-judge larger bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry also gave two more months to the SC-constituted judicial commission to complete its probe into the scandal. The three-judge commission had earlier been asked to come up with its report by Dec 30. The commission, at its last proceedings on Jan 24, had directed its secretary to send a request to the Supreme Court to extend the deadline because cross-examination of key witnesses required more time. The court declined to consider for any purpose a secret letter addressed to the chief justice by Mansoor Ijaz, the main character in the scandal. The court directed the registrar to keep the letter with him under seal. In the letter captioned ‘secret’, Mr Ijaz is reported to have disclosed certain information, but the court questioned its authenticity and observed that it was the cardinal principle of law that only court decided the status of a document to be treated as confidential or classified. “We would have appreciated if he (Mansoor Ijaz) had sent such a document to the court through his counsel,” the court said. The court rejected an application moved by Mr Ijaz through his counsel Mohammad Akram Sheikh that his statement be recorded outside Pakistan and asked the counsel to take up the matter with the judicial commission. The commission has already turned down the request. “One feels breathing easier after the stuffy air behind the memogate scandal gushed out after today’s court order,” a senior lawyer commented. REFERENCE: Court lifts Haqqani travel restrictions Nasir Iqbal http://www.dawn.com/2012/01/31/memo-commission-gets-2-month-extension-court-lifts-haqqani-travel-restrictions.html

Milt Bearden (Former CIA Station Chief in Pakistan) talks about Bin Laden Being Trained by CIA




Milt Bearden retired from the Central Intelligence Agency in 1994, after thirty years in the CIA's clandestine services Bearden rose through the ranks to become one of CIA's most senior officers. His early career was split between German speaking Europe and Hong Kong where he conducted classic Cold War intelligence operations. During the early 1980's he moved to Africa to serve as CIA Chief in Nigeria and later in Khartoum, where he covered Sudan's civil war and the ultimate overthrow of the regime of Jaafar Nimeiri. It was in the Sudan in 1985, that Bearden organized a secret airlift from the Sudanese desert to Israel of the stranded remnants of the Ethiopian Falasha Jews. For his work in Sudan Milt Bearden was awarded the Intelligence Medal of Merit, the Agency's second highest decoration. In the spring of 1986, Bearden was selected by Bill Casey to take charge of the CIA Covert Action supporting a flagging Afghan Resistance. The end of the war was symbolically marked by the final march of Soviet troops across Friendship Bridge over the Oxus River on February 15, 1989, thus ending almost ten years of struggle. For his service in Afghanistan Bearden was awarded the agency's highest decoration, the Distinguished Intelligence Medal. From 1989-92, Bearden directed the CIA's clandestine operations against a decaying Soviet Empire. During this period Bearden was awarded the CIA's unique Donovan Award, named after its founder. Bearden wound up his CIA career as the CIA Chief in Bonn where he worked with a newly reunified Germany in dealing with its Cold War legacy. For his service in Germany, Milt Bearden was honored by the German President with the Federal Cross of Merit, the only such decoration ever given to a CIA Chief in the Federal Republic. REFERENCE: Milt Bearden Retired Senior CIA Officer http://security.nationaljournal.com/contributors/milt-bearden.php

Memogate storm in Pakistan & Mansoor Ijaz flip-flop on ISI - 1 (NDTV)




As the Memogate scandal continues to create ripples in the Pakistani establishment, all eyes now are centred on US-based Pakistani businessman Mansoor Ijaz – better known as the ‘Memogate man’. He has finally secured a Pakistan visa to travel to the country to depose before a judicial commission that is probing the political scandal. NDTV‘s Barkha Dutt speaks to Ijaz amidst questions by the global media of why the latter missed his date with the court on the 16th of this month and what he would eventually say in his deposition. REFERENCE: I will be in Pakistan before the 26th: Mansoor Ijaz. 20th January 2012 http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/news/memogate-storm-in-pak-mansoor-ijaz-flip-flop-on-isi/221650?pfrom=home-lateststories&cp http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xru3kFPPttI


WASHINGTON, Nov 3: A senior US official responsible for counter-terrorism on Tuesday directly accused Pakistan of supporting training of militant groups in Afghanistan as well as providing "material support" to some of the Kashmiri militants. "There are numerous Kashmiri separatist groups and sectarian groups involved in terrorism which use Pakistan as a base...We have repeatedly asked Islamabad to end support of terrorist training in Afghanistan," Michael Sheehan, State Department's coordinator for counter-terrorism, told a Senate Foreign Relations sub-committee. The sub-committee hearing was called and presided over by Senator Sam Brownback and the list of experts who testified included a former CIA officer in Pakistan Milt Bearden, president of Stimson Centre Michael Krepon, John Hopkins University Central Asia Institute chairman Dr Fredrick Starr and a Pakistani- American businessman and columnist Mansoor Ijaz. Mr Sheehan recently visited India to coordinate US-Indian responses to terrorist threats but when asked whether he would also visit Pakistan soon, he said: "Hopefully." "Pakistan has frequently acknowledged what it calls moral and diplomatic support for militants in Kashmir who employ violence and terrorism against Indian interests. We have continuing reports of Pakistani material support for some of these militants," Mr Sheehan said. He named several Pakistan-based militant Islamic groups including Lashkar Taiba, Harkatul Jehad Islami and Hizbul Mujahideen, which, he said, "operate freely in Pakistan and support terrorist attacks in Kashmir." Asked by Indian and Pakistani journalists after his hearing whether he found any change in the policy after the overthrow of the Nawaz government, Mr Sheehan said: "We are still waiting for their responses and it is too early to judge whether there is any change." When a correspondent pointed out whether it was "business as usual" with the military government, he crisply said "no" but added: "We hope to work with them on all these issues." REFERENCE: US says Pakistan training militants Shaheen Sehbai DAWN WIRE SERVICE Week Ending: 06 November 1999 Issue : 05/45 http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/SouthAsia/SAserials/Dawn/1999/06nov99.html#ussa


Memogate storm in Pakistan & Mansoor Ijaz flip-flop on ISI - 2 (NDTV)



As the Memogate scandal continues to create ripples in the Pakistani establishment, all eyes now are centred on US-based Pakistani businessman Mansoor Ijaz – better known as the ‘Memogate man’. He has finally secured a Pakistan visa to travel to the country to depose before a judicial commission that is probing the political scandal. NDTV‘s Barkha Dutt speaks to Ijaz amidst questions by the global media of why the latter missed his date with the court on the 16th of this month and what he would eventually say in his deposition. REFERENCE: I will be in Pakistan before the 26th: Mansoor Ijaz. 20th January 2012 http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/news/memogate-storm-in-pak-mansoor-ijaz-flip-flop-on-isi/221650?pfrom=home-lateststories&cp http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xru3kFPPttI


WASHINGTON, Oct 7: A key congressional committee voted unanimously on Wednesday evening to provide President Clinton indefinite waiver authority to lift military and economic sanctions on Pakistan and India. The amendment for the authority, moved by Senator Sam Brownback and


commonly known as Brownback-2, is now almost assured a smooth sailing through the full houses of the Senate and House of Representatives as part of the larger Defence Appropriations Bill. The language approved by the committee practically takes away all the bite and sting of the Pressler Amendment without actually repealing the infamous law and is being viewed on the Hill as the biggest ever Pakistani victory in Congress. The final waiver came only after an epic battle between Pakistani and Indian lobbies and last minute long-distance interventions by Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz, Petroleum Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, Pakistani lobbyist Charlie Wilson and a prominent Pakistani-American Mansoor Ijaz, who used his clout with the Clinton Administration and key senators to pull it through. Congressional experts said the waiver authority was enough for President Clinton to remove all restrictions on Pakistan, including those on military sales including aircraft, tanks and other equipment as well as spare parts. "This would be enough for Pakistan to declare that the coercive atmosphere that existed has now been removed, paving the way for Islamabad to sign the CTBT," these experts said. The committee adopted the final version of the amendment after Conference Committee Chairman, Senator Ted Stevens from Alaska, gave his go ahead, but not before Islamabad moved fast and decisively to resolve a multi-million dollar dispute with an Alaskan Pipeline Company. Pakistan's biggest victory against an Indian lobbying juggernaut headed by former Republican Party chief Bob Dole, former congressman Steven Solarz and former senator Larry Pressler was mainly due to the team efforts of the Pakistani- Americans and their lobbyist who used their influence to get the hurdles past upto the last minute. The Embassy coordinated their effort. The last formidable hurdle which threatened to derail the process was the pending problem with an Alaskan pipeline company, VECO, which had lobbied hard on Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens to get their case sorted out before Stevens voted for the waiver law. Stevens, who chairs the key conference committee, and who is also the chairman of the defence appropriations committee with the last word on what his committee passes, put his foot down and in the last 24 hours Islamabad was told to either agree to VECO's demands or risk the entire process being put off for months, or even years. Mansoor Ijaz and Pakistani lobbyist former congressman Charlie Wilson, worked on the telephone for 20 hours, talking several times to Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz and other high ups to get the VECO issue out of the way. The matter was rushed to the cabinet meeting on Wednesday morning and a decision was taken to involve the World Bank as an arbitrator in the dispute. REFERENCE: Sanctions waiver approved By Shaheen Sehbai DAWN WIRE SERVICE Week Ending : 09 October 1999 Issue : 05/41 http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/SouthAsia/SAserials/Dawn/1999/09oct99.html#sanc 



Just how vicious a campaign the CIA was sponsoring is suggested by the Pakistan Brigadier Mohammed Yousuf, who directed the training with and distribution of CIA weapons at that time. In a matter-of-fact passage in his memoirs, he describes the range of assassination tactics and targets he was preparing the mujahideen to take on in Kabul. They ranged from your everyday “knife between the shoulder blades of a Soviet soldier shopping in the bazaar” to “the placing of a briefcase bomb in a senior official’s office.” Educational institutions were considered fair game, he explains, since they were staffed by “Communists indoctrinating their students with Marxist dogma.” {Page 335 Charlie Wilson’s War: The Extraordinary Story Of The Largest Covert Operation in History by George Crile}.

On a CIA sponsored trip to Washington that year, the proud ISI Brigadier was deeply insulted when he was led, virtually blindfolded, to the Agency’s “sabotage school” in North Carolina. Vickers {CIA Official foe Afghan “Jihad} escorted the burly Pakistani Brigadier in a plane whose windows were blacked, then in a car with its shades drawn. Yousuf, who suffers the chip on the shoulder of many proud Third World types, was deeply offended at this slight. He reasoned that if he was trusted enough to be permitted to run the CIA’s operation in Pakistan, why was the Agency treating him as if he were about to reveal the location of the sabotage school? Later Vicker and Avrakotos {CIA Officials for Afghan “Jihad”} take Yousuf and one of his colleagues out for a fancy dinner at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, USA. [Page 351 Charlie Wilson’s War: The Extraordinary Story Of The Largest Covert Operation in History by George Crile].

On page 503 in Charlie Wilson’s War, the author quoted “but it was losing Zia that crushed Charlie. At the state funeral in Islamabad, with a million Pakistanis and Mujahideen crowding up to him, Charlie made his way to Akhtar’s successor, Hamid Gul, and broke into tears. “I have lost my father on this day,” he said. [Reference: Charlie Wilson’s War The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History by George Crile]

She was Zia’s most trusted American adviser, as per Sahibzada Yaqub Khan, She absolutely had his ear, it was terrible,” “Zia would leave cabinet meetings just to take Joanne’s calls. “There was no affair with Zia,” Wilson recalls, but it’s impossible to deal with Joanne and not deal with her on sexual basis. No matter who you are, you take those phone calls.” [Page 67-68 Charlie Wilson’s War The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History by George Crile]


A new book, “Charlie Wilson’s War” by George Crile on the life and good times of a former US congressman is a frank pastiche of a lawmaker who helped Pakistan’s military ruler Gen. Ziaul Haq in procuring American money and weapons for the “holy war” against the Soviet Union in the 1980s. From humble beginnings in Lufkin, Texas, Congressman Charlie Wilson became an Israeli lobbyist and beneficiary of largesse bestowed upon him by the Jewish lobby in the United States and went on to become Ziaul Haq’s personal friend and confidant as they plotted to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan at times using Israeli supplied arms. Charlie Wilson still works as a lobbyist for Pakistan on Capitol Hill and he was spotted at every reception that former Pakistani ambassador Maleeha Lodhi hosted. Wilson, an avowed anti-Communist and anti-Indian, sat on the powerful US House Appropriations Committee. He managed to procure millions of dollars for America’s largest covert operation ever. He has been investigated several times by the FBI for using covert money to support his lifestyle. Wilson reveals in the book that he was introduced to Gen Ziaul Haq by the Houston socialite Joanne Herring who was appointed honorary Pakistani consul-general by the then ambassador of Pakistan, soon to become foreign minister, Sahibzada Yaqub Ali Khan, when Mr Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was prime minister. Joanne Herring, described as the “Texas Bombshell” in addition to her role as “a social lioness and hostess to the powerful”, was credited with “setting in motion a process that would profoundly impact the outcome of the Afghan war”. “In the pivotal years of the Jihad, she (Herring) became both matchmaker and muse to Pakistan’s Muslim fundamentalist military dictator Ziaul Haq as well as scandal prone Charlie Wilson,” writes Crile. “Herring set the stage. She had called Zia from Houston on his private line and told him not to be put off by Wilson’s flamboyant appearance and not to pay attention to any stories of decadence that his diplomats might relate. She was adamant he win over US Congressman from Texas: he could become Pakistan’s most important ally.” Crile quotes Wilson in the book as saying that “Zia would leave cabinet meetings just to take Joanne’s calls”. When Zia made his maiden visit to the United States during the Reagan administration, he was much reviled by most Americans having hung Mr Bhutto. Ms Herring hosted a most lavish dinner for Zia at a Houston hotel where she defended Zia’s hanging of Bhutto, saying “Zia did not hang Bhutto. He was found guilty. President Zia did not commute the sentence because the Pakistani constitution based on the Quran did not allow it”. At that dinner, Crile writes, “Zia had dangerous decisions to make in the coming months about the CIA’s involvement in his inflamed North-West Frontier, and all of them centred on whether he could trust the United States. Joanne’s startling toast was strangely therapeutic for the much-maligned leader, who remembered how quickly Jimmy Carter had turned on him. In Houston that night, Joanne Herring saw to it that a host of powerful Americans actually honoured him. And that same night, Charlie Wilson provided yet another dimension to Zia’s growing partnership with the United States when he took the general into a side room for a private talk. The congressman had a novel proposition for the Muslim dictator. Would Zia be willing to deal with the Israelis? “This was not the sort of proposal just anyone could have made. But by now, the Pakistanis believed that Charlie Wilson had been decisive in getting them the disputed F-16 radar systems. As he saw it, Wilson had pulled off the impossible. Now the congressman, in his tuxedo, began to take Zia into the forbidden world where the Israelis were prepared to make deals no one need hear about. “He told Zia about his experience the previous year when the Israelis had shown him the vast stores of Soviet weapons they had captured from the PLO in Lebanon. The weapons were perfect for the mujahideen, he told Zia. If Wilson could persuade the CIA to buy them, would Zia have any problems passing them on to the Afghans? “Zia, ever the pragmatist, smiled on the proposal, adding, ‘Just don’t put any Stars of David on the boxes.” With that encouragement, Wilson pushed on. “Pakistan did not have diplomatic relations with Israel, and Wilson certainly had no authority to serve as a quasi secretary of state. In fact, with this kind of talk, the congressman was walking dangerously close to violating the Logan Act, which prohibits anyone other than the (US) president or his representatives from conducting foreign policy. But as the two rejoined Joanne’s party, Zia left the congressman with an understanding that he was authorized to begin secret negotiations to open back channels between Islamabad and Jerusalem. Wilson would leave for Israel in March and travel on to Pakistan to brief Zia immediately afterward. Crile says that the CIA man in Islamabad, Howard Hart, when asked years later, if he knew about Wilson’s efforts to bring the Israelis into the Afghan war, dismissed the story out of hand, insisting that the Pakistanis would never have permitted it. “I would have burst into hysterical laughter and locked myself in the bathroom before proposing such a thing,” he said. “It was bad enough for Zia to be dealing with the Americans, even secretly. But the Israelis were so beyond the pale that it would have been impossible. You have to understand that the Pakistanis were counting on maintaining the image of holding the high moral ground — of a religious brother helping a religious brother. It is beyond comprehension to have tried to bring the Israelis into it.” “Yet right under Hart’s nose,” Crile writes, “Wilson had proposed just such an arrangement, and Zia and his high command had signed on to implement it. Seven years later, Hart still knew nothing about it.” Charlie Wilson’s strategy called for introducing a new weapon into the battle every three months or so, in order to bluff the Red Army into thinking their enemy was better armed and supported than it was, “The Spanish mortar, for example, with its satellite-guided charge, was rarely deployed and may only have succeeded because the Pakistani ISI advisers were along to direct the fire. But the Soviets didn’t know that. When the weapon was first used it wiped out an entire Spetsnaz outpost with a volley of perfect strikes.” But ultimately it was the Reagan administration’s decision to covertly supply the mujahideen with Stinger missiles which changed the course of war. President Zia, Wilson is quoted as saying in the book, was unwilling to deploy Stingers in the war fearing that the Soviets would react harshly. As it is at Leonid Brezhnev’s funeral Soviet leader, Yuri Andropov, had threatened “to destroy Zia if he didn’t cut off the Afghan bandits.” In his bid to persuade Zia to allow mujahideen to deploy Stingers, Wilson says that he told the general “that he should consider an important benefit beyond weapon’s battlefield value to mujahideen. The Stinger, he told Zia would become symbol of the special relationship that had been forged between United States and Pakistan.” Crile says Wilson’s importance to Zia and Pakistan went beyond money. “Every year the appropriations sub-committee members fought a battle royal over charges that Pakistan was actively pursuing an Islamic Bomb. And every year Wilson, sometimes single-handedly, beat back those accusations. The fact is, Pakistan was working on the bomb, as Wilson, the CIA and almost everyone knew. Furthermore it was not about to stop. The one thing all serious Pakistani politicians agreed on was the need for a nuclear deterrent. It was the only way, they believed, they could survive against militarily superior India, which had already overrun the country in three previous wars.” Thus, Crile says, “Zia knew that as long as Pakistan was backing the mujahideen, Charlie Wilson would be with them, whether they had the bomb or not.” Hence the crucial decision to deploy the Stingers was made by Zia. REFERENCE: Charlie Wilson’s war July 23, 2003 Wednesday Jumadi-ul-Awwal 22, 1424 http://archives.dawn.com/2003/07/23/fea.htm#2


Memogate storm in Pakistan & Mansoor Ijaz flip-flop on ISI - 3 (NDTV)






As the Memogate scandal continues to create ripples in the Pakistani establishment, all eyes now are centred on US-based Pakistani businessman Mansoor Ijaz – better known as the ‘Memogate man’. He has finally secured a Pakistan visa to travel to the country to depose before a judicial commission that is probing the political scandal. NDTV‘s Barkha Dutt speaks to Ijaz amidst questions by the global media of why the latter missed his date with the court on the 16th of this month and what he would eventually say in his deposition. REFERENCE: I will be in Pakistan before the 26th: Mansoor Ijaz. 20th January 2012 http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/news/memogate-storm-in-pak-mansoor-ijaz-flip-flop-on-isi/221650?pfrom=home-lateststories&cp http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xru3kFPPttI


A comprehensive blueprint of how and in which direction future relations between Pakistan and the United States would, or should move, is circulating in Washington's three main centres of power the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives and many believe that there may not be a better practical alternative. President Clinton has acknowledged it, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has adopted some of its proposals, Senator Larry Pressler agrees with most of it and the House of Representatives may not find a better "staged roadmap" to put U.S. Pakistan relations back on track, its sponsors claim. It has been put forward by some influential Pakistani-Americans in the form of a confidential memorandum which takes into account the pressing security and defence requirements of Islamabad as well as provides Washington a framework to achieve its own goals. The fine print, however, needs a deeper study. The man behind the whole idea is a 34-year old American of Pakistani origin, MIT and Harvard educated mechanical engineer turned nuclear physicist turned investment consultant who was introduced to Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto by a senior Pakistani diplomat in Washington as "the silent billionaire". Mansoor Ijaz runs a billion dollar investment management firm, claims he dines with President Clinton, is a Managing Trustee of the Democratic Party's National Committee and a Majority Trust Member of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, says he makes heavy donations which do move things for him on the Hill, produces a stack of letters written by almost anyone who is someone on the Capitol Hill, and boasts of his business connections outside the U.S. He is adviser to Nelson Mandela's South Africa, manages investments for many other countries and maintains three homes in New York, Toronto and Paris. His credentials are impressive and CNN and the Dow Jones Business and Financial Weekly "Barron's" provide him international media recognition by interviewing him on investment matters repeatedly. He and his other friends, in similar well placed position, say they have laid the ground work for the changes that have started to show in the U.S. policy towards Pakistan (meaning others were just paying lip service) and they have been at this job eversince the Pressler sanctions were imposed. Their claims are hard to be accepted or rejected at their face value but what has actually taken place in favour of Pakistan including the change of heart in the White House, the sympathetic mood of the Senate and the bipartisan support for an even-handed policy in South Asia, was originally outlined in Mansoor Ijaz's confidential blueprint. That gives his claims a bit more credibility that any Pakistani Government official would make us believe. But this also rings many warning bells as the rest of his plan has some serious implications for Pakistan and its security. Mansoor minces no words in stating that Pakistan and the United States will have to enter into a wider security arrangement in which Washington would have to provide the security umbrella and Pakistan would safeguard the interests of the west in that region as strategically Islamabad is now the only country with which the Americans could have an alliance to check fundamentalism and international terrorism. "Yes what I mean is that the Americans have to be given bases to operate in that part of the world, because they cannot always remain onboard their air craft carriers," he argued with cold logic in a two hour discussion last week. His blue print suggests the same thing in camouflaged language, speaking of "strategic military cooperation" between the two countries. His words may have been taken by me as a routine boast of a well-placed Pakistani, many of whom are in the habit of exaggerating things to incredible limits, just to impress others about their reach and influence. But his words instantly reminded me of an important Congressman of the Democratic Party, David Bonior, who in a speech to the Pakistani American Congress, just a few days back talked of "common defence" between Pakistan and U.S. He had done so when the Ambassador of Pakistan, all other senior diplomats and many prominent Pakistanis were present and no one had questioned him. Ijaz's blueprint suggested modifications to the Pressler Amendment in three stages because easing the sanctions was "in the best national security interests of the United States and no one was interested in allowing Pakistan to fall under partial or complete control of the Iranians." These three stages were restoration of economic assistance, including OPIC, TDA and IMET in the first stage, allowing "non-control list" military spare parts and return of spare parts Pakistan had already paid for, increased military training and cooperation on anti-drug trafficking in stage two and going for strategic military cooperation in the third stage. No conditions were to be attached to the first two stages while the third stage had a hidden agenda, of roping in Pakistan's nuclear programme into the NPT net, if not directly by forcing Pakistan to sign the NPT, by persuading it to sign other international treaties like the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT) or asking Islamabad to comply with the requirements of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR). The Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House of Representatives have already approved the first two stages which would open economic assistance to Pakistan, reinstate OPIC cover for U.S. businesses, restore TDA paradigms and revive the military education and training programme (IMET) between the military establishments of the two countries. The blueprint had suggested there concessions in two stages but Ijaz says the Congress was in such a hurry that both the stages were crossed in one go. The argument he had put forward was that on these two stages there was a consensus that they were in the interest of the United States. His line of thought on restoring IMET was interesting. "For Pakistan the objective was clear: They need officer training and they want it from the best in the world. For its strategic long- term interests America can use the IMET forum to encourage the moderate elements in Pakistan's military (non-nuclear hawks and doves and non-religious extremists) to rise to the top ranks and thereby know intimately the type of minds that 

are controlling the panic button...." "American military training will be a step towards containment of 'mullaism' and other forms of extremism as the educational paradigms of Pakistani military," the blueprint argued. "There is also a growing feeling among moderate Pakistani military strategists that if the U.S. wants to see more effective containment of inappropriate Iranian behaviour, America needs to cast a life raft to the Pakistani military-a military that is in essence 'out of shape' to properly withstand the current Iranian offensive," it said. "Military training and spare parts will relieve sufficiently the hawkish pressure on Benazir Bhutto to ask for 'all or none' terms on Pressler modification. It will also get her to the next election date without damaging no confidence motions in Parliament by Nawaz Sharif (a decided nuclear hawk) and give us sufficient time to evaluate the stability of Pakistan's economy, military and politics before engaging in more strategic arms equipment contracts," it argued. For these two stages, Pakistan was supposed to continue cooperation in U.N. peacekeeping missions as well as in other field like checking international terrorism drug trafficking, heroin production, illegal immigration and counterfeit money production, besides reporting tangible progress on existing and outstanding human rights and democracy issues. The third stage of the blue print was the crucial part and though the first two stages have already begun to be implemented, implementation of the last stage could bring in a lot more trouble than anticipated. This stage envisages a "broad range of possibilities, from 'control list' spare parts to strategic armaments that have non- nuclear capable characteristics, to consideration under appropriate conditionality of strategic weaponry that would serve U.S. national security objectives.." It said the time frame of this stage would depend on two critical issues. "First our conditionality on strategic military cooperation that Pakistan be a signatory to the successful negotiation of the FMCT for which the time frame of end of 1995 and early 1996 is indicated. Secondly, and in conjunction with the first issue, will be Pakistan taking tangible steps towards meeting the requirements of the MTCR including progress on the M-11 issue." The conditions stated in the blueprint are clear: Pakistan's inclusion in FMCT which means accepting verifications of the nuclear programme without actually signing the NPT. "FMCT is an elegant roadmap that achieves the most critical non-proliferation objectives of the U.S. within the existing framework of the NPT, without compromising the internal political sensitivities of the non-declared nuclear states," it says. The final proposal of the blueprint is after these three stages are crossed. It proposes that the President of the United States be given the flexibility, under the Pressler Amendment, to certify that the "proposed U.S. military assistance programme will reduce significantly the likelihood of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their ballistic missile delivery systems." Ijaz explains that by including an "or" instead of an "and" in the Pressler Amendment, the President will be able to certify that in his view whatever military assistance was being provided to Pakistan would not help in its nuclear proliferation goals. "I can tell you that this blueprint is what meets the United States parameters of re writing the Pressler Amendment and it would be done on these lines, come what may. It has already begun to be implemented," he strongly argues brushing aside any other ideas that the Government of Pakistan or its Embassy in Washington may be floating. He says Pakistan should get its money back, keep the money in an escrow account, wait for the President to get the new certification powers and then negotiate the F-16 deal which would then be possible without any congressional interference. Whatever the reaction of the U.S. authorities on these plans and proposals, at least President Clinton acknowledges them. On May 26 Clinton wrote to Ijaz: "Dear Mansoor, Thank You for your letter regarding Pakistan and for your comments about my meeting with Prime Minister Bhutto. I welcome your input on this important matter." Said Clinton: "We need to continue working on ways to solve the difficulties that derive from the Pressler Amendment and the sanctions that have been in place since 1990. I informed the Prime Minister that I was prepared to seek relief from the sanctions and that we would explore our options for return of the F-16s and equipment or of the money that Pakistan paid for U.S. equipment before the sanctions went into effect. I will continue to work with Congress on this important issue. "I appreciate knowing your perspective, and I'am glad you took time to write," Sincerely, Bill Clinton. REFERENCE: Dateline Washington : A blueprint Pakistan cannot ignore Shaheen Sehbai DAWN WIRE SERVICE Week Ending : 15 June, 1995 Issue : 01/23 http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/SouthAsia/SAserials/Dawn/1995/15Je95.html#blue

Memogate storm in Pakistan & Mansoor Ijaz flip-flop on ISI - 4 (NDTV)





As the Memogate scandal continues to create ripples in the Pakistani establishment, all eyes now are centred on US-based Pakistani businessman Mansoor Ijaz – better known as the ‘Memogate man’. He has finally secured a Pakistan visa to travel to the country to depose before a judicial commission that is probing the political scandal. NDTV‘s Barkha Dutt speaks to Ijaz amidst questions by the global media of why the latter missed his date with the court on the 16th of this month and what he would eventually say in his deposition. REFERENCE: I will be in Pakistan before the 26th: Mansoor Ijaz. 20th January 2012 http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/news/memogate-storm-in-pak-mansoor-ijaz-flip-flop-on-isi/221650?pfrom=home-lateststories&cp http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xru3kFPPttI





Soon after lush green meadows started reappearing from beneath the melting snow, the Indian Army and the paramilitary forces had begun relentless search operations and a crackdown in north Kashmir’s Kupwara district in the spring of 2000. Reason—the military intelligence (MI) sleuths from across the LoC had informed that Abdul Majeed Dar, chief operational commander of the only formidable Kashmiiri militant outfit Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) was missing from its headquarters in Muzaffarabad. According to intelligence inputs gathered by the MI and some other agencies, Dar was last seen travelling towards a border village to sneak into Indian territory. The air was already thick with rumours about his movements and meetings with the top brass of HM. Little did they know that external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) had a major scoop up its sleeve. In a successful operation, they had airlifted Dar to Srinagar via Karachi, Dubai and Delhi in May 2000, to enable him to announce a unilateral ceasefire. And the man, who negotiated and mediated the short-lived truce, was believed to be Mansoor Ijaz, a Pakistani American businessman, now at the centre of controversy, nicknamed 'Memogate', that is taking a toll on the civilian government of Pakistan President Asif Zardari in Islamabad. Later, Ijaz was also involved in brokering a Kashmir solution between India and Pakistan in 2000 and 2001, as an unofficial interlocutor, it was claimed, for then United States President Bill Clinton. Though India opposes any third party mediation on Kashmir, the then National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee accorded Ijaz a status that befits only high-profile emissaries and, at least, on two occasions he visited Delhi on special "out-of-passport" visa, with full secrecy of his identity and itinerary. Ijaz made half a dozen trips to India and Pakistan at that time to arbitrate the Kashmir dispute. In an interaction with the media at a hotel in the outskirts of Delhi, he denied acting on behalf of the US government but claimed that he was drawn to the Kashmir problem because "oppressed people have no capacity to speak for themselves and stop violations that occur against them in the name of religion or politics or money." Ijaz, a nuclear physicist and a New York-based investment banker as also a member of the influential US Think Tank Council on Foreign Relations, had given contours of his efforts in an interview to Pakistani daily The News International on 25 December, 2001, seven months before the Agra summit between Vajpayee and President Musharraf Pervez failed, dashing the initiatives he had taken. He described the HM ceasefire as “a momentous event in the tumultuous history of the Kashmir valley,” which opened a door to search for an earnest resolution of the conflict. 

Recalling his visit to Delhi, Ijaz heaped praise on Chandar D Sahay, then point-man on Kashmir in the RAW, (he later became its chief). Sahay, he believed, was the key man who made India's hawks understand that peace in Kashmir meant giving the Kashmiris a stake—economic, moral, emotional— in the success of their choice to remain with India or become a semi-autonomous region. “In my hotel suite in New Delhi in November 2000, I brought Sahay and a prominent Kashmiri activist, Yasin Malik, together after nearly a year of painstaking negotiations following the military coup in Pakistan,” he claimed. Maintaining that Malik had taken unprecedented risks in dealing with Sahay secretly, Ijaz claimed having persuaded even the toughest Kashmiri loyalist, Syed Geelani, to not oppose progress towards permanent peace. Ijaz revealed that Khalid Khawaja, a former ISI official, who had piloted Osama bin Laden's aircraft in Afghanistan during the Afghan resistance, had also taken unprecedented risks in bringing him in contact with Syed Salahuddin, the chief of HM and also allowed him to hand-carry his written messages back to President Clinton at the time. Khawaja was murdered by Taliban militants in April 2010. In his interview with The News International, Ijaz had claimed: "The process of empowering both civilian and militant Kashmiri voices remains the central objective of our efforts at present because a strong Kashmir provides Pakistan and India with face-saving exit strategies."

Ijaz also spoke of a mid-January 2001 meeting of political and militant leaders in Islamabad to set a common agenda for talks with New Delhi and take General Musharraf into confidence about the merits and rationale for the talks. "There will also be a clear effort made to deal with the so-called mercenary problem whether or not to allow non-indigenous Pakistani-backed insurgents a seat at the peace table. Once the internal agenda is agreed upon and the various Kashmiri parties are united on a message and a delegation, Indo-Kashmiri dialogue can begin," said he. Ijaz also referred to ground ceasefire modalities and a possible Musharraf-Vajpayee summit and said in that interview that "the Kashmiris will be free to suggest Pakistan's inclusion either partially or wholly in political dialogue aimed at a permanent solution. Delhi understands this as a condition for beginning talks with the Kashmiris." Stressing that "Pakistan is a party to the (Kashmir) dispute, Ijaz had gone on to affirm: "But General Musharraf is rapidly, flexibly and correctly adapting the Pakistani position to the reality that Islamabad's pursuit of Jihad-based resistance in Kashmir has not worked.

As head of state rather than just head of the army, his responsibility to the larger interests of the Pakistani people go far beyond the narrow pursuit of an ideological war that is decimating an innocent population while deeply scarring the image and vitality of Pakistan as a nation. "That is why General Musharraf is wisely preparing the people of Pakistan for a policy of maximum flexibility in its negotiating stance. By doing so, he accommodates growing Kashmiri willpower to test India's sincerity for peace and resolution while maintaining a firm bottom line that protects Pakistan's security interests." Ijaz’s 'Mission Kashmir' did not take toll on the Vajpayee government for allowing a mediator against India's declared policy as he always maintained a low profile unlike an article he wrote for a British paper last month to strengthen President Zardari’s stance, which boomeranged. He narrated how he felt threatened from encroachments by Pakistani Army chief General Ashfaq Kayani. If he is to be believed then Zardari had sought him out, after the US Navy Seal raid to extract Osama bin Laden from Abbottabad in May, to convey its insecurity to Admiral Mike Mullen, the then Chairman of US Joint Chiefs of Staff and avowed "friend" of General Kayani to fend off a possible coup. Ijaz reportedly drafted and dispatched a secret "memo" portraying the Pakistani military as being part of the problem rather than the solution to America's dilemma in Afghanistan.

Once the "memogate" became public, Ijaz tried to prove his credibility by revealing all, even though he may no longer be sought by anyone any longer as a credible and confidential interlocutor. It is because of his reveal-all mess that the Pakistan military has turned its guns on Hussain Haqqani, Pakistan's ambassador to Washington. Running afoul of Musharraf in 2002 for his critical newspaper columns in Urdu and English, Haqqani had fled to the US where he wrote his seminal book on the unholy historical nexus between the mosque and military in Pakistan. Since he was appointed ambassador to Washington in 2008, the Pakistan military has since embarked upon a campaign to defame him, he reasoned. Iftikhar Gilani is a Special Correspondent with Tehelka.com. iftikhar@tehelka.com REFERENCE: Memogate’s Mansoor Ijaz was once an NDA guest The Pakistani-American businessman played a key role in facilitating talks between Pakistan and India over the Kashmir dispute Iftikhar Gilani New Delhi Posted on 21 November 2011 http://www.tehelka.com/story_main51.asp?filename=Ws211111Pakistan.asp

Memogate storm in Pakistan & Mansoor Ijaz flip-flop on ISI - 5 (NDTV)



As the Memogate scandal continues to create ripples in the Pakistani establishment, all eyes now are centred on US-based Pakistani businessman Mansoor Ijaz – better known as the ‘Memogate man’. He has finally secured a Pakistan visa to travel to the country to depose before a judicial commission that is probing the political scandal. NDTV‘s Barkha Dutt speaks to Ijaz amidst questions by the global media of why the latter missed his date with the court on the 16th of this month and what he would eventually say in his deposition. REFERENCE: I will be in Pakistan before the 26th: Mansoor Ijaz. 20th January 2012 http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/news/memogate-storm-in-pak-mansoor-ijaz-flip-flop-on-isi/221650?pfrom=home-lateststories&cp http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xru3kFPPttI



ISLAMABAD: A spokesman for Husain Haqqani, former ambassador of Pakistan to the United States, has expressed surprise at the publication as an article of the diatribe by Mohammad Akram Sheikh, the lawyer for the American businessman responsible for the memo accusations. “It is sad and highly unprofessional for a lawyer representing a party in a case to simultaneously pretend to be an impartial commentator and The News should not have published the article,” the spokesman said in a rejoinder to Mohammad Akram Sheikh’s viewpoint ‘Memogate: Stop insulting our honourable judges’, published in The News on Thursday. Following is the text of the spokesman’s rejoinder: “Mr Akram Sheikh has attacked Mr Haqqani for crimes he never committed. For him to write such a personal attack on the person of Mr Haqqani, after having been his advocate as well as having known him personally for many years raises serious questions about the honourable counsel’s motives. Mr Haqqani respects Mr Akram Sheikh for ably defending him in the high court in 1999 and securing bail for him when the then government of Mr Nawaz Sharif put him through three days of torture and more than 70 days of detention on trumped up charges that were later thrown out by court. Mr Sheikh might have forgotten but many people remember Mr Sheikh offering sweets after the Musharraf coup in 1999, such was his bitterness against Mr Sharif. He had had fallen out with the Sharif government not because he had chosen to stand with Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah, as he claims. The newspapers of the era testify that the real falling out was failure of Mian Nawaz Sharif to appoint Mr Sheikh as Attorney General of Pakistan. Mr Haqqani, on the other hand, stood by Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto consistently since joining the PPP in 1993. Mohtarma has given the only certificate Mr Haqqani needs of being “a loyal friend” in her final book, ‘Reconciliation.’

Mr Sheikh has cited distorted personal stories to suggest a close relationship between Mr Haqqani and the Musharraf regime in its early days. But Mr Haqqani could not have been as close to anyone in power as an eminent lawyer like Mr Sheikh at the time. If Mr Sheikh was made an offer to represent the military regime in court, that offer must have come from the well known legal and constitutional wizard and ‘Advisor’ to Musharraf with whom Mr Sheikh has maintained a very long association. Mr Sheikh did not need Mr Haqqani’s support or reference. Now that he has accepted his latest high profile client’s brief it is obvious that the only reason he refused a brief on behalf of the Musharraf regime must have been a case of the fee not being right. Only Mr Sheikh’s ethics allow him to write a lengthy article attacking a person without mentioning once that he represents his accuser in pending legal proceedings. Mr Sheikh sahib also objects to Mr Haqqani’s standing and respect in American academic circles though he never mentioned that criticism on any of the occasions he met Mr Haqqani during visits to the United States. The only valid response to an academic work based on research would be an equally well researched and coherent book that counters the arguments of Mr Haqqani’s international respected book. Someone whose entire life has depended solely on a loud voice and verbosity may never be able to find time to read Mr Haqqani’s 400-page book, let alone write one countering its arguments.

Mr Sheikh has also expressed irritation at the support Mr Haqqani has received from a large section of civil society. Mr Haqqani has no qualms in accepting the label of ‘Born again liberal.’ He has written sufficiently on his life journey explaining the transformation of his thought process and is proud of what he has achieved in terms of developing his critical thinking faculties. Mr Sheikh could next serve as a lawyer for Mumtaz Qadri if he so chooses and Mr Haqqani would have no problem with that. It is the culture of labeling people one disagrees with as ‘Kafirs’ or ‘traitors’ that all fair-minded Pakistanis object to. There is no justification of seeking to ridicule, abuse and lynch anyone who does not follow the ideological agenda of Mr Sheikh, whatever that might be. Mr Haqqani’s political stand is clear and he is thankful to all those who have supported him. In the so-called Memo case, he is confident of his innocence, leaving his lawyers make the legal arguments. Mr Haqqani fully respects the Supreme Court and Pakistan’s judiciary. His lawyers have submitted proper legal arguments before the honourable court and they still feel that they have a solid case. That is why they are moving the apex court for a review of its judgement. Before Mr Sheikh ventures into another diatribe against Mr Haqqani in print he should be mindful of the long association he has had with him. He may want to recall the day he wept in front of Mr Haqqani, seeking his assistance against the media propaganda campaign relating to his personal life that he claimed had been launched by the Nawaz Sharif government. At that time, Mr Sheikh did not accept Mr Haqqani’s advice to sue the newspapers, seeking support on the media front instead. Political lives have their ups and downs and lawyers must represent their clients but there is no reason to lower the level of discussion to make it vulgar or personal.” REFERENCE: Haqqani respects judiciary Friday, January 06, 2012 http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=11531&Cat=13

LIE with General (R) Hamid Gul on ARY! AGAIN & AGAIN & AGAIN.

Now, we come to the second generation of officers who were in key decision-making positions during 80s. Former Director General (DG) of Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), Lieutenant General (Retd) Hameed Gul’s anti-American rhetoric in post-retirement phase makes headlines off and on in national news media. It is interesting that when he was DGISI, US ambassador attended the meetings of Afghan Cell of Benazir government. In fact the major decision of Jalalabad offensive in 1989 was made in one of those fateful meetings. To date there has been no evidence (no statement by any other participants of those meetings or by General Hameed Gul himself) that Mr. Gul made any objection to the presence of US ambassador in these meetings, which had wide ranging impact on national security. It is probable that Mr. Gul was at that time a top contender for the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) race, therefore he didn’t wanted to be on the wrong side of the civil government. When he was sacked, then he found the gospel truth that US was not sincere. Another example is of former Chief of Afghan Cell of ISI, Brigadier (Retd) Muhammad Yusuf. For five long years, he was a major participant in a joint CIA-ISI venture of unprecedented scale in Afghanistan. During this time period, he worked with several different level US officials and visited CIA headquarters in Langley. In his post-retirement memoirs, he tried his best to distance himself from the Americans. His statements like, ‘Relations between the CIA and ourselves were always strained’, ‘I resorted to trying to avoid contact with the local CIA staff’, ‘I never visited the US embassy’ and vehement denial of any direct contact between CIA and Mujahideen shows his uncomfortability of being seen as close with the Americans.5 Pakistan’s former foreign minister Agha Shahi in a conversation with Robert Wirsing said that in 1981 during negotiations with US, he gave a talk to a group of Pakistani generals on the objectives of Pakistan’s policy toward US. He stressed the importance of non-alignment and avoidance of over dependence on superpowers. Few days later one of the generals who attended Shahi’s briefing met him and told him that Americans should be given bases in return for the aid.6 The officer would not dare to make that statement public in view of the prevailing sentiments of the public. The hawkish generals of Zia reassured US about the full Pakistani support. John Reagan, the CIA station chief in Islamabad stated, “Their attitude was that Agha Shahi was doing his own thing, that we needn’t be concerned about it”.7 General Zia and DGISI Akhtar Abdur Rahman had very cordial relations with CIA director William Casey. To offset that uncomfortable closeness with Americans, Zia and Akhtar were portrayed as holy warriors of Islam and modern day Saladins. According to one close associate of Akhtar, ‘They (Casey and Akhtar) worked together in harmony, and in an atmosphere of mutual trust’.8 The most interesting remarks about the death of CIA Director, William Casey were made by Brigadier Yusuf. He states that, “It was a great blow to the Jehad when Casey died”.9 He did not elaborate whether by this definition one should count Casey as Shaheed (warrior who dies in battle in the cause of Islam). It will quite be amusing for Americans to know that one of their former CIA director is actually a martyr of Islam. In fifty-five years, we have come full circle, and in 2002, a retired Major General laments about the US and gives a long list of grievances. He states, “Discarding General Ziaul Haq when no more needed must never be forgotten. The treatment meted out to Pakistan after the victory in Afghanistan in late eighties cannot be forgiven ... It can be safely presumed that before mobilizing its armed forces on the borders of Pakistan, the US has (take it for sure) given a nod to India... Remember the visit of Mrs. Indira Gandhi to the USA and getting a silent approval from there before attacking East Pakistan in 1971. And the Pakistanis kept waiting for the seventh fleet to come to our rescue... They have already done a great damage to Pakistan by imposing an anti-Pakistan government in Afghanistan”.10 Very limited knowledge, paranoia, disregard of the facts, total lack of perception and extreme simplicity is quite evident from the statement and not a very good sign of the intellectual level of senior officers at highest decision making process. REFERENCE: Tale of a love affair that never was: United States-Pakistan Defence Relations Columnist Hamid Hussain analyses an ON and OFF affair. http://www.defencejournal.com/2002/june/loveaffair.htm

General Hamid Gul supported Pervez Musharraf on 12 Oct 1999


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRXOjCGcoRI

Hamid Gul, a retired general, accuses Mr Sharif of having presided over an administration which had failed to deliver the goods. "Sharif turned out to be a great destroyer of national institutions," he told the BBC. "Look at what he did to the judiciary. "He stripped them of power, put a set of judges against the chief justice, did the same to the press. "He gagged the parliament and finally he wanted to do the same to the army." REFERENCE: World: South Asia Pakistan's coup: Why the army acted Wednesday, October 13, 1999 Published at 23:20 GMT 00:20 UK http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/473297.stm 
On 26th January 2012, General (R) Hamid Gul shamelessly lied again on many thing and shamelessly declared that Objective Resolution should be declared National Motto, he also praised General Ziaul Haq for many pristine qualities whereas the truth is this that General Zia himself subverted the Objective Resolution which is recently unearthed by the none other than the Supreme Judiciary of Pakistan.

ISLAMABAD: Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry remarked that it was a criminal negligence to bring changes in the documents like Objectives Resolution as former president General (retd) Zia ul Haq tampered with the Constitution in 1985 however, the sitting parliament had done a good job by undoing this tampering. At one point Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry observed that the word ‘freely’ was omitted from the Objectives Resolution in 1985 by a dictator, which was an act of criminal negligence, but the then parliament surprisingly didn’t take notice of it. He said the Constitution is a sacred document and no person can tamper with it. The chief justice said credit must go to the present parliament, which after 25 years took notice of the brazen act of removing the word relating to the minorities’ rights, and restored the word ‘freely’ in the Objectives Resolution, which had always been part of the Constitution. The chief justice further said that the court is protecting the fundamental rights of the minorities and the government after the Gojra incident has provided full protection to the minorities. “We are bound to protect their rights as a nation but there are some individual who create trouble.” - DAILY TIMES - ISLAMABAD: Heading a 17-member larger bench of the Supreme Court on Tuesday, Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry termed as criminal negligence the deletion of a word about the rights of minorities from the Objectives Resolution during the regime of General Ziaul Haq in 1985. Ziaul Haq had omitted the word “freely” from the Objectives Resolution, which was made substantive part of the 1973 Constitution under the Revival of Constitutional Order No. 14. The clause of Objectives Resolution before deletion of the word ‘freely’ read, “Wherein adequate provision shall be made for the minorities to ‘freely’ profess and practice their religions and develop their culture.” DAILY DAWN - ISLAMABAD: Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry on Tuesday praised the parliament for undoing a wrong done by the legislature in 1985 (through a constitutional amendment) when it removed the word ‘freely’ from a clause of the Objectives Resolution that upheld the minorities’ right to practise their religion. The word “freely” was deleted from the Objectives Resolution when parliament passed the 8th Amendment after indemnifying all orders introduced through the President’s Order No 14 of 1985 and actions, including the July 1977 military takeover by Gen Zia-ul-Haq and extending discretion of dissolving the National Assembly, by invoking Article 58(2)b of the Constitution. After the passage of the 18th Amendment, the Objectives Resolution now reads: “Wherein adequate provision shall be made for the minorities freely to profess and practise their religions and develop their culture.” The CJ said: “Credit goes to the sitting parliament that they reinserted the word back to the Objectives Resolution.” He said that nobody realised the blunder right from 1985 till the 18th Amendment was passed, even though the Objectives Resolution was a preamble to the Constitution even at the time when RCO (Revival of Constitution Order) was promulgated. REFERENCES: CJ lauds parliament for correcting historic wrong By Nasir Iqbal Wednesday, 09 Jun, 2010  http://archives.dawn.com/archives/32657   - CJP raps change in Objectives Resolution * Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry says deletion of clause on rights of minorities was ‘criminal negligence’ * Appreciates incumbent parliament for taking notice of removal of clause by Gen Zia’s govt in 1985 By Masood Rehman Wednesday, June 09, 2010 http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=201069\story_9-6-2010_pg1_1  CJ lauds parliament for undoing changes in Objectives Resolution Wednesday, June 09, 2010 Says minorities’ rights have to be protected; Hamid says parliament should have no role in judges’ appointment By Sohail Khan  http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=29367&Cat=13&dt=6/10/2010  

General (R) Hamid Gul dubious Role after General Zia's Death

When I got to Pakistan in February and called upon General Hamid Gul, the Director General of the ISI, I found out that political events had apparently overtaken this mandate. He told me that his agency had called off its investigation at the request of the government and had transferred the responsibility for it to a "broader based" government authority headed by a civil servant called F.K. Bandial. It was not using the resources of his intelligence service and, as far as he knew that committee had not begun the work. His tone suggested that, he did not expect any immediate resolution of the crime. REFERENCE: Who Killed Zia? VANITY FAIR September 1989 by Edward Jay Epstein http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/archived/zia_print.htm http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/archived/zia.htm

LIE with General (R) Hamid Gul on ARY - 1 (Off the Record 26 Jan 2012)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvY8UT7SM4Q



One week after a major explosion at a Pakistani ammunition dump, Defense Department officials say that they believe that the explosion was the work of agents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. The United States still has no firm proof that this was an act of sabotage, according to Administration officials. And some experts at the Central Intelligence Agency are said to believe that it is possible that the explosion was an accident. One Government expert said the ''overwhelming majority'' of the equipment at the installation was intended for the Afghan guerrillas. He said the supplies that were destroyed included Stinger antiaircraft missiles, antitank missiles and long-range mortars. This expert said the Stinger missiles destroyed in the blast constituted about one-third of the total supply of antiaircraft missile systems for the Afghan guerrillas. A Defense Department official said the explosion fits a pattern of recent attacks against military and civilian installations in Pakistan by agents of the Kabul regime. Comments Are Contradictory. ''Our opinion is that it was sabotage,'' said the Defense Department official, referring to the explosion last week. The explosion occurred last Sunday in an ammunition depot between the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. The explosion killed at least 93 people and wounded about 1,100 people. Pakistani leaders have made contradictory comments about the blast. At first, President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq called the explosion ''an extraordinary accident.'' But on Friday, President Zia said the blast was the result of sabotage. Over the last week, there have been differing intelligence reports about the possible cause of the explosion. One report said the blast was triggered when a truck bearing Afghan license plates and carrying an incendiary device entered the compound and exploded. Another report suggested the explosion might have been triggered when a Pakistani enlisted man dropped a white phosphorous shell. Circumstances Assessed Defense Department officials say they believe that the blast was the result of sabotage because of the circumstances surrounding the explosion. One Defense Department official said the explosion appeared to be part of a pattern of attacks last weekend, including an attempted rocket attack on an oil storage installation in Peshawar that ''didn't work,'' a fire at an ordnance factory in Lahore and a bomb that was discovered and defused in Islamabad. A State Department official offered a more cautious assessment. ''It could have been an accident. But it could equally have been sabotage.'' Officials at the Defense Department and the State Department disagree about what action the United States should now take in light of the explosion, according to a Government official. Guerrillas' Needs Cited. Defense Department officials are reported to have argued that the weapons destroyed are relatively long-range ones that are needed by the guerrillas to attack well-defended garrisons as well as Kabul, the fortified seat of the Soviet-supported regime. Defense Department officials are reported to have argued that more weapons of this type should be sent to the Afghan rebels. They have reportedly asserted that Soviet forces have recently been trying to destroy caches of the guerrillas' arms in Afghanistan in an effort to prolong the life of the Kabul regime. But State Department officials insist the significance of the explosion is exaggerated. One State Department official said that the Afghan rebels had a ''big cushion'' of weapons and said that the explosion would ''not have a big effect.'' This official added that he did not expect very intense fighting over the next couple of weeks, since the Russians appear to be intent on keeping casualties down while withdrawing their troops from Afghanistan. He asserted that the United States had been ''planning conservatively'' by sending significant quantities of weapons to insure that the Afghan guerrillas will have all the arms they need. A Defense Department official said that the United States did not believe that a bomb attack last weekend at a Saudi Arabian airlines office in Karachi was the work of the Kabul agents. He said that the United States believed that this bombing was the work of Iran, which is trying to strike back at Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has said that it would restrict the number of Iranian pilgrims to Mecca this year because of demonstrations by Iranian pilgrims in Mecca last summer. U.S. Officials Link Pakistan Blast to Kabul Regime By MICHAEL R. GORDON, Special to the New York Times Published: April 17, 1988 http://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/17/world/us-officials-link-pakistan-blast-to-kabul-regime.html http://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/17/world/us-officials-link-pakistan-blast-to-kabul-regime.html?pagewanted=2&src=pm

LIE with General (R) Hamid Gul on ARY - 2 (Off the Record 26 Jan 2012)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kt75YzZy4eI


ISLAMABAD, April 9: Twenty years have passed but the images of destruction caused by the Ojhri Camp disaster are still fresh in the minds of many residents of Rawalpindi and Islamabad. Over 100 men, women and children were killed and many times more were wounded by the missiles and projectiles which exploded mysteriously and rained death and destruction on the twin cities on this day in 1988. Physical scars of the tragedy may have healed but the nation is unaware till this day what, and who, caused that disaster and why. An investigation was conducted into the disaster but, like in the case of all other probes into national tragedies, its report was not made public. The then prime minister Mohammad Khan Junejo appointed two committees, one military and the other parliamentary, to probe the military disaster. His action so infuriated military dictator Gen Ziaul Haq that he dismissed his handpicked prime minister on May 29, 1988 - the main charge being that he failed to implement Islam in the country. While the parliamentary committee, headed by old politician Aslam Khattak, went out with the Junejo government, the military committee under Gen Imranullah Khan submitted its report before the government’s dismissal. Subsequent governments of prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif which followed Gen Zia’s fiery death in a mysterious plane crash on August 17, 1988, also kept Gen Imranullah Khan’s findings under covers. Some opposition members called for making it public during the last five years of Gen Pervez Musharraf’s military rule but the PML-Q government took the position that it would not be “in the larger national interest”. Neither political observers expect the PPP and the PML-N doing so even when they have been swept into power again by the people and run a coalition government. Interestingly, when contacted, leaders of both the parties agreed that the Ojhri Camp inquiry report should be made public but refused to commit to do so. Junejo’s defence minister Rana Naeem Ahmed had told Dawn in an interview last year that he had received the report but said it did not fix responsibility on any one and declared the huge disaster an accident. Even then the ISI seized it in a raid on his office the day after the Junejo government was dismissed, he claimed. “They returned all my belongings, except the briefcase that contained the report,” he said, disclosing that the report was inconclusive and focused just on the causes of the blast. It was a bright and sunny morning on April 10, 1988, when the citizens of Islamabad and Rawalpindi were startled by huge explosions and swishing sounds as if fireworks were going off. Thousands of missiles and projectiles soon started raining down on the two cities the Ojhri Ammunition Depot, situated in the densely-populated Faizabad area, blew up. Officially the death toll was 30, but independent estimates put the figure much higher. Prominent among those killed was a federal minister Khaqan Abbasi whose car was hit by a flying missile while he was on his way to Murree, his hometown. His son accompanying him was hit in the head. He went into deep coma and died some two years ago after remaining on artificial respiration for 17 years. The Ojhri Camp was used as an ammunition depot to forward US-supplied arms to Afghan Mujahideen fighting against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan. There were reports that a Pentagon team was about to arrive to take audit of the stocks of the weapons and that allegedly the camp was blown up deliberately to cover up pilferage from the stocks. Some reports said that Ojhri Camp had about 30,000 rockets, millions of rounds of ammunition, vast number of mines, anti-aircraft Stinger missiles, anti-tank missiles, multiple-barrel rocket launchers and mortars worth $100 million in store at the time of blasts that destroyed all records and most of the weapons thus making it impossible for anyone to check the stocks. Prime minister Junejo had promised to the National Assembly that the inquiry report would be made public and the guilty would be punished but was sacked by Gen Zia. Senior members of the PPP and the PML-N admit that their governments in the past made no serious effort to make the report public. A PPP member however claimed that the second Benazir Bhutto government did attempt to do that but failed due to resistance from the “concerned quarters”. There are some elements in the Charter of Democracy, signed by the PPP and the PML-N, which could be pursued to make such reports public, he said. REFERENCE: 20 years on, Ojhri Camp truth remains locked up By Amir Wasim April 11, 2008 Friday Rabi-us-Sani 4, 1429 http://archives.dawn.com/2008/04/11/nat26.htm


A recently published book of Begum Kalsoom Saifullah `Meri Tanha Parvaz` (My Solo Flight) is selling quickly in the local market because of its controversial material. However, some of the disclosures in the book have created a breach among PML-Like-minded leaders. The first edition of Ms Safiullah`s autobiography was released on Wednesday (Sept 14) but the second one will not come for sale unless some of its chapters are withdrawn or removed. In the book, Begum Safiullah narrates the events of her 50 years worth of political experience. The author relates her version of the truth from the time of former Prime Minister and founder of present ruling Pakistan People`s Party (PPP) Zulfikar Ali Bhutto`s (ZAB) era to Nawaz Sharif`s tenure as prime minister in her autobiography. Her book includes her experiences of working with ZAB and other political figures as well as high ranking military officials. Ms Safiullah started writing the book two years ago when she probably had not considered the possibility that those very same people who she labels “opportunists” would later end up as political aides for her sons. “Gen Zia once told me when he came to Peshawar, he brought his wife in a Tonga. Similarly, Gen Akhtar Abdur Rehman told me that he could not even afford to buy a cycle. However, these people went on accumulating wealth and property in a manner which is incomprehensible,” she wrote. However, since writing these words and including other allegations in her book, her son Salim Saifullah, along with other leaders of Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML-Q) have made a separate faction within the party. Furthermore, her son became the head of PML-Likeminded group and Humayum Akhtar, son of Gen Akhtar Abdul Rehman, acquired the position of secretary general in the disgruntled faction. “We are in trouble because I am president of the party and the book annoyed my secretary general Humayun Akhtar,” said Salim Saifullah. In order to control the damage, Saifullah`s family tendered an apology to General Akhtar`s family. “We tendered our apologies not only to General Akhtar`s family but also to others who have been hurt by Begum Kalsoom`s revelations,” said Mr Saifullah. Mr Saifullah blamed the editor of the book instead of the author for what should not have been published in the autobiography. “I did not go through the book as I was out of the country and my elder brother Anwar Saifullah was handling the publication, but it is the editor`s fault that he did not remove controversial paragraphs from the book. My mother first met General Akhtar when he was a serving general and what she wrote about his past was on the basis of what she had heard from others.” Humanyun Akhtar said that Begum Kulsoom and Senator Salim Saifullah Khan contacted his family and apologised for the book`s comments about his father. “Begum Kulsoom is a very illustrious lady but because of old age and her eyesight problem, the book has been written and edited by other people. As a result these remarks inadvertently appeared in the book,” he said. He added: “Saifullah`s family assured us these remarks have been removed from all the remaining books and any future publications of it.” Interestingly, although Begum Kalsoom`s book has been distributed to book shops in large numbers, Salim Saifullah says that only 2,000 were originally marketed and that no new edition would be sent to the market for sale unless controversial remarks are removed from it. Book sellers in Islamabad said the book is doing good business and a large number of people are coming to buy it. The cost of the book is Rs500. “We have sold 300 books in only two days but we have been asked that the new edition be sent after some corrections,” said an employee of Mr Books in Jinnah Super Market. However, nothing can be done with the sold books and no one can be stopped in future from quoting it in their writings and speeches. Some other interesting disclosures in the book are that: ZAB could have saved his life had he controlled his tongue in the jail. ZAB`s attitude was rigid and inflexible after his arrest. During Bhutto`s imprisonment, some of his colleagues were busy arranging their marriages. On the Ojhri Camp tragedy, the author wrote, “I can confidently say that some Stinger missiles were taken out of the Ojhri Camp on orders from General Zia so that they can be provided to Iran, and Gen Zia ordered that Ojhri Camp be blown up before the arrival of the US inspection team.” REFERENCE: Begum Saifullah`s book lands Like-minded in trouble Syed Irfan Raza September 18, 2011 http://www.dawn.com/2011/09/18/begum-saifullahs-book-lands-like-minded-in-trouble.html Begum Sahiba’s not-so-solo flight by Waseem Altaf Hamuyun threw one crore rupees on the table and then asked the other party to begin the negotiations. This was being done by someone whose father could not even afford a bicycle http://www.viewpointonline.net/begum-sahibas-not-so-solo-flight.html

LIE with General (R) Hamid Gul on ARY - 3 (Off the Record 26 Jan 2012)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkX6Epsg75w


Steve Coll ends his important book on Afghanistan -- Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to 10 September 2001 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1594200076/nationbooks08 --by quoting Afghan President Hamid Karzai:"What an unlucky country." Americans might find this a convenient way to ignore what their government did in Afghanistan between 1979 and the present, but luck had nothing to do with it. Brutal, incompetent, secret operations of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, frequently manipulated by the military intelligence agencies of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, caused the catastrophic devastation of this poor country. On the evidence contained in Coll's book Ghost Wars, neither the Americans nor their victims in numerous Muslim and Third World countries will ever know peace until the Central Intelligence Agency has been abolished.
It should by now be generally accepted that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on Christmas Eve 1979 was deliberately provoked by the United States. In his memoir published in 1996, the former CIA director Robert Gates made it clear that the American intelligence services began to aid the mujahidin guerrillas not after the Soviet invasion, but six months before it. In an interview two years later with Le Nouvel Observateur, President Carter's national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski proudly confirmed Gates's assertion."According to the official version of history," Brzezinski said,"CIA aid to the mujahidin began during 1980, that's to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan. But the reality, kept secret until now, is completely different: on 3 July 1979 President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And on the same day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained that in my opinion this aid would lead to a Soviet military intervention."

Asked whether he in any way regretted these actions, Brzezinski replied:

Regret what? The secret operation was an excellent idea. It drew the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? On the day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, saying, in essence: 'We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War.'

Nouvel Observateur:"And neither do you regret having supported Islamic fundamentalism, which has given arms and advice to future terrorists?"

Brzezinski:"What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?"

Even though the demise of the Soviet Union owes more to Mikhail Gorbachev than to Afghanistan's partisans, Brzezinski certainly helped produce"agitated Muslims," and the consequences have been obvious ever since. Carter, Brzezinski and their successors in the Reagan and first Bush administrations, including Gates, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage, and Colin Powell, all bear some responsibility for the 1.8 million Afghan casualties, 2.6 million refugees, and 10 million unexploded land-mines that followed from their decisions. They must also share the blame for the blowback that struck New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. After all, al-Qaida was an organization they helped create and arm.

A Wind Blows in from Afghanistan

The term"blowback" first appeared in a classified CIA post-action report on the overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953, carried out in the interests of British Petroleum. In 2000, James Risen of the New York Times explained:"When the Central Intelligence Agency helped overthrow Muhammad Mossadegh as Iran's prime minister in 1953, ensuring another 25 years of rule for Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, the CIA was already figuring that its first effort to topple a foreign government would not be its last. The CIA, then just six years old and deeply committed to winning the Cold War, viewed its covert action in Iran as a blueprint for coup plots elsewhere around the world, and so commissioned a secret history to detail for future generations of CIA operatives how it had been done . . . Amid the sometimes curious argot of the spy world -- 'safebases' and 'assets' and the like -- the CIA warns of the possibilities of 'blowback.' The word . . . has since come into use as shorthand for the unintended consequences of covert operations."

"Blowback" does not refer simply to reactions to historical events but more specifically to reactions to operations carried out by the U.S. government that are kept secret from the American public and from most of their representatives in Congress. This means that when civilians become victims of a retaliatory strike, they are at first unable to put it in context or to understand the sequence of events that led up to it. Even though the American people may not know what has been done in their name, those on the receiving end certainly do: they include the people of Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Cuba (1959 to the present), Congo (1960), Brazil (1964), Indonesia (1965), Vietnam (1961-73), Laos (1961-73), Cambodia (1969-73), Greece (1967-73), Chile (1973), Afghanistan (1979 to the present), El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua (1980s), and Iraq (1991 to the present). Not surprisingly, sometimes these victims try to get even.

There is a direct line between the attacks on September 11, 2001 -- the most significant instance of blowback in the history of the CIA -- and the events of 1979. In that year, revolutionaries threw both the Shah and the Americans out of Iran, and the CIA, with full presidential authority, began its largest ever clandestine operation: the secret arming of Afghan freedom fighters to wage a proxy war against the Soviet Union, which involved the recruitment and training of militants from all over the Islamic world. Steve Coll's book is a classic study of blowback and is a better, fuller reconstruction of this history than the Final Report http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393326713/nationbooks08 of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (the"9/11 Commission Report" published by Norton in July).

From 1989 to 1992, Coll was the Washington Post's South Asia bureau chief, based in New Delhi. Given the CIA's paranoid and often self-defeating secrecy, what makes his book especially interesting is how he came to know what he claims to know. He has read everything on the Afghan insurgency and the civil wars that followed, and has been given access to the original manuscript of Robert Gates's memoir (Gates was CIA director from 1991 to 1993), but his main source is some two hundred interviews conducted between the autumn of 2001 and the summer of 2003 with numerous CIA officials as well as politicians, military officers, and spies from all the countries involved except Russia. He identifies CIA officials only if their names have already been made public. Many of his most important interviews were on the record and he quotes from them extensively.

Among the notable figures who agreed to be interviewed are Benazir Bhutto, who is candid about having lied to American officials for two years about Pakistan's aid to the Taliban, and Anthony Lake, the U.S. national security adviser from 1993 to 1997, who lets it be known that he thought CIA director James Woolsey was"arrogant, tin-eared and brittle." Woolsey was so disliked by Clinton that when an apparent suicide pilot crashed a single-engine Cessna airplane on the south lawn of the White House in 1994, jokers suggested it might be the CIA director trying to get an appointment with the President.

Among the CIA people who talked to Coll are Gates; Woolsey; Howard Hart, Islamabad station chief in 1981; Clair George, former head of clandestine operations; William Piekney, Islamabad station chief from 1984 to 1986; Cofer Black, Khartoum station chief in the mid-1990s and director of the Counterterrorist Center from 1999-2002; Fred Hitz, a former CIA Inspector General; Thomas Twetten, Deputy Director of Operations, 1991-1993; Milton Bearden, chief of station at Islamabad, 1986 -1989; Duane R."Dewey" Clarridge, head of the Counterterrorist Center from 1986 to 1988; Vincent Cannistraro, an officer in the Counterterrorist Center shortly after it was opened in 1986; and an official Coll identifies only as"Mike," the head of the"bin Laden Unit" within the Counterterrorist Center from 1997 to 1999, who was subsequently revealed to be Michael F. Scheuer, the anonymous author of Imperial Hubris: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1574888498/nationbooks08 Why the West is Losing the War on Terror. (See Eric Lichtblau, "CIA Officer Denounces Agency and Sept. 11 Report")

In 1973, General Sardar Mohammed Daoud, the cousin and brother-in-law of King Zahir Shah, overthrew the king, declared Afghanistan a republic, and instituted a program of modernization. Zahir Shah went into exile in Rome. These developments made possible the rise of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, a pro-Soviet communist party, which, in early 1978, with extensive help from the USSR, overthrew President Daoud. The communists' policies of secularization in turn provoked a violent response from devout Islamists. The anti-Communist revolt that began at Herat in western Afghanistan in March 1979 originated in a government initiative to teach girls to read. The fundamentalist Afghans opposed to this were supported by a triumvirate of nations -- the U.S., Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia -- with quite diverse motives, but the U.S. didn't take these differences seriously until it was too late. By the time the Americans woke up, at the end of the 1990s, the radical Islamist Taliban had established its government in Kabul. Recognized only by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, it granted Osama bin Laden freedom of action and offered him protection from American efforts to capture or kill him.

Coll concludes:

The Afghan government that the United States eventually chose to support beginning in the late autumn of 2001 -- a federation of Massoud's organization [the Northern warlords], exiled intellectuals and royalist Pashtuns -- was available for sponsorship a decade before, but the United States could not see a reason then to challenge the alternative, radical Islamist vision promoted by Pakistani and Saudi intelligence . . . Indifference, lassitude, blindness, paralysis and commercial greed too often shaped American foreign policy in Afghanistan and South Asia during the 1990s.

Funding the Fundamentalists

The motives of the White House and the CIA were shaped by the Cold War: a determination to kill as many Soviet soldiers as possible and the desire to restore some aura of rugged machismo as well as credibility that U.S. leaders feared they had lost when the Shah of Iran was overthrown. The CIA had no intricate strategy for the war it was unleashing in Afghanistan. Howard Hart, the agency's representative in the Pakistani capital, told Coll that he understood his orders as:"You're a young man; here's your bag of money, go raise hell. Don't fuck it up, just go out there and kill Soviets." These orders came from a most peculiar American. William Casey, the CIA's director from January 1981 to January 1987, was a Catholic Knight of Malta educated by Jesuits. Statues of the Virgin Mary filled his mansion, called"Maryknoll," on Long Island. He attended mass daily and urged Christianity on anyone who asked his advice. Once settled as CIA director under Reagan, he began to funnel covert action funds through the Catholic Church to anti-Communists in Poland and Central America, sometimes in violation of American law. He believed fervently that by increasing the Catholic Church's reach and power he could contain Communism's advance, or reverse it. From Casey's convictions grew the most important U.S. foreign policies of the 1980s -- support for an international anti-Soviet crusade in Afghanistan and sponsorship of state terrorism in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala.

Casey knew next to nothing about Islamic fundamentalism or the grievances of Middle Eastern nations against Western imperialism. He saw political Islam and the Catholic Church as natural allies in the counter-strategy of covert action to thwart Soviet imperialism. He believed that the USSR was trying to strike at the U.S. in Central America and in the oil-producing states of the Middle East. He supported Islam as a counter to the Soviet Union's atheism, and Coll suggests that he sometimes conflated lay Catholic organizations such as Opus Dei with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian extremist organization, of which Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's chief lieutenant, was a passionate member. The Muslim Brotherhood's branch in Pakistan, the Jamaat-e-Islami, was strongly backed by the Pakistani army, and Coll writes that Casey, more than any other American, was responsible for welding the alliance of the CIA, Saudi intelligence, and the army of General Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq, Pakistan's military dictator from 1977 to 1988. On the suggestion of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) organization, Casey went so far as to print thousands of copies of the Koran, which he shipped to the Afghan frontier for distribution in Afghanistan and Soviet Uzbekistan. He also fomented, without presidential authority, Muslim attacks inside the USSR and always held that the CIA's clandestine officers were too timid. He preferred the type represented by his friend Oliver North.

Over time, Casey's position hardened into CIA dogma, which its agents, protected by secrecy from ever having their ignorance exposed, enforced in every way they could. The agency resolutely refused to help choose winners and losers among the Afghan jihad's guerrilla leaders. The result, according to Coll, was that"Zia-ul-Haq's political and religious agenda in Afghanistan gradually became the CIA's own." In the era after Casey, some scholars, journalists, and members of Congress questioned the agency's lavish support of the Pakistan-backed Islamist general Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, especially after he refused to shake hands with Ronald Reagan because he was an infidel. But Milton Bearden, the Islamabad station chief from 1986 to 1989, and Frank Anderson, chief of the Afghan task force at Langley, vehemently defended Hekmatyar on the grounds that"he fielded the most effective anti-Soviet fighters."

Even after the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1988, the CIA continued to follow Pakistani initiatives, such as aiding Hekmatyar's successor, Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban. When Edmund McWilliams, the State Department's special envoy to the Afghan resistance in 1988-89, wrote that"American authority and billions of dollars in taxpayer funding had been hijacked at the war's end by a ruthless anti-American cabal of Islamists and Pakistani intelligence officers determined to impose their will on Afghanistan," CIA officials denounced him and planted stories in the embassy that he might be homosexual or an alcoholic. Meanwhile, Afghanistan descended into one of the most horrific civil wars of the 20th century. The CIA never fully corrected its naive and ill-informed reading of Afghan politics until after bin Laden bombed the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam on August 7, 1998.

Fair-weather Friends

A co-operative agreement between the U.S. and Pakistan was anything but natural or based on mutual interests. Only two weeks after radical students seized the American Embassy in Tehran on November 5, 1979, a similar group of Islamic radicals burned to the ground the American Embassy in Islamabad as Zia's troops stood idly by. But the U.S. was willing to overlook almost anything the Pakistani dictator did in order to keep him committed to the anti-Soviet jihad. After the Soviet invasion, Brzezinski wrote to Carter:"This will require a review of our policy toward Pakistan, more guarantees to it, more arms aid, and, alas, a decision that our security policy toward Pakistan cannot be dictated by our non-proliferation policy." History will record whether Brzezinski made an intelligent decision in giving a green light to Pakistan's development of nuclear weapons in return for assisting the anti-Soviet insurgency.

Pakistan's motives in Afghanistan were very different from those of the U.S. Zia was a devout Muslim and a passionate supporter of Islamist groups in his own country, in Afghanistan, and throughout the world. But he was not a fanatic and had some quite practical reasons for supporting Islamic radicals in Afghanistan. He probably would not have been included in the U.S. Embassy's annual"beard census" of Pakistani military officers, which recorded the number of officer graduates and serving generals who kept their beards in accordance with Islamic traditions as an unobtrusive measure of increasing or declining religious radicalism -- Zia had only a moustache.

From the beginning, Zia demanded that all weapons and aid for the Afghans from whatever source pass through ISI hands. The CIA was delighted to agree. Zia feared above all that Pakistan would be squeezed between a Soviet-dominated Afghanistan and a hostile India. He also had to guard against a Pashtun independence movement that, if successful, would break up Pakistan. In other words, he backed the Islamic militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan on religious grounds but was quite prepared to use them strategically. In doing so, he laid the foundations for Pakistan's anti-Indian insurgency in Kashmir in the 1990s.

Zia died in a mysterious plane crash on August 17, 1988, four months after the signing of the Geneva Accords on April 14, 1988, which ratified the formal terms of the Soviet withdrawal. As the Soviet troops departed, Hekmatyar embarked on a clandestine plan to eliminate his rivals and establish his Islamic party, dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, as the most powerful national force in Afghanistan. The U.S. scarcely paid attention, but continued to support Pakistan. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the implosion of the USSR in 1991, the U.S. lost virtually all interest in Afghanistan. Hekmatyar was never as good as the CIA thought he was, and with the creation in 1994 of the Taliban, both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia transferred their secret support. This new group of jihadis proved to be the most militarily effective of the warring groups. On September 26, 1996, the Taliban conquered Kabul. The next day they killed the formerly Soviet-backed President Najibullah, expelled 8,000 female undergraduate students from Kabul University, and fired a similar number of women schoolteachers. As the mujahidin closed in on his palace, Najibullah told reporters:"If fundamentalism comes to Afghanistan, war will continue for many years. Afghanistan will turn into a center of world smuggling for narcotic drugs. Afghanistan will be turned into a center for terrorism." His comments would prove all too accurate.

Pakistan's military intelligence officers hated Benazir Bhutto, Zia's elected successor, but she, like all post-Zia heads of state, including General Pervez Musharraf, supported the Taliban in pursuit of Zia's"dream" -- a loyal, Pashtun-led Islamist government in Kabul. Coll explains:

Every Pakistani general, liberal or religious, believed in the jihadists by 1999, not from personal Islamic conviction, in most cases, but because the jihadists had proved themselves over many years as the one force able to frighten, flummox and bog down the Hindu-dominated Indian army. About a dozen Indian divisions had been tied up in Kashmir during the late 1990s to suppress a few thousand well-trained, paradise-seeking Islamist guerrillas. What more could Pakistan ask? The jihadist guerrillas were a more practical day-to-day strategic defense against Indian hegemony than even a nuclear bomb. To the west, in Afghanistan, the Taliban provided geopolitical"strategic depth" against India and protection from rebellion by Pakistan's own restive Pashtun population. For Musharraf, as for many other liberal Pakistani generals, jihad was not a calling, it was a professional imperative. It was something he did at the office. At quitting time he packed up his briefcase, straightened the braid on his uniform, and went home to his normal life.

If the CIA understood any of this, it never let on to its superiors in Washington, and Charlie Wilson, a highly paid Pakistani lobbyist and former congressman for East Texas, was anything but forthcoming with Congress about what was really going on. During the 1980s, Wilson had used his power on the House Appropriations Committee to supply all the advanced weapons the CIA might want in Afghanistan. Coll remarks that Wilson"saw the mujahidin through the prism of his own whisky-soaked romanticism, as noble savages fighting for freedom, as almost biblical figures." Hollywood is now making a movie, based on the book Charlie Wilson's War http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0871138549/nationbooks08 by George Crile, glorifying the congressman who"used his trips to the Afghan frontier in part to impress upon a succession of girlfriends how powerful he was." Tom Hanks has reportedly signed on to play him.

Enter bin Laden and the Saudis

Saudi Arabian motives were different from those of both the U.S. and Pakistan. Saudi Arabia is, after all, the only modern nation-state created by jihad. The Saudi royal family, which came to power at the head of a movement of Wahhabi religious fundamentalists, espoused Islamic radicalism in order to keep it under their control, at least domestically."Middle-class, pious Saudis flush with oil wealth," Coll writes,"embraced the Afghan cause as American churchgoers might respond to an African famine or a Turkish earthquake":"The money flowing from the kingdom arrived at the Afghan frontier in all shapes and sizes: gold jewelry dropped on offering plates by merchants' wives in Jedda mosques; bags of cash delivered by businessmen to Riyadh charities as zakat, an annual Islamic tithe; fat checks written from semi-official government accounts by minor Saudi princes; bountiful proceeds raised in annual telethons led by Prince Salman, the governor of Riyadh." Richest of all were the annual transfers from the Saudi General Intelligence Department, or Istakhbarat, to the CIA's Swiss bank accounts.

From the moment agency money and weapons started to flow to the mujahidin in late 1979, Saudi Arabia matched the U.S. payments dollar for dollar. They also bypassed the ISI and supplied funds directly to the groups in Afghanistan they favored, including the one led by their own pious young millionaire, Osama bin Laden. According to Milton Bearden, private Saudi and Arab funding of up to $25 million a month flowed to Afghan Islamist armies. Equally important, Pakistan trained between 16,000 and 18,000 fresh Muslim recruits on the Afghan frontier every year, and another 6,500 or so were instructed by Afghans inside the country beyond ISI control. Most of these eventually joined bin Laden's private army of 35,000"Arab Afghans."

Much to the confusion of the Americans, moderate Saudi leaders, such as Prince Turki, the intelligence chief, supported the Saudi backing of fundamentalists so long as they were in Afghanistan and not in Saudi Arabia. A graduate of a New Jersey prep school and a member of Bill Clinton's class of 1964 at Georgetown University, Turki belongs to the pro-Western, modernizing wing of the Saudi royal family. (He is the current Saudi ambassador to Great Britain and Ireland.) But that did not make him pro-American. Turki saw Saudi Arabia in continual competition with its powerful Shia neighbor, Iran. He needed credible Sunni, pro-Saudi Islamist clients to compete with Iran's clients, especially in countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan, which have sizeable Shia populations.

Prince Turki was also irritated by the U.S. loss of interest in Afghanistan after its Cold War skirmish with the Soviet Union. He understood that the U.S. would ignore Saudi aid to Islamists so long as his country kept oil prices under control and cooperated with the Pentagon on the building of military bases. Like many Saudi leaders, Turki probably underestimated the longer term threat of Islamic militancy to the Saudi royal house, but, as Coll observes,"Prince Turki and other liberal princes found it easier to appease their domestic Islamist rivals by allowing them to proselytize and make mischief abroad than to confront and resolve these tensions at home." In Riyadh, the CIA made almost no effort to recruit paid agents or collect intelligence. The result was that Saudi Arabia worked continuously to enlarge the ISI's proxy jihad forces in both Afghanistan and Kashmir, and the Saudi Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, the kingdom's religious police, tutored and supported the Taliban's own Islamic police force.

By the late 1990s, after the embassy bombings in East Africa, the CIA and the White House awoke to the Islamist threat, but they defined it almost exclusively in terms of Osama bin Laden's leadership of al-Qaida and failed to see the larger context. They did not target the Taliban, Pakistani military intelligence, or the funds flowing to the Taliban and al-Qaida from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Instead, they devoted themselves to trying to capture or kill bin Laden. Coll's chapters on the hunt for the al-Qaida leader are entitled,"You Are to Capture Him Alive,""We Are at War," and"Is There Any Policy?" but he might more accurately have called them"Keystone Kops" or"The Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight."

On February 23 1998, bin Laden summoned newspaper and TV reporters to the camp at Khost that the CIA had built for him at the height of the anti-Soviet jihad. He announced the creation of a new organization -- the International Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders -- and issued a manifesto saying that"to kill and fight Americans and their allies, whether civilian or military, is an obligation for every Muslim who is able to do so in any country." On August 7, he and his associates put this manifesto into effect with devastating truck bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The CIA had already identified bin Laden's family compound in the open desert near Kandahar Airport, a collection of buildings called Tarnak Farm. It's possible that more satellite footage has been taken of this site than of any other place on earth; one famous picture seems to show bin Laden standing outside one of his wives' homes. The agency conceived an elaborate plot to kidnap bin Laden from Tarnak Farm with the help of Afghan operatives and spirit him out of the country but CIA director George Tenet cancelled the project because of the high risk of civilian casualties; he was resented within the agency for his timidity. Meanwhile, the White House stationed submarines in the northern Arabian Sea with the map co-ordinates of Tarnak Farm preloaded into their missile guidance systems. They were waiting for hard evidence from the CIA that bin Laden was in residence.

Within days of the East Africa bombings, Clinton signed a top secret Memorandum of Notification authorizing the CIA to use lethal force against bin Laden. On 20 August 1998, he ordered 75 cruise missiles, costing $750,000 each, to be fired at the Zawhar Kili camp (about seven miles south of Khost), the site of a major al-Qaida meeting. The attack killed 21 Pakistanis but bin Laden was forewarned, perhaps by Saudi intelligence. Two of the missiles fell short into Pakistan, causing Islamabad to denounce the U.S. action. At the same time, the U.S. fired 13 cruise missiles into a chemical plant in Khartoum: the CIA claimed that the plant was partly owned by bin Laden and that it was manufacturing nerve gas. They knew none of this was true.

Clinton had publicly confessed to his sexual liaison with Monica Lewinsky on August 17, and many critics around the world conjectured that both attacks were diversionary measures. (The film Wag the Dog had just come out, in which a president in the middle of an election campaign is charged with molesting a Girl Scout stand-in"Firefly Girl" and makes it seem as if he's gone to war against Albania to distract people's attention.) As a result Clinton became more cautious, and he and his aides began seriously to question the quality of CIA information. The U.S. bombing in May 1999 of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, allegedly because of faulty intelligence, further discredited the agency. A year later, Tenet fired one intelligence officer and reprimanded six managers, including a senior official, for their bungling of that incident.

The Clinton administration made two more attempts to get bin Laden. During the winter of 1998-99, the CIA confirmed that a large party of Persian Gulf dignitaries had flown into the Afghan desert for a falcon-hunting party, and that bin Laden had joined them. The CIA called for an attack on their encampment until Richard Clarke, Clinton's counter-terrorism aide, discovered that among the hosts of the gathering was royalty from the United Arab Emirates. Clarke had been instrumental in a 1998 deal to sell 80 F-16 military jets to the UAE, which was also a crucial supplier of oil and gas to America and its allies. The strike was called off.

The CIA as a Secret Presidential Army

Throughout the 1990s, the Clinton administration devoted major resources to the development of a long-distance drone aircraft called Predator, invented by the former chief designer for the Israeli air force, who had emigrated to the United States. In its nose was mounted a Sony digital TV camera, similar to the ones used by news helicopters reporting on freeway traffic or on O.J. Simpson's fevered ride through Los Angeles. By the turn of the century, Agency experts had also added a Hellfire anti-tank missile to the Predator and tested it on a mock-up of Tarnak Farm in the Nevada desert. This new weapons system made it possible instantly to kill bin Laden if the camera spotted him. Unfortunately for the CIA, on one of its flights from Uzbekistan over Tarnak Farm the Predator photographed as a target a child's wooden swing. To his credit, Clinton held back on using the Hellfire because of the virtual certainty of killing bystanders, and Tenet, scared of being blamed for another failure, suggested that responsibility for the armed Predator's use be transferred to the Air Force.

When the new Republican administration came into office, it was deeply uninterested in bin Laden and terrorism even though the outgoing national security adviser, Sandy Berger, warned Condoleezza Rice that it would be George W. Bush's most serious foreign policy problem. On August 6, 2001, the CIA delivered its daily briefing to Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, with the headline"Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.," but the president seemed not to notice. Slightly more than a month later, Osama bin Laden successfully brought off perhaps the most significant example of asymmetric warfare in the history of international relations.

Coll has written a powerful indictment of the CIA's myopia and incompetence, but he seems to be of two minds. He occasionally indulges in flights of pro-CIA rhetoric, describing it, for example, as a"vast, pulsing, self-perpetuating, highly sensitive network on continuous alert" whose"listening posts were attuned to even the most isolated and dubious evidence of pending attacks" and whose"analysts were continually encouraged to share information as widely as possible among those with appropriate security clearances." This is nonsense: the early-warning functions of the CIA were upstaged decades ago by covert operations.

Coll acknowledges that every president since Truman, once he discovered that he had a totally secret, financially unaccountable private army at his personal disposal, found its deployment irresistible. But covert operations usually became entangled in hopeless webs of secrecy, and invariably led to more blowback. Richard Clarke argues that"the CIA used its classification rules not only to protect its agents but also to deflect outside scrutiny of its covert operations," and Peter Tomsen, the former U.S. ambassador to the Afghan resistance during the late 1980s, concludes that"America's failed policies in Afghanistan flowed in part from the compartmented, top secret isolation in which the CIA always sought to work." Excessive, bureaucratic secrecy lies at the heart of the Agency's failures. Given the Agency's clear role in causing the disaster of September 11, 2001, what we need today is not a new intelligence czar but an end to the secrecy behind which the CIA hides and avoids accountability for its actions. To this day, in the wake of 9/11 and the false warnings about a threat from Iraq, the CIA continues grossly to distort any and all attempts at a Constitutional foreign policy. Although Coll doesn't go on to draw the conclusion, I believe the CIA has outlived any Cold War justification it once might have had and should simply be abolished. REFERENCE: Are We to Blame for Afghanistan? Chalmers Johnson Sunday, November 21, 2004 - 18:38 http://hnn.us/articles/8438.html Mr. Johnson's latest books are Blowback (Metropolitan, 2000) and The Sorrows of Empire (Metropolitan, 2004), the first two volumes in a trilogy on American imperial policies. The final volume is now being written. From 1967 to 1973, Johnson served as a consultant to the CIA's Office of National Estimates.