Results tagged “ISI” from SpyTalk

Young Pakistan Army Officers May Be Turning to Taliban, Insiders Say

By Jeff Stein | May 11, 2009 5:31 PM | | Comments (2)

A retired Pakistani general confided a deep worry to a friend in Washington last week: that some young officers in Pakistan's regular army have become increasingly sympathetic over the past few years to the Taliban and their brand of radical Islam.

While he had no numbers or percentages of officers sympathetic to the Taliban, the possibility of any defections raises questions about the reliability of these officers during any sort of push against the Taliban by the Pakistani army.

Tags: Afghanistan, Arthur_Keller, Center_for_International_Policy, CIA, civil_war, ISI, Islam, Pakistan, Pakistani_army, Pashtun, Punjabi, Qaeda, Selig_Harrison, Southwest_Asia, Taliban, treachery, WorldFocus

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U.S. Fingers Four Former Pakistan Spy Chiefs

By Jeff Stein | December 4, 2008 3:57 PM | | Comments (1)

A little over a decade ago I sat in the living room of Hamid Gul, a still-powerful former head of Pakistani intelligence, listening to him rail in cold fury about the United States.

A hawk-like man with laser black eyes, Gul was known as the "father of the Taliban" for his role in midwifing the fundamentalist Afghan coalition into a fighting force that took Kabul and ruled the country with a puritanical zeal until ousted by the U.S. in the wake of 9/11.

Now he's been fingered by the U.S. as one of four former top Pakistani intelligence officers supporting Islamic terrorism.

Tags: Hamid Gul, India, ISI, Lashkar-e-Toiba, Pakistan, terrorism, United Nations Security Council

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Pakistan, Fingered in Mumbai Terror, Dispatches Spy Chief to India

By Jeff Stein | November 28, 2008 5:26 PM | | Comments (0)

Pakistan, fending off growing evidence that terrorists mounted a seaborne assault from Karachi, said Friday it was dispatching its spy chief to India. 

Terrorists suspected of links to Kashmiri separatists have killed at least 150 people, including 22 foreigners, in a wide ranging, coordinated assault on India's financial and movie capital that began Wednesday.  

The terrorists' main targets were two luxury hotels and the headquarters of an Orthodox Jewish organization. 

Indian officials told reporters two gunmen had been captured who were British citizens of Pakistani origin.

Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee pointed a finger directly at Pakistan, saying: "Based on preliminary information, and prima facie evidence we have, elements of Pakistan are linked to this." 

But Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi warned India not to "be jingoist" and said the two nuclear armed countries "are facing a common enemy, and we have to join hands to defeat this enemy."s

According to a SpyTalk source with close connections to top Indian intelligence and security officials, it was "far less likely today than a few years ago" that Pakistani intelligence, which in the past was deeply involved with Islamic Kashmiri separatists, would have been involved in the Mumbai attacks.

[I discussed these warnings on the PBS television show WorldFocus.]

Mukherjee did not specifically charge Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, with complicity in the assault. 

Pakistan's  decision to send Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the director general of the ISI, will mark the first time one of its chiefs has been known to visit India, its longtime nuclear-armed rival, but recently both sides' intelligence services have been meeting with an idea toward quelling points of tension 

It was not immediately clear, however, when General Pasha would leave for India.

Tags: India, Indian Mujahideen, ISI, Pakistan, terrorism

Islamists Had Warned of Mumbai Attacks

By Jeff Stein | November 26, 2008 5:39 PM | | Comments (1)

UPDATE (12:50 am EST Friday): With Indian authorities still battling to root out terrorist attackers, fears grew that casualties would rise past the 119 known dead and 300 wounded. At least dozens of people, perhaps many more, remained trapped in the hotels, but the number held hostage was unknown. 

Indian commandos, meanwhile, stormed a Jewish center where gunmen were holding a number of people hostage. In a development freighted with dangerous implications, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh went on television and said the attacks probably had "external linkages," clearly fingering its nuclear-armed neighbor Pakistan. 

The Islamic terrorists who claimed responsibility for Wednesday's Mumbai bombings warned two months ago they were targeting the city, home to India's financial services and movie industries.

The warning came in September, following Islamic extremist attacks in other cities. 

"The Indian Mujahideen, which has claimed responsibility for the Delhi, Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Jaipur blasts killing at least 130 people in a span of four months, has now threatened to carry out attacks in Mumbai," reported the Deccan Herald, part of a quality newspaper group based in Bangalore, on Sept. 15.

The group accused Mumbai's antiterrorism squad of harassing Muslims and said in an email that "it was closely watching the ATS," the Herald reported.

[I discussed these warnings on the PBS television show WorldFocus.]

A heretofore unknown group calling itself Deccan Mujahideen claimed responsibility for the attacks in e-mail messages sent to Indian news organizations. Authorities have not confirmed  the identity of the attackers.

But Rohan Gunaratna, an international terrorism expert, told CNN Wednesday that only the Indian Mujahideenhad the resources to carry out the plan.

The head of Mumbai's antiterrorism police was killed in Wednesday's attacks.

The claim of Islamic militants will undoubtedly prompt Indian officials to point a finger at Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, for complicity in the attacks. The ISI has supported Islamic rebels in Kashmir for decades, despite official denials.

American security officials also blame ISI elements for supporting the Taliban in the Pakistani tribal areas that also host al Qaeda, likewise a Sunni Muslim terrorist organization.

But Hindu extremists cannot be ruled out for the Mumbai bombings, either.

Last summer Indian authorities initially blamed Muslim terrorists for a seris of bombings that would eventually kill 145 people.

But in October, police arrested Hindu militants for the attacks. 

"It is too early to tell with any precision who is behind these attacks," Tom Jocelyn granted at The Weekly Standard. "The smart money is on the multi-headed hydra of terrorist and extremist groups based in Pakistan and Kashmir." 

"Indeed, Pakistan's intelligence service has waged a proxy war against India using terrorists for decades. The two nuclear powers have avoided a large-scale exchange, but the Pakistani ISI has repeatedly sponsored or aided terrorist groups targeting civilians in India. For example, Indian authorities were quite vocal in blaming Pakistan for the July 11, 2006 train bombings, which killed more than 200."

A leading suspect for coordinating the attacks is Abdul Subhan Qureshi, also known as Tauqeer, a Mumbai-educated member of the Indian Mujahideen credited with masterminding several of the previous attacks. London's Guardian newspaper said Wednesday. 

He's also been called "India's Osama bin Laden."

"Reports from India's intelligence agencies claim he has been able to use his expertise as a computer engineer to stay one step ahead of his pursuers and to coordinate attacks."

ATS chief Hemant Karkare, two senior police officers and at least 80 others have been killed in the ongoing attacks. Over 240 have been wounded so far.

A witness told Indian television that gunmen in Mumbai looked for British and U.S. passport holders in the city's posh hotels.

"They wanted foreigners, " he told a local television station, according to Reuters. 

Tags: Hindu, India, Indian Mujahideen, ISI, Mumbai, Pakistan, terrorism, WorldFocus

Petraeus Heads to Islamabad Amid Reports of Taliban Talks

By Jeff Stein | October 31, 2008 3:27 AM | | Comments (0)

Newly minted CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus gets a chance to see if his Iraq magic has any chance of working elsewhere next week, when he travels to Islamabad amid a swirl of negotiations aimed at getting the Taliban to halt its Afghan insurgency.

According to some reports, the U.S. itself is ready to talk directly with the Taliban in hopes  of driving a wedge between it and al Qaeda, which it has hosted since the 1990s. 

But while the Taliban was talking in the Pakistani capital this week, its fighters were striking in Afghanistan's capital, in a brazen attack on the Ministry of Culture in the heart of Kabul. 

According to some reports, Saudi Arabia had already quietly brokered talks between the Pakistanis and the Taliban, who were said to be tiring of the al Qaeda Arabs led by Osama bin Laden. 

Tags: Afghanistan, Ahmed Shuja Pasha, Bruce Riedel, CENTCOM, CIA, Iraq, ISI, John D. Negroponte, Pakistan, Petraeus, Robert Gates

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