Behind his public rhetoric of global engagement and diplomacy, the US President, Mr Barack Obama, has secretly sanctioned the deployment of US Special Forces to 75 countries as part of a largely ‘secret war’ against Al Qaeda and other radical groups, a news report said on Sunday.
American troops are now operating in 75 countries compared with about 60 at the beginning of last year, the Washington Post reported on Sunday.
In the past 18 months Mr Obama has ordered a big expansion in Yemen and the Horn of Africa — known areas of strong Al Qaeda activity — and elsewhere in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa.
Mr Obama has asked for a 5.7 per cent increase in the Special Operations budget for fiscal 2011, for a total of $6.3 billion, plus an additional $3.5 billion in 2010 contingency funding, the report said.
It said Mr Obama has also approved pre-emptive Special Forces strikes to disrupt terror plots, and has given the units powers and authority that was not granted by Mr George Bush when he occupied the White House.
Commanders are now planning greater use of these Special Forces for pre-emptive or retaliatory strikes when a plot has been identified, or after an attack.
The former Bush officials, still smarting from accusations that their administration overextended the President’s authority to conduct lethal activities around the world at will, have asked similar questions.
“While they seem to be expanding their operations both in terms of extraterritoriality and aggressiveness, they are contracting the legal authority upon which those expanding actions are based,” Mr John B. Bellinger III, a senior legal adviser in both of Bush’s administrations, was quoted as saying.
The surge in Special Operations deployments, with intensified CIA drone attacks in western Pakistan, is the other side of the national security doctrine of global engagement and domestic values Mr Obama released last week.
Of the 13,000 US Special Forces overseas, 9,000 are divided between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Showing posts with label al Qaeda. Show all posts
Showing posts with label al Qaeda. Show all posts
Monday, June 7, 2010
Friday, May 7, 2010
NY bomber linked to Jaish
The Pakistani investigators are yet to conclude the allegiance of Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad — linked with the failed bombing plot in New York — to any militant outfit but the Jaish-e-Mohammad connections seem strong.
“He was close to the Taliban and Al Qaeda but what we see he was formally associated with Jaish-e-Mohammad (a proscribed Kashmiri outfit fighting against the Indian rule in Kashmir),” an investigator told this newspaper.
Shahzad, arrested in New York, is an ethnic Kashmiri and used to live in Hayatabad town near Pakistan’s Peshawar district — known as gateway to the lawless tribal areas. “Mostly, he was trained by Jaish-e-Mohammad in Karachi and then in Waziristan. The main training was imparted by the Jaish-e-Mohammad and some field training was done in Waziristan,” added the investigator. “Administrator and Nazim (administrator) international relations of Jaish-e-Mohammad (who are stated to be close associates of Faisal Shahzad), have been arrested from North Nazimabad (Karachi) and are being interrogated,” he said. The source said Nazim international relations of Jaish-e-Mohammad Abu Sufian was arrested from Jamia Masjid Batta located in block N at North Nazimabad. Administrator Mohammad Rehan, senior to Sufian, was arrested from Hussain market in the same area. The investigator said that Faisal Shahzad, stayed in a flat of Hussain market building located in North Nazimabad which stood close to Masjid Batta.
“The arrested men tell us that he was imparted basic training in the said flat and was introduced to other people therein,” he said. “We have also found some documents from Rehan’s house which indicate to the same link,” he said.
Mohammad Rehan, the investigator said, told during the preliminary investigation he had stayed with Faisal Shahzad in Peshawar from July, 7 to 22 and later “we returned to Karachi.”
The source said that four other Jaish-e-Mohammad men, identified as Samad, Adnan, Zeeshan and Taha, have also told the investigators about the strong links of Shahzad with the militant outfit. Investigators were led to these men following a scrutiny of Shahzad’s telephone records after his arrival in Pakistan in 2009. “Rehan was picked up along with his cousin Zeeshan. He is an active member of the Jaish-e-Mohammad and collects donations for them. He is also affiliated with Masjid-e-Batta,” said the investigator.
The vice principal of the mosque’s madrassa and its khateeb (prayer leader) Maulana Mohammad Ali said that the agencies’ men had visited the mosque.
“He was close to the Taliban and Al Qaeda but what we see he was formally associated with Jaish-e-Mohammad (a proscribed Kashmiri outfit fighting against the Indian rule in Kashmir),” an investigator told this newspaper.
Shahzad, arrested in New York, is an ethnic Kashmiri and used to live in Hayatabad town near Pakistan’s Peshawar district — known as gateway to the lawless tribal areas. “Mostly, he was trained by Jaish-e-Mohammad in Karachi and then in Waziristan. The main training was imparted by the Jaish-e-Mohammad and some field training was done in Waziristan,” added the investigator. “Administrator and Nazim (administrator) international relations of Jaish-e-Mohammad (who are stated to be close associates of Faisal Shahzad), have been arrested from North Nazimabad (Karachi) and are being interrogated,” he said. The source said Nazim international relations of Jaish-e-Mohammad Abu Sufian was arrested from Jamia Masjid Batta located in block N at North Nazimabad. Administrator Mohammad Rehan, senior to Sufian, was arrested from Hussain market in the same area. The investigator said that Faisal Shahzad, stayed in a flat of Hussain market building located in North Nazimabad which stood close to Masjid Batta.
“The arrested men tell us that he was imparted basic training in the said flat and was introduced to other people therein,” he said. “We have also found some documents from Rehan’s house which indicate to the same link,” he said.
Mohammad Rehan, the investigator said, told during the preliminary investigation he had stayed with Faisal Shahzad in Peshawar from July, 7 to 22 and later “we returned to Karachi.”
The source said that four other Jaish-e-Mohammad men, identified as Samad, Adnan, Zeeshan and Taha, have also told the investigators about the strong links of Shahzad with the militant outfit. Investigators were led to these men following a scrutiny of Shahzad’s telephone records after his arrival in Pakistan in 2009. “Rehan was picked up along with his cousin Zeeshan. He is an active member of the Jaish-e-Mohammad and collects donations for them. He is also affiliated with Masjid-e-Batta,” said the investigator.
The vice principal of the mosque’s madrassa and its khateeb (prayer leader) Maulana Mohammad Ali said that the agencies’ men had visited the mosque.
Friday, March 12, 2010
"ISI maintaining links with Lashkar"
The ISI continues to maintain links with Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the terrorist outfit responsible for 26/11, and Islamabad is reluctant to take action against its leaders and its network, several eminent U.S. scholars and experts of South Asia have categorically told U.S. lawmakers.
Attending a special Congressional hearing on Thursday on “Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Growing ambition of Islamic Militancy in Pakistan”, Congressmen unanimously expressed concern that despite best of the efforts by the Obama Administration, the ISI continues to maintain links with LeT and that Pakistan is not taking decisive action against the terrorist outfit.
"The LeT is a deadly serious group of fanatics. They are well financed, ambitious, and most disturbingly, both tolerated by, and connected to, the Pakistani military," said Gary L. Ackerman, Chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia of the House Committee on International Relations.
And it is the same Pakistani military, to which the Obama Administration is selling advanced arms, he pointed out.
Testifying before the Congressional committee, Marvin G Weinbaum, from the Middle East Institute –- a Washington-based think tank, said despite the government official ban of LeT, ISI continued to consider the organisation as an asset.
The ISI is believed to continue to share intelligence and provide protection to LeT, he said.
"It is a measure of the impunity with which LeT is allowed to operate in Pakistan that the authorities have been unwilling to contain LeT chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed.
His inflammatory remarks would be expected to land him among the hundreds of disappeared political activists in the country. Although he has been periodically arrested, his house detentions have been cosmetic," Mr. Weinbaum said.
Noting that LeT poses a threat to the U.S. national security interests, Lisa Curtis from the Heritage Foundation said the appearance of LeT leader Hafez Muhammed Sayeed at a recent public rally casts grave doubts about Pakistan’s commitment to reining in the group’s activities.
Policy failure
Ms. Curtis said it has been a failure of U.S. policy to not insist Pakistan shut down the LeT long ago. U.S. officials have shied away from pressuring Pakistan on the LeT in the interest of garnering Pakistani cooperation against targets the U.S. believed were more critical to immediate U.S. objectives, that is Al-Qaeda shortly after 9/11 and the Afghan Taliban more recently.
“To degrade the overall international terrorist threat emanating from Pakistan, the US must convince Islamabad to confront those groups it has supported against India," Ms. Curtis said.
The Mumbai attacks and subsequent Headley investigations reveal that the LeT has the international capabilities and ideological inclination to attack western targets whether they are located in South Asia or elsewhere.
Eminent Pakistani scholar Shuja Nawaz too conceded that the relationship between the ISI and LeT has stayed overtime.
Ms. Nawaz is currently the director, South Asia Center, The Atlantic Council of the United States.
"The LeT's emerging role as a trans regional force that has broadened its aim to include India and perhaps even Afghanistan, by linking with the Students Islamic Movement of India or SIMI and the Harkat ul Jihad al Islami or HUJI of Bangladesh poses a serious threat to regional stability," Mr. Nawaz said.
"Another Mumbai-type attack involving the LeT might bring India and Pakistan into conflict, a prospect that should keep us awake at night. In Pakistan, both the civil and the military now appear to recognise the existential threat from home grown militancy.
"The army appears to have dislocated the Tehreek e Taliban of Pakistan. Yet, it faces a huge and, to my mind, greater threat in the hinterland, in the form of the LeT," he said.
‘Pak a safe haven’
Ashley J Tellis, senior associate at the prestigious Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told lawmakers that today LeT relies on the ISI primarily for safe haven and political protection for its leadership, intelligence on selected targets and threats, campaign guidance when necessary, and infiltration assistance, particularly in regard to long distance operations involving transits through third countries.
"Although the interrogation of David Headley has now established that there were clearly some shadowy ISI connections with the Bombay (Mumbai) attacks, the management of the LeT detainees by the Pakistani state and the tortured progress of their trial demonstrates that, whatever the outcome of this charade, the ISI has simply no intention of eviscerating LeT (or any other anti-Indian jihadi groups) because of their perceived utility to Pakistan’s national strategy vis-à-vis India," Mr. Tellis said.
"So long as the Pakistani Army and the security establishment more generally conclude that their private interests (and their conception of the national interest) are undermined by a permanent reconciliation between India and Pakistan, they will not rid themselves of the terrorist groups they have begotten and which serve their purposes-irrespective of what New Delhi or Kabul or Washington may desire," he said.
"This fact ought to be understood clearly by the Obama administration. Once it is, it may push the United
States to either compel Pakistan to initiate action against LeT or hold Pakistan responsible for the actions of its proxies.
If these efforts do not bear fruit, the United States will have to contemplate unilateral actions (or cooperative actions with other allies) to neutralize the most dangerous of the terrorist groups now resident in Pakistan.
Doing so may be increasingly necessary not simply to prevent a future Indo-Pakistani crisis, but more importantly to protect the United States, its citizens, its interests, and its allies," Mr. Tellis said.
Attending a special Congressional hearing on Thursday on “Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Growing ambition of Islamic Militancy in Pakistan”, Congressmen unanimously expressed concern that despite best of the efforts by the Obama Administration, the ISI continues to maintain links with LeT and that Pakistan is not taking decisive action against the terrorist outfit.
"The LeT is a deadly serious group of fanatics. They are well financed, ambitious, and most disturbingly, both tolerated by, and connected to, the Pakistani military," said Gary L. Ackerman, Chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia of the House Committee on International Relations.
And it is the same Pakistani military, to which the Obama Administration is selling advanced arms, he pointed out.
Testifying before the Congressional committee, Marvin G Weinbaum, from the Middle East Institute –- a Washington-based think tank, said despite the government official ban of LeT, ISI continued to consider the organisation as an asset.
The ISI is believed to continue to share intelligence and provide protection to LeT, he said.
"It is a measure of the impunity with which LeT is allowed to operate in Pakistan that the authorities have been unwilling to contain LeT chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed.
His inflammatory remarks would be expected to land him among the hundreds of disappeared political activists in the country. Although he has been periodically arrested, his house detentions have been cosmetic," Mr. Weinbaum said.
Noting that LeT poses a threat to the U.S. national security interests, Lisa Curtis from the Heritage Foundation said the appearance of LeT leader Hafez Muhammed Sayeed at a recent public rally casts grave doubts about Pakistan’s commitment to reining in the group’s activities.
Policy failure
Ms. Curtis said it has been a failure of U.S. policy to not insist Pakistan shut down the LeT long ago. U.S. officials have shied away from pressuring Pakistan on the LeT in the interest of garnering Pakistani cooperation against targets the U.S. believed were more critical to immediate U.S. objectives, that is Al-Qaeda shortly after 9/11 and the Afghan Taliban more recently.
“To degrade the overall international terrorist threat emanating from Pakistan, the US must convince Islamabad to confront those groups it has supported against India," Ms. Curtis said.
The Mumbai attacks and subsequent Headley investigations reveal that the LeT has the international capabilities and ideological inclination to attack western targets whether they are located in South Asia or elsewhere.
Eminent Pakistani scholar Shuja Nawaz too conceded that the relationship between the ISI and LeT has stayed overtime.
Ms. Nawaz is currently the director, South Asia Center, The Atlantic Council of the United States.
"The LeT's emerging role as a trans regional force that has broadened its aim to include India and perhaps even Afghanistan, by linking with the Students Islamic Movement of India or SIMI and the Harkat ul Jihad al Islami or HUJI of Bangladesh poses a serious threat to regional stability," Mr. Nawaz said.
"Another Mumbai-type attack involving the LeT might bring India and Pakistan into conflict, a prospect that should keep us awake at night. In Pakistan, both the civil and the military now appear to recognise the existential threat from home grown militancy.
"The army appears to have dislocated the Tehreek e Taliban of Pakistan. Yet, it faces a huge and, to my mind, greater threat in the hinterland, in the form of the LeT," he said.
‘Pak a safe haven’
Ashley J Tellis, senior associate at the prestigious Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told lawmakers that today LeT relies on the ISI primarily for safe haven and political protection for its leadership, intelligence on selected targets and threats, campaign guidance when necessary, and infiltration assistance, particularly in regard to long distance operations involving transits through third countries.
"Although the interrogation of David Headley has now established that there were clearly some shadowy ISI connections with the Bombay (Mumbai) attacks, the management of the LeT detainees by the Pakistani state and the tortured progress of their trial demonstrates that, whatever the outcome of this charade, the ISI has simply no intention of eviscerating LeT (or any other anti-Indian jihadi groups) because of their perceived utility to Pakistan’s national strategy vis-à-vis India," Mr. Tellis said.
"So long as the Pakistani Army and the security establishment more generally conclude that their private interests (and their conception of the national interest) are undermined by a permanent reconciliation between India and Pakistan, they will not rid themselves of the terrorist groups they have begotten and which serve their purposes-irrespective of what New Delhi or Kabul or Washington may desire," he said.
"This fact ought to be understood clearly by the Obama administration. Once it is, it may push the United
States to either compel Pakistan to initiate action against LeT or hold Pakistan responsible for the actions of its proxies.
If these efforts do not bear fruit, the United States will have to contemplate unilateral actions (or cooperative actions with other allies) to neutralize the most dangerous of the terrorist groups now resident in Pakistan.
Doing so may be increasingly necessary not simply to prevent a future Indo-Pakistani crisis, but more importantly to protect the United States, its citizens, its interests, and its allies," Mr. Tellis said.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Al Qaeda biggest killer of innocent muslims: Obama
Al Qaeda is the biggest killer of innocent muslims in the world, US President Barack Obama has said.
"I think it's important to understand that we are at war against a very specific group -- al Qaeda and its extremist allies that have metastasised around the globe, that would attack us, attack our allies, attack bases and embassies around the world, and most sadly, attack innocent people regardless of their backgrounds, regardless of their religions," Obama said yesterday in an interview to YouTube.
"Al Qaeda is probably the biggest killer of innocent muslims of any entity out there," said Mr Obama in his first ever interview to the YouTube as the US President.
"So that is our target and that is our focus. Now, they employ terrorist tactics, but we need to be clear about who our target is," he argued.
The US President said United States is having to fight terrorism on all fronts.
"We have to fight them in very concrete ways in Afghanistan and along the border regions of Pakistan where they are still holed up.
They have spread to places like Yemen and Somalia, and we are working internationally with partners to try to limit their scope of operations and dismantle them in those regions," he said
"I think it's important to understand that we are at war against a very specific group -- al Qaeda and its extremist allies that have metastasised around the globe, that would attack us, attack our allies, attack bases and embassies around the world, and most sadly, attack innocent people regardless of their backgrounds, regardless of their religions," Obama said yesterday in an interview to YouTube.
"Al Qaeda is probably the biggest killer of innocent muslims of any entity out there," said Mr Obama in his first ever interview to the YouTube as the US President.
"So that is our target and that is our focus. Now, they employ terrorist tactics, but we need to be clear about who our target is," he argued.
The US President said United States is having to fight terrorism on all fronts.
"We have to fight them in very concrete ways in Afghanistan and along the border regions of Pakistan where they are still holed up.
They have spread to places like Yemen and Somalia, and we are working internationally with partners to try to limit their scope of operations and dismantle them in those regions," he said
