America’s war on American-trained extremists in Pakistan

A secret order issued by George Bush giving US special forces carte blanche to mount counter-terrorist operations inside Pakistani territory raises fears that escalating conflict was spreading from Afghanistan to Pakistan and could ignite a region-wide war.

Following the unprecedented executive order, signed by Bush in July, US navy Seals commandos, backed by attack helicopters, launched a ground raid into Pakistan last week which the US claimed killed about two dozen insurgents. Pakistani officials meanwhile condemned the raid as illegal and said most of the dead were civilians.

Meanwhile Peter Chamberlin suggests that it is American-funded "Islamists" who are destabilizing Pakistan to justify American intervention to seize Pakistani nukes before the American-funded "Islamists" can get their hands on them.

All those who are being accused and targeted by America's cross-border raiders are the extremists like Jalaluddin Haqqani, whom we have trained and supported in the past.

The areas being targeted in Bajaur and S. Waziristan are the locations of former CIA training camps and American/Saudi-funded madrassas.

Other raids have targeted Baitullah Mehsud and his men (who are also tied to secret American training programs), who move freely throughout the region promoting the terrorism that will justify American actions, in possession of the most-advanced communication gear and possibly even satellite intelligence.

Killing ourselves in Afghanistan

On a recent bitterly cold winter day, I sat huddled on a red Persian carpet in an unheated Kabul office, waiting for a visitor who, I was told by a trusted friend, would help me understand why America is not winning its war in Afghanistan. Our meeting was conducted in secrecy. My guest was, until early 2007, a Taliban commander of 50 fighters in North Waziristan, Pakistan.

For at least two and a half years, and perhaps far longer, the Pakistani government has been receiving massive U.S. aid while its intelligence agency and elements of its military have been pursuing their own anti-American agenda within Afghanistan. The U.S. has given the Musharraf regime $10 billion since Sept. 11, 2001, but Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and factions within the Pakistan army, while helping the U.S. track al-Qaida with one hand, have been aiding the Taliban with the other. In part because of Pakistani help, the Taliban have made a steady comeback and American and Afghan casualties are at their highest annual levels since the war began. Coalition casualties increased more than 20 percent last year.

Islamabad has denied complicity and Washington has maintained official silence, but the double-dealing is not surprising. It's just the continuation of the Pakistani government's former alliance with the Taliban, which was itself an outgrowth of a decades-old Pakistani policy of trying to exert control over the internal affairs of its chaotic neighbor. [The former Taliban commander] said the ISI had helped train and arm him to fight inside Afghanistan against U.S. and international coalition forces since 2002.

Interviews with Afghan and U.S. intelligence officials involved in covert U.S. operations along the border suggest that U.S. intelligence operatives have known since 2005 that the Pakistan army and the ISI have been training and arming insurgents in the Tribal Areas who cross into Afghanistan to kill Afghan, U.S. and coalition forces. "Our guys are getting killed because Pakistan has a double policy," said an American policy advisor who travels frequently to U.S military and CIA bases near the border.

[Excerpt of article by Matthew Cole, Salon.com]

Paying Pakistan for the ‘War on Terror’

Once a month, Pakistan's Defense Ministry delivers 15 to 20 pages of spreadsheets to the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, listing costs for feeding, clothing, billeting and maintaining 80,000 to 100,000 Pakistani troops along the Afghan border, in support of U.S. counterterrorism efforts.

In response, the Defense Department has disbursed about $80 million monthly, or roughly $1 billion a year for the past six years, in one of the most generous U.S. military support programs worldwide. The U.S. aim has been to ensure that Pakistan remains the leading ally in combating extremism in South Asia.

But vague accounting, disputed expenses and suspicions about overbilling have recently made these payments to Pakistan highly controversial -- even within the U.S. government.

"Padding? Sure. Let's be honest, we're talking about Pakistan, which has a legacy of corruption," adds an U.S. official familiar with past U.S. payments. "But if they're billing us $5 billion and it's worth only $4 billion, and it's in the ballpark, does the bigger picture call for continuing on with a process that does generate significant progress on the war on terror?”

U.S. officials say the payments to Pakistan -- which over the past six years have totaled $5.7 billion -- were cheap compared with expenditures on Iraq, where the United States now spends at least $1 billion a week on military operations alone.

[Excerpt of an article by Robin Wright, Washington Post]