World Threats

The combination of Afghan police and military forces and NATO killed over 50 Taliban members in a lightning assault in the last twenty four hours.

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Six people were killed in a bus explosion in Karachi, Pakistan today. This comes as the United States has decided to again launch drone strikes on suspected terrorists in Waziristan.

Six people were killed Saturday when a bus exploded outside the main railway station in Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi, authorities said.

About 50 people were reported injured, some of them critically, Dawn News reported.

Abdul Majeed Abid is a medical graduate in Lahore, Pakistan that first began writing criticisms of Islamism in Urdu last year. He is the assistant-editor at Pak Tea House, a leading blog in Pakistan that promotes liberal values, where he regularly challenges political Islam, conspiracy theories and historical biases in Pakistani textbooks and pop culture.

Here’s an excerpt from our interview:

Religion is considered sacrosanct in Pakistani society and the only discussion about it is in the garb of reverence. There is little realization in the educated classes of Pakistan about the differences between Islam and Islamism. I was part of that group until the assassination of the governor of the largest province by one of his own guards because the governor had expressed dislike for the blasphemy laws of Pakistan.

Those laws, enacted by the military dictator, General Zia ul-Haq, were considered to be derived from the Quran and Hadiths, the two primary sources of Islamic jurisprudence. In fact, those laws were not based on any religious texts at all. The realization that dawned upon me and on people like me after the murder was that the space for religious discourage in this country is almost over. That particular incident became the core inspiration of my writings critical towards Islamism and the overindulgence of it in Pakistan. That murder made a lot of progressive voices decide that enough was enough and something had to be done by the civil society regarding this.

Click here to read the entire interview at RadicalIslam.org.

President Obama boasts that 22 of Al-Qaeda’s top 30 leaders have been killed on his watch, mostly by drone strikes (The Long War Journal doubts this claim). That number just grew to 23, with U.S. officials confirming that Abu Yahya al-Libi has been killed in a drone strike in Pakistan.

This is devastating for Al-Qaeda. Libi was the second-in-command of the group, only surpassed by Ayman al-Zawahiri in importance. He performed many roles for the group: As the “gatekeeper” between field operatives and the leadership; an administrator in Al-Qaeda’s Shura Council; a terrorist trainer; an operations manager; a dynamic spokesman, releasing more tapes than any other Al-Qaeda figure in recent years and a cleric, drawing upon his advanced religious education in Mauritania to preach and issue fatwas with authority.

“There is no one who even comes close in terms of replacing the expertise Al -Qaeda has just lost,” a U.S. official said.

Libi’s escape from America’s Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan brought his reputation to a whole new level. He was captured in 2002 and held until July 2005 when he and several of his terrorist colleagues (including Al-Qaeda’s former top operative in Southeast Asia) snuck out of the maximum-security prison. The terrorists took careful watch of the facility’s security procedures, identifying loopholes. Somehow, they were able to pick the locks on their jail cells, change their outfits and crawl over a wall. One of their terrorist friends was waiting in a truck. The escape set off a fruitless manhunt.

The strike happened in the village of Hassu Khel, a village near Mir Ali, in North Waziristan, Pakistan. The drone blew up the compound he was staying at and a pickup truck next to it, killing a total of 16 people. One resident says that Libi was there recovering from an injury he suffered in another drone strike that happened on May 28.

Click here to read the rest of my article at RadicalIslam.org.

The Christian Post quoted me extensively in their report on Al-Qaeda’s releasing of a video of Warren Weinstein begging President Obama to give into Al-Qaeda’s demands so he can be released by the terrorist group. Below is an excerpt:

Al-Qaida’s demands are not reasonable at all,” Ryan Mauro, national security analyst at RadicalIslam.org, told The Christian Post, adding that the terrorists surely made Weinstein describe these demands as “easy,” against all logic. “They [al-Qaida] set the bar so high that it can’t realistically expect the U.S. to contemplate giving in.”

Traditionally, the U.S. is known to practice a policy of not negotiating with terrorists.

Mauro adds that it is very little likely the U.S. would engage in negotiations, given that it would be very unreasonable.

“Al-Qaeda would be politically impossible and a waste of time. If the U.S. gives in to any of Al-Qaeda’s demands, it only vindicates their methods and guarantees further kidnappings,” he told CP via email Monday. The terror group is looking to make a “splash” to show its presence one year after bin Laden, its leader, was killed by the U.S. forces, the analyst adds. “The U.S. says Al-Qaeda is near defeat and the terrorist group is under immense pressure to show that it is still effective,” Mauro told CP.

Click here to read the rest of the Christian Post story.

Taliban-linked terrorists carried out a coordinated wave of dramatic attacks on high-profile targets across Afghanistan on Sunday ahead of a planned NATO-Afghan offensive. At the same time, Islamist terrorists broke into a jail in Pakistan, freeing nearly 400 prisoners, including 20 terrorists labeled as “very dangerous.” The sophistication of the attacks worries NATO and Afghan officials.

Seven attacks occurred simultaneously at about 1:45 PM. The fighting lasted for over 18 hours in Kabul and the capitals of Paktia, Logar and Nangarhar provinces. Several embassies, police stations, a NATO base, the Kabul Star Hotel, an airport and the parliament building all came under attack. The targets were chosen based on prominence instead of creating maximum casualties. The Islamist enemy’s goal was to demonstrate that no target is safe and to show off its ability to conduct complicated operations.

The attacks are also meant to discourage the Afghans and the American public. About 66% of Americans now oppose the war in Afghanistan and 70% believe that the Afghan population does not support the U.S. military presence. Only 22% believe the Afghans support American involvement.

Click here to read the rest of my FPM article.

The U.S. is now offering $10 million for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Hafiz Saeed, the founder of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET) terrorist group most famous for its 2008 attacks in Mumbai that killed 166 people, including 6 Americans. His response was to hold a public press conference and crack jokes while Pakistani officials again lashed out at the U.S.

After the bounty was announced, Saeed held an event across from the Pakistani military headquarters in Rawalpindi, only about 40 minutes from the U.S. embassy in the capital. He has operated openly in Pakistan since his house arrest ended in 2009, during which he still preached to thousands.

Saeed defiantly said, “I am here. I am visible” and joked that “America should give that reward money to me.” He announced that he’d be in Lahore the next day if the U.S. wishes to come get him.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner clarified that the U.S. bounty was different from the one that was placed on Bin Laden. The problem isn’t finding him. “We all know where is…every journalist in Pakistan knows where he is,” Toner explained. The award is for information that can “give the Pakistani government the tools to arrest him” so his “brazen flouting of the justice system” comes to an end.

Click here to read the rest of my FSM article.

Color me skeptical, but it would be interesting, nonetheless. The Russia Today is reporting that Osama bin Laden’s corpse was not buried at sea, which was stated after his death last May. This news came leaked from Wikileaks, which cites Stratfor, an intelligence website.

Stratfor’s vice-president for intelligence, Fred Burton, believes the body was “bound for Dover, [Delaware] on [a] CIA plane” and then “onward to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Bethesda [Maryland],” an email says.

Weird.

On August 13, a 70-year old Jewish-American named Warren Weinstein was kidnapped from hishome in Pakistan. Ayman al-Zawahiri has released a tape claiming he is in Al-Qaeda’s custodyand his fate will be decided by whether the U.S. gives into his demands. He’s believed to be under the control of Pakistani Taliban commander Tariq Afridi, who operates out of the tribal town of Darra Adam Khel near Peshawar, but there are reportedly no credible leads on Weinstein’s exact location. What is the United States to do?

The first thing the U.S. must do is inform Pakistan that it will be held responsible for Weinstein’s fate. This would not have happened if Pakistan lived up to the same responsibilities that all of the world’s countries are expected to. If there is any intelligence service that can find Weinstein, it’s Pakistan’s ISI intelligence service. Should it fail to do so, Pakistan should receive just as much blame as Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. There are specific, long overdue punishments that Pakistan must face if Weinstein’s life is lost.

Click here to read the rest of my FSM column.

The Pakistani military is accusing the U.S. of purposely killing its 24 soldiers on Saturday and Pakistani-American relations are, again, at a new low. It may be only a matter of time before Pakistani cooperation on counter-terrorism dwindles from little to nothing but the U.S. shouldn’t be blamed. The NATO airstrike, even if it was a case of misidentification, happened because Pakistan’s border posts allow terrorists to fire across the border.

The details of what happened on November 26 are sketchy, but it is known that U.S. and Afghan forces were attacked. Most reports say the attackers were the Taliban, while another says they belonged to a Salafi militia. The U.S. says it called the Pakistani military, which said it had no soldiers in the area. An airstrike was called in, which the Pakistanis say took place 300 yards inside their country and lasted for over an hour. It is suspected that NATO may have fallen for a Taliban ruse, and accidentally bombed a border post thinking it was a terrorist camp.

Click here to read the rest of my FPM article.

Even as the White House is readying its exit from Afghanistan, there is still the urgent need to build the Afghan security forces. Involved in that task are ISAF trainers. Now with the withdrawal plan accelerated, NATO will need more:

Marine Gen. John R. Allen, who took command in Afghanistan last summer, wants 1,700 more military personnel — mid-level officers and senior enlisted troops leading hundreds of new advisor teams to be assigned beginning next year to Afghan units battling the Taliban insurgency, the officials said.

A similar approach worked in Iraq in 2007 and 2008. Hopefully there will be similar success here, but the situation is even more complicated.

On Saturday, Pakistan showed how dismissive it is of U.S. pressure. Only days after Secretary State Clinton’s visit to Pakistan and one day prior to her trip to Afghanistan, the Pakistan-based Haqqani network carried out the deadliest bombing in Afghanistan since the war began. Thirteen NATO personnel were killed by a suicide bomber and there is every reason to believe it will be traced back to Pakistan’s intelligence service.

The attack is a challenge from Pakistan. Haroun Mir, an Afghan analyst, said, “The Pakistanis are sending another message, too: They are not willing to abandon their support of the Taliban.” The Pentagon’s latest report on the war in Afghanistan states that the Pakistani safe havens and the weaknesses of the Afghan government present the most serious problems to the war effort. The fact that Pakistan allowed the Haqqani network to carry out such an operation shows it has no intention of changing its behavior.

Click here to read the rest of my FPM article.

It’s time for some blunt speaking: Pakistan is trying to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan and that is an act of war. The Pakistanis have tried to deny it altogether or blame it on rogue elements, but 10 years after 9/11, these “rogue elements” are as active as ever. Our troops deserve to be protected, and their attackers don’t deserve taxpayer money. It’s time to treat the killers as killers.

The crisis in Pakistani-American relations reached a new height when Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, accused the Pakistani ISI intelligence service of being behind the attacks on the U.S. embassy and NATO headquarters in Kabul in mid-September. He also said the ISI orchestrated a truck bombing on September 10 that wounded 77 American soldiers and an attack on the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul on June 28. The U.S. learned of the truck bomb headed towards its forces in advance, and two days before the explosion, asked the top Pakistani military commander to intercept it. Unintentionally confirming that Pakistan has the power to stop such attacks, he said he’d “make a phone call” to stop it. It wasn’t.

“The Haqqani network acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency,” Mullen said. It was the first time that a top U.S. official publicly said that the ISI as an agency was masterminding attacks on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. The White House tried to walk back from his remarks, but Mullen stood firm. “I phrased it the way I wanted it to be phrased,” he said.

Click here to read the rest of my FPM article.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has signed an accord with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi. The two countries have cooperated in the fight against Islamic extremists and India is very wary about what will happen if NATO withdraws from Afghanistan. Both countries also lay blame at Pakistan’s doorstep for fomenting much of the inter-border violence.

India has played a role in training Afghan police and military forces. Prime Minister Singh has cooperated with NATO and Afghanistan for years:

He said that the people of India sympathised with Afghanistan as it sought to cope with “acts of terrorism… particularly the assassination of [peace envoy] Burhanuddin Rabbani”.

President Karzai said that he was “grateful” for India’s help as his country strives to overcome “violence and extremist activities”.

India would likely send troops to the country except for fears it could spark a conflict with Pakistan. Pakistan would be loathe to have Indian forces on both sides of its border.

The U.S. believes it has killed Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, the second-in-command of Al Qaeda, in a drone strike in Waziristan, Pakistan on August 22. It is a painful loss for Al Qaeda, as his importance is arguably even greater than that of the group’s chief, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The Obama administration will cite his death as evidence that the “strategic defeat” of Al Qaeda is near.

There is no firm confirmation of Rahman’s death. A Pakistani intelligence official confirmed to The Independent that Rahman has been killed. However, a Taliban commander in Pakistan insists, “It’s a fake story. It’s not true.” A Pakistani official in Peshawar has expressed doubts, claiming that no informants in the area could substantiate the reports. Rahman has been falsely reported as having been killed before, but the U.S. appears confident that he has been taken out.

Rahman was one of five terrorist leaders that the U.S. told Pakistan would be unilaterally targeted if it did not locate them by July. David Ignatius argues that Rahman was the most important Al Qaeda figure because “whatever thread still held al-Qaeda together passed from bin Laden through to Rahman.” He is not believed to have dealt with the details of individual operations, but he did work with Bin Laden on the general planning for a spectacular attack on the U.S. for the tenth anniversary of 9/11. He was the overall leader for Al Qaeda in the Pakistani tribal regions, and handled communication between Osama Bin Laden and his commanders.

Click here to read the rest of my FPM article.