AFP : More gains expected in anti-terror drive in post-Musharraf era

More gains expected in anti-terror drive in post-Musharraf era

August 18, 2008

WASHINGTON (AFP) — With Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf gone, Washington must work with Islamabad's democratically elected government to wage the "war on terror" -- a task US experts say may be more challenging but could reap better results.

In fact, Washington moved beyond Musharraf in the wake of the free elections in February when it realized that the former army general who seized power in a 1999 coup was no longer the central player he had been.

But the fledgling coalition government of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has seemed powerless to act against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, which regrouped inside Pakistan after they were expelled from Afghanistan by a US-led invasion in 2001.

Reacting to Musharraf's resignation Monday, the White House said US President George W. Bush would keep working with Islamabad and was committed to a "strong Pakistan" that continued to strengthen democracy and fight terror.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Musharraf "one of the world's most committed partners in the war against terrorism and extremism."

But some US experts said that Musharraf, who ruled with almost unfettered power during most of his tenure, played a double game and was not a genuine US war-on-terror partner despite more than 10 billion dollars in US aid to his country.

Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, Al-Qaeda's safe haven in Pakistan grew rapidly under Musharraf's watch, they said.

"In theory, working with an unruly, fractious coalition government is more difficult than working with someone who has most of the power in his own hands," said Robert Hathaway of the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

"But the problem with the theory in this case is that it never worked very well with Musharraf," he said.

"Musharraf worked with us when it suited his interest and to the extent it suited his interest, but I think most of us feel that our partnership with Musharraf did not produce the fruits that we had hoped for."

Although cooperation between Washington and Islamabad has not been very satisfactory with the new government, Hathaway felt Musharraf's departure would enable both sides to "focus their collective minds on the major problems challenging both countries."

It can also help erase a growing perception that Washington was trying to dictate anti-terrorism policy to the new government, experts said.

"What it will do is to remove the automatic link in the Pakistani mind that any actions which are taken in the FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) and in the frontier generally are American-dictated," said Marvin Weinbaum, a former Pakistan intelligence analyst at the US State Department.

"Weakening that link means that decisions that Pakistan's going to take are in its own interest," he said. "So, if it moves more aggressively, it wouldn't be automatically seen as simply carrying out American command."

One reason for Musharraf's unpopularity had been the perception that he allowed Washington to violate Pakistani sovereignty while simultaneously letting the northwestern provinces bordering Afghanistan where Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces hide spin out of control, said US think tank Stratfor.

Washington has staged missile strikes on terrorist haunts in the region, drawing protests from Islamabad.

Some experts say the new Pakistani government seems to lack control over the military or the powerful intelligence service, ISI, which was linked to a July suicide bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul.

Unless Washington can trust Islamabad with critical intelligence information on militant movements, counter-terrorism cooperation will not reach the expected level, they warned.

"Intelligence sharing is going to be important," Weinbaum said. "The question is whether there is a serious effort here to break the ties within the Pakistan military with at least some of the extremists."

Pakistan has overtaken Iraq as a key concern among US foreign policy elites, with a majority believing it is the country most likely to pass nuclear technology to terrorists, an annual survey showed in Washington Monday.

Pakistan was named by more than half of the 100-odd foreign policy experts surveyed by Foreign Policy magazine and the Center for American Progress as the country most likely to become the next Al-Qaeda stronghold, up from 35 percent last year.

Dawn : Pakistan's Musharraf announces resignation

Pakistan's Musharraf announces resignation

ISLAMABAD, Aug 18 (AFP) -Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf announced his resignation on Monday in the face of looming impeachment charges, ending a turbulent nine years in power.

“After viewing the situation and consulting legal advisers and political allies, with their advice I have decided to resign,” a grim-faced Musharraf, wearing a sober suit and tie, said in a televised address to the nation.

“I leave my future in the hands of the people.”

Musharraf said he would hand his resignation to the speaker of the national assembly (lower house of parliament) later on Monday.

He made the shock announcement after denying that any of the impeachment charges against him could stand and launching into a lengthy defence of his time in power.

“Not a single charge in the impeachment can stand against me,” Musharraf said.

“No charge can be proved against me because I never did anything for myself, it was all for Pakistan.”

He said that there was now law and order in the country, that human rights and democracy had been improved and that Pakistan was now [a] crucial country internationally.

“On the map of the world, Pakistan is now an important country, by the grace of Allah,” he said.

Musharraf's popularity slumped last year amid his attempts to oust the country's chief justice and then during a wave of Taliban suicide bombings that killed more than 1,000 people, including former premier Benazir Bhutto.

He imposed a state of emergency in November last year to force his re-election to another five-year term through the Supreme Court, but his political allies were trounced at the February polls.

The coalition of parties which won the February election, led by Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, finally overcame months of divisions and agreed to impeach Musharraf on August 7.

It piled on the pressure with no-confidence votes in Pakistan's four provincial assemblies last week.

Then on Sunday it said it had drawn up impeachment charges and would lodge them in parliament this week.

The charges reportedly included violation of the constitution and gross misconduct.

Officials say that Musharraf's aides have been in talks with the coalition, brokered by Saudi Arabia, the United States and Britain, to allow him to quit in return for indemnity.

Musharraf's spokesman had repeatedly denied in recent days that he was about to quit, and it was not immediately clear what would happen next.

But a lack of apparent support from Pakistan's army, which he left in November, apparently made other options -- including dissolving parliament or even declaring another state of emergency -- impossible.

Speculation over Musharraf's fate intensified overnight when US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that granting asylum to Musharraf was not currently under consideration by the United States.

“That's not an issue on the table, and I just want to keep our focus on what we must do with the democratic government of Pakistan,” Rice said.

Western allies want Pakistan to resolve the crisis over Musharraf so it can deal with the fight against Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, where nearly 500 people have died in the past week.

The government is also struggling to deal with a severe economic crunch.

WaPo : Iraq Wants U.S. to Compromise More on Security Deals

Iraq Wants U.S. to Compromise More on Security Deals

By Karen DeYoung | Washington Post Staff Writer | April 22, 2008

KUWAIT CITY, April 21 -- Iraq is resisting U.S. proposals for a pair of new bilateral security agreements, saying it expects Washington to compromise on "sensitive issues," including the right to imprison Iraqi citizens unilaterally, Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Monday.

Other problematic areas now being negotiated, Zebari said in an interview, are provisions in U.S. drafts to give American contractors immunity from Iraqi law and allow the United States to conduct military operations without Iraqi government coordination. "These are the main ones, but there could be others," he said, among them "issues of sites, of locations, of access" by U.S. troops.

The Iraqi people "expect to see a change in the relationship on internment, and on some sovereignty issues," Zebari said. About 23,000 Iraqis are currently held in U.S. military prisons there.

Zebari spoke in Bahrain, where he was attending a meeting with Egypt, Jordan and the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who also attended the meeting and had pressed the Arabs to invite Zebari, called the session a "good step toward reintegrating" Iraq into the Arab world.

The United States has been trying to persuade the leaders of predominantly Sunni Arab states to increase diplomatic and economic support for the Shiite-led government in Baghdad. One goal is to counter the influence of Iran, whose government is overseen by Shiite clerics.

Many of those who attended the Bahrain gathering -- including Rice and Zebari -- then traveled to Kuwait for a regional meeting Tuesday on Iraq that is also to include representatives of the Group of Eight highly industrialized nations.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki met here with Rice on Monday night, one day after she visited him in Baghdad.

The United States and Iraq are negotiating a status of forces agreement and a separate "strategic framework" to replace the existing U.N. mandate governing the U.S. troop presence. The mandate expires at the end of this year. A growing and bipartisan number of U.S. lawmakers have demanded that the Bush administration submit the agreements for congressional approval.

Democrats have charged that the Bush administration is attempting to tie the next administration to its military policy in Iraq. Republicans fear that President Bush's refusal to seek congressional ratification will compound public dissatisfaction with the war and become a negative campaign issue.

The White House has said that Bush can use his executive authority to sign the agreements and that they do not require congressional approval. He has pledged they will not include authorization for specific U.S. troop numbers or "permanent" military bases.

Zebari agreed that the accords would be nonbinding and said Iraq would also retain the ability to review and change them at any time. He said he expected the negotiations to be concluded by a July 31 deadline. "It's not going to be easy," Zebari said. "If you want to reach a final agreement, there has to be compromise."

Maliki's government, which has its own internal discord, has said that both accords will have to be ratified by the Iraqi parliament.

Zebari made clear that the Iraqi government is closely monitoring the U.S. election campaign and noted that none of the candidates is calling for "immediate disengagement." The campaign, he said, has also affected Arab willingness to increase involvement in Iraq.

Rice sent Assistant Secretary of State C. David Welch to each of the Gulf Cooperation Council states in recent weeks -- Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar -- to persuade them to invite Iraq to the Monday meeting. His argument was that the recent Basra offensive targeting Shiite militias proved that Maliki's government was without sectarian bias.

During Monday's closed-door meeting of Arab foreign ministers, according to a U.S. official traveling with Rice, Zebari was asked why Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the only regional head of state to have visited Baghdad since the 2003 U.S. invasion. Zebari, the official said, replied that he was "embarrassed" by that fact, but that Arab governments had not accepted any invitations.

The U.S. official expressed satisfaction that Zebari was physically embraced by Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal upon entering the conference room and invited to remain in the meeting for discussions on Lebanon and the Palestinian-Israeli situation. "If they thought he was an Iranian agent, he would never have been allowed," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Bahraini Foreign Minister Khalid bin Khalifa acknowledged after the session that "we had questions about the ambiguity about the situation in Iraq."

Khalifa called Iraq's inclusion at the meeting an "important development" and said that Baghdad would continue to be invited as "an anchor of this group."

In the interview, Zebari said that Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have expressed interest in opening embassies but that none had made a definitive move.

"Really, we've removed all the excuses in terms of security and logistics," he said. "We've given them options outside the IZ," the International Zone, or Green Zone, where the U.S. Embassy and much of the Iraqi government is located. "Or, if they prefer inside the IZ, we have evacuated a number of villas for them."

But the real reason for their reluctance, he said, was "not technical, not logistical, not security . . . it is political." Some of the countries, he said, harbor unhappiness over the U.S. invasion, although "they didn't shed any tears over Saddam's departure." More recently, "they always complain that there is extended Iranian influence."

"Our argument with them is that you have to blame yourselves," Zebari said. "They [the Iranians] are there and you're not there. A majority of the Iraqi people want to see you standing with them, beside them."

Asked about U.S. accusations that Iran supplies weapons and training for Shiite militias, Zebari said his government had raised the subject privately with Iranian leaders. "There hasn't been any public statement," he acknowledged, "but in discussions, in face-to-face bilaterals with the Iranians, yes, we do raise it . . . very seriously.

"They don't deny it, to be honest with you," he said. Unlike the Syrians, the Iranians respond that "there could be violations, here and there."

WaPo : Book Details U.S. Pressure On Allies Before War

Book Details U.S. Pressure On Allies Before War

By Colum Lynch | Washington Post Staff Writer | March 22, 2008; Page A01

UNITED NATIONS -- In the months leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration threatened trade reprisals against friendly countries who withheld their support, spied on its allies, and pressed for the recall of U.N. envoys that resisted U.S. pressure to endorse the war, according to an upcoming book by a top Chilean diplomat.

The rough-and-tumble diplomatic strategy has generated lasting "bitterness" and "deep mistrust" in Washington's relations with allies in Europe, Latin America and elsewhere, wrote Heraldo Muñoz, Chile's ambassador to the United Nations, in his book "A Solitary War: A Diplomat's Chronicle of the Iraq War and Its Lessons," set for publication next month.

"In the aftermath of the invasion, allies loyal to the United States were rejected, mocked and even punished" for their refusal to back a U.N. resolution authorizing military action against Saddam Hussein's government, Muñoz wrote.

But the tough talk dissipated as the war effort worsened and President Bush came to reach out to many of the same allies that he had spurned. Muñoz's account suggests the U.S. strategy backfired in Latin America, damaging the administration's standing in a region that has long been dubious of U.S. military intervention.

Muñoz details key roles by Chile and Mexico, the Security Council's two Latin members at the time, in the run-up to the war. Then-U.N. ambassadors Juan Gabriel Valdés of Chile and Adolfo Aguilar Zínser of Mexico helped thwart U.S. and British efforts to rally support among the council's six undecided members for a resolution authorizing the U.S.-led invasion.

The book portrays Bush personally prodding the leaders of those six governments -- Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Mexico and Pakistan -- to support the war resolution, a strategy aimed at demonstrating broad support for U.S. military plans, despite the looming French threat to veto the resolution.

In the weeks preceding the war, Bush made several appeals to Chilean President Ricardo Lagos and Mexican President Vicente Fox to rein in their diplomats and support U.S. war aims. "We have problems with your ambassador at the U.N.," Bush told Fox at a summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in Los Cabos, Mexico, in late 2002.

"It's time to bring up the vote, Ricardo. We've had this debate too long," Bush told the Chilean president on March 11, 2003.

"Bush had referred to Lagos by his first name, but as the conversation drew to a close and Lagos refused to support the resolution as it stood, Bush shifted to a cool and aloof 'Mr. President,' " Muñoz wrote. "Next Monday, time is up," Bush told Lagos.

Senior U.S. diplomats sought to thwart a last-minute attempt by Chile to broker a compromise that would delay military action for weeks, providing Iraq with a final shot at demonstrating that it had fully complied with its disarmament requirements.

On March 14, 2003, less than one week before the eventual invasion, Chile hosted a meeting of diplomats from the six undecided governments to discuss its proposal. But U.S. ambassador John D. Negroponte and then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell moved quickly to quash the initiative, warning their governments that the effort was viewed as "an unfriendly act" designed to isolate the United States. The diplomats received calls from their governments ordering them to "leave the meeting immediately," Muñoz writes.

Aguilar-Zínser, who died in 2005, was finally forced out of the Mexican government after publicly accusing the United States of treating Mexico like its "back yard" during the war negotiations. Valdés was transferred to Argentina, where he served as Chile's top envoy, and Muñoz, a Chilean minister and onetime classmate of Condoleezza Rice at the University of Denver, was sent to the United Nations in June 2003 to patch up relations with the United States.

In the days after the invasion, the National Security Council's top Latin American expert, John Maistos, invited Muñoz to the White House to convey the message to Lagos, that his country's position at the United Nations had jeopardized prospects for the speedy Senate ratification of a free-trade pact. "Chile has lost some influence," he said. "President Bush is truly disappointed with Lagos, but he is furious with Fox. With Mexico, the president feels betrayed; with Chile, frustrated and let down."

Muñoz said subsequent ties remained tense at the United Nations, where the United States sought support for resolutions authorizing the occupation of Iraq. He said that small countries met privately in a secure room at the German mission that was impervious to eavesdropping. "It reminded me of a submarine or a giant safe," Muñoz said in an interview.

The United States, he added, expressed "its displeasure" to the German government every time they held a meeting in the secure room. "They couldn't listen to what was going on."

Muñoz said that threats of reprisals were short-lived as Washington quickly found itself reaching out to Chile, Mexico and other countries to support Iraq's messy postwar rehabilitation. It also sought support from Chile on issues such as peacekeeping in Haiti and support for U.S. efforts to drive Syria out of Lebanon. The U.S.-Chilean free trade agreement, while delayed, was finally signed by then-U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick in June 2003.

Muñoz said that Rice, as secretary of state, called him to ask for help on a U.N. resolution that would press for Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon. The United States had secured eight of the nine votes required for adoption of a resolution in the Security Council. Muñoz had received instructions to abstain. "I talked to [Lagos], and he listened to my argument, and we gave them the ninth vote," he said.

NYT : Send the State Department to War

Send the State Department to War

By MAX BOOT | November 14, 2007

THE State Department has announced that it will force 50 foreign service officers to go to Iraq, whether they want to or not. This is the biggest use of “directed assignments” since the Vietnam War, and it represents a long-overdue response to complaints that diplomats aren’t pulling their weight in Iraq and Afghanistan.

However welcome, this is only a baby step toward a larger objective: to reorient the department and the government as a whole for the global war on Islamic terrorism. Yes, this is a war, but it’s a very different war from conventional conflicts like World War II or the Civil War. It is, in essence, a global counterinsurgency, and few counterinsurgencies have ever been won by force alone.

While maintaining military power remains important, even more crucial goals are aiding moderate Muslims, countering enemy propaganda, promoting economic growth, flexing our political and diplomatic muscles to achieve vital objectives peacefully, gathering intelligence, promoting international cooperation, and building the rule of law in ungoverned lands.

The government developed expertise in many of these areas during the cold war, but those skills were lost as budgets were slashed and jobs eliminated during the “peace dividend” decade of the 1990s. Because civilian capacity has been so anemic, an undue burden has fallen on the military — something that soldiers understandably resent.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recognizes the problem and has tried to reorient the State Department. She has, among other steps, moved diplomats out of Western Europe and into the developing world, set up a “war room” where Arabic-speaking diplomats can address the Middle Eastern press, and fostered a clumsily named Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization to plan for nation-building assignments.

Such efforts, however, are unlikely to succeed because they run counter to centuries of State Department tradition that emphasizes liaison work with established governments rather than creating governments from scratch or communicating with foreign citizens over the heads of their leaders.

Modern management theory holds that small, tightly focused organizations are likely to be more effective than large conglomerates that try to do a million different things. If we apply that insight to the State Department, it would make sense to undo some ruinous consolidations that occurred after the cold war, when the United States Agency for International Development was placed within the State Department’s sphere of influence and the United States Information Agency was folded into the department outright. No wonder our capacities in nation-building and strategic communications have withered — their practitioners are second-class citizens behind traditional foreign service officers.

The information and development agencies should be made independent again, and their resources expanded. The Agency for International Development, in particular, has seen a precipitous decline in personnel. In the 1960s, it had 1,900 officers in South Vietnam alone. Today it has only 1,200 to cover the entire world, forcing it to rely mainly on contractors. If we expand its ranks, it could become our lead nation-building agency, sort of a global FEMA, marshaling the kind of resources that have been lacking in Iraq and Afghanistan.

To buttress the growing corps of government reconstruction experts, we should have civilian reservists on call who could be summoned by the Agency for International Development in an emergency like military reservists. They could bring expertise in municipal administration, sewage treatment, banking, electricity generation, and countless other disciplines needed to rebuild a war-torn country. President Bush endorsed this notion in his last State of the Union address, but too little has been done to turn it into reality.

One of the most important shortages we have faced in Iraq and Afghanistan is in experienced police officers who can train local counterparts. Much of the job has fallen on the military police, whose troops are too few in number, and on civilian contractors, who are of uneven quality. We need to fill the vacuum by creating a federal constabulary force — a uniformed counterpart to the F.B.I. that, like the Italian carabinieri, could be deployed abroad.

Its efforts could be supplemented by municipal policemen if we pass a law allowing the federal government to call up local police officers without loss of pay or seniority and to compensate hometown police departments for their absence. Along with these police officers, we need a deployable corps of lawyers, judges and prison guards who could set up functioning legal and penal systems abroad.

Even with increased participation from civilian branches of government, the armed forces will still have a major role to play in what President Bush calls the “Long War.” But not necessarily a kinetic role. If we can train and advise foreign militaries, they can fight our battles for us. This model was demonstrated as long ago as the 1950s when Edward Lansdale and other advisers helped the Philippines put down a Marxist uprising, and has been repeated more recently in Somalia and the Phillipines.

Yet, important as it is, the United States military has not put enough emphasis on training and promoting experts in foreign military assistance. Such duty has traditionally been seen as a hindrance to promotion, which has made it tough to attract the best officers.

Lt. Col. John Nagl, a counterinsurgency expert, has suggested setting up an “adviser corps” of 20,000 soldiers. His idea would make advisory service not a career detour but a career in itself, equal, at least in theory, to infantry, armor and other traditional specialties. Some advisers, in turn, could be deployed as part of the “country team” at American embassies — something that happened routinely in the 1950s and ’60s but has since fallen into disuse.

Along with pushing advisory expertise, the armed forces also need to promote linguistic and cultural knowledge. Such skills are to be found primarily in Foreign Area Officers, but that is another career field whose practitioners are traditionally expected to commit career suicide. The military needs to increase the ranks of Foreign Area Officers and to provide more rewards for their much-needed service. We will have a hard time prevailing in today’s war as long as fewer than one-half of 1 percent of all service members have any grasp of Arabic.

Even while expanding governmental capacity, we also need to improve coordination among various branches of government, and between the government and nongovernmental and international organizations. That type of unified action has been in short supply in Iraq and Afghanistan, leading to nonstop complaints about how broken the “interagency” process has become.

James R. Locher, a former Congressional aide who helped draft the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act that brought greater coordination among the different branches of the military, is now leading a nonpartisan consortium of Washington policy and research groups that is trying to devise legislation to enhance the “unity of effort” among different branches of the government. Ideas under consideration include forcing civilian bureaucrats to serve a “joint tour” in a different agency and creating regional diplomatic coordinators who would marshal civilian agencies in the same way that the Pentagon’s Central Command and Pacific Command coordinate military units abroad. A partial prototype of this concept may be tested with the Defense Department’s new Africa Command, which is going to have a larger civilian component than the other combat commands.

Mr. Locher’s goal is to write a bill that would update the legendary National Security Act of 1947, which created the bureaucratic instruments (the C.I.A., Defense Department, National Security Council and the like) used to win the cold war. He hopes to have legislation ready in time for a new president in 2009. That’s an ambitious objective, but it’s one worth striving for if we’re going to adjust to the post-9/11 era of American foreign policy.

Some will no doubt object that to build up these capacities will encourage reckless “imperialism” or “militarism.” But improving our abilities in nation-building, strategic communications, security advising and related disciplines will actually lessen the chances that we will need to mount a major military intervention such as the one in Iraq. Our goal should be not just to deal with the aftermath of wars (Phase IV, in military parlance) but to solve problems before they grow into full-blown wars. In other words, to win Phase Zero.

Max Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of “War Made New: Weapons, Warriors and the Making of the Modern World.”

Dawn : Rice in new plea for unity of moderates

Rice in new plea for unity of moderates

By Anwar Iqbal | November 23, 2007

WASHINGTON, Nov 22: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has indicated that Washington will still like President Gen Pervez Musharraf and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto to work together.

“We obviously also still believe that moderate forces ought to try to come together to present a unified front against extremism,” she told a briefing in Washington. “Extremism is a problem in Pakistan.”

Ms Rice then named the two leaders who have been targeted by the extremists — President Musharraf and Ms Bhutto — and said that the attempts on their lives underline the need for moderate forces to work together.

Asked what was the purpose of Deputy Secretary John Negroponte’s visit to Islamabad last weekend and had he achieved his objective, Ms Rice said he went, first of all, to talk about how important it was for Pakistan to get back to the democratic path.

She explained that democratic development includes freeing the media, developing the civil society and economic reforms.

Pakistan, she said, was already pursuing these goals before the emergency rule was clamped on Nov 3.

Ms Rice also echoed the sentiments President George W. Bush expressed in a television interview on Tuesday when he said that President Musharraf has done more for democracy in Pakistan than any other modern leader has.

She credited Gen Musharraf for putting Pakistan on a road to greater realisation of these goals and said: “Look, a lot of that was done by Musharraf himself. And so for him at this point to help put his country back on the road to democratic reform is important.”

Ms Rice said that it’s very clear what the United States expects Gen Musharraf to do.

“We’re looking for him to take off his uniform. We’re looking for the lifting of the state of emergency so that elections can be held in a free and open atmosphere,” she said.

Ms Rice said that Mr Negroponte had a chance to discuss all these objectives when he was in Islamabad and “I think it was extremely important that he go out and talk to the parties.”

She said that the US ambassador in Islamabad, Anne Patterson, was now continuing Mr Negroponte’s mission, “trying to help use American influence to get Pakistan back on a road to democracy because that’s what the Pakistanis deserve.”

Asked if she saw any improvement in the situation since Mr Negroponte’s visit, Ms Rice noted that a number of opposition figures have been released. “That’s a good step. But it’s only one step of what’s needed,” she added.

Star-Ledger (NJ) : U.S. must cut ties to Pakistan's dictator

U.S. must cut ties to Pakistan's dictator

BY MOHAMAD BAZZI | November 11, 2007

If anyone in the Muslim world still believed in the Bush administration's historic promise to support democracy over political expe diency, those hopes are being shat tered with the crisis unfolding in Pakistan.

If ever there was a clear-cut case for the administration to put action behind its rhetoric, this is it. And yet Washington is standing behind Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, even after he imposed emergency rule, suspended the country's constitution, muzzled the media and continues to round up hundreds of political opponents.

In June 2005, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the world that the United States would no longer tolerate repressive regimes in the name of keeping political stability. "For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East -- and we achieved neither," she said at the American University in Cairo. "Now, we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people."

For a brief moment, Rice's message resonated in the Middle East. It was a few months after the purple fingers of Iraq's first parliamentary election, and in Lebanon a popular revolt had succeeded in dislodging years of Syrian military and political domination. It was a ripe moment, when the United States could have encouraged some genuine change.

But things fell apart when Washington confronted its first test: In late 2005 and into 2006, a small group of Egyptian judges challenged the undemocratic re gime of President Hosni Mubarak. The United States stood by silently while Mubarak crushed public protests, and the Arab world understood, correctly, that Washington had given up on democracy.

When the United States continues supporting autocrats like Musharraf, against the will of their people, then it loses much of its leverage to demand reform from other repressive regimes like Iran and Syria. Even more importantly, favoring stability over democracy will come back to haunt America in the long term.

Washington has supported repressive regimes in Egypt and Saudi Arabia for decades. These are also the places that spawned the top leaders of Al Qaeda: Osama bin Laden is a Saudi, and his top lieutenant, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, is Egyptian.

Of course, we will never know whether these men would have at tacked America regardless of its support of the governments they were trying to destroy. But it did not help. Both men at first turned against the dictators at home, and then -- realizing that the United States was propping up these re gimes -- they targeted the "far enemy."

In Pakistan, the Bush administration now has an opportunity to show the Arab and Muslim worlds that it can change. But so far, President Bush has only issued tepid warnings to Musharraf. The administration has given no sign of cutting military aid to Pakistan, whose military the U.S. has subsidized with $10 billion since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, in exchange for Musharraf's help in the "war on terror."

Musharraf -- who often delivers his speeches sitting under a portrait of Pakistan's secularist founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah -- claims that he is fighting extremism. Yet Musharraf's police are rounding up not militants but lawyers and opposition politicians. Like Mubarak, he is trying to quash an independent judiciary: the Supreme Court was on the verge of invalidating his unconstitutional election as president. By destroying any viable opposition -- those who carry hope of a vibrant civil society that could foster democracy -- Musharraf is actually encouraging militancy.

Islamic militant groups emerged in Pakistan in the late 1970s, when then military ruler Gen. Muhammad Zia ul-Haq began a campaign to Islamize his society. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Pakistan became the staging ground for Islamic guerrillas fighting the Soviet occupation. The United States funneled nearly $3 billion in weapons and aid to the militants through Pakistan's intelligence services. Bin Laden and many other Islamic militants got their start in that war.

When the jihad against the Soviets ended in 1989, Pakistan became a haven for thousands of militants from across the Muslim world. With covert support from Pakistan's army and intelligence agencies, several Pakistan-based militant groups shifted to fighting Indian rule in Kashmir. After Zia's death in 1988, two civilian rulers, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, continued the government's support for the militants.

Like many previous rulers of Pakistan, Musharraf is making his own marriage of convenience with Islamic militants, and it will haunt him. Despite their violence and noisy protests, Pakistan's militant Islamic parties have never won more than 12 percent of a national vote.

Pakistan is a country of about 160 million people, the majority of them moderate Muslims. If the West has any hope of nurturing moderates in places like Pakistan and Egypt, it must support an independent judiciary and a free media. Those institutions help democracy thrive. And that's why they are the first targets of autocrats.

It's not enough for President Bush to call Musharraf to ask him to hold new parliamentary elections. The United States must drop its support of Musharraf and encourage democratic alternatives. If the United States chooses democracy over false stability, it can win new allies and foster true stability -- not only in Pakistan, but throughout the Muslim world.

Mohamad Bazzi, the former Middle East bureau chief for Newsday, is a visiting fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

Pak Tribune : US meddling

US meddling

Kamran Kiani | Rawalpindi | October 30, 2007

Pakistan was never as unstable and vulnerable as it is today. The most important of the reasons for this is America`s interference in our internal matters. Condoleezza Rice and Richard Boucher and other US officials, as well as the American ambassador to Pakistan, exceed diplomatic prerogative when they issue statements on Pakistani affairs. This is extremely annoying to the people of Pakistan, which is why we have such intense anti-American sentiment today.

Then there is Benazir Bhutto, who hastily returned to the country following her deal with the government. May I ask why she went into self-imposed exile, in the first place? She pretends as if no one loves Pakistan as much as she does, which is why she has returned from her life of luxury abroad. As for the people of Pakistan, the Oct. 18 carnage would not have taken place if their memory were not so short.

Why did the multitude have to attend the homecoming rally of such a politician? She would surely have been grilled by the media about the deal and the National Reconciliation Ordinance if everything else had not been overshadowed by the tragedy of the bombings. People should not attend such rallies in the future because they only benefit opportunistic politicians and the participants end up being killed or maimed. The blood spilled in turn gives an opportunity to such politicians, who themselves escape unhurt, to gain sympathy.

Nawaz Sharif left the country under a deal and Benazir Bhutto came back as the result of one, in either case with the same military dictator. All these players have made this country a banana republic. Pakistan needs someone who can lead it to stability. Otherwise the increasing American interference, the threats from the neighbours and from within the country will ultimately lead to its destruction.

Reuters : Rice won't discuss Maliki corruption probe

Rice won't discuss Maliki corruption probe

By Susan Cornwell | October 25, 2007

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice vowed on Thursday to examine corruption allegations against Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, but refused to discuss publicly what she said could be rumor.

In an edgy three-hour hearing led by one of Congress' most tenacious interrogators, Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman of California, Rice said her office would look into allegations against Maliki as well as "hundreds of reports of corruption" among Iraqi officials.

A former Iraqi judge told Waxman's committee earlier this month that Maliki had shielded top Iraqi officials, including one of the prime minister's own relatives, from investigation.

"I am not personally following every allegation of corruption in Iraq, but I am certain that we are tracking these allegations of corruption because no one is more concerned about allegations of corruption in Iraq, no one is more concerned about what is, in fact, a pervasive problem of corruption than we are," Rice told the House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

"But to assault the prime minister of Iraq or anyone else in Iraq with here-to-date unsubstantiated allegations or lack of corroboration, in a setting that would simply fuel those allegations, I think, would be deeply damaging," she said.

"And frankly, I think it would be wrong," Rice said.

Waxman is one of the President George W. Bush's strongest critics. He has led probes into the State Department over the Iraq corruption issue, the conduct of private security contractors in Iraq and the construction of a massive new U.S. embassy in Baghdad.

At Waxman's urging, the entire House voted last week to rebuke the State Department for withholding information from the public on corruption among Iraqi officials.

Rice was enduring a second day of congressional grilling, following a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Wednesday at which an anti-war protester waved blood-colored hands in her face.

There were more policemen than protesters in the hearing room on Thursday and no disruptions from anti-war demonstrators.

But the atmosphere was tense as Rice repeatedly refused to discuss allegations against Maliki, despite questioning from Waxman. She did repeat an earlier offer to provide information in a session closed to the public.

"We investigate every allegation of this kind," Rice told Waxman.

"When will your investigation be complete?" he demanded.

Rice replied that she was overseeing a large organization and there were many documents to examine.

"Well, this is a big deal. This is the prime minister of the country," Waxman declared.

"I agree with you it's a big deal," Rice retorted. "Precisely because it's not a minor allegation, I think it is worth giving the time to it to fully investigate it before discussing it."

Later, Waxman told Rice he was concerned about Iraqi corruption because "Americans are there fighting to keep Prime Minister Maliki in office."

"We're not fighting to keep Prime Minister Maliki in office," Rice shot back. "We are fighting to help the Iraqis to develop a democratic government that can provide for its people."

A few Republicans on the panel apologized to Rice for the "prosecutorial" nature of the hearing and praised her composure. She was "hectored but not harried," said Rep. Chris Cannon of Utah.

© Reuters 2007 All rights reserved

WaPo : On Hill, Rice Talks About Blackwater

On Hill, Rice Talks About Blackwater

Secretary Notes Regret but Defends Efforts

By Karen DeYoung | Washington Post Staff Writer | October 26, 2007

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed regret yesterday that the State Department had inadequately supervised private security contractors in Iraq, but she defended overall U.S. diplomatic efforts in that country under what she called "complex and difficult" circumstances.

During nearly three hours of contentious exchanges with Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Rice parried and often ducked questions on contractors, Iraqi government corruption and problems in the construction of a $600 million U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. She repeatedly said she needed to review matters more closely or could not answer in an open congressional session.

Several lawmakers questioned whether Rice was even aware of some of the most serious allegations. "You're the secretary of state!" Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) said incredulously after Rice responded to a specific charge against Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki by saying she is "not personally following every allegation of corruption in Iraq."

Rice's testimony was the culmination of a series of recent oversight hearings on U.S. diplomacy in Iraq. "For most of this year, Congress has focused its attention on assessing the military surge," Waxman said. But the "quality and effectiveness of [Rice's] actions in Iraq and the State Department's management are a matter of urgent national concern."

The Democratic outrage was countered by Republicans, who rushed to Rice's defense and accused the majority of seeking new ways to attack the Iraq war. "Everything this committee has done in this last year in particular has been to try and put out everything bad that is going on," fumed Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.).

"We should have no illusions about the subtext of these hearings," said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (Va.), the committee's ranking Republican. Having failed to force a U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq, Davis said, "the Democratic strategy seems to be to drill enough small holes in the bottom of the boat to sink the entire Iraqi enterprise."

Rice said she launched a review of the State Department's private security contracts after Blackwater Worldwide guards allegedly shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians last month because "I did not think personally that I could say that oversight and follow-up was appropriate." Despite numerous reports of Iraqi deaths over the past three years, she had not acted sooner because she did not want to "second-guess people on the ground" who had handled the shootings in Baghdad, Rice said.

Pressed to express regret for what Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.) called "the failures of your department, your failures," Rice said, "I certainly regret that we did not have the kind of oversight that I would have insisted upon." She has implemented changes recommended by the review, she said, and "we now will have that oversight."

Rice agreed that "there is a hole" in U.S. law that has prevented prosecution of contractors. Early this month, the House passed a bill that would place all contractors under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, and a similar measure is pending in the Senate. The White House opposes the bill on the grounds that it would have "unintended and intolerable consequences" for national security. But Rice seemed to support the concept, saying that it is under discussion in the Justice Department.

The FBI is investigating the Sept. 16 Blackwater shootings. An earlier shooting, in which a Blackwater guard allegedly killed the Iraqi vice president's bodyguard after a Green Zone party on Christmas Eve 2006, was referred to the Justice Department months ago, but a lack of evidence has hobbled that investigation, Rice said.

Lawmakers cited recent reports by the Government Accountability Office, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction and the State Department describing pervasive corruption in the Iraqi government. In previous hearings and closed-door depositions, the oversight panel heard similar reports from U.S. and Iraqi officials.

"This is not some pie in the sky," Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) said to Rice. "This is your own department."

Rice declined to discuss specific allegations in open session, saying it is "potentially damaging to relationships we are very dependent on." The American people should be assured, she said, that "if there is corruption, the United States is in fact dedicated to rooting it out." But, she added, "let's not take Iraq in isolation. . . . We need to understand that corruption is a pervasive issue" in many other developing and nondemocratic countries.

Democrats focused on an April 1 memo from Maliki's office forbidding investigation of anyone in the government or cabinet without the prime minister's approval. The memo was turned over to the committee by Judge Radhi Hamza al-Radhi, the former head of the Iraqi Commission on Public Integrity, who is seeking U.S. political asylum. Radhi testified to the committee early this month that his investigators had uncovered "rampant" corruption in Iraqi ministries and that nearly four dozen anti-corruption employees or members of their families had been murdered.

Although the memo has been widely publicized in U.S. and Iraqi news media, and a senior State Department official was questioned about it in the same Oct. 4 hearing as Radhi, Rice told the committee she will "have to get back to you. I don't know precisely what you are referring to.

"Our understanding," she said, "is that the Iraqi leadership is not in fact immune from investigation. . . . If, in fact, there is such an order . . . that would certainly be concerning."

WaPo : Rice Orders Team to Iraq on Blackwater

Rice Orders Team to Iraq on Blackwater

By MATTHEW LEE | The Associated Press | September 28, 2007

NEW YORK -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has ordered a review board to visit Iraq next week to assess U.S. diplomatic security practices there following a deadly Baghdad shooting incident involving private Blackwater USA guards protecting a U.S. Embassy convoy.

Led by Patrick Kennedy, one of the most senior management experts in the U.S. foreign service, the panel will leave early next week and present an interim report by Oct. 5, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Thursday.

Kennedy's team will "begin establishing some baseline set of facts about these contractor operations" and report back to Rice, McCormack said.

He quoted Rice as saying she wanted Kennedy's assessment to "be 360 (degrees), to be serious, and to be really probing."

His announcement was posted to the State Department's new Internet blog, "Dipnote," (http://www.blogs.state.gov). He then confirmed the comments to The Associated Press.

McCormack also said the department soon would name several outside independent experts to join Kennedy's review board.

"Based on Pat's work, as well as their own assessments, the independent panel will then make a set of recommendations to Secretary Rice several weeks from now," he said.

McCormack did not identify the independent experts to be tapped, but said they could be named as early as Friday.

Several former senior diplomats and military officers have been approached about joining the panel, officials said.

Rice set up the review board last week in the wake of the Sept. 16 incident involving security guards from private contractor Blackwater USA in which at least 11 Iraqis, including civilians, were killed. Blackwater is the largest of three private companies contracted by the State Department to provide security for U.S. diplomats in Iraq.

There are several separate investigations now under way into the Baghdad incident amid widely divergent witness accounts of what happened.

American witnesses, including the Blackwater guards, insist the convoy was attacked before the protective detail opened fire while Iraqi witnesses say the gunshots were unprovoked.

To straighten out the details, the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, to which Blackwater reports, is conducting one probe. Iraqi authorities are conducting another.

A joint U.S.-Iraqi commission has been created to try to come up with a common set of facts about the incident and look at ways to clarify the regulations under which private security guards operate in Iraq.

Kennedy's review is broader and will look beyond the Sept. 16 incident to assess what general changes need to be made to the State Department's security program, including the rules of engagement that govern private contractors.

CNN : Rice tells nuke watchdog to butt out of Iran diplomacy

Rice tells nuke watchdog to butt out of Iran diplomacy

* U.N. watchdog chief ElBaradei wants slowdown in discussions on sanctions
* Rice says ElBaradei's group isn't in the "business of diplomacy"
* U.N. readies third sanctions resolution against Iran for its uranium enrichment
* U.S. and other nations seek to divert Iran's alleged nuclear weapons ambitions

From Elise Labott | CNN | September 19, 2007

SHANNON, Ireland (CNN) -- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice cautioned the U.N. nuclear watchdog group Wednesday not to interfere with international diplomacy over Iran's alleged weapons program.

The International Atomic Energy Agency "is not in the business of diplomacy," Rice told reporters traveling with her to the Middle East.

The IAEA's role should be limited to carrying out inspections and offering a "clear declaration and clear reporting on what the Iranians are doing; whether and when and if they are living up to the agreements they have signed," she said.

Rice was referring to recent comments made by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei, in which he criticized U.S. rhetoric about Iran.

ElBaradei has called for less emphasis on additional U.N. sanctions against Iran in favor of enhanced cooperation between the IAEA and Tehran. Iran has agreed with IAEA requests to answer unresolved questions about its nuclear program.

Iranian officials insist their nuclear program is aimed at producing civilian electric power, but the Bush administration accuses Tehran of working toward a nuclear weapon. President Bush has called the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran "unacceptable."

Rice said the IAEA agreement with Iran was "a good thing," but "this wouldn't be the first time the Iranians made an agreement only to break it"

She said the U.N. Security Council is working on a third resolution imposing additional sanctions against Iran for failing to suspend its uranium enrichment program.

The elements of a possible resolution will be discussed in Washington on Friday at a meeting of the political directors of the "P5 plus one" -- Germany and the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council: Britain, France, China, the United States and Russia.

Those talks will continue next week in New York when Rice meets with her counterparts on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, she said.

"The United Nations Security Council has in two resolutions set forth obligations that Iran must fulfill," Rice said. "It is not up to anybody to diminish or to begin to cut back on the obligations the Iranians have been ordered to take under Chapter Seven unanimous United Nations Security Council resolutions. "

Rice insisted that Bush was committed to diplomacy, but has not taken any options off the table. She said the United States has confronted Iranian agents in Iraq when they are believed to be threatening American forces.

She encouraged Iran to take advantage of international offers of economic incentives and improved Western relations in exchange for suspending its nuclear program.

"We believe the diplomatic track can work," Rice said. "But has to work both with a set of incentives and a set of teeth."

Separately, European Union members Britain, France and Germany have led Western powers in negotiations with Tehran. But French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner warned Sunday that Europe must prepare for war if Iran continues to flout international demands.

The U.N. Security Council slapped sanctions on Iran in December after Tehran refused international demands to freeze its production of enriched uranium.

It is not the first time the IAEA director has butted heads with Rice over Iran. ElBaradei has often criticized what he called "war mongering," only to be told by Rice to mind his business.

ElBaradei and the IAEA won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 for efforts to stop nuclear proliferation.

At last minute, Pakistan rejects emergency rule

At last minute, Pakistan rejects emergency rule

Under U.S. pressure, Musharraf backs away from declaring state of emergency.

By Carlotta Gall and Salman Masood | THE NEW YORK TIMES | Friday, August 10, 2007

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, was on the brink of declaring a state of emergency in his increasingly volatile country but backed away after a gathering storm of media, political and diplomatic pressure, Pakistani officials acknowledged Thursday.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telephoned Musharraf about 2 a.m. Thursday in Pakistan, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. Bush administration officials refused to discuss in public what was said, but one Pakistani official said Rice exhorted Musharraf not to declare emergency rule. The conversation lasted about 15 minutes.

"She thought it was an opportune moment to talk about a couple of things," McCormack said without elaborating.

Earlier Thursday, Pakistan's deputy information minister, Tariq Azim, had said that Musharraf wasn't ruling out declaring an emergency, which would allow him sweeping powers to restrict freedom of movement and assembly, to suspend Parliament and to curtail the activities of the courts. Such a step, U.S. officials fear, would further inflame the region and open the Bush administration to additional criticism from democracy advocates who say it has already been too willing to turn a blind eye toward Musharraf's failure to restore civilian rule.

In Pakistan, opponents of emergency rule, including some inside the government, warned that it would push the country into deeper crisis as the opposition parties, the judiciary, lawyers and civil society would react strongly against it.

"I fear the whole system will collapse and the country will plunge into a period of turmoil," said one minister, warning of moves to impose emergency rule.

Musharraf told political supporters in Karachi this week that he would stand for re-election by the national and provincial assemblies as early as Sept. 15. But the public mood has soured on the general since he tried to dismiss the chief justice five months ago. That move set off nationwide protests and was later overturned by the Supreme Court.

Opposition parties now seem poised to use the court to bring constitutional challenges against Musharraf's continued rule, particularly his holding dual positions as president and army chief of staff.

Amid such political uncertainty, some of Musharraf's supporters had urged him to take greater control in the form of extraordinary powers. Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, the leader of the ruling party, the Pakistani Muslim League, which backs Musharraf, had floated the possibility often in the past year as a way to postpone parliamentary elections and retain the current government, opposition politicians said.

On Wednesday, Hussain was reported to have announced that a decree was coming while he was addressing the women's chapter of his party at a dinner. But on Thursday he dismissed the report as irresponsible and said there was "no possibility of an emergency."

On Wednesday Musharraf canceled a long-planned trip to Kabul to co-chair a three-day assembly of tribal elders and political leaders with Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai. The news fueled speculation that an emergency decree was imminent.

Musharraf held a high-level meeting with his close military and political aides Thursday morning. Later in the day, Information Minister Muhammad Ali Durrani issued a categorical denial that an emergency was being imposed.

"There were so many people recommending the imposition of emergency," Durrani told local TV channel Dawn News, "but the prescience of the president was that he decided not to impose emergency in Pakistan." He also said the general hadn't signed any document to declare a state of emergency.

"The president is very clear that steps like emergency can hinder the democratic process and should, therefore, be avoided," Durrani added.

The U.S. diplomatic pressure on Musharraf appears to have been timely. "It seems that the preparation was complete for imposition of emergency, but fearing a strong public backlash, the government was forced to backtrack," said Qamar Zaman Kaira, a member of Parliament from the opposition Pakistan Peoples Party. "Probably they were trying to check the pulse of the public."

NDTV L Pakistan's political situation in a flux

Pakistan's political situation in a flux

Munizae Jehangir | August 12, 2007

(Lahore) -- This week Pakistan came dangerously close to emergency but a phone call from close ally the US changed all that. However, it has to be seen whether President Musharraf has changed his mind only for the time being.

Given the precarious political situation and trouble on the Pakistan-Afghan border, emergency now seems to be one of the few choices confronting a man who seems to be desperate to hang on to power.

Much has been said about how a 17-minute phone call between Condoleezza Rice and President Musharraf led to a categorical denial of these reports by Musharraf's cabinet. But what has emerged after the overnight drama are divisions within.

''Ok if that call was helpful in the process, I think the US should be appreciated in that because it was a sensible decision,'' said Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed, Secretary, General PML (Q).

''But let me tell you, before that there were voices raised within our own PML (Q) myself included, which vociferously opposed any such move. It would destabilize the country which has just recovered from the 133 day old judicial crises so it will galvanize the opposition and it would destabilize the political process,'' he added.

Pervez Musharraf is constitutionally bound to end his innings as president and Chief of Army Staff in the next three months. But from all accounts the General is in no mood to surrender.

Rising radicalism

It's not the first time, there has been talk of an emergency before, after all it's allowed by the constitution. Analysts close to the establishment feel it's a sign that Musharraf already weakened by the lawyers' movement and rising radicalism might be finally cracking under pressure.

''My own view is that the army would be sensitive to the criticism and they would therefore move in a way they can undermine the attacks on them,'' said Dr Shirin Mazari, Director General, Institute of Strategic Studies.

''They can restore the public confidence and so on and where criticism is reduced and one way of doing it of course is with the holding of fair and free elections,'' she added.

But the question is whether the military president will abide by the constitutional deadline or will he challenge it and take on a judiciary he's already drawn battle lines with?

''There is no guarantee that General Musharraf will do that. So far the signs have not been encouraging,'' said Ali Dayan Hassan, Political Analyst.

''The recent incident of speculation surrounding the imposition of state of emergency and the government backtracking on this decision shows a level of disarray and confusion that is prevalent in the corridors of power in Pakistan today,'' he added.

Weekend reports now suggest that a ''confidential'' deal between the president and former PM Benazir Bhutto is close to the finish. A deal that would help him retain power and clear her of corruption charges so she can return to Pakistan without fear of legal action.

Few people know exactly what happens in the corridors of power in Islamabad. But one thing is certain, the lawyer's movement and the increasing domestic political pressures have tilted the power balance.

Now it has become difficult for any Pakistani leader to ignore the mood on the streets and to take unpopular decisions.

DNA India : In PoK, Jaish chief threatens US, UK

In PoK, Jaish chief threatens US, UK

by Josy Joseph | October 3, 2006

NEW DELHI: Despite recent Pakistani overtures on controlling terrorism, Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Maulana Masood Azhar has been heard making an unprecedented vitriolic attack on the US, praising Osama bin Laden and Taliban in a speech that is becoming popular in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. Azhar was among the three terrorists released in Kandahar during the hijack of an Indian Airlines plane in 1999.

Indian agencies intercepted the speech across the border, where the Jaish chief is believed to have delivered it in the last week of August, just a few days after his relative and Jaish member, Rashid Rauf, was picked up for masterminding the failed London plot to blow up several trans-Atlantic planes.

Indian investigators believe that Jaish, which Azhar founded after release from Indian custody, is behind major terrorist attacks on India. They also believe Jaish has a role in the recent Mumbai serial blasts.

When the London plane plot investigation was underway, Azhar’s father and supporters had maintained that their fight is focused purely on Kashmir, and they were not involved in the global jehad against the US and its allies. Sources say this was an important reason why the US and British governments went soft on Azhar in their investigations into the London plot.

But his latest speech, which is now available in cassettes in POK, calls on Muslims to keep alive the spirit of jihad, which the US, UK and others cannot crush. During the speech, the audience is heard raising slogans favouring “Al Jihad”. Indian officials say the name probably refers to a new conglomeration of Pakistan, Arab and other foreign mujahideen along the Pak-Afghan border.

The speech contains laudatory references to the Taliban, Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden. In the transcripts of the speech accessed by DNA, Azhar says even if Bin Laden were to be ‘martyred’ others would step in to fill his shoes in the jehad.

Azhar’s speech contains derogatory remarks about Bush, Condoleeza Rice and “the kafirs who have unleashed atrocities against the Muslims.” He claims that the US and its allies are being forced to leave Iraq because of the resistance put up by the mujahideen.

DNA India : In PoK, Jaish chief threatens US, UK

In PoK, Jaish chief threatens US, UK

by Josy Joseph | October 3, 2006

NEW DELHI: Despite recent Pakistani overtures on controlling terrorism, Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Maulana Masood Azhar has been heard making an unprecedented vitriolic attack on the US, praising Osama bin Laden and Taliban in a speech that is becoming popular in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. Azhar was among the three terrorists released in Kandahar during the hijack of an Indian Airlines plane in 1999.

Indian agencies intercepted the speech across the border, where the Jaish chief is believed to have delivered it in the last week of August, just a few days after his relative and Jaish member, Rashid Rauf, was picked up for masterminding the failed London plot to blow up several trans-Atlantic planes.

Indian investigators believe that Jaish, which Azhar founded after release from Indian custody, is behind major terrorist attacks on India. They also believe Jaish has a role in the recent Mumbai serial blasts.

When the London plane plot investigation was underway, Azhar’s father and supporters had maintained that their fight is focused purely on Kashmir, and they were not involved in the global jehad against the US and its allies. Sources say this was an important reason why the US and British governments went soft on Azhar in their investigations into the London plot.

But his latest speech, which is now available in cassettes in POK, calls on Muslims to keep alive the spirit of jihad, which the US, UK and others cannot crush. During the speech, the audience is heard raising slogans favouring “Al Jihad”. Indian officials say the name probably refers to a new conglomeration of Pakistan, Arab and other foreign mujahideen along the Pak-Afghan border.

The speech contains laudatory references to the Taliban, Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden. In the transcripts of the speech accessed by DNA, Azhar says even if Bin Laden were to be ‘martyred’ others would step in to fill his shoes in the jehad.

Azhar’s speech contains derogatory remarks about Bush, Condoleeza Rice and “the kafirs who have unleashed atrocities against the Muslims.” He claims that the US and its allies are being forced to leave Iraq because of the resistance put up by the mujahideen.

Nafeez Ahmed : Ties With Terror: The Continuity of Western-Al-Qaeda Relations in the Post-Cold War Period

Ties With Terror: The Continuity of Western-Al-Qaeda Relations in the Post-Cold War Period

Nafeez Ahmed | September 17, 2006

Actual Document
http://www.house.gov/mckinney/20050722transcript.pdf

An accurate understanding of the history of US relations with the Afghan mujahideen who went on to join al-Qaeda’s international terrorist network is crucial to understanding the anatomy of international terrorism today.

I will attempt here to condense this history in order to capture some of its most striking and significant features. In doing so, I hope to demonstrate as fact a hypothesis that flies entirely in the face of the official narrative – that US relations with the mujahideen did not end with the Cold War, but on the contrary have continued to this day in the post-Cold War era; and that this subtle, hidden relationship contributes directly to the systematic undermining of national security, through the cultivation of the sources of international terrorism. Most importantly, I will show that this conclusion is based on reliable, credible sources from the public record. And further, I must emphasize, I will not delve into any form of theoretical speculation, but will concentrate solely on alerting you to verifiable information that can be subject to further investigation.

I will divide this presentation into the following sections:

1. The Formation of al-Qaeda
2. The Utility of al-Qaeda Beyond Afghanistan
3. Al-Qaeda in the Balkans
4. Al-Qaeda in North Africa
5. Al-Qaeda in the Asia-Pacific
6. Al-Qaeda in the Caucasus
7. Conclusion

In the interests of being both as concise and comprehensive as possible, I will cite a very limited amount of data for each section as necessary to articulate the main substance of my research. For further in-depth understanding of the issues raised here, I recommend referring to my book, The War on Truth.

1. The Formation of al-Qaeda
As early as June 1979, and perhaps earlier, the United States had already commenced a series of covert operations in Afghanistan designed to exploit the potential for social conflict. According to Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Adviser under the Carter Administration, US involvement had begun long before the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on December 27, 1979. (1) Brzezinski’s revelations have been corroborated by former CIA Director Robert Gates in his memoirs From the Shadows, where he writes that US intelligence began sponsoring an Afghan rebellion in Afghanistan six months before Soviet intervention. (2)

According to Jane's Defense Weekly, the ISI operatives in contact with al-Qaeda had received assistance from “American Green Beret commandos and Navy SEALS in various US training establishments.” Over 10,000 mujahideen were “trained in guerilla warfare and armed with sophisticated weapons.” By 1988, Jane's reports that “with US knowledge, Bin Laden created Al Qaeda (The Base): a conglomerate of quasi-independent Islamic terrorist cells in countries spread across at least 26 countries.” But in the meantime, “Washington turned a blind eye to Al-Qaeda.” (3)

2. The Utility of al-Qaeda Beyond Afghanistan
After the departure of Soviet troops from Afghanistan and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, the anti-Soviet Afghan factions began competing for power. Although in 1991 the US and the USSR formally agreed to jointly cease aiding any faction in Afghanistan, the US Department of State had remained anxious about who might emerge as the winner of this competition. According to Labeviere, European intelligence sources reveal that the CIA and the Saudis – intent on securing a regime commensurate with their joint regional interests – agreed that they did not want to give up “the assets of such a profitable collaboration,” referring to the Cold War Afghan-US alliance controlled significantly by Osama bin Laden. Accordingly, in 1991, the CIA, Saudi intelligence, and bin Laden held a series of meetings. Although exactly what was agreed upon remains secret, Labeviere reports that the CIA remained determined to maintain its influence in Afghanistan, “the vital route to Central Asia where the great oil companies were preparing the energy eldorado for the coming millenium.” The Saudis were also intent on preserving the bin Laden-Pakistan alliance “at all costs,” which was agreeable for the US in order to ensure a regional stalwart against influence from Shi’ite Iran. (4)

Labeviere’s findings are corroborated by other credible sources. After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, Osama bin Laden “returned for a short period to Saudi Arabia to tend to the family construction business at its Jeddah head office.” (5) Even after 1991 when Saudi security held on to bin Laden’s passport purportedly “to prevent or at least discourage his contact with extremists he had worked with… during the Afghan jihad,” he had considerable influence in Saudi circles: “After Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait he lobbied the Saudi royal family to organize civil defense in the kingdom and to raise a force from among the Afghan war veterans to fight Iraq.” (6)

The Saudi regime turned down his offer, instead accepting the influx of 300,000 US soldiers. According to Gerald Posner – a leading investigative journalist who contributes regularly to NBC’s TODAY Show – this was the key point at which bin Laden decided to become an enemy of the Saudi regime. But in April 1991, according to a classified US intelligence report, then head of Saudi intelligence services Prince Turki al-Faisal struck a secret deal with bin Laden – despite his being under house arrest for his opposition to the presence of US soldiers. Under the deal, although the regime would publicly disown him, bin Laden was permitted to leave Saudi Arabia with his funding and supporters. Moreover, the regime would continue to fund his activities on condition that he does not target the Saudi kingdom itself. (7) Posner’s account of a secret arrangement between bin Laden and Saudi intelligence known to US intelligence confirms the general tenor of Labeviere’s findings. Citing European intelligence sources, however, Labeviere, goes further in suggesting that the CIA was integrally involved in the 1991 Saudi-bin Laden agreement. Even by Posner’s account though, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion of at least tacit US connivance in the agreement since US intelligence was clearly aware of the deal but did nothing about it.

According to a former CIA analyst cited by Labeviere in his Dollars for Terror: “The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them against our adversaries worked marvelously well in Afghanistan against the Red Army. The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia.” (8)

In other words, the CIA had always seen vast potential to use the terrorist network established by bin Laden during the Cold War in an international framework in the post-Cold War era against the Russian and Chinese power, i.e. in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and Central Asia.

3. Al-Qaeda in the Balkans
Successive US administrations have used al-Qaeda to pursue strategic interests in the Balkans. A further examination of this issue, however, reveals that the US-al-Qaeda alliance in the Balkans has been instrumental in facilitating successive terrorist attacks against US targets. Nevertheless, the alliance continues to this day. As the London Spectator noted:

America’s role in backing the Mujahideen a second time in the early and mid-1990’s is seldom mentioned… From 1992 to 1995, the Pentagon assisted with the movement of thousands of Mujahideen and other Islamic elements from Central Asia into Europe, to fight alongside Bosnian Muslims against the Serbs… If Western intervention in Afghanistan created the Mujahideen, Western intervention in Bosnia appears to have globalised it. (9)

This secret US-backed conduit between Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the Bosnian Muslims was also used to fly in al-Qaeda mujahideen forces connected to Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan, Algeria, Chechnya, Yemen, Sudan, and elsewhere. The US played a very direct role in facilitating this influx. According to one authoritative report from London’s International Media Corporation affiliated to Washington DC’s International Strategic Studies Association: “The Mujahideen landing at Ploce are reported to have been mujahideen accompanied by US Special Forces equipped with high-tech communications equipment.” Intelligence sources indicated that “the mission of the US troops was to establish a command, control, communications and intelligence network to coordinate and support Bosnian Muslim offensives – in concert with Mujahideen and Bosnian Croat forces.” The US military, in other words, was actively coordinating on the ground with several thousand members of bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network in Bosnia. (10)

According to Yossef Bodansky, Director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, most reliable intelligence estimates indicate that the number of al-Qaeda affiliated mujahideen operating in Bosnia at this time was more than 10,000. (11)

The policy of connecting with al-Qaeda in the Balkans continued in relation to the Kosovo conflict. As early as 1998, the US State Department listed the KLA as a terrorist organization connected to al-Qaeda. (12) Other US intelligence reports prove that not only is the KLA funded from afar by al-Qaeda, numerous KLA fighters have trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and Albania, and numerous al-Qaeda mujihadeen have joined the ranks of the KLA. The reports substantiate a “link” between bin Laden and the KLA, “including a common staging area in Tropoje, Albania, a center for Islamic terrorists.” KLA-sponsored border crossings into Kosovo from Albania of hundreds of foreign fighters include “veterans of the militant group Islamic Jihad from Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan,” carrying forged Macedonian Albanian passports. (13)

As Ralf Mutschke, Assistant Director of Interpol’s Criminal Intelligence Directorate, testified before Congress in December 2000: “In 1998, the US State Department listed the KLA as a terrorist organization, indicating that it was financing its operations with money from the international heroin trade and loans from Islamic countries and individuals, among them allegedly Osama bin Laden.” Mutschke also confirmed that Osama bin Laden sent one of his top military commanders to Kosovo to lead “an elite KLA unit during the Kosovo conflict.” (14)

While much of the KLA’s funds came from Osama bin Laden as reported by Mutschke, and while KLA fighters were trained in al-Qaeda camps, US and British military intelligence personnel actively mingled with the al-Qaeda backed KLA, providing them further extensive training and assistance. The Sunday Times reported that since March 1999: “American intelligence agents have admitted they helped to train the Kosovo Liberation Army before NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia.” CIA officers were “developing ties with the KLA and giving American military training manuals and field advice on fighting the Yugoslav army and Serbian police” under the cover of ceasefire monitors. The US military gave KLA commanders – including no doubt Osama’s own military commander in Kosovo – “satellite telephones and global positioning systems.” KLA commanders also “had the mobile phone number of General Wesley Clark, the NATO commander.” (15) The Herald also disclosed that:

Both the UK and the US set up clandestine camps inside Albania to teach the KLA effective guerilla tactics… Despite government denials on both sides of the Atlantic, SAS (British Special Forces) and US Delta Force instructors were used to train Kosovar Volunteers in weapons handling, demolition and ambush techniques, and basic organization. (16)

The same has been noted by Yossef Bodansky, director of the Congressional anti-terrorism task force, who also notes that the KLA and its Albanian mafia allies constitute a vital arm of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network within the US, providing broad financial and logistical support for operations. “The role of the Albanian Mafia, which is tightly connected to the KLA, is laundering money, providing technology, safe houses, and other support to terrorists within this country…

This isn’t to say that the Albanians themselves would carry out the actual terrorist operations. But there are undoubtedly “sleeper” agents within the Albanian networks, and they can rely upon those networks to provide them with support. In any case, a serious investigation of the Albanian mob isn’t going to happen, because they’re “our boys” – they’re protected.

The KLA/Albanian mafia network camouflages the “blonde-haired, blue-eyed Bosnians and Albanians who are bin Laden operatives. After the last attack we’re all looking for Arab suspects, but it’s not going to be that easy.” (17)

End Part I

4. Al-Qaeda in North Africa
Algeria
The Armed Islamic Group (GIA) is an al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group in Algeria. The group was first “created in the house of the Mujahirin in 1989 in Peshawar.” From here, on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, “the first hard core of ‘Algerian Afghans’ launched their terrorist campaign against Algeria.” The al-Qaeda veterans of the Afghan war against the Soviets, “trained in the Afghan militias, returned to Algeria with the help of international networks, via Bosnia, Albania, Italy, France, Morocco or Sudan.” (18) According to Jane’s Defense Weekly, in the late 1980s between 400 and 1,000 Algerians who trained as bin Laden’s mujahideen in Afghanistan joined various armed groups in Algeria. By January 1993, most of these groups united under the banner of the GIA. (19) The latter forged close links to al-Qaeda “in the early 1990s,” reports the Office of the Attorney-General in Australia, when the UK-based Abu Qatada “was designated by bin Laden as the spiritual adviser for Algerian groups including the GIA.” (20) Afghan veteran Khamareddine Kherbane was close to both the GIA and al-Qaeda leaderships. Both the GIA and its sub-faction the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) “developed ties with Al-Qaeda early on.” From 1997 to 1998, al-Qaeda achieved further ‘large-scale penetration of Algerian groups.” (21) So far the total civilian death toll from the GIA massacres in Algeria amounts to nearly 150,000. (22) The GIA is also implicated in terrorist atrocities outside Algeria and has been “linked to terrorist attacks in Europe.” (23) According to Stephen Cook, an expert on Algeria at the Brookings Institute, “there are Algerian (terrorist) cells spread all over Europe, Canada, and the United States.” (24)

In a detailed report, British journalists John Sweeney and Leonard Doyle interviewed ”’Yussuf-Josheph’ a career secret agent in Algeria’s securite militaire until he defected to Britain.” Algeria’s secret police state, they conclude, “is indicted by one of its own members for crimes against humanity.” “Joseph,” who spent 14 years as an Algerian secret agent, told Sweeney and Doyle that: “The bombs that outraged Paris in 1995 – blamed on Muslim fanatics – were the handiwork of the Algerian secret service. They were part of a propaganda war aimed at galvanizing French public opinion against the Islamists.”

The massacres in Algeria, blamed on the GIA, are in fact “the work of secret police and army death squads… The killing of many foreigners was organized by the secret police, not Islamic extremists.” GIA terror is, in fact, “orchestrated by two shadowy figures… Mohammed Mediane, codename ‘Tewfik,’ and General Smain Lamari, the most feared names in Algeria. They are, respectively, head of the Algerian secret service, the DRS, and its sub-department, the counter intelligence agency, the DCE.” According to Joseph:

The GIA is a pure product of Smain’s secret service. I used to read all the secret telexes. I know that the GIA has been infiltrated and manipulated by the government. The GIA has been completely turned by the government… In 1992 Smain created a special group, L’Escadron de la Mort (the Squadron of Death). One of is main missions to begin with was to kill officers, colonels. the death squads organize the massacres. If anyone inside the killing machine hesitates to torture or kill, they are automatically killed… The FIS aren’t doing the massacres.

As for the Paris bombings, Joseph reveals that Algerian secret agents sent by Smain organized “at least” two of the bombs in Paris in summer 1995. “The operation was run by colonel Soumaes Mahmoud, alias Habib, head of the secret service at the Algerian embassy in Paris.” (25)

Indeed, Western intelligence agencies know far more about the crisis than they have publicly conceded. In a remarkable report in The Guardian, Richard Norton-Taylor recorded that: “An unprecedented three-year terrorist case dramatically collapsed yesterday when an MI5 informant refused to appear in court after evidence which senior ministers tried to suppress revealed that Algerian government forces were involved in atrocities against innocent civilians.” The report refers to “secret documents showing British intelligence believed the Algerian government was involved in atrocities, contradicting the view the government was claiming in public.” Attempting to suppress the evidence, three British Cabinet ministers – Jack Straw, Geoffrey Hoon and Robin Cook – “signed public interest immunity certificates.” (26)

The secret Foreign office documents “were produced on the orders of the trial judge” 18 months late. But when they finally arrived, “they were in marked contrast to the government’s publicly-stated view, expressed by the Foreign Office in 1998, that there was ‘no credible, substantive evidence to confirm’ allegations implicating Algerian government forces in atrocities.” The documents, read out in open court, revealed that according to Whitehalls’ Joint Intelligence Committee: “responsibility for violence cannot be conclusively laid in one place… There is no firm evidence to rule out government manipulation or involvement in terrorist violence.” According to one document: “Sources had privately said some of the killings of civilians were the responsibility of the Algerian security services.” Another document from January 1997 cites a British source as follows: “military security (in Algeria) would have… no scruples about killing innocent people… My instincts remain that parts of the Algerian government would stop of nothing.” Multiple documents, according to The Guardian, “referred to the ‘manipulation’ of the GIA being used as a cover to carry out their own operations.” A US intelligence report similarly confirmed that “there was no evidence to link 1995 Paris bombings to Algerian militants.” On the contrary, the US report indicates “that one killing at the time could have been ordered by the Algerian government.” Crucially, a Whitehall document cites the danger to British government interests if this information becomes public – “if revealed,” it warns, it “could open us to detailed questioning by NGOs and journalists.” (27)

The Algerian junta-GIA-al-Qaeda terror nexus has also received heavy Western financial assistance. In the late 1990s, for instance, the European Union relased 60 million Euros – some $65 million – to the Algerian generals. The total loan package was worth 125 million Euros. (28) Algeria has the fifth largest reserves of natural gas in the world, and is the second largest gas exporter, with 130 trillion proven natural gas reserves. It ranks fourteenth for oil reserves, with official estimates at 9.2 billion barrels. Approximately 90 per cent of Algeria’s crude oil exports go to Western Europe, including Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain. Algeria’s major trading partners are Italy, France, the United States, Germany, and Spain. (29)

ABC News correspondent John Cooley, a specialist in north Africa and the Middle East, further reports the presence of “500 to 600 American engineers and technicians living and working behind barbed wire” in a collection of “protected gas and oil enclaves in Algeria.” This little-publicized but heavy US commercial involvement in Algeria “began in earnest… in 1991.” At the end of that year, the regime “opened the energy sector on liberal terms to foreign investors and operators…

About 30 oil and gas fields have been attributed to foreign companies since then. The main American firms involved, Arco, Exxon, Oryx, Anadarko, Mobil and Sun Oil received exploration permits, often in association with European firms like Agip, BP, Cespa or the Korean group Daewoo… The majority of oil and gas exports go to nearby Europe… the main clients in the late 1990s (being) France, Belgium, Spain and Italy. (30)

In June 2000, US-based international banks and investment houses such as Chase Manhattan visited Algiers, along with them Under-Secretary of the Treasury Stuart Eizenstat. US private investments in Algeria were estimated at between $3.5 and $4 billion – almost entirely in oil and gas exploration and production. (31)

Libya
Anas al-Liby is on the FBI’s list of “Most Wanted Terrorists” “in connection with the August 7, 1998, bombings of the United States Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya… The Rewards For Justice Program, United States Department of State, is offering a reward of up to $25 million for information leading directly to the apprehension or conviction of Anas al-Liby” (32)

David Shayler worked for the international terrorism desk of MI5 for 6 years before resigning in 1997. In 1995, he obtained classified MI6 documents detailing a covert British intelligence plan to assassinate Libyan Head of State, Col. Mu’ammar Gaddafi. Most surprisingly, Shayler disclosed that as part of the plot, MI6 paid over 100,000 Pounds to the al-Qaeda network in Libya to conduct the assassination. The operation, however, failed. The al-Qaeda operatives working on the MI6 payroll placed a bomb under the wrong car, killing six innocent Libyan civilians. (33) In a press release on the subject, Shayler observed:

We need a statement from the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary clarifying the facts of this matter. In particular, we need to know how around 100,000 Pounds of taxpayers’ money was used to fund the sort of Islamic Extremists who have connections to Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network. Did ministers give MI6 permission for this? by the time MI6 paid the group in late 1995 or early 1996, US investigators had already established that Bin Laden was implicated in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Centre. Given the timing and the close connections between Libyan and Egyptian Islamic Extremists, it may even have been used to fund the murder of British citizens in Luxor, Egypt in 1996. (34)

In a further comment piece for The Observer, Shayler elaborated on these concerns. The “real criminals,” he argued, “are the British Government and the intelligence services. The Government has a duty to uphold the law. It cannot simply be ignored because crimes are carried out by friends of the Government.” Noting his November 1999 dossier of evidence on the plot sent to Home Secretary Jack Straw, Shayler pointed out: “Although the assassination failed when attempted in 1996, innocent Libyan civilians were killed.” In the face of such compelling evidence, “these very senior Ministers should, of course, have called in the police immediately… The Government’s failure to ensure that two MI6 officers are brought to justice for their part in planning a murder is what I would expect of despots and dictators.” (35)

The British government’s response was at first to completely deny the story. Then Foreign Secretary Robin Cook described Shayler’s allegations as “pure fantasy” (36) The government then changed tactic, accusing Shayler of breaching the 1989 Official Secrets Act – his revelations, officials claimed, were a threat to British national security – and subsequently pursued legal action against him to prevent further publication of his information. Reporting on the upcoming trial in October 2002, the Evening Standard observed that:

Michael Tugendhat, QC, appearing for various national newspapers, is expected to argue that the Government has provided no evidence that national security will be threatened by the trial and will underline the importance of open justice… Shayler will be defending himself during the trial. He is expected to claim that British secret service agents paid up to 100,000 Pounds to al Qaeda terrorists for an assassination attempt on Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafy in 1996. He is seeking permission to plead a defense of “necessity” – that he acted for the greater good by revealing wrongdoing by the security service. (37)

In further startling revelations supporting Shayler’s allegations, French intelligence experts journalist Guillaume Dasquie and adviser to President Jaques Chirac, Jean-Charles Brisard, documented that among the members of the Libyan al-Qaeda cell hired by MI6 to assassinate Col. Gaddafi was one of Osama bin Laden’s most trusted lieutenants Anas al-Liby, who as already noted was on the FBI’s “Most Wanted Terrorist” list for his involvement in the 1998 terrorist attacks on US embassies in Africa. London Observer home affairs editor Martin Bright reported in detail on Dasquie’s and Brisard’s devastating findings:

British intelligence paid large sums of money to an al-Qaeda cell in Libya in a doomed attempt to assassinate Colonel Gaddafi in 1996 and thwarted early attempts to bring Osama bin Laden to justice. The latest claims of MI6 involvement with Libya’s fearsome Islamic Fighting Group, which is connected to one of bin Laden’s trusted lieutenants, will be embarrassing to the Government…

The Libyan al-Qaeda cell included Anas al-Liby, who remains on the US government’s most wanted list with a reward of $25 million for his capture. He is wanted for his involvement in the African embassy bombings. Al-Liby was with bin Laden in Sudan before the al-Qaeda leader returned to Afghanistan in 1996. Astonishingly, despite suspicions that he was a high-level al-Qaeda operative, al-Liby was given political asylum in Britain and lived in Manchester until May of 2000.

A police raid at al-Liby’s Manchester accommodation discovered a 180-page al-Qaeda “manual for jihad” containing instructions for terrorist attacks. According to Shayler, the plot came to his attention in formal meetings with this MI6 colleagues. The Observer’s Bright revealed that the said officers involved in the plot were “Richard Bartlett, who has previously only been known under the codename PT16 and had overall responsibility for the operation; and David Watson, codename PT16B.” The latter was the MI6 handler for Libyan al-Qaeda operative “Tunworth,” who was providing information from within the cell. Eager to crush further damaging publicity on these issues emerging from the Shayler trial, Home Secretary David Blunkett and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw “signed Public Interest Immunity certificates to protect national security. Reporters were not able to report allegations about the Gaddafi plot during the course of the trial.” (38)

End Part II

5. Al-Qaeda in the Asia-Pacific
The roots of the Abu-Sayyaf, the most prominent terrorist group in the Philippines, lead us straight back to al-Qaeda. In the mid-1980s, Professor Abdul Rasul Sayyaf nominally headed an alliance of extremist armed groups financed by Osama bin Laden, among others, and influenced by Saudi Wahabism. He established a notorious but secretive “university” – Dawal al-Jihad – in the north of Peshawar, which functioned as a major terrorist training camp. Roughly 20,000 mujahideen from 40 countries – including the Philippines – were trained there by Pakistani military intelligence (ISI) with extensive CIA support in the form of expertise, weapons, and funds. Many of these fighters were in search of “other wars to fight,” including in the Phlippines, the Middle East, north Africa, and New York. It was not long before “a nucleus of Abu Sayyaf fighters had moved to the Philippines and were operating there under that name.” The Philippines division of the Abu Sayyaf group conducted “kidnappings and bomb attacks on Christian and government targets” in the south. Among those coordinating operations in the Philippines with Afghan veterans of Abu Sayyaf was al-Qaeda operative Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing plot and an author of Project Bojinka. The first half of Bojinka was implemented by Abu Sayyaf on December 11, 1994, in the bombing of Philippines Airlines flight between Manila and Tokyo, and the targeting of 11 other American airliners over the Pacific on the same day. The latter plot failed due to the FAA’s tighter security measures, but the plot was traced back by Philippine police and the FBI to Abu Sayyaf/al Qaeda operative Yousef. The other half of Bojinka was eventually implemented on 9/11, involving a scheme to fly civilian planes into key US buildings. (39) Another member of the Abu Sayyaf terror cell in Manila was 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a key al-Qaeda leader who participated in Yosef’s Bojinka Operation. He lived only a few floors from Yousef. (40)

According to Washington DC’s Center for Defense information: “Abu Sayyaf-al Qaeda links are strong. Many of its fighters claim to have trained in Afghanistan, including as many as 20 who were in the graduating class of a Mazar-e Sharif camp in 2001… Zamboanga City, a Mindanao Islamic hotbed, was frequented by members of al Qaeda. Janajalani forged a close relationship with Saudi businessman Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law, who set up a network of Islamic charities used to fund Abu Sayyaf fighters. Khalifa’s “main organization, the International Islamic Relief Organization, has an office in Zamboanga, as does a bin Laden foundation. Abu Sayyaf received training and momey funneled through Khalifa’s network.” (41)

Clandestine official connivance in the activities of al-Qaeda’s Abu Sayyaf group has also been documented by a leading member of the Philippine government, Senator Aquilino Q. Pimentel Jr. Former law professor Pimentel has been involved in Philippine politics for over 30 years, has been Senator of the Republic since 1998, and is a respected legislator. In a July 2000 speech before the Philippine Senate, he disclosed some startling evidence of joint US-Philippine government involvement in the emergence and activities of Abu Sayyaf:

Because the Abu Sayyaf was operating on the fringe of the Muslim insurgency in the country, its participants were enticed by certain officers of the armed forces to serve as informers on the activities of the Muslim insurgents in Southern Mindanao… at least, three military and police officers (were ) coddlers or handlers of the Abu Sayyaf.

These officers hold very high posts. “One was the commanding general of the Muslims at that time, Brig. Gen. Guillermo Ruiz; the other two were police officers, Chief Supt. Leandro mendoza and Chief Supt. Rodolfo mendoza,” continued Senator Pimentel:

My information is that the Abu Sayyaf partisans were given military intelligence services IDs, safe-houses, safe-conduct passes, firearms, cell phones and various sorts of financial support.

Edwin Angeles, a leader of the Abu Sayyaf in Basilan, told me after the elections of 1995, that it was the Abu Sayyaf that was responsible for the raid and the razing down of the town of Ipil, Zamboanga del Sur in early 1995. In that raid, Angeles told me that the Abu Sayyaf raiders were reportedly provided with military vehicles, mortars and assorted firearms. All this time, Angeles was “handled” – by police officers, now chief superintendant, Rodolfo mendoza.

According to Senator Pimentel, these Philippine military and police “handlers” funneled CIA assistance in the form of both weapons and finances to Abu Sayyaf: ”... these officers did not only ‘handle’ the Abu Sayyaf, they coddled them, trained them, protected them, passed on military equipment and funds from the CIA and its support network, and probably even from the intelligence funds of the armed forces to them.

... The evidence is now overwhelming – unassailable in my mind – that the CIA was the procreator of the Abu Sayyaf and that some of our own military officers acted as midwives at its delivery and who have nursed the hooligans under illegal, if not, at least, questionable circumstances that enabled the latter to pursue their criminal activities to this day. (42)

The US military works extremely closely with the Philippine military, providing weapons, advice, and extensive training. For instance, nearly 1,000 US combat troops were sent to the southern islands of Mindanao, Basilan, and Jolo in 2002 to join with thousands of Philippine troops supposedly hunting Abu Sayyaf. So closely are US military officers and and soldiers liasing with their Philippine counterparts that Operation Balikatan (“shoulder to shoulder”) commands US troops to accompany Philippine military patrols with permission to fight in self-defense. According to US Major Cynthia Teramae: “We are here as counterparts. We will be working alongside each other. We have two co-directors and two co-generals. It shows the kind of relationship that we have.” (43)

It is not a surprise then that the key US objective in the Philippines is not the elimination of terror. One the contrary US-backed Philippine state-sponsored terror appears to have provided a crucial justification within the “War on Terror” narrative for the expansion of US military power in the region and the consolidation of US economic control. “The important thing is to have a safe and stable security environment for domestic and foreign investors, including US entrepreneurs,” remarked US Assistant Secretary of Commerce, William Lash, in a January 2002 visit to Manila. indeed, according to former Philippine President Fidel Ramos, the US aim in the Philippines “is to maintain a viable presence in Asia-Pacific as a means to secure their own interests and their huge investments.” (44)

6. Al-Qaeda in the Caucasus
The Chechen resistance movement to Russian occupation has for some time been increasingly penetrated and manipulated by al-Qaeda. According to R.P. Eddy, former Director of Counterterrorism at the White House National Security Council, at the end of the Afghan war in 1989, “a multinational force of mujahidin slithered into Chechnya” led by “Omar ibn al Khattab, who had trained in bin Laden’s camps. Bin Laden and Khattab enjoyed an unusually close theological affinity, and exchanged personnel and resources.” Khattab was appointed operations chief “under the overall commander, Shamil Basayev. Like Khattab, Basayev had trained in al Qaeda camps and was personally close to bin Laden.” (45) Basayev himself has admitted to reporters that he ‘visited training camps in Afghanistan three times in the early 1990s to study the tactics of guerrila warfare. In Chechnya, he and Khattab built their own training camp in the village of Serzen-Yurt, complete with advanced communications equipment.” (46)

Since the mid-1990s, bin Laden has funded Chechen guerilla leaders Shamil Basayev and omar Ibn Khattab, sidelining the moderate Chechen majority, “to the tune of several millions of dollars per month” according to the asia Times:

Khattab, after the outbreak of the second Chechen war in 1999, aligned ever more closely with the most radical Chechen elements around Shamil Basayev and Arbi Barayev, sidelining more moderate chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov. Not only did significant funds and guns flow from al-Qaeda to Khattab; chechens also received training in Afghanistan and an Islamic “learning center” preaching strict Wahhabism (and at one point counting 1,000 recruits to the Islamic jihad cause) was established in Chechnya. (47)

Indeed, Russian and US sources confirm that by 1999, al-Qaeda mujahideen from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, and Sudan, with heavy financing from bin Laden, were involved in Basayev’s insurrection. According to Bodansky, the mujahideen force consisted of 10,000 fighters trained in al-Qaeda camps. Shortly before Basayev’s invasion of Dagestan, Osama bin laden himself “made a weeklong visit to a training camp in the village of Serzhen-Yurt in Chechnya.” (48)

Russian co-optation of Basayev and the Chechen resistance is longstanding. Patrick Cockburn – visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC – notes for instance that: “In 1992-93 (Basayev) is widely believed to have received assistance from the GRU when he and his brother Shirvani fought in Abkhazia, a breakaway part of Georgia. Russia did not want to act overtly against Georgia but covertly supported a battalion of volunteers led by Mr. Basayev.” (49)

Forbes senior editor and historian – the late Paul Klebnikov – in his book, Godfather of the Kremlin, notes the widely acknowledged fact that “Kremlin oligarch Boris Berezovsky gave the al Qaeda-connected Chechen terrorist leader Shamil Basayev $1 million prior to the 1999 Dagestan incursion that triggered the latest Chechen conflict.” Klebnikov reports that “Berezovsky, together with other members of the Yeltsin inner circle, had long maintained a secret relationship with Chechen extremists…

To the extent Berezovsky represented the interests of the Yeltsin regime in Chechnya, the Kremlin had been undermining the (Chechen) moderates, supporting the extremists financially and politically, and consequently sowing the seeds of conflict… the Berezovsky strategy with the Chechen warlords was a deliberate attempt to fan the flames of war.

According to Boris Kagarlitsky, a political scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences who is also adviser to the Russian Parliament, writing in Novaya Gazeta (January 24, 2000), Shamil Basayev and his brother have long been special agents of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian General Staff. In an article titled “Who blew up Russia” in the February 2000 edition of Versiya, another researcher Pyotr Praynishnikov reported that “Chechnya’s terrorists had been trained by the GRU – by Russia’s SPETSNAZ (special diversionary troops).” The Basayev brothers, Shamil and Shirvani, were “both recruited as agents by the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian General Staff (GRU) in 1991-2.” Indeed, Basayev was initially recruited by the GRU to “organize kidnappings, bombings and airline hijackings in Russia and Abkhazia.” In 1992, Basayev and his men were allowed by Russian guards to travel freely across the borders into Chechnya. (50)

Ironically, the Russians are not the only ones who have co-opted the al-Qaeda guerillas in Chechnya. US Congressional intelligence and security analyst Yossef Bodansky reports that the US government was actively involved in “yet another anti-Russian jihad” in the “Summer of 2000.” The end of the Cold War, it seems, did not mean the end of the US alliance with the mujahideen:

As if reliving the “good ‘ol days” of Afghanistan of the 1980s, Washington is once again seeking to support and empower the most virulent anti-Western Islamist forces. The US crossed the line in mid-December 1999, when US officials participated in a formal meeting in Azerbaijan in which specific programs for the training and equipping of mujahideen from the Caucasus, Central/South Asia and the Arab world were discussed and agreed upon. This meeting led to Washington’s tacit encouragement of both Muslim allies (mainly Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia) and US “private security companies” (of the type which did the Clinton Administration’s dirty job in the Balkans while skirting and violating the international embargo the US formally supported) to assist the Chechens and their Islamist allies to surge in the Spring of 2000 and sustain the ensuing jihad for a long time.

Thus, the al-Qaeda affiliated Chechen guerillas have been jointly manipulated by both Russian and US intelligence services, although it seems that the two powers have varying interests for doing so. While Russia sees the war with Chechnya as an opportunity to militarize Russian foreign policy and forcefully maintain its military occupation of the region to protect strategic and oil pipeline routes, the US sees the ongoing conflict as a way to do the opposite by “depriv(ing) Russia of a viable pipeline route through spiraling violence and terrorism… US-assisted escalation and expansion of the war in Chechnya should deliver the desired debilitation of Russia.” Thus, the US was “fanning the flames of the Islamist jihad in the Caucasus through covert assistance (and) tacit encouragement of allies to actively support the mujahideen.” (51)

End Part III

Conclusion
At every major strategic point in the world, we find that US and Western power is symbiotically melded – through financial, military and intelligence connections – with al-Qaeda; and further that al-Qaeda has in certain places been explicitly used as a military-intelligence asset by Western powers, particularly the United States and United Kingdom. This documentation indicates that international terrorism in the form of al-Qaeda is not merely an enemy to be fought, but rather an unruly asset to be, when possible, controlled and manipulated in the pursuit of quite specific strategic and economic interests. Worse still, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that certain elements of the policy-making establishment are perfectly cognizant that as a direct result of such policies, national security is being fundamentally and continuously undermined with repeatedly fatal consequences. Yet the same brand of policies persists. Without dwelling unnecessarily on the possible theoretical ramifications of this phenomenon, it is sufficient for me to note that these facts fundamentally challenge the entire paradigm of the ‘War on Terror’ as articulated and legitimized by the official narrative.

Notes
1. Warrick, Jo and Stephens, Joe, ‘Before Attack, US Expected Different Hit, Chemical, Germ Agents Focus of Preparation,’ Washington Post, 2 October, 2001.

2. Ibid.

3. PEC Report, ‘Terrorist Plans to Use Planes as Weapons Dates to 1995: WTC bomber Yousef confessed to US agents in 1995’ Public Education Center, Washington DC, http://www.publicedcenter.org/faaterrorist.htm

4. Garcia, Raphael M., ‘Decoding Bojinka,’ Newsbreak Weekly, 15 November 2001, Vol. 1, No. 43. Also see Cooley, John, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, American and International Terrorism, Pluto Press, London, 1999, p. 247.

5. Woodward, Bob and Eggen, Dan, ‘Aug. Memo Focused on Attacks in US’, Washington Post, 18 May 2002, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...-2002May17.html

6. Hudson, Rex A., Report Prepared for the National Intelligence Council, The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism, Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, Washington DC, September 1999, p. 8, http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/pdf-files...f_Terrorism.pdf

7. National Intelligence Council website (viewed July 9 2004), http://www.cia.gov/nic/NIC_home.html

8. National Intelligence Council website, NIC Mission (viewed July 9 2004), http://www.cia.gov/nic/NIC_about.html

9. Shenon, Philip, ‘Traces of Terrorism: The Warnings: FBI Knew for Years About Terror Pilot Training’, New York Times, 18 May 2002.

10. Monterey Herald, 18 July 2002.

11. Stafford, Ned, ‘Newspaper: Echelon Gave Authorites Warning of Attacks,’ Newsbytes, 13 September 2001, http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/170072.html ECHELON is a vast intelligence information collection system capable of monitoring all the electronic communications in the world. It is operated by the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. While no government agency has ever confirmed or denied its existence, an EU committee that investigated ECHELON for more than a year confirmed that the system does exist in early September 2001. The EU committee reported that ECHELON sucks up electronic transmissions “like a vacuum cleaner”, using keyword search techniques to sift through enormous amounts of data. The system covers the whole world’s electronic communications with 120 satellites. For more on ECHELON see Bamford, James, _Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency, Doubleday, 2001.

12. Hill, Joint Inquiry Staff Statement Part I, op. cit. (emphasis added)

13. Neumeister, Larry, ‘Trade Center Bomber’s Threat Foreshadowed September Terrorist Attacks,’ Associated Press, 30 September 2001.

14. Lines, Andy, ‘Pentagon Chiefs Planned for Jet Attack,’ The Mirror, 24 May 2002, http://www.intellnet.org/news/2002/05/24/9488-1.html Also see Ryan, Dennis, ‘Contingency planning Pentagon MASCAL exercise simulates scenarios in preparing for emergencies’, Military District of Washington News Service, 3 November 2000, http://www.mdw.army.mil/news/Contingency_Planning.html

15. Hill, Joint Inquiry Staff Statement Part I, op. cit. “In March 2001, an intelligence source claimed a group of Bin Ladin operatives were planning to conduct an unspecified attack in the United States in April 2001. One of the operatives allegedly resided in the United States;

In April 2001, the Intelligence Community obtained information that unspecified terrorist operatives in California and New York State were planning a terrorist attack in those states for April;

Between May and July, the National Security Agency reported at least 33 communications indicating a possible, imminent terrorist attack… These reports were widely disseminated within the Intelligence Community;

In May 2001, the Intelligence Community obtained information that supporters of Usama Bin Ladin were reportedly planning to infiltrate the United States via Canada in order to carry out a terrorist operation using high explosives. This report mentioned an attack within the United States…

In July 2001, this information was shared with the FBI, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), US Customs Service, and the State Department and was included in a closely held intelligence report for senior government officials in August 2001;

In May 2001, the Department of Defense acquired and shared with other elements of the Intelligence Community information indicating that seven individuals associated with Usama Bin Ladin departed various locations for Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States;

In June 2001, the DCI’s CTC had information that key operatives in Usama Bin Ladin’s organization were disappearing while others were preparing for martyrdom;

In July 2001, the DCI’s CTC was aware of an individual who had recently been in Afghanistan who had reported, ‘Everyone is talking about an impending attack.’ The Intelligence Community was also aware that Bin Ladin had stepped up his propaganda efforts in the preceding months.”

16. Drogin, Bob, ‘US Tells of Covert Afghan Plan Before 9/11,’ Los Angeles Times, 18 May 2002, http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...802strike.story

17. Breitweiser, Kristen, Statement Concerning the Joint 9/11 Inquiry, op. cit.

18. Wright, Lawrence, ‘The Counter-Terrorist,’ New Yorker, 14 January 2002. Under pressure from Congress, the White House has finally officially admitted that the US intelligence community had information that Al-Qaeda was planning an imminent attack through hijacking. However, National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice has gone on record denying that US intelligence had any other specific information, such as that the planes might be used as missiles (BBC Newsnight, 16 May 2002). This denial, however, is patently false, as demonstrated by the reports on the public record discussed here.

19. Washington Post, 17 May 2002.

20. Diamond, John, ‘US had agents inside al-Qaeda,’ USA Today, 4 June 2002, http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack...cia-attacks.htm

21. Ensor, David, et. al., ‘Justice may probe leaked pre 9-11 intercepts,’ CNN, 21 June 2002.

22. Crary, David and Schwartz, David, ‘World Trade Center collapses in terrorist attack,’ Associated Press, 11 September 2001.

23. ‘The Proof They Did Not Reveal: Two key pieces of evidence were missing from the government’s dossier on the US attacks, made public last week. Now full details of the case against Bin Laden can be disclosed’, Sunday Times, 7 October 2001, http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/...tiusausa02012.h...

24. CNN, ‘Blair’s full statement’, 4 October 2001, http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/e...blair.statement

25. Waller, Douglas, ‘Was Hijack “Ringleader” in Bin Laden Orbit?’, Time Magazine, 5 October 2001, http://www.time.com/time/nation/art...,178228,00.html

26. Diamond, John, ‘US had agents inside al-Qaeda’, USA Today, 4 June 2002. http://www.usatoday.com/news/sept11...cia-attacks.htm

27. Turnipseed, Tom, ‘The Fear Factor to Promote War and Trample the Truth,’ Common Dreams News Center, 14 June 2002, http://commondreams.org and http://turnipseed.net

28. Thomas, Evan, Newsweek, 24 September 2001.

29. Hirsh, Michael, ‘We’ve hit the targets,’ Newsweek, 13 Sept. 2001.

30. Crewdson, John, Hijacker Held, Freed Before Sept. 11 Attack,’ Chicago Tribune, 13 December 2001, http://www.chicagotribune.com/searc...0293dec13.story Also see Baltimore Sun, 14 December 2001.

31. MacVicar, Sheila and Faraj, Caroline, ‘September 11 Hijacker Questioned in January 2001,’ CNN, 1 August 2002, http://edition.cnn.com/2002/US/08/0...cker/index.html

32. Ibid.

33. Ibid.

34. CNN, ‘Another hijacker was stopped for traffic violation’, 9 January 2002, http://edition.cnn.com/2002/US/01/0....traffic.stops/

35. MacVicar and Faraj, ‘September 11 Hijacker Question’, op. cit.

36. Staff Statement No. 9, Law Enforcement, Counterterrorism, and Intelligence Collection in the United States Prior to 9/11, National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Washington DC, April 2004, p. 7.

37. Gordon, Greg, ‘FAA security took no action against Moussaoui,’ Corpus Christi Caller Times, 13 January 2002.

38. Staff Statement No. 9, op. cit., p. 9.

39. Ibid. p. 2.

40. Ibid. p. 10.

41. Ibid. p. 10.

42. Ibid. p. 4.

43. Ibid. p. 9.

44. CAP report, ‘The Blame Game Continues: Intelligence and the 1990s’, Center for American Progress, Washington DC, 18 February 2004, http://www.americanprogress.org/sit...JRJ8OVF&b=33582 (emphasis added)

45. Cited in Letter by Senator Charles E. Grassley to the Honorable Robert S. Mueller, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 12 April 2004, http://grassley.senate.gov/releases/2004/p04r04-12.htm

46. Ibid. p. 4.

47. Ibid. p. 11.

48. Staff Statement No. 11, The Performance of the Intelligence Community, National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Washington DC, March 2004, p. 6.

49. Staff Statement No. 5, Diplomacy, National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Washington DC, March 2004, p. 6.

50. Staff Statement No. 11, op. cit. p. 12.

51. Statement for the Record, FBI Director Louis J. Freeh before the Senate Judiciary Committee, 3 September 1998, archived at http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/199...090302_npo.html

52. Statement for the Record, FBI Director Louis J. Freeh before the Senate Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee for the Departmenst of Commerce, Justice, and State, the Judiciary, and Related Agencies, 4 February 1999, archived at http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/199...04-freehct2.htm

53. ‘Avoiding the real questions,’ Jane’s Intelligence Digest, 28 May 2002.

End