Pakistan’s all-powerful army chief will ask President Pervez Musharraf to resign from office within a week, a senior government official claimed today.

By Isambard Wilkinson in Islamabad
Last Updated: 6:48PM BST 08 Aug 2008

The claim was supported by a former military aide to the president who said that the army’s leadership wished Mr Musharraf to be spared the humiliation of impeachment.

The civilian government intensified an attritional, seven-month long power struggle with the presidency when it announced earlier this week that it is to begin impeachment proceedings against Mr Musharraf on Monday. Read more »

Note: Both the book and its following review fail to explore and analyse the central question: Why did the US leave Afghanistan to a few thousand troops and the ISI? Was it just that Iraq was the real prize? Or was it a part of a deliberate strategy pursued by Cheney and Rumsfeld to let Al-Qaeda survive beginning with evacuation of Arab, Afghan, and Pakistani militants from Kunduz and Tora Bora in December 2001? The book is good on details but weak on the analysis of US policies and motives and blames the debacle in Afghanistan to mistakes and US complete reliance on Musharraf in a rather superficial manner.

BOOK REVIEW
Chronicle of errors
Descent Into Chaos by Ahmed Rashid

Reviewed by Sreeram Chaulia

As security in Afghanistan enters a freefall, the world’s worst fears are coming true. With the Taliban and al-Qaeda on the ascendant, hopes of a terrorism-free region have gone. The horizon in Afghanistan’s neighborhood is shrouded in violence and instability that threatens distant countries in an age of global jihad.

Reputed Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid’s new book chronicles the colossal errors of omission and commission that brought about this tragedy. His thesis is that the United States ignored opportunities to consolidate South and Central Asia and embarked on a grand folly in Iraq from 2003. Read more »

From the Independent UK 

By Anne Penketh, Diplomatic Editor
Friday, 8 August 2008 

The last thing that Pakistan needs is a bout of metaphorical regicide at a time when Washington and the rest of the world are worried about the heightened risk posed by Islamic militants at the country’s northern border who are fuelling the conflict in Afghanistan. Read more »

A report published by the News on August 5, 2008  includes the following (apparently based on  information given by the ISI officials):

” The top US military commander and the CIA official were also asked why the CIA-run predator and the US military did not swing into action when they were provided the exact location of Baitullah Mehsud, Pakistan’s enemy number one and the mastermind of almost every suicide operation against the Pakistan Army and the ISI since June 2006. One such precise piece of information was made available to the CIA on May 24 when Baitullah Mehsud drove to a remote South Waziristan mountain post in his Toyota Land Cruiser to address the press and returned back to his safe abode. The United States military has the capacity to direct a missile to a precise location at very short notice as it has done close to 20 times in the last few years to hit al-Qaeda targets inside Pakistan.Pakistani official have long been intrigued by the presence of highly encrypted communications gear with Baitullah Mehsud. This communication gear enables him to collect real-time information on Pakistani troop movement from an unidentified foreign source without being intercepted by Pakistani intelligence.”

Both the CIA and the ISI have been playing a double game. Fighting and nurturing terrorists and warlords at the same time! Why?  

Read more »

Bush warns of ‘serious action’ after evidence of agents masterminding deadly embassy bombing

Officers from Pakistan’s main intelligence agency have had links with the Taliban

From the Sunday Times, August 3, 2008 

By Christina Lamb in Islamabad

The United States has accused Pakistan’s main spy agency of deliberately undermining Nato efforts in Afghanistan by helping the Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants they are supposed to be fighting.

President George W Bush confronted Yusuf Raza Gillani, Pakistan’s prime minister, in Washington last week with evidence of involvement by the ISI, its military intelligence, in a deadly attack on the Afghan capital and warned of retaliation if it continues. Read more »

By SAEED SHAH

Globe and Mail, Toronto

August 2, 2008 at 12:19 AM EDT

ISLAMABAD — For a covert spy agency, Pakistan’s Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence has been attracting a lot of attention. It’s been rebuked by the U.S. government for failing to curb terrorism, accused in The New York Times of involvement in an international bombing, and targeted by the government it’s supposed to serve — first for increased oversight, and now for a purge of its more extremist elements. Read more »

By Joby Warrick
Washington Post

Friday, August 1, 2008; 1:58 PM

U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that elements of Pakistan’s military intelligence service provided logistical support to militants who staged last month’s deadly car bombing at the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan’s capital, U.S. officials familiar with the evidence said yesterday. Read more »

Is Afghanistan a Narco-State?

POPPY FIELDS FOREVER A crop in Helmand Province in 2006. An unlikely coalition of corrupt Afghan officials, timorous Europeans, blinkered Pentagon officers and the Taliban has made poppy cultivation stubbornly resistant to eradication.

By THOMAS SCHWEICH

Published: July 27, 2008

On March 1, 2006, I met Hamid Karzai for the first time. It was a clear, crisp day in Kabul. The Afghan president joined President and Mrs. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Ambassador Ronald Neumann to dedicate the new United States Embassy. He thanked the American people for all they had done for Afghanistan. I was a senior counternarcotics official recently arrived in a country that supplied 90 percent of the world’s heroin. I took to heart Karzai’s strong statements against the Afghan drug trade. That was my first mistake.

Read more »

From the New York Times

July 30, 2008

By MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON — A top Central Intelligence Agency official traveled secretly to Islamabad this month to confront Pakistan’s most senior officials with new information about ties between the country’s powerful spy service and militants operating in Pakistan’s tribal areas, according to American military and intelligence officials.

The C.I.A. emissary presented evidence showing that members of the spy service had deepened their ties with some militant groups that were responsible for a surge of violence in Afghanistan, possibly including the suicide bombing this month of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, the officials said. Read more »

Comment by Yousuf Nazar 

First it was the matter of postponement of the by-elections. Rehman Malik thought he could pull a fast one and make an excuse about the law and order situation but the ANP NWFP government spilled the beans. Then came the constitutional package which was a non-starter but showed how quickly Asif Zardari was losing the plot. It had no hope of getting through but all it did was to damage his credibility after that ‘infamous’ statement that the Murree declaration was a political statement implying political statements are lies and should not be taken at their face value.

Now after spending weeks in Dubai, he came back and held long meetings with the Prime Minister and one meeting with his senior party members. The outcome was a fiasco in the shape of a crude and immature attempt to rein in the no less infamous ISI by placing it under the control of Rehman Malik. His former bosses tell me that he is a mediocre and corrupt fixer who has come this far only because he can do anything to please his master or madam. It is a tragedy that people like  Makhdoom Amin Fahim, Aitzaz Ahsan,  Raza Rabbani can take this situation and let the party sink. They should demand his resignation. Or they too fear the CIA who planted Rehman Malik in the first instance and who has the full blessings and support of AZ who has focused on nothing but his cases and accounts.

But the writing on the wall is clear. If the old PPP guard does not move and rid the party of Mr. Zardari and Rehman Malik, they might as well write their political obituary because at this rate, there may not be any government, forget independent judiciary, within a matter of few months. Even if what has been presented as her will is taken at its face value, Benazir Bhutto Shaheed requested the party to let Mr. Zardari lead ‘in the interim’ till they elect a new leader. The best way would be to hold a convention of the party and invite all members of central, provincial, and local organisations, members of national and provincial assemblies, and senators to discuss party’s future and elect new officer bearers including a new Chairperson, vice chairmen, and general serectary. Ms. Bhutto was an undisputed leader of the party but the situation has changed now. The old guard, for their own survival and political future, must come forward and save the party from being destroyed by Mr. Zardari and Rehman Malik or face political extinction.

An Indian view

By B.RAMAN, former Additional Chief Secretary, Govt. of India

In a recent article ( June 25,2008), the “Dawn” of Karachi described Pakistan as a bus full of drivers “with no one really at the steering and the bus lurching from one side to the other.”

2. No driver has the courage and the confidence to take the steering in an attempt to bring the bus under control and no driver is prepared to let any other driver do so. It is a bus full of drivers, but with none driving.

3. On paper, Pervez Musharraf is still a powerful ruler. He is the President of the country, with unimpaired powers to dismiss the elected Prime Minister and the National Assembly. He is the Chairman of the National Security Council (NSC), which has the power to take decisions in all matters relating to national security. He is the Supreme Commander of the Armed forces, who has to approve all senior promotions and postings in the Armed Forces and whose orders on national security matters, including in matters relating to Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, have to be carried out by the Armed Forces. Read more »

Bilawal House security chief gunned down in Karachi

Wednesday, July 23, 2008 By Salis bin Perwaiz KARACHI: Gunmen killed the security incharge of the Bilawal House, Khalid Shahanshah, outside his residence in the upmarket Defence neighbourhood here on Tuesday.Mazhar, a friend of Shahanshah who was with him at the time of the incident, said they had just returned from the Bilawal House and were waiting outside the house at Khayaban-e-Bukhari for its gate to open when some unidentified gunmen showered Shahanshah with bullets. Mazhar was standing near the gate while the deceased was in the vehicle.The attackers escaped in a white car (GS-3909). Khalid received multiple bullet wounds and was shifted to the Ziauddin Hospital where he succumbed to his injuries. Soon after the incident, a large police contingent, led by DIG (South) Iqbal Mehmud, reached the spot and started investigation.

Read more »

The murder of Khalid Shahenshah, a key witness in Benazir Bhutto’s murder case, has been blamed rather quickly on the ‘terrorists’ by Sind Home Minister. But Khalid had a controversial background which included a record of criminal cases, working as an activist of People’s Students Federation in the 1980s, an alleged member of Dawood Ibrahim’s gang later, and most recently as one of the body guards of Benazir Bhutto. He was considered a diehard member of the Karachi PPP during the 1980s.  Shahenshah’s group was a source of inspiration among pro-PPP students throughout the 1980s because Karachi’s urban areas were under the influence of either religio-political parties or the MQM. “He experienced the worst days of his life when he was put behind bars during the rule of Martial Law dictator General Zia ul Haq,” recalled Waqar Mehdi, special assistant to the Chief Minister of Sindh. Shahenshah had contested Elections 2002 from NA-246 and while the MQM’s candidate defeated him, Shahenshah was appreciated for standing from the home constituency of none other than MQM Chief Altaf Hussain. After the electoral contest, he was relatively less active in the PPP for quite some time. He was also accused of having connections with the underworld. 

He was sitting in the back seat of Benazir’s car when she was hit by bullets and bomb blasts and was a key witness in her murder case. He was also interviewed by the Scotland yard.  His most controversial part was his antics on the stage where BB addressed her last public meeting. See the following video:

After BB’s murder, the above video was run by many channels including DAWN News and Rehman Malik denied Khalid Shahenshah’s or his responsibility in BB’s secuirty lapses. (See Daily Times of Jan. 06, 2008)

According to the Post of Januray 4, 2008:

PPP sources have reported that the moment Benazir ended her address, this (servant) man was the first one to dive into her bullet proof Land Cruiser; an unusual change from past routine whilst he always boarded the vehicle after Benazir, often hanging by the external pedestals of her Cruiser, as was evident in videos.

One other household servant and Dr Safdar Abbassi got seated in the rear portion of the Cruiser, and when the suicide bomber blew himself apart, Khalid was also present in the Cruiser. Afterwards he (Khalid) went over to the Zardari House, Islamabad where he lived for two days, and did not visit Naudero despite Benazir’s death, making it there on third day. When informed about the video of his antics he promptly disappeared from the scene, over the excuse of his mother’s death.

Khalid’s name figured in Asia Times reports of July 16, 2003 and  October 22, 2003 as a gang member linked to the famous underworld don Dawood Ibrahim. The News in its June 18, 2006 issue published a report speculating Dawood may have moved to Waziristan.

The Newsline in its September 2001 issue had reported:

Meanwhile, not only have the Pakistani authorities turned a blind eye to the gang’s activities within Pakistan, but many in the corridors of power have partaken of Dawood’s hospitality.  Dawood often throws lavish mujras for Pakistani politicians and bureaucrats.  A recent guest was a former caretaker Prime Minister.

            These are not the only members of the establishment who have close ties with Dawood.  He is said to have the protection of assorted intelligence agencies.  In fact, Dawood and his men move around the city guarded by heavy escorts of armed men in civvies believed to be personnel of a top Pakistani security agency.

 

New York Times 

July 20, 2008

By JEFF ZELENY

WASHINGTON – Senator Barack Obama arrived in Afghanistan early Saturday morning, opening his first overseas trip as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, to meet with American commanders there and later in Iraq to receive an on-the-ground assessment of military operations in the two major U.S. war zones.

Read more »