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Cell phones tie Afghan embassy attackers to Pakistan

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  • Cell phones tie Afghan embassy attackers to Pakistan

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government has evidence that militants who attacked the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan last week were in telephone contact with people connected to Pakistan's principal intelligence agency, according to an expert who has advised the White House.
    Bruce Riedel, a former senior CIA analyst who advised President Barack Obama on Afghan policy, told Reuters administration officials have told him militants who attacked the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters in Kabul on September 13 telephoned individuals connected with Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence directorate (ISI) before and during the attack.
    Following the attacks, Riedel said, U.S. security forces collected cell phones which the attackers had used. These are expected to provide further evidence linking militants to ISI.
    Obama Administration spokespeople declined to comment on or confirm Riedel's statements.
    But a person familiar with private diplomatic discussions between senior U.S. and Pakistani officials who have visited the United States in the last few days said American officials informed their Pakistani counterparts that they had hard evidence linking ISI to the Kabul attacks.
    The source said that when Pakistani officials asked the U.S. side to produce the evidence, they declined.
    The apparent evidence about the telephone calls could explain the increasingly strong public declarations U.S. officials have made this week attributing the attacks to the Haqqani network.
    The Haqqanis are a Pakistan-based group of Afghan militants alleged to be simultaneously aligned with ISI and elements of the Taliban, and the residual core leadership of al Qaeda.
    On Thursday, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Congressional hearing the Haqqani network was a "veritable arm" of ISI. "With ISI support, Haqqani operatives planned and conducted (a September 10) truck bomb attack, as well as the assault on our embassy," he said.
    PAKISTAN DENIES INVOLVEMENT
    U.S. officials said Mullen would not have linked ISI to the attacks without strong evidence, but declined to elaborate.
    Some U.S. officials caution that the evidence of ISI's involvement in supporting or instigating the Kabul attacks needs further corroboration.
    Rehman Malik, Pakistan's interior minister, flatly rejected U.S. accusations of ISI involvement in the attacks inside Afghanistan, telling Reuters: "If you say that it is ISI involved in that (embassy) attack, I categorically deny it. We have no such policy to attack or aid attack through Pakistani forces or through any Pakistani assistance."
    Some U.S. officials and experts say relations between Washington and Islamabad have become so strained over the accusations that the Obama Administration has threatened Pakistan with U.S. military raids launched from Afghanistan against Haqqani hide-outs in Pakistan's tribal areas unless Pakistani authorities themselves move against the militants.
    However, other U.S. officials say the Pakistanis would become more antagonistic toward the U.S. in the face of such threats. These officials said Pakistan had considerable leverage over Washington, in that it could take practical steps to curb U.S. drone operations against Pakistan-based militants, which until now Pakistan's leadership has quietly tolerated.
    U.S. officials and experts have theorized that elements of ISI have encouraged Taliban and Haqqani network attacks on prominent U.S. targets in order to show displeasure at what some Pakistani security officials believe is the growing influence of India, Pakistan's arch-enemy, on Afghanistan's current U.S.- and NATO-supported government.
    One can't help wondering how long this marriage of convenience is going to last with the 'love' just quickly falling through the floor at every turn. Realistically speaking what are US's options here? If Pakistan just shrugs off its shoulders or worse still, stick out their tongue to the US what can the US do about it? Can the US really afford to break off with Pakistan completely? Don't think US has much leverage here. Link
    Last edited by Zinja; 23 Sep 11,, 00:47. Reason: Inserting link

  • #2
    US bomb warning to Pakistan ignored

    The American commander of Nato in Afghanistan personally asked Pakistan's army chief to halt an insurgent truck bomb that was heading for his troops, during a meeting in Islamabad two days before a huge explosion that wounded 77 US soldiers at a base near Kabul.

    In reply General Ashfaq Kayani offered to "make a phone call" to stop the assault on the US base in Wardak province. But his failure to use the American intelligence to prevent the attack has fuelled a blazing row between the US and Pakistan.

    Furious American officials blame the Taliban-inspired group the Haqqanis – and, by extension, Pakistani intelligence – for the 10 September bombing and an even more audacious guerrilla assault on the Kabul US embassy three days later that killed 20 people and lasted more than 20 hours.

    On Thursday the US military chief, Admiral Mike Mullen, described the Haqqanis as "a veritable arm of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence [spy] agency". He earlier accused the ISI of fighting a "proxy war" in Afghanistan through the group.

    Pakistan's defence minister, Ahmed Mukhtar, rejected the American accusations of Haqqani patronage as "baseless". "No one can threaten Pakistan as we are an independent state," he said.

    The angry accusations lift the veil on sensitive conversations that have heretofore largely taken place behind closed doors. On 8 September, General John Allen, the Nato commander in Afghanistan, raised intelligence reports of the impending truck bomb at a meeting with Kayani during a visit to Islamabad.

    Kayani promised Allen he would "make a phone call" to try to stop the attack, according to a western official with close knowledge of the meeting. "The offer raised eyebrows," the official said.

    But two days later, just after Allen's return to Kabul, a truck rigged with explosives ploughed into the gates of the US base in Wardak, 50 miles south-west of Kabul, injuring 77 US soldiers and killing two Afghan civilians.

    Afterwards the US ambassador to Kabul, Ryan Crocker, blamed the Haqqanis. "They enjoy safe havens in North Waziristan," he said, referring to the Haqqani main base in the tribal belt.

    Allen's spokesman said Nato "routinely shares intelligence with the Pakistanis regarding insurgent activities" but he refused to confirm the details of the conversation with Kayani.

    The Pakistani military spokesman, General Athar Abbas, said: "Let's suppose it was the case. The main question is how did this truck travel to Wardak and explode without being checked by Nato? This is just a blame game."

    US allegations of ISI links to Haqqani attacks stretch back to July 2008, when the CIA deputy director, Stephen Kappes, flew to Islamabad with intercept evidence that linked the ISI to an attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul.

    But American disquiet has never been so uncompromisingly expressed as in recent days. The issue dominated three hours of talks between the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and the Pakistani foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar.

    On Tuesday Mullen said he had asked Kayani to "disconnect" the ISI from the Haqqanis. In Washington the CIA chief, David Petraeus, delivered a similar message in private to the ISI chief, General Shuja Pasha. Even the soft-spoken US ambassador to Islamabad, Cameron Munter, has joined the chorus of condemnation, delivering a hard-hitting message through an interview on Pakistani state radio.

    "We've changed our message in private too," one US official said. "Before, we used to make polite demands about the Haqqanis. Now we are saying 'this has to stop'."

    The new mood is driven by a combination of climbing casualties and brazen attacks. The Haqqanis were also blamed for a recent assault on the InterContinental Hotel, while August was the deadliest month for US forces in Afghanistan, with 71 deaths.

    Nato is now investigating whether the Haqqanis had a hand in Tuesday's assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani, President Hamid Karzai's peace envoy to the Taliban. Rabbani was killed at his home by a suicide bomber wearing an explosives-packed turban. A bloodstained four-page letter he was carrying at the time of the attack, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, insisted that "Pakistan is not our boss".

    American officials have vowed to act unilaterally if Pakistan fails to comply with their demands over the Haqqanis. But it remains unclear how far they are willing to go against Pakistan, a nuclear-armed country that still provides vital counter-terrorism support.

    There was some hope of resuscitating fragile relations between the Pakistani and American intelligence services, which were buffeted by the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden on 2 May. Officials from both countries hailed a joint operation on 28 August to arrest Younis al-Mauritani, a senior al-Qaida operative, in the western city of Quetta. On 5 September the Pakistani military issued a press release that highlighted Pakistani-American co-operation; some viewed the raid as a possible turning point in relations.

    But the flurry of Haqqani attacks over the past two weeks seems to have washed away whatever goodwill was generated by the arrest.

    US officials say debate is raging inside US policy circles about what to do next. The defence secretary, Leon Panetta, is said to have privately advocated US military incursions into the Haqqani stronghold in Waziristan – a risky gambit other officials reject as dangerous folly, citing the historical record of failure of western armies in the tribal belt.

    Other US officials say Washington could slash non-military aid such as the $7.5bn five-year Kerry-Lugar-Berman package, which was approved in 2009.

    There is also debate about the exact nature of the ISI's relationship with the Haqqanis. One western official said it was not a puppetmaster scenario. "It's not like they have a chain of command, with the Pakistanis handing down XOs [executive orders]," he said. Neither are the Pakistanis necessarily providing logistical support, he added: "It's murkier than that."

    But, the official added, the US believes Pakistan is "actively tolerating" the Haqqanis. And the ISI could, if it wanted to, seriously disrupt their activities.

    He warned that Pakistan was heading towards international isolation. "If it keeps going like this, it could end up like Syria – before the Arab spring."
    No such thing as a good tax - Churchill

    To make mistakes is human. To blame someone else for your mistake, is strategic.

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