Mystery of the Burned Bagram Korans, Part 2: The riots

Hekmatyar is responsible for deliberately slaughtering roughly 50,000 Kabuli civilians during his bombardments of the city during the extermination campaign westerners still quaintly refer to as the “Afghan civil war,” that hellish ISI-wrought, Khomeinist-contested and Saudi-funded interregnum between the Red Army’s massacres and the Taliban despotism.

Terry Glavin tries to see behind the dust kicked up by the Koran burning riots in Afghanistan, and with help from Amrullah Saleh spies a pattern that first manifested clearly in the deadly Mazar-i-Sharif riots last year:

An Equal Opportunity Butcher Returns to Afghanistan
by Terry Glavin
The National Post [Canada]
February 27, 2012

In a column in the Ottawa Citizen I examined the shadowy and overlooked forces at work behind the latest bloodcurdling eruptions of what we’re all expected to believe are the offended religious sensibilities of those inscrutable Afghans. I relied mainly on some key observations the legendary Afghan spy chief Amrullah Saleh shared with me during a telephone conversation in the early hours of Thursday morning.

The script that’s playing out in the latest riots in Afghanistan is an almost play-by-play reenactment of last April’s berserking, which everyone was also expected to apprehend as eruptions of religious outrage, but which was also no such thing. For an elaboration of what was really going on last April, you can look it up in an essay I wrote for Dissent while the ashes in Mazar were still smouldering.

In my column, there is mention of the psychopathic mass-murderer Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Pakistan’s notorious Inter-Services Intelligence agency also gets honourable mention, and I am not hesitant to reiterate here that no adequate remedy for the ISI may exist except to get rid of everyone above the rank of major.

To appreciate what follows, you’ll want to know straight away that Hekmatyar heads up the original faction of Hezb-e-Islami, an offshoot of which is well represented in Afghanistan’s Wolesi Jirga, and even in Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s cabinet, in the person of Economy Minister Abdul Hadi Arghandiwal.

You will also need to know that the ISI has declared that it is most pleased that the United States is setting up Mullah Omar’s Taliban in a fancy district of Qatar to begin the final forced “reconciliation” of the Afghan people with the genocidal Taliban high command. The ISI is seeing to it that Omar’s Haqqani wing will have Qatari office space of their own so that they won’t feel left out of the bargain.

And here’s Hekmatyar’s mouthpiece, immediately prior to the Koran riots: “If any groups are ignored in the peace talks, it would change to resistance force against the government and could be a major threat to Afghanistan,” Mr Baheer said. “Destabilizing Afghanistan is not a difficult task, it’s too easy.”

In other words, nice filthy little disgrace of a capitulation you’ve got going here, it would be a shame if anything happened to it, we want our piece. And with the right people in the right places, “destabilizing Afghanistan” is a very easy thing to do indeed.

I now introduce Afghan analyst Abdul Ali Faiq, who these days works in London with the European Campaign for Human Rights in Afghanistan. Abdul has closely tracked the trajectory of this past week’s protests and their locales, and he’s also closely monitored the local buzz and the factional polemics in Dari/Farsi and Pashto media. His findings stand in sharp contradiction to the story that most westerners are hearing about what’s going on. But they are perfectly consistent with Amrullah Saleh’s assessment.

The whole thing’s got Hekmatyar’s signatures all over it.

“What happened at Baghram, this is not a concern for the 29 million people of Afghanistan,” Faiq told me. Some soldiers mistakenly burned a Koran, it was a sad and regrettable mistake, even President Barack Obama is falling all over himself issuing groveling apologies. Most Afghans have their minds on other things. “They say, why should we care?”

One of Faiq’s key findings is that even in the Tajik and Hazara areas of the north – Kabul, Parwan, and so on – and in the Persian west – Herat, for instance – the specific locales of the violence and the slogans being shouted are associated with ethnic pockets of Pashtuns, but more importantly, with centres of Hezb-e-Islami.

“It’s a manipulation of the masses,” Faiq says. “It is Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e-Islami. This is a milking cow for them. They have made this drama. They made this scenario.”

Many Afghans are legitimately aggrieved by the sacrilegious aspect of the Bagram incident. But what most Afghans are more likely to notice is that it’s almost poetically emblematic of what a growing number of people across the country’s political, ethnic and religious divides now cannot help but conclude: the Obama administration holds them and their sorry little country in utter contempt, and he never did mean it when he said he was going to be the president who would take Afghanistan seriously for once.

The American surrender crept up so subtly, and was couched in such syrupy lies — of course all wars end in negotiations, of course all negotiations must be Afghan-led — that it was accomplished before most Afghans had even an inkling that they were being sold out.

You think it’s hard to figure out who’s who around the presidential palace in Kabul? Most North Americans and Europeans couldn’t tell you the first thing about who’s who around the Obama White House these days. Cut the Afghans some slack here. It’s taken them a while, but they’ve finally figured out that as far as the whole “Af-Pak” thing goes, it’s all Joe Biden, all the time, and he’s the dumbest American vice-president to come along since Dan Quayle.

My friend Sanjar Sohail, editor of the liberal Kabul daily Hasht-e Sohb, put it this way: “This is good for the Khomeinists, the ISI, and for Hezb-e Islami. If there was no Koran burning at the Bagram base, it would have been something else, and of course Hezb-e-Islami is benefiting from it.”

No serious person in Afghanistan has any doubt that Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, if not living in a mansion in Rawalpindi within a short limousine ride from ISI HQ, is living in swank digs known to the ISI, somewhere, instead of spending his days at the International Criminal Court at the Hague on charges of crimes against humanity, which is where he belongs.

It should tell you something that the reason the ISI generals invented the Taliban in the first place was that they thought Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and his Hezb-e-Islami were a bit too harsh. Hekmatyar had been the ISI’s most lavishly-funded war-criminal proxy all through the 1980s. The ISI wanted something a little less bloodthirsty, so in around 1994 they replaced him and Hezb with Mullah Omar and his Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Hekmatyar’s been ostensibly freelance ever since.

Hekmatyar is responsible for deliberately slaughtering roughly 50,000 Kabuli civilians during his bombardments of the city during the extermination campaign westerners still quaintly refer to as the “Afghan civil war,” that hellish ISI-wrought, Khomeinist-contested and Saudi-funded interregnum between the Red Army’s massacres and the Taliban despotism.

A Pashtun supremacist turned Stalinist, then drug-trafficker and drooling Islamist fanatic, Hekmatyar ran his Hezb faction in Leninist style, a habit he picked up from his days as a student at Kabul University, where he’d been jailed for two years for his part the murder of a Maoist rival. Hekmatyar is an equal-opportunity butcher. He was the gangster the ISI spent most of its American money on during the anti-Soviet jihad (although they say he never won a battle against the Soviets and that all his victims were Afghans) and was also the Saudis’ anointed proxy for a while, and has also been a frequent guest of Khomeinist Iran.

Hekmatyar rushed to Osama bin Laden’s aid after September 11. He brags about having helped Al Qaida forces escape through the Tora Bora mountains into Pakistan, and he brought Al Qaida fugitives back with him to Iran, where he wore out his welcome after a year or so. Dozens of the more deadly attacks carelessly attributed to the Taliban in recent years were Hekmatyar jobs. His Hezb gangsters have even carried off some spectacular whacks of Talib columns, just to prove they can do it. It was a Hekmatyar rocket that came close to killing Karzai at a military parade in Kabul in 2008.

We are supposed to believe the ISI doesn’t know his whereabouts, and we are supposed to believe the Americans will scruple about cutting Hekmatyar in on Obama’s new reconciliation and power-sharing action in Qatar. Believe what you like, but believe this: the vampire’s back in town.

Terry Glavin is a journalist and cofounder of the Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee.

Madame Ambassador, regimes that live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones

February 10, The News Tribe (Pakistan):

Washington: Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States Sherry Rehman has conveyed the reservations of Pakistan to the US administration on the US Congress Comittee debate on Balochistan was tantamount to helping terrorists operating in the province.
[...]
Ambassador Rehman, in her meetings with the congressmen and senior officials of the US administration, said that the Congress hearing was marked by a blatant disregard for history and inflammatory use of selective facts.

“It is deeply regrettable that the legislature of a country that calls itself a friend of Pakistan should allow itself to be used as a platform by those advocating the dismemberment of Pakistan and provide justification to terrorists attempting to hold Balochistan, and Pakistan, hostage,” she said.

The subcommittee on oversights and investigations of the House Foreign Affairs Committee had held the hearing on 8th February with testimonies from human rights organizations and policy analysts on the human rights violations and target-killings in Balochistan.

”Pakistan views this hearing with serious concern and considers it unacceptable in no uncertain terms,” she stated adding that this kind of an exercise constituted interference in Pakistan’s internal affairs. The hearing, she observed, would be detrimental to building mutual trust and confidence and “will add to suspicions in Pakistan about the American motives in the region and concerning Pakistan.”
[...]

She was just getting warmed up; News Tribe has her full statement. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the ISI is under judicial fire in Pakistan for the first time in its existence. Does this mean the spy agency is indeed Gen. Kayani's sacrificial goat? We'll find out soon enough.

Meanwhile, back at the indoor putting green, the White House announced yesterday that President Obama and his national security team had undertaken a review of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship. From (Pakistan's) Dawn, dateline today:

WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama has reviewed efforts to improve ties with Pakistan with his national security team, the White House said on Thursday as media reports indicated that both countries were trying vigorously to reduce tensions that have bedevilled their relations for more than a year now.

At Wednesday’s meeting, President Obama “received an update on our engagement with the Pakistani government on a range of issues of mutual interest, including efforts to strengthen cooperation along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border,” the White House said.

US sources told Dawn that the White House had been regularly consulting Pakistan’s new ambassador in Washington, Sherry Rehman, on these issues.

Last week, Ambassador Rehman and a Pakistani defence team met the head of the US Central Command, General James N. Mattis, at the embassy. Soon after the meeting, The New York Times reported that Gen Mattis would visit Islamabad later this month for talks with Pakistani military chief and other officials and he might also convey an official apology on the Nov 26 Nato attack on a Pakistani post that killed 24 soldiers.

Pakistan has long demanded such an apology as an important step towards improving ties.

Another sign that both sides are making serious efforts to overcome their differences came earlier Thursday when US ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter hinted that Nato supplies might have resumed through Pakistani airspace. Pakistan had blocked the supplies after the Nov 26 attack and Washington wanted Islamabad to open both land and air routes as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, Ms Rehman is having another important meeting with senior White House officials on apparently accelerated attempts by both sides to rebuild a relationship that has gone sour.

She also met Senator John Kerry, who is considered the Obama administration’s unofficial envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan on Capitol Hill and is often sent to Islamabad for dealing with contentious issues.

Asked for comments on these meetings, Ms Rehman said she could not discuss ongoing negotiations but both sides were eager to leave behind the bitterness of the past year and move ahead with a new zeal.

“Pakistan is still reviewing the full spectrum of its relations with the US in a historic parliamentary review, which will anchor forthcoming decisions in the solid background of public consent,” she said.

So. I gather from Dawn that the good news to emerge from the review is that Obama decided not to give Kayani the shirt off his back. Did he decide to give Kayani the shirt off your back? This is Dawn we're talking about; the glass is always half full on Pakistan's side of the table. I assume we'll have more definite news of Obama's decisions when Gen. Mattis returns from his trip to Pakistan.

All right; I'm outta here until next week. Have fun reading last night's two posts. Oh, one more thing: last week I guessed that the German command at NATO leaked the top secret NATO report titled, The State of the Taliban, which fingered the ISI as aiding and abetting the Afghan Taliban. I also half-joked that the one time I was willing not to blame the British for something was probably the one time I was wrong about them.

It turns out that the only journalists to read the report prior to its leak worked for two British media outlets: the BBC and the (London) Times; this, according to the Economist.

Heh.

That doesn't make it definite that the leaker was with the British command but it is suggestive. The report was leaked on the eve of a NATO foreign ministers' meeting. The next day the Telegraph reported that a substantial cut in British combat troops would occur in 2013 -- a claim that a defense ministry spokesperson denied but in such a way as to make it seem that the troop cuts were always planned for that year. Not. According to the Telegraph.

Well, if it was the British, I don't hold it against them. The public had a right and a need to know about the report.

Okay, my weekend is now officially underway; I'm off to down a thimblefull of sherry, for medicinal purposes only, of course. Cheers!

Has Kayani decided ISI is the sacrificial goat?

Well, the general has to find some means to placate the IMF fast, or he's in deep doo-doo. However, we can't learn the answer until we discover where President Obama has hidden the bunny. If this makes no sense, it's just because there are some readers who're trying to make sense of things that I never added a quote from a famous figure in the U.S. news media to the Puffy Head part of this blog's sidebar: "Pundita is Alice in Washington's Wonderland."

Bum's Rush

Yesterday I discussed my suspicion that ISI Chief Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha's hastily arranged trip to Washington was actually a last-ditch attempt ahead of the U.S.-India strategic dialogue on Monday to impress on the more impressionable members of Congress that Pakistan has greater strategic importance to the USA than India. Last night Reuters reported that Pasha's meeting at Langley "went very well" according to an unnamed U.S. official, who refused to give details beyond saying, "They agreed on a number of steps that will improve Pakistani and U.S. national security." The report ended with this note:

Pasha had also been expected to meet with the heads of congressional intelligence committees during his visit, but the meeting did not happen because of time constraints, a U.S. source familiar with the visit said.

As I mentioned in the update to yesterday's post, I guess this means the more impressionable members of Congress are not quite as impressionable as they used to be, or have less patience with twaddle since Abbottabad.

In other newsworthy speculations, I suspect State has finally managed to wrestle a muzzle on the Gray Lady; if so, then until she chews through the muzzle we won't have to hear any more howls from Islamabad that the New York Times is picking on Pakistan.

If other major U.S. news media and Washington policymakers had displayed a fraction of the gumption that the Times has done during the past year we'd be in much better shape than we are today regarding Afghanistan and Pakistan, and that's not speculation.

The killing of Saleem Shahzad: White House fingers ISI as prime suspect

Visit the Times website for source links in the following report:

Pakistan's Spies Tied to Slaying of a Journalist
by Jane Perlez and Eric Schmitt
July 4, 2011
The New York Times

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Obama administration officials believe that Pakistan’s powerful spy agency ordered the killing of a Pakistani journalist who had written scathing reports about the infiltration of militants in the country’s military, according to American officials.

New classified intelligence obtained before the May 29 disappearance of the journalist, Saleem Shahzad, 40, from the capital, Islamabad, and after the discovery of his mortally wounded body, showed that senior officials of the spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, directed the attack on him in an effort to silence criticism, two senior administration officials said.

The intelligence, which several administration officials said they believed was reliable and conclusive, showed that the actions of the ISI, as it is known, were “barbaric and unacceptable,” one of the officials said. They would not disclose further details about the intelligence.

But the disclosure of the information in itself could further aggravate the badly fractured relationship between the United States and Pakistan, which worsened significantly with the American commando raid two months ago that killed Osama bin Laden in a Pakistan safehouse and deeply embarrassed the Pakistani government, military and intelligence hierarchy. Obama administration officials will deliberate in the coming days how to present the information about Mr. Shahzad to the Pakistani government, an administration official said.

The disclosure of the intelligence was made in answer to questions about the possibility of its existence, and was reluctantly confirmed by the two officials. “There is a lot of high-level concern about the murder; no one is too busy not to look at this,” said one.

A third senior American official said there was enough other intelligence and indicators immediately after Mr. Shahzad’s death for the Americans to conclude that the ISI had ordered him killed.

“Every indication is that this was a deliberate, targeted killing that was most likely meant to send shock waves through Pakistan’s journalist community and civil society,” said the official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the information.

A spokesman for the Pakistan intelligence agency said in Islamabad on Monday night that “I am not commenting on this.” George Little, a spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency, declined to comment.

In a statement the day after Mr. Shahzad’s waterlogged body was retrieved from a canal 60 miles from Islamabad, the ISI publicly denied accusations in the Pakistani news media that it had been responsible, calling them “totally unfounded.”

The ISI said the journalist’s death was “unfortunate and tragic,” and should not be “used to target and malign the country’s security agency.”

The killing of Mr. Shahzad, a contributor to the Web site Asia Times Online, aroused an immediate furor in the freewheeling news media in Pakistan.

Mr. Shahzad was the 37th journalist killed in Pakistan since the 9/11 attacks, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Pakistan’s civilian government, under pressure from the media, established a commission headed by a Supreme Court justice to investigate Mr. Shahzad’s death. The findings are scheduled to be released early next month.

Mr. Shahzad suffered 17 lacerated wounds delivered by a blunt instrument, a ruptured liver and two broken ribs, said Dr. Mohammed Farrukh Kamal, one of the three physicians who conducted the post-mortem.

The anger over Mr. Shahzad’s death followed unprecedented questioning in the media about the professionalism of the army and the ISI, a military-controlled spy agency, in the aftermath of the Bin Laden raid.

Since that initial volley of questioning, the ISI has mounted a steady counter-campaign. Senior ISI officials have called and visited journalists, warning them to douse their criticisms and rally around the theme of a united country, according to three journalists who declined to be named for fear of reprisals.

Mr. Shahzad, who wrote articles over the last several years that illuminated the relationship between the militants and the military, was abducted from the capital three days after publication of his article that said Al Qaeda was responsible for an audacious 16-hour commando attack on Pakistan’s main naval base in Karachi on May 22.

The attack was a reprisal for the navy’s arresting up to 10 naval personnel who had belonged to a Qaeda cell, Mr. Shahzad said.

The article, published by Asia Times Online, detailed how the attackers were guided by maps and logistical information provided from personnel inside the base.

Particularly embarrassing for the military, Mr. Shahzad described negotiations before the raid between the navy and a Qaeda representative, Abdul Samad Mansoor. The navy refused to release the detainees, Mr. Shahzad wrote. The Pakistani military maintains that it does not negotiate with militants.

Mr. Shahzad prided himself on staying out of the mainstream press, preferring, he wrote in a preface to his recently published book, “Inside Al Qaeda and the Taliban,” to challenge the “conventional wisdom.”

He had submitted articles to Asia Times Online, which claims 150,000 readers, since 2001, when he was a reporter in Karachi uncovering corruption in the public utility, the editor of the Web site, Tony Allison, said.

He broke into the limelight two years ago with an interview with Ilyas Kashmiri, a highly trained Pakistani militant allied to Al Qaeda. Mr. Kashmiri is believed to have been killed in a drone attack in early June.

According to associates, Mr. Shahzad cultivated contacts inside the military and the intelligence agency and members of militant groups, some from his student days in Jamaat Islami, a religious political party.

Some of his stories were threaded with embellishments. Soon after the Bin Laden raid, Mr. Shahzad wrote that Gen. David H. Petraeus visited the chief of the Pakistani Army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and informed him, an account the White House strongly disputes. Pakistani journalists questioned the authenticity of some of Mr. Shahzad’s reporting: whether those doubts arose from professional jealousy or were well founded was never clear.

But the ISI had been interested in Mr. Shahzad for some time. In an e-mail written to Ali Dayan Hasan, the head of Human Rights Watch in Pakistan, which Mr. Shahzad instructed Mr. Hasan to release if something happened to him, Mr. Shahzad gave details of an Oct. 17 meeting at ISI headquarters, where two senior officials in the press section wanted to discuss an article he had written about the release of an interrogated Afghan Taliban commander, Abdul Ghani Baradar.

At the end, Mr. Shahzad said, he had been given what Mr. Hasan said he understood to be a veiled death threat from the head of the press section, Rear Adm. Adnan Nazir. “We have recently arrested a terrorist and recovered a lot of data, diaries and other material during the interrogation,” Mr. Shahzad quoted Admiral Nazir saying. “The terrorist had a list with him. If I find your name in the list, I will certainly let you know.”

In its statement after the death of Mr. Shahzad, the ISI said the agency notifies “institutions and individuals alike of any threat warning received about them.” There were no “veiled or unveiled threats” in the e-mail, the ISI said.

Hameed Haroon, the publisher of Dawn, an English-language newspaper and the head of the newspaper publishers’ association in Pakistan, said that the journalist had confided to him that “he had received death threats from various officers of the ISI on at least three occasions in the past five years.”

It was possible that Mr. Shahzad had become too cavalier, said Ayesha Siddiqa, a Pakistani columnist and author.

“The rules of the game are not completely well defined,” she said. “Sometimes friendly elements cross an imaginary threshold and it is felt they must be taught a lesson.”

The efforts by the ISI to constrain the Pakistani news media have, to a degree, worked in recent days. The virulent criticism after Mr. Shahzad’s death has tempered a bit.

A Pakistani reporter, Waqar Kiani, who works for the British newspaper The Guardian, was beaten in the capital after Mr. Shahzad’s death with wooden batons and a rubber whip, by men who said: “You want to be a hero. We’ll make you a hero,” the newspaper reported. Mr. Kiani had just published an account of his abduction two years earlier at the hands of intelligence agents.

Jane Perlez reported from Islamabad, Pakistan, and Eric Schmitt from Washington. Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting from Washington.

Cell phone links bin Laden courier with militant Pakistani group that has close ties with ISI and Pak military

"Heeeere lizard lizard lizard"

"It is as if the Pakistani powers that be have had, ever since Al Qaeda's retreat from Afghanistan and their withdrawal into Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi, a precise idea of where the chiefs of Al Qaeda could be found. It is as if Pakistan's formidable intelligence service, the ISI, had not only localized but kept these public enemies of the U.S. -- and theoretically of Pakistan -- under observation, handy for periodic culling.

It is as if these people were bargaining chips, with the Pakistanis drawing from their reserves of terrorists and cashing them in one by one, depending on the needs of their relationship with the great American 'friend.'

Optimists will be delighted to learn that there is a country where people know a little about the hiding places of Osama bin Laden's lieutenants, as well as about Bin Laden himself, perhaps." -- Bernard-Henri Lévy, 2005

“The question of ISI and Pakistani Army complicity in Bin Laden’s hide-out now hangs like a dark cloud over the entire relationship” between Pakistan and the United States." -- Bruce Riedel, 2011

Seized Phone Offers Clues to Bin Laden’s Pakistani Links

By Carlotta Gall, Pir Zubair Shah and Eric Schmitt
June 23, 2011 - 11:00 PM EDT
The New York Times

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The cellphone of Osama bin Laden’s trusted courier, which was recovered in the raid that killed both men in Pakistan last month, contained contacts to a militant group that is a longtime asset of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, senior American officials who have been briefed on the findings say.

The discovery indicates that Bin Laden used the group, Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen, as part of his support network inside the country, the officials and others said. But it also raised tantalizing questions about whether the group and others like it helped shelter and support Bin Laden on behalf of Pakistan’s spy agency, given that it had mentored Harakat and allowed it to operate in Pakistan for at least 20 years, the officials and analysts said.

In tracing the calls on the cellphone, American analysts have determined that Harakat commanders had called Pakistani intelligence officials, the senior American officials said. One said they had met. The officials added that the contacts were not necessarily about Bin Laden and his protection and that there was no “smoking gun” showing that Pakistan’s spy agency had protected Bin Laden.

But the cellphone numbers provide one of the most intriguing leads yet in the hunt for the answer to an urgent and vexing question for Washington: How was it that Bin Laden was able to live comfortably for years in Abbottabad, a town dominated by the Pakistani military and only a three-hour drive from Islamabad, the capital?

“It’s a serious lead,” said one American official, who has been briefed in broad terms on the cellphone analysis. “It’s an avenue we’re investigating.”
[...]
Harakat “is one of the oldest and closest allies of Al Qaeda, and they are very, very close to the ISI,” said Bruce O. Riedel, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer and the author of “Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America, and the Future of the Global Jihad.”

“The question of ISI and Pakistani Army complicity in Bin Laden’s hide-out now hangs like a dark cloud over the entire relationship” between Pakistan and the United States, Mr. Riedel added.

Indeed, suspicions abound that the ISI or parts of it sought to hide Bin Laden, perhaps to keep him as an eventual bargaining chip, or to ensure that billions of dollars in American military aid would flow to Pakistan as long as Bin Laden was alive.

Both the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Representative Mike Rogers, Republican of Michigan, and the panel’s ranking Democrat, Representative C. A. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, said this month that they believed that some members of the ISI or the Pakistani Army, either retired or on active duty, were involved in harboring Bin Laden.

Bin Laden himself had a long history with the ISI, dating to the mujahedeen insurgency that the Americans and Pakistanis supported against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Two former militant commanders and one senior fighter who have received support from the ISI for years said they were convinced that the ISI played a part in sheltering Bin Laden. Because of their covert existence, they spoke on the condition that their names not be used.

One of the commanders belonged to Harakat. The other said he had fought as a guerrilla and trained others for 15 years while on the payroll of the Pakistani military, until he quit a few years ago. He said that he had met Bin Laden twice.
[...]
He and the other commander, who spent 10 years with Harakat, offered no proof of their belief that Bin Laden was under Pakistani military protection. But their views were informed by their years of work with the ISI and their knowledge of how the spy agency routinely handled militant leaders it considered assets — placing them under protective custody in cities, often close to military installations.

The treatment amounts to a kind of house arrest, to ensure both the security of the asset and his low profile to avoid embarrassment to his protectors.
[...]

Yes. That is how Pakistan's military was able to magically locate members of al Qaeda when they found it expedient.

There is much more to the Times report than I've quoted here, so I hope you'll read the entire piece at the Times site.

Pakistan's ISI arrests Pakistani informants who helped CIA gather intell for US raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad (UPDATED 3X)

UPDATE 6:05 AM EDT
According to Pakistan's The News, Inter Services Public Relations is denying that anyone was arrested:

RAWALPINDI: The Pakistan Army has rejected claims in the US media that the country's top intelligence agency ISI arrested some of the Pakistani informants who fed information to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the months leading up to the raid that led to the death of Osama bin Laden. A statement released by the ISPR read that no arrests were made and no major was being investigated in reference to the Abbottabad raid.

I am not going to sit here for the rest of the morning and add more updates on denials and corrections to denials, so this is the last update.

UPDATE 5:00 AM EDT
The number of those arrested has gone up from the number cited in the NYT report, which broke the story (see below):

Pakistan Arrests 30 Civilians in Probe of U.S. Raid That Killed Bin Laden
By Haris Anwar - Jun 15, 2011 4:14 AM EDT

Pakistan arrested 30 to 40 civilians as it investigates the U.S. commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden last month, an army spokesman said, denying a report that an army major was among those detained.

Some of those arrested have already been released, Brigadier Azmat Ali, director of public relations at the army’s media arm in Rawalpindi, said in a phone interview.

A report in the New York Times that an army officer is being held is “totally wrong,” Ali said. “I can say with authority that all arrests were non-military.”

Pakistan’s top military spy agency has arrested five Pakistani informants who fed information to the Central Intelligence Agency in the months leading up to the raid that killed bin Laden on May 2, the Times reported today, citing American officials it didn’t name.

Those arrested include a Pakistani army major who officials said copied the license plates of cars visiting bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, the report said.

UPDATE 1:54 AM EDT
From Reuters about 50 minutes ago: "Asked about the Times report [see below], a CIA spokeswoman neither confirmed nor denied it and said she had no further comment."
*********

Pakistan Arrests C.I.A. Informants in Bin Laden Raid

By ERIC SCHMITT and MARK MAZZETTI
Published: June 14, 2011 [published online at approx. 11 PM EDT]
The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Pakistan’s top military spy agency [ISI] has arrested some of the Pakistani informants who fed information to the Central Intelligence Agency in the months leading up to the raid that led to the death of Osama bin Laden, according to American officials.

Pakistan’s detention of five C.I.A. informants, including a Pakistani Army major who officials said copied the license plates of cars visiting Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in the weeks before the raid, is the latest evidence of the fractured relationship between the United States and Pakistan.
[...]
The fate of the C.I.A. informants arrested in Pakistan is unclear, but American officials said that the C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, raised the issue when he travelled to Islamabad last week to meet with Pakistani military and intelligence officers.
[...]

The rest of the Times report doesn't throw more light on the situation so here I'll switch to the Associated Press, which unearthed another factoid connected with the situation:

AP sources: Pakistan nabs CIA informants

By KATHY GANNON [reporting from Islamabad]
[Published approx. midnight EDT]
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Pakistan's intelligence service has arrested the owner of a safe house rented to the CIA to observe Osama bin Laden's compound before the U.S. raid that killed the al-Qaida leader, as well as a "handful" of other Pakistanis, a U.S. official said late Tuesday.

In Pakistan, a Western official confirmed a New York Times report [see above] that five of the Pakistani informants who fed information to the CIA before the May 2 raid were arrested by Pakistan's top military spy agency.

The officials spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters.[...]

Police find body of Syed Saleem Shahzad; say he was tortured, killed

See this May 31 TIME report, published while there was still hope Shahzad was alive, for extensive background; report was updated at 10:00 AM EDT to reflect reports of his death.

June 1, Asia Times Online:

[HONG KONG] Syed Saleem Shahzad, the Pakistan Bureau Chief for Asia Times Online who went missing on Sunday evening, has been killed, according to police. ...

Police reported that his body was found in a canal in Mandi Bahauddin in Punjab province about 150 kilometers southeast of Islamabad and about 10 kilometers from where his car was found. They said that his body bore marks of torture.

He leaves a wife, two sons aged 14 and seven, and a daughter aged 12. ...

Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani expressed his "deep grief and sorrow" over Shahzad's death and ordered an immediate inquiry into his kidnapping and murder, according to Associated Press of Pakistan. ...

Shahzad, who has been writing for Hong Kong-based Asia Times Online for nearly 10 years, failed to show up for a scheduled appearance on a television talk show in the capital Islamabad.

Earlier, the International Federation of Journalists released a statement saying it "urgently appeals to the Government of Pakistan to order its security and police agencies to respond immediately to find a senior journalist who disappeared in Islamabad on May 29".

Shahzad, 40, had on several occasions been warned by officials of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) over articles they deemed to be detrimental to Pakistan's national interests or image.

Human Rights Watch researcher Ali Dayan Hasan earlier said he suspected ISI officials abducted Shahzad, possibly because of a recent story he wrote on al-Qaeda infiltration in the Pakistani navy. Authorities haven't commented. (Al-Qaeda had warned of Pakistan strike.)

Tony Allison, the Editor of Asia Times Online, expressed his deep concern for one of the most fearless journalists with whom he had ever worked. "We will bring the utmost pressure to bear on the authorities over this case. We at Asia Times Online express our deepest sympathies for Saleem's family."

Human Rights Watch claims Syed Saleem Shahzad in ISI custody (UPDATED 1:30 PM EDT)

UPDATE
10:00 AM update to TIME report I cited below:

Pakistan's main news channels are reporting that Shahzad's dead body has been found. One news channel broadcast what appeared to be a black and white image of Shahzad's face. There were visible signs of torture.

Asia Times Online is also reporting that Shahzad's body has been found by police and that it bears marks of torture.
***********

Missing Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad
with Giuseppe Marra, chief of AdnKronos International news agency

The Asia Times Online still hasn't commented on their bureau chief's disappearance; a note on the website says that due to the holiday they won't be uploading reports until May 31; perhaps the uploaders are still getting their beauty sleep because the uploads aren't there yet.

Ifnan Khan at Pakistan's Daily Times got the scoop by several hours on the news that Human Rights Watch (HRW) has, through "credible sources," learned Shahzad is in the custody of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). But I'm going to run with the report from TIME, which has much more detail and background than the Daily Times report. See TIME's website for source links in the report:

A Pakistani Journalist Vanishes: Is the I.S.I. Involved?
By Omar Waraich
Islamabad; Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Fears are growing for the safety of a well-known Pakistani journalist who has been missing for 39 hours now and, according to an international advocacy group, is believed to be in the custody of the Pakistan's controversial Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Human Rights Watch declared that Saleem Shahzad, a reporter working for the Hong Kong-based Asia Times Online and Adnkronos International, the Italian news agency, could be subject to mistreatment and even torture while in custody.

While the ISI was said to have bristled at previous reports by Shahzad, his disappearance happened two days after he wrote a story for Asia Times Online that said that al-Qaeda had attacked a naval base in the port city of Karachi on May 22 after talks had broken down between the Pakistan navy and the global terror organization. In his report, Shahzad claimed that al-Qaeda had carried out the attack in retaliation for the arrest of naval officials suspected of links with the terror group.

The 17-hour attack on the Karachi naval base by at least four attackers led to the destruction of two Lockheed Martin P-3C Orion aircraft that had been enhanced with counterterrorism capabilities. An investigation is currently underway. At the time of the attack, former military officers and analysts speculated that it could not have been mounted without some help from the inside.

On Monday, Pakistani intelligence officials told journalists that they had picked up Kamran Ahmed Malik, a former navy commando, in Lahore on Friday. Malik and his brother have been detained in connection with the investigation. While Malik has not been formally charged, it is widely reported that he is being held for questioning about his links to both the terrorists and former colleagues inside the Navy.

Shahzad, the missing journalist, is believed to have been abducted by intelligence agents from the well-heeled F-6/2 area of Islamabad at around 5:45 p.m. At the time, he was on his way to the studios of Pakistan's Dunya News channel to discuss the contents of his latest report about the naval base attack. He had driven there from his house in central Islamabad's leafy F-8/4 neighborhood, some four kilometers away. At quarter to six, Shahzad had responded to a call from a producer at Dunya News and said that he was on his way, says Nasim Zehra, director of current affairs at the channel. No one has heard from him since.

The following morning, Ali Dayan Hasan, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, received a call from Shahzad's wife.

"He had told her that I was one of the people that should be called in case anything happens to him," says Hasan.

"He had feared for sometime that something like this would happen to him."

Later, Human Rights Watch was able to establish that Shahzad was being held by the ISI.

"We were informed through reliable interlocutors that he was detained by the ISI," says Hasan.

Those interlocutors, he adds, had received direct confirmation from the agency that it was detaining Shahzad. In any case, Hasan says, "in a high security zone like Islamabad, it is only the ISI that can effect the disappearance of man and his car without a trace."

Human Rights Watch was also told that Shahzad was supposed to return home on Monday night.

"The relevant people were informed that his telephone would be switched on first, enabling him to communicate with his family," says Hasan.

"They were told that he would return home soon after."

But by 1 a.m. on Tuesday morning, Shahzad had still not been heard from. At that point, Hasan recalled that Shahzad had sent him an email on Oct. 18, 2010 that was to be released in the event of his disappearance. At the time, says Hasan, he was "fairly sure that sooner or later something was going to happen."

Human Rights Watch says that it has made repeated attempts to contact the Pakistan government and establish Shahzad's whereabouts, but has received no response.

On Oct. 17, Shahzad had been summoned to the ISI's headquarters to discuss the contents of an article published the day before with two officials from the agency's media wing. That report, published in Asia Times Online, alleged that Pakistan had quietly released Afghan Taliban commander Mullah Baradar, Mullah Omar's deputy, to take part in talks through the Pakistan Army.

According to the email, labeled "For future reference" and seen by TIME, one of the officials said the following words to Shahzad: "I must give you a favor. We have recently arrested a terrorist and recovered a lot of data, diaries and other material during the interrogation. The terrorist had a list with him. If I find your name in the list, I will certainly let you know."

Incidentally, the two ISI officials present at the meeting, Rear Admiral Adnan Nawaz and Commodore Khalid Pervaiz, are both from the Navy. Pervaiz has just been appointed the new commander of the Karachi naval base that was attacked.

Hasan of Human Rights Watch says that statement can be read as a threat. "The tone and the manner in which it was issued did constitute a threat," he says. "Shahzad described it to me."

The rest of the meeting, as Shahzad described it in the email, was held in "an extremely polite and friendly atmosphere," but no words were minced. In the email, the ISI official was said to have asked for the source of his story. Shahzad writes that he would not name the source, but said that he had been told the information by an intelligence official and later confirmed the story from "the most credible Taliban source." According to Shahzad's account, he was asked to "write a denial of the story" but "refused to comply with the [ISI] demand."

Many of Shahzad's media colleagues speculate that the ISI is holding him to extract the identities of his sources. "It is very difficult to say what they want from him," says Hasan.

"But when the ISI picks up journalists in this manner, they are often subjected to mistreatment and torture. The longer he stays in their custody, the greater the likelihood is that he will be tortured."

Last September, Umar Cheema, an investigative reporter for The News, an influential Pakistani daily, was kidnapped, blindfolded, stripped naked, had his head and eyebrows shaved, beaten, filmed in humiliating positions, and dumped on the side of the road six hours later.

"If you can't avoid rape," one of his interrogators jeered during the ordeal, "enjoy it."

The perpetrators were never found, but when asked about his suspicions, Cheema told the New York Times: "I have suspicions and every journalist has suspicions that all fingers point to the ISI."

The disappearance of Shahzad is a reminder of the multiple hazards faced by journalists working in Pakistan. In January, Wali Khan Babar, a respected reporter for Geo News, was gunned down in Karachi. [1]

Last month, reporter Abdullah Bhittani cheated death after being shot three times in Rawalpindi, while a radio station in the northwest town of Charsadda was bombed. Bhittani has recovered, but with 10 slain journalists last year, the Washington DC-based Newseum called Pakistan "the deadliest country in the world for journalists." Reporters Without Borders ranked it 151st out of 178 countries when it comes to press freedom.

The principal threats, human rights campaigners say, come from military intelligence agencies and Islamist militants.

"As a consequence, it is becoming difficult for journalists to perform their basic professional duties in the context of a war between the Pakistani state and the militants," Hasan says.

"Both parties target journalists, arbitrarily and with brutality."

Human Rights Watch has called on the Pakistan government to locate Shahzad, return him safely to his home, and hold those who held him "illegally" accountable. "To date, no intelligence personnel have been held accountable for frequently perpetrated abuses against journalists," laments Hasan. "Tolerance for these practices has to end, now."

The International Federation of Journalists has also issued an appeal to Pakistan's government on Shahzad's behalf (press release via New Zealand Scoop news site:

Tuesday, 31 May 2011, 3:11 pm
Press Release: International Federation of Journalists
Appeal to Pakistan Government to Find Missing Journalist

May 31, 2011 - The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) urgently appeals to the Government of Pakistan to order its security and police agencies to respond immediately to find a senior journalist who disappeared in Islamabad on May 29.

Syed Saleem Shahzad, the Pakistan bureau chief for Asia Times Online , went missing in the early evening [around 5 PM Pakistan time] while heading to the office of Dunya TV [a private TV station] to record a program.

The IFJ and its affiliate, the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ), hold grave fears for the welfare of Shahzad, who published the first of a two-part investigative series into alleged links between Al-Qaeda and Pakistani naval officials on Asia Times Online on May 26.

“The IFJ is deeply worried for the safety of Syed Saleem Shahzad,” IFJ Asia -Pacific Director Jacqueline Park said.

“We appeal as a matter of urgency for Pakistan ’s Government to do all it can to find Shahzad quickly, and to prove a commitment to reverse Pakistan ’s poor track record in investigating abuses against journalists.”

See Shahzad's website for more information about him.

Regarding the controversy generated by his most recent investigative report for Asia Times Online, which is supposed to be a two-parter (the second part hasn't been published yet), his May 27 report opened with this paragraph

Al-Qaeda carried out the brazen attack on PNS Mehran naval air station in Karachi on May 22 after talks failed between the navy and al-Qaeda over the release of naval officials arrested on suspicion of al-Qaeda links ...

Pakistan's regime had chalked up the attack to the so-called Taliban, and a so-called Taliban group had claimed responsibility for it.

As to how much stock I'm putting in Shahzad's report, I've discussed this kind of question before. He belongs to that category of reporter who specializes in cultivating high-level sources in civilian government/military, many of which are anonymous. (In this case, sources in Pakistan's regime.)

Such sources are a double-edged sword: very useful for gaining inside information but they can also use the reporter as a conduit; i.e., to get into the public domain a point of view among a particular faction in government/military for reasons that are not always clear to the public -- or the reporter. So such reportage is a high-wire act, both for the reporter and the news consumer.

Right now I'm reading Shahzad's report as pieces of a large jigsaw puzzle called 'the present thinking inside Pakistan's military.' But my overriding concern at this time is his safety. Shahzad also cultivated sources among terrorist groups. HRW could have been misled by the informant, or the informant could have been misled. Pea-soup fog.

1) Sultan Hijazi, a TIME reader, asserted in the report's comment section "Wali Khan Babar was killed by his colleague at Geo News; the author should get his facts right." I have not followed the issue and so have no idea whether Hijazi is correct.

Is Pakistan's ISI trying to sneak Mullah Omar into Afghanistan?

If the Afghan source isn't blowing smoke this report is a riot. There is no honor among thieves, fer sure. I'm getting such a chuckle from the story I'm lapsing into Valley Girl Speak, fer sure. But hey by any which way getting hold of Omar would be fine with me. See the Examiner website for report's source links.

Pakistan sets Mullah Omar deathtrap to disrupt U.S.-Taliban talks

Michael Hughes
May 18, 2011
The Examiner

An Afghan security official told [Afghanistan's] TOLO news on Tuesday that Pakistan’s spy agency is scheming to move Taliban leader Mullah Omar from Pakistan to Helmand province and then report his whereabouts to U.S. forces.

The Pakistanis hope Omar is killed on Afghan soil because it will prove terrorist leaders are also hiding in Afghanistan, the source claimed. The same Afghan official said Omar received the ISI order to leave Quetta from former Pakistani spy chief Hamid Gul.

Such a development would disrupt the negotiations reportedly underway between the U.S. and the Taliban. According to the Washington Post, a U.S. representative attended at least three meetings in Qatar and Germany within the last eight or nine days with a Taliban official who is close to Mullah Omar.

U.S. officials claim “exploratory” conversations which began in February have advanced significantly in terms of substance and willingness to engage. The commencement of dialogue predated the Osama bin Laden assassination, but the death of the Al Qaeda leader has put more pressure on insurgent leaders to compromise, experts say.

Rumors of the talks have been chastised by critics who believe that such negotiations will compromise Afghan democracy because it appears Kabul and Washington are seriously considering bestowing the Taliban with whatever the insurgents consider an “acceptable share of political power.” This would undermine Afghan self-determination by handing over partial control of Afghanistan to the Taliban without the consent of the governed.

Afghan native Khalil Nouri, co-founder of the New World Strategies Coalition (NWSC) commented today in The Huffington Post that “there can only be one legitimate way to obtain stability in Afghanistan; through an all Afghan national ratification of a reconciliation process”. Afghans like Nouri believe neither the U.S. nor the Karzai administration has the legitimacy or the proper mandate to negotiate a settlement on behalf of the Afghan people.

An American official reported that “the Afghans have been fully briefed” on U.S.-Taliban contacts and “the Pakistanis only partially so” because the Obama administration is now of the mind that negotiation with the Quetta Shura does not require Pakistan’s cooperation. One senior administration official was even quoted as saying:

“Some people who have met with the Taliban say that among the reasons [the insurgents] want to establish their own office is so they can get out from under the Pakistanis”.
[...]

Hughes goes on to talk about the Haqqani Network; worth the read.

Amrullah Saleh on 2008 Indian embassy bombing in Kabul and ISI complicity; Pundita on Washington's failure to grasp the meaning of policy

CIA officers who know Amrullah Saleh have described him as "brilliant" but Saleh has always been reluctant to say much on the record until his attendance at an anti-terrorism conference in Washington late last year -- and even then he didn't go into detail about his oft-repeated charge that Pakistan's ISI is complicit in terrorist attacks in Afghanistan and India.

Now, FRONTLINE has aired an interview with Saleh conducted by veteran reporter and FRONTLINE producer Martin Smith. ("The Spy Who Quit," aired January 17, 2011 on PBS). They expanded their discussion off camera, which FRONTLINE published in transcript form.

Smith has been in contact with Saleh for four years and is knowledable about the issues raised in the interview. The expanded portion of the discussion fills in several gaps in the Afghan war record, from the pre-9/11 days to the present, addresses Saleh's career in intelligence work and his relationship with Hamid Karzai, and his views on al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan and the war in terror in general.

But it's the part of the discussion about the ISI and specifically Saleh's charge that the ISI orchestrated the bombings of the Indian embassy in Kabul (in 2008 and 2009) that's the stunner because of the details Saleh provides for the first time about his claim of ISI involvement in the 2008 bombing. Below I feature excerpts from the transcript that address the bombing, but first I'd like to make two points:

Although Saleh was fêted in many quarters during his trip to Washington in December 2010 I find that there's a subtle bias against him within certain Washington factions - namely ones that recoil from his hawkishness toward Pakistan, or still cling to the notion that Pakistan should have a large say in Afghanistan's affairs, or which fear that he's too friendly with Russia or will become so if he gains political power.

Often the bias takes the form of faintly praising him while pointing out that as a Tajik he can't be accepted by Afghanistan's Pashtuns. This line is invariably accompanied by the claim that Pashtuns are the majority population in Afghanistan.

The Pashtuns are the majority ethnic group in Afghanistan but they make up only 40 percent of the country's population, and Amrullah Saleh's ethnic heritage is actually Tajik-Pashtun, as a reader at RFERL's Gandhara blog notes in response to Christian Caryl's speculations about Saleh's chances of becoming Afghanistan's next president.

Secondly, while Saleh speaks with frankness during the interview he avoids stating the obvious, which is that Afghanistan's 'Pakistan problem' is a U.S. problem spelled backward. The problem is that Washington can't make up its mind from one day to the next about how it deals with Pakistan.

It's because of Washington's incoherence that I don't agree with Amrullah Saleh's recommendation that the U.S./NATO "bomb" Pakistan, nor do I support the drone strikes. Or rather I think such actions put the cart before the horse.

Washington and its most powerful NATO partners should first change their tune toward Pakistan and make the tune consistent, then see if Pakistan's military/ISI continue to support terrorism in Afghanistan. Then take it to the next level if they don't abandon the support.

But it's only recently that Washington has demonstrated real opposition to the Pakistani military's support of terror sponsoring groups -- and even then the demonstration is part of a passive-aggressive approach that sends conflicting signals to Pakistan's military and civilian leaders.

Let me show you something:

October 8, 2009

US leaders say no intention to interfere in Pakistan's affairs

[...] Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States has no intention of interfering in Pakistan's internal affairs through the [civilian] aid programme, as some critics have suggested. "Those who have questions or doubts should read the legislation, which is very clear in its intent. [...]

January 8, 2011

Islamabad - The US has the right to interfere in Pakistan’s economic and governance affairs as Washington provides funds to it, the American envoy here has asserted. US Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter said the US was the largest aid giver to Pakistan and, therefore, it has the right to interfere in economic and governance affairs, Geo News reported Saturday.[...]

[flipping her pen in the air] Who acts like this? Only crazy people can afford the luxury of changing their minds whenever it suits them. A policy, particularly one that's written into legislation, means an assurance that's consistently applied. Policies can change but if 'change' is the operative term, one is no longer making policy.

With that off my chest I'll turn the floor over to Martin Smith and Amrullah Saleh; Smith's comments are shown in boldface:

[...]
Were you in Kabul on the day that the Indian Embassy was bombed [in 2008]?

Yes.

You got the news and then you began to gather evidence.

Yes. The evidence directly linked the bombing to [the Pakistani Islamist group] Lashkar-e-Taiba and ISI.

Specifically what?

Very specific, because we got the guy who prepared the car; we got the guy who planned together with ISI in Pakistan. And we had sufficient evidence that it was ISI's plan, because prior to the bombing, I had passed many other assets they had if they could do it. So we knew they were trying to do something against the Indian Embassy.

But what was the evidence that you had?

We had the remaining members of the network arrested.

And they told you --

That they were working for Lashkar-e-Taiba.

But what was the evidence linking those Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives to the ISI?

Lashkar-e-Taiba is an ISI child, A. B, prior to the bombing, we had detected ISI surveillance of the Indian Embassy through proxy, meaning they would train people in surveillance and casing and task them to go after the Indian targets in Afghanistan and bring back information. So we knew ISI were planning to do something against the Indian Embassy.

What was the evidence that linked those proxies to the ISI?

Because it's very direct and it's very simple. Indian Embassy in Kabul is not a target for Al Qaeda. India is not doing anything against Al Qaeda, one. That's circumstantial evidence.

But hard evidence means we get the guy. He tells us about his safe house in a Pakistani city. He gives us telephone numbers. He gives us the name of this mysterious clean-shaven person who came and gave them the equipment, showed them the map and gave them the training and the money, which clearly shows ISI's hand. And we go to the ISI, and we say, "Brother, this is the location where the bombing was found."

Months later they come by and say, "Yes, we did go to the location; the house was empty." Sure, if the house was empty, you could see the register. Who are running it? Very frustrating. Very frustrating. Yeah, they were involved. They were involved. ...

And when did you present your evidence to your U.S. counterparts in the CIA?

As far as investigations were concerned, I don't know now. It was shoulder to shoulder it worked. ... On this particular incident there was nothing that we were withholding from CIA. They knew everything we were doing in the investigation, everything.

So they concluded that as well as you did that this was an ISI-sponsored operation.

We were not telling the CIA to share with us their conclusion. We were empowering them with evidence. And we were assuming that overwhelming evidence will allow them to have good judgment. ...

What was [the Haqqani network's] role in that attack?

They have facilitated, because the bombers had come to Logar with the help of Haqqani facilitators into Kabul. But it was a Lashkar-e-Taiba operation.

Lashkar-e-Taiba is a --

Is a Pakistani extremist outfit, Punjabi. It's not tribal areas. Initially created to do operations in India. They are the ones who did the Mumbai attack.

You have numerous incidents, operations that you've investigated. But can you recount for us now ... perhaps something you haven't talked about before that makes very crystal clear the involvement of the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, in Taliban operations inside Afghanistan?

... There is an individual called Tajmir. Tajmir, during the Taliban, was chief of their intelligence for Jalalabad. By virtue of his job he was very close to Al Qaeda, and he was trained by ISI. He's an ISI graduate, and he hails from Paktia province. Very professional in training, he uses about 70 aliases and fake names. But we know it's Tajmir.

He is directing operations from Tal, from Waziristan, from tribal areas. And more than a dozen times after we found out this particular operation was carried out with blessings of Tajmir, we told ISI: "This guy is not hiding in mountains. He is either in Peshawar, or he is in a specific building with this telephone number." They never arrested Tajmir because Tajmir is their man. CIA knows about this. The U.S. military knows about it. The FBI knows about it. And Tajmir is like chief of operations of Al Qaeda assisted by ISI. And he's responsible for more than half of the deadly, the spectacular attacks that have happened since 2004 in Kabul.

You just said that he was chief of operations for Al Qaeda or for the Taliban?

Both. For that particular region of Afghanistan.

He was trained by the ISI?

Yes, he was trained.

What convinces you that he is currently being run by the ISI?

Because he's not hiding in the mountains. He is living in a flat in town. And more than a dozen times we have passed his location and phoned to the ISI. The ISI have come back to me and said: "You were right. A cell who did that operation in Kabul or this operation in Kabul, you are right, they were in contact with their masters in Tal." But they never arrested anybody.

You've called the ISI?

Yes.

Who do you talk to?

I used to talk to [Pakistan army chief Ashfaq Parvez] Kayani, [former ISI chief] Nadim Taj and [ISI chief] Gen. [Ahmed Shuja] Pasha.

And when you talked to Kayani or Pasha, you mentioned this Tajmir?

Yes.

And they said?

They would say, "We will look into it."

Did they deny that he worked for the ISI?

Of course.

So they're denying it? And you're saying that your proof that he works for the ISI is that they don't arrest him?

He's not an ISI officer, but without ISI's protection, he cannot live where he is living. When he does an operation, he then moves to Peshawar, [where] he has a shop. ... And ISI knows about it.

Well, there's a difference, though, between hands-off policy by the ISI toward operatives and actually running them.

I am afraid the United States is becoming again so legalistic like before 9/11, and that will hurt you.

But you're an intelligence man. There is a difference, would you not admit, between a hands-off policy and actual employment and running him as an agent? Are we talking here about the refusal of the ISI to cooperate with you in going after people, or are we talking about active ISI-led operations?

ISI has created a space for Al Qaeda, Haqqani and Taliban to launch operations. Without their protection, without them tolerating the presence of these operatives to do planning, training and using Pakistani soil they won't be able to do these operations. So ISI knows they are doing it, and ISI is happy they are doing it, because through them, Pakistan promotes her policy in Afghanistan, and the policy is, "Taliban are ours, and they are to dominate Afghanistan."

And we're going to help those who help them by protecting them? By not arresting them?

Sure.

Have you ever arrested somebody engaged in a Taliban operation who was carrying papers that identified them as having communications with the ISI?

Too many.

Can you give me an example of that?

For example, there is a guy called Sayed Akbar. He's an active ISI officer, and he was embedded with Taliban in Kunar. We arrested him, and he's in jail.

Give me another example.

Another example -- my colleagues and the police arrested another ISI man fighting, embedded with Taliban in Farah.

How did they know he was an ISI man?

He's saying he's an ISI man. He gives his regiment and his office, everything.

Can you give me another example?

I wouldn't because we have an expression: When you buy apples, you just look at one, and don't necessarily look at each and every apple you buy. So what is the point going over and over this? Americans know ISI is hurting them.

The Pakistanis deny it.

Sure. It suits them.

They say: "We're being hurt and attacked by the Taliban. Why should we be helping them?"

I would say they are being hurt by anti-Pakistani elements or miscreants, but not the Taliban.

In the summer of 2008, the drone campaign in FATA [Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas] accelerates. What kind of conversations did you have with the CIA, with your U.S. counterparts and the military about this operation and what were your feelings were about it?
[...]

I'll break off here, but there is much more of import in the interview.

Pakistani-American Headley fingers ISI involvement in terror attacks on Mumbai. Why was this big news ignored by American mainstream media?

I note the Waldman paper (see earlier Pundita post), which is about the official involvement of Pakistan's ISI in terrorism in Afghanistan, was published three days after the news broke that David Coleman Headley had told Indian investigators the ISI was behind the 26/11/08 terror attacks in Mumbai, India.

Yet despite the importance of the news to Americans it doesn't seem it got much if any coverage in the American mainstream media. The report didn't even show up on the Google News front page; it appears only on Google News after entering keywords such as Pakistan, ISI or Headley. In short, Americans would have to know what to look for, to find it on Google News. Here's a report on Headley's remarks from The Times of India:

'ISI guided LeT at every step for 26/11'
by Diwakar & Vishwa Mohan, TNN, Jun 10, 2010, 02.40am IST

Pakistani-American terrorist David Headley has confirmed that Lashkar-e-Taiba [LeT] terrorists carried out the Mumbai attack under the "guidance" of Pakistan's ISI.

Headley, who is being interrogated in the US by a team of NIA officials, has said that the notorious ISI was engaged with the Lashkar commanders responsible for the 26/11 carnage at "each and every stage of the plot".

The account of the terrorist, who receed targets for Lashkar terrorists across the country, corroborates India's stand about the involvement of Pakistani state actors in terrorism, trains the spotlight on LeT-ISI tandem, and explains Pakistan's unwillingness to clamp down on the Lashkar leadership.

Headley has mentioned serving officers of Pakistan army — Major Sameer Ali, Major Iqbal and Major Haroon — as those who collaborated with the Lashkar terrorists. Major Sameer and Major Iqbal figured in the dossier India gave to Pakistani foreign secretary Salman Bashir.

NIA's sessions with Headley tally with what he is learnt to have told the FBI, including the crucial bit about Hafiz Saeed being in the loop through the plot.

Whether the disclosures that undercut its denial will lead Pakistan to step up its cooperation with the 26/11 probe remains unclear.

Home minister P Chidambaram is to demand voice samples of seven Lashkar commanders including Zakiur Rahman Lakhvi, Zarar Shah, Abu Al Qama and others when he meets his Pakistani counterpart Rehman Malik during his visit to Islamabad for the conference of home ministers from SAARC region. Pakistan has so far refused to give voice samples which could help investigators ascertain the identity of those who instructed the 26/11 attackers as they went about their deadly assignment.

Headley has also spoken of how post-26/11, ISI wanted Lashkar to disown the Mumbai attack to turn the global attention away from the terror outfit that Pakistan considers to be an important strategic asset to be used against India. With Ajmal Kasab snared, and investigations by India and FBI homing in its nexus with Lashkar, ISI planned to blame the carnage on al-Qaida. It even prepared a list of 4-5 al-Qaida figures who were to be projected as the conspirators.

Significantly, the ploy did not work because of resitance from Lashkar leaders, particularly Zakiur Rahman Lakhvi, one of the 26/11 masterminds. Lashkar leaders who have proclaimed themselves to be innocent and have accused India of levelling baseless charges, felt that the increased notoriety after 26/11 had raised the terror profile of the group and was going to help them with recruitment and funds.

Headley also admitted that while he had started off as a Lashkar recruit, he started drifting towards Al Qaida under the influence of Major Abdul Rahman Saeed. Saeed, who served with 6 Baloch Regiment of Pakistan army, took voluntary retirement in 2002 to devote himself full time to Al Qaida's cause. Headley, who respected Saeed for his "sacrifice", went high in the retired major's esteem because of precise inputs he provided for the 26/11 attack.

Saeed, with the help of Ilyas Kashmiri, drafted him for the plan to attack Danish newspaper Jylland Posten which published controversial cartoons of Prophet Mohammad. This, when Headley's original handler Sajid Mir wanted him to focus on Lashkar's anti-India mission.

During his Pakistan visit, Chidambaram will also ask Islamabad to locate and arrest 13 absconders found guilty by Indian courts.