Posted on 12/15/2008 9:44:54 AM PST by jhpigott
Mon Dec 15, 2008 5:34am EST
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistani newspapers gave prominent coverage on Monday to a British media report that a retired general gunned down in Islamabad last month planned to blow the whistle on fellow generals' dealings with the Taliban.
Jang, Pakistan's biggest selling Urdu-language newspaper, ran a story on its front page headlined: "Gen. Alavi was against pacts with Taliban, Musharraf had sacked him."
The reports in Jang and other Pakistani dailies were based on a story published in Britain's Sunday Times, and written by Carey Schofield. Major-General Amir Faisal Alavi, a brother-in-law of Nobel prize-winning British novelist V.S. Naipaul, was shot dead along with his driver on the outskirts of the capital on November 19.
Suspicion initially fell on Islamist militants linked to al Qaeda and the Taliban, but an investigation by police and intelligence agencies has yet to come up with hard evidence.
"The investigation is going on but so far there has been no progress. We could not identify the murderers or the motive," said Sajid Kiyani, superintendent of police in Islamabad.
Schofield says Alavi, who had commanded the elite Special Services Group, gave her a copy of a letter he had had sent to army chief General Ashfaq Kayani in which he named two generals whose conspiracy resulted in his premature retirement more than two years ago.
Western and Pakistani analysts have long harboredsuspicion that Pakistan has played a double game by supporting Taliban factions in the years since 2001, despite the heavy casualties suffered by its security forces fighting militants in the tribal region bordering Afghanistan.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
ping
Risky business being a whistleblower in the Pak military I guess.
Noticed this a few mins ago too :
Pakistan Rejects Terror Request
Breaking News
5:44pm UK, Monday December 15, 2008
Pakistan has refused a British request to question suspects arrested in connection with the Mumbai attacks, says Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.
Gordon Brown visited Islamabad at the weekend in a bid to calm tensions between Pakistan and India in the wake of the attacks that left 172 dead.
More follows...
Your link does not work.
thank you for posting the link
http://extras.timesonline.co.uk/letters.pdf
Thanks.
was this a British request to question Pakistani subjects on behalf of India or was this just the British relaying an Indian request to question Pakistani subjects? . . . the latter, while not helping the situation, is expected. If it’s the former, then this really will not help things.
It was a request for UK police to question suspects.
In August, 2004, REDtone was awarded a 20-Year Long Distance & International License from the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority. In January, 2005, REDtone Pakistan received a 14 years and nine month Card Payphone Licence from the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority for the provision of telephone and fax services through card payphone in Pakistan.
Alavi was brought in to control the problem of "grey trafficking of calls". REDtone is at a disadvantage because they have to pay the government certain charges for terminating international long-distance calls. However, "grey" operators manipulate gateway exchanges for international calls to enable them to be classified as domestic calls to escape having to pay the same charges.
Alavi supervised “Operation Mountain Lion”, with American and British Special Forces in the Pak-Afghan tribal belt to track down al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders. In Angoor Adda, Waziristan, October, 2003, a SSG unit led by Faisal Alvi killed 12 Taliban and al-Qaeda and arrested 14.
“It was a request for UK police to question suspects.”
dandy. kind of hard to verify Pakistani reports of a “crackdown” when they won’t even let a neutral 3rd party question the suspects . . . guess we’ll just have to take the Pakis at their word . . . i imagine there could be some consequences though for this Paki decision
...ISLAMISTS....
Some update and discussion from ORBAT.
...Pakistan: More Bad News Remember the former head of Pakistan’s special forces who was murdered in an ambush a few days back? Well, you’d better read this story from London Times. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article5337881.ece
The correspondent says that the general was threatening to expose two army generals who had made deals with insurgents, including one who was paying off Baituallah Mesud, the Waziri insurgent leader not to attack the Army. The general talked with the correspondent, the details are in the story. Now, it appears the general had British and Pakistani nationality. So the Brits are getting into the act. It also seems the general was brother to Mr. V. Naipaul’s wife - Mr. Naipaul being the eminent South Asian writer and British citizen. so presumably there’s pressure from that side on the government.
Folks, the bad news is that Pakistani generals don’t just drive to their bank to pick up suitcases of cash from their account and pay off insurgent leaders. The money the general was giving had to be state money. The clear implication in the story is that the Pakistan army chief, General Kiyani, had no knowledge of this deal. So inevitably, if this is correct, we have to assume it was ISI money.
But wherever the money came from: the point is - as we have repeatedly said, based on our sources whom we can neither identify nor go into detail - the Pakistani commitment to the US’s GWOT is not worth a rubber duck with a one-centimeter hole. We are not reviling the Pakistanis: after all, why is it that they alone cannot serve the national interests and must serve the Americans?
We are saying that America has got to get its facts straight. Pakistan is not a GWOT ally. How many times does this have to be said? The answer is not to bomb Pakistan, the answer is to understand the Afghanistan infection must be stopped at the border. The last thing America needs is to expand its over-boiling pot of troubles by starting fights with the Pakistanis. Its better to seal the border with Afghanistan. If you won’t do that, then come home and forget about the region. No action is better than wrong action.
According to Syed Saleem Shahzad:
Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure)
“LET is the most important, unconventional strategic arm of the Pakistani armed forces which, in the event of war, will play a major role by providing frontline troops. The LET is estimated to have about 10,000 to 15,000 trained fighters.”
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JL18Df01.html
Yeah, whaddayaexpect?
However, they did get their arses kicked at Kargil in 1999.
Well, the US has pursued this fiction of seperating the jihadis from the Pakistani Military and Foreign Office when they’ve been an integral, pivotal and forward leaning spearpoint of the Pakistani state.
The UK goes along because, after all, Pakistan was the Crown’s creation.
But, LeT really messed by killing a few Americans, Britishers and even Israelis.
If they hadn’t done that, the overall reaction would’ve been similar to the Bombay Train Attacks that killed 250.
LeT’s 15,000 fighters in a conventional setting are good for target practice for standoff weapons.
Where they are likely to cause havoc is by doing more Mumbai style attacks. In 2002, they got into an Indian army barracks and slaughtered several dozen innocents - wives and kids of Indian troops.
Think about how our troops would react if they feared the enemy could kill their kids?
Maybe if groups like the LeT openly join hands with the Pakistan army, instead of the covert role today, we might overcome our reluctance to take care of Pakistan once and for all.
If another 9/11 were to happen, it is likely to come from Pakistan. Let’s not forget that.
PS: Thanks for the ping. Someone I knew died at Mumbai. What an awful tragedy!
I’m sorry to hear that.
“All roads of terrorism in the world lead to Pakistan,” says renowned author Salman Rushdie. “The headquarters of all terrorist organizations are based in Pakistan.”
Pakistan is not even a functioning state,” Rushdie said. “They have a decreasingly functional society, an increasingly Islamized army and an out of control ISI (Pakistan’s intelligence agency).”
Pakistan has always felt resentment over the tremendous progress India has made, he added, in what perhaps was one of the most candid of critiques on that country coming from a celebrity. Laced with uncanny humor, Rushdie did not deter from calling a spade a spade when most people were still spewing rhetoric over Pakistan’s continued support to terrorist organizations operating openly on its soil. Rushdie dismissed arguments that “injustices” meted out to Indian Muslims was one of the reasons for repeated terrorist attacks in India.
“The question of injustice is not their (the terrorists’) project,” he said. “They just want to drag the modern world back to medieval fundamentalism at the point of modern weaponry.” “Will these terror groups disband if the Kashmir issue is resolved or will al Qaeda and other such organizations disband if there was lasting peace between Israel and Palestine? Will they then say their jihadi purpose has been served and go back to regular lives? I doubt that,” he said. Rushdie, however, was equally critical of the failed Indian intelligence agencies and the ineptness of the Mumbai police to act on several tip offs about an impending terrorist attack from the sea.
http://indiapost.com/article/usnews/4886/
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