Boston’s Globe: The Big Picture on Bin Laden
Kyaemon
Osama bin Laden killed – The Big Picture – Boston.com
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/05/osama_bin_laden_killed.html
Osama bin Laden is dead. He was 54. The leader of the Al Qaeda terrorist network had eluded capture for a decade since the attacks on September 11, 2001. U.S. forces and CIA operatives killed him in a firefight in his hideout compound in the city of Abbotabad, Pakistan. He was buried at sea. — Lane Turner (27 photos total)
PLUS: BBC’S NEWS ON PRAISE FOR PRESIDENT OBAMA
President Obama praised for Bin Laden raid
BBC News – President Obama praised for Bin Laden raid
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13275880
President Obama’s decision to authorise the raid which killed Osama Bin Laden, has led to praise from Democrats and Republicans alike, as Mark Mardell reports.
23 comments
Kyaemon
May 4, 2011 at 8:34 pm
White House Fixes Record, Says Target Wasn’t Armed
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703834804576301351486023840.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read
WASHINGTON—Osama bin Laden died in a confrontation in his house during which he resisted U.S. forces but wasn’t armed, White House officials said Tuesday.
Two days after the raid on a compound in Pakistan, new facts filled in the picture of the critical moments in which bin Laden was killed. The new details corrected erroneous information provided a day earlier by a senior administration official, who said bin Laden was armed.
The White House worked to provide an accurate timeline of the events, and corrected information about the fate of one of bin Laden’s wives. When Navy Seals entered the room in the three-story building in Abbottabad where bin Laden was hiding, his wife rushed the assault team….
Kyaemon
May 6, 2011 at 8:41 am
World shares Osama blame: Gilani
http://nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Politics/05-May-2011/World-shares-Osama-blame-Gilani
PARIS – Apparently frustrated by reports of America claiming sole credit for intelligence gathering on Osama bin Laden, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani remarked that no war could be won without Pakistan.
“We are part of the solution not the problem,” the PM repeated his candid remarks on the Afghan conflict that eventually spurs terror activities across the border into Pakistan.
In remarks aimed at countering growing uproar on how al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden managed to live in a luxurious hideaway in Abbotabad, PM Gilani said: “Certainly, this is intelligence failure of the whole world, not Pakistan alone.”
“Security and the fight against extremism or terrorism is not the job of only one nation,” PM Gilani said.
“We share intelligence with agencies of the entire world. If there is a victory, they say it’s our victory; if it’s a loss (or lapse), they say it is their’s (Pakistan)’s. We have to share victory and loss together,“ said PM Gilani at the MEDEF – Mouvement des Entreprises de France (Movement of the French Enterprises), the largest union of employers in France.
Addressing the French business community, specifically businesses already operating or hoping to venture to Pakistan, the PM said although the world acknowledges the uniqueness of the challenges and expectations placed on Pakistan, the same is not reflected by uniqueness of preferential treatment in terms of trade openings or market access. “Terrorism is not just the concern of one country, it is not affecting Pakistan alone, we need the world to back us. We alone are fighting for the peace, prosperity and progress of the whole world. The Soviet Union and its allies left Aghanistan… since then we are paying a huge price. There are 3.5 million Afghan refugees that Pakistan hosts. Forty to forty-five thousand people are moving across the border daily. We have suffered a lot for this war and lost thousands of lives. We have two major problems, terrorism and a struggling economy; and the two are interrelated,“ said the PM.
MEDEF President Jean Burelle, in his address, welcomed PM Gilani and Minister of State for Economic and Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar and Minister of Water and Power Naveed Qamar, who were accompanying him.
Burelle expressed the hope that the PM’s meeting with the MEDEF and later with French President Nicholas Sarkozy and Prime Minister Francois Fillon would help foster good relations between the two countries.
“Trade relations between Pakistan and France have never been as good as they could be, or should be,” he said.
“…as a key actor in Asia, Pakistan cannot be ignored…in terms of purchasing power, its statistics are similar to Belgium or South Africa’s.”
Elaborating on the reasons that Pakistan and France economic relations have declined recently (down 8 percent), Burelle listed the main causes of concern for French businesses of doing business in Pakistan as “two digit inflation of 15 to 16%; huge power deficit; suspension of IMF loans; and on the geopolitical side, the issue of security.”
According to Burelle’s data, the fight against terrorism is using up 4% of Pakistan’s GDP that could instead be spent on education, health or other such key sectors.
Aiming to help improve the economy of Pakistan, “trade not aid” was declared to be the common view of the MEDEF and the PM’s visit. Burelle resolved to do all he and MEDEF could in this regard.
The Prime Minister, in his speech, which was the first scripted speech of his visit to France, complimented the MEDEF and said it was a symbol of the prosperity and progress of France. The PM termed the establishment of the French-Pakistan Business Council (for which an MoU was signed) under Pakistan Business Council President Kamran Mirza and Habib Bank Ltd President Zakir Mahmood to be an important step in the improvement of trade relations between the two countries.
The PM spent some time speaking about the perception versus the reality of the state of security in Pakistan. “Perceptions and mental images are built and reinforced by exaggerated narratives…if you only see Pakistan through the lens of conflict and in the context of the war in Afghanistan, you will never see the real Pakistan,” he said.
Kyaemon
May 6, 2011 at 6:02 pm
Who was the courier who led US to Osama Bin Laden?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-13300680
Who was the man said to have inadvertently led the Americans to Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad?
US officials have identified him as Kuwait-born Pakistani, Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti, and say he was Bin Laden’s “most trusted” courier.
They said they had been keeping an eye on him since 2002 and that he owned the house where Bin Laden was hiding.
They also said he was killed along with Bin Laden during the 2 May raid.
To his neighbours in the town’s Hashmi Colony, though, the owner of the house was known as Arshad Khan – a tall, robust man in his late 30s or early 40s.
Nobody has seen him since the raid.
Fake identity?
The national identification papers which this Arshad Khan produced to obtain gas and electricity connections for the house seven years ago show him to be originally a resident of Khat Kuruna village in Charsadda district of north-western Pakistan.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
On several occasions I saw what looked like bullet-proof four-wheel-drive vehicles coming to the house. I never saw the main gate of the house stay open one second longer than it needed to let a vehicle pass in or out”
End Quote Abottabad resident
No-one in that village knows him or his father Naqab Khan, according to his identification documents.
“If the family had their origins here, it would be widely known,” a local resident and political activist, Mufti Iftikhar, says.
Arshad Khan also used this apparently fake identity to purchase land for the Abbottabad house in 2004.
Ironically, the land was bought in the cantonment area, which is developed and managed by the military, and is located about a kilometre from the prestigious Pakistan Military Academy (PMA).
An official at Abbottabad’s cantonment board confirmed to the BBC that the land was purchased in the name of Arshad Khan, son of Naqab Khan, resident of Charsadda district.
He said he could not provide further details of the property as the file containing property records had been taken away by Pakistani intelligence officials investigating the case.
Pakistan’s National Data Registration Authority (Nadra), which keeps identification records of citizens, has not yet commented on when and where Arshad Khan’s national ID was issued and who authorised it…….
Kyaemon
May 7, 2011 at 6:02 am
Anatomy of a Raid: Osama bin Laden’s Final Moments
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,932476277001_2069645,00.html#ixzz1Le3l6UaL
http://www.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,932476277001_2069645,00.html
Kyaemon
May 7, 2011 at 6:48 pm
Welcome to the post-Osama world
By Pepe Escobar
To follow Pepe’s articles on the Great Arab Revolt, please click here.
United States President Barack Obama, riding high in the polls, his re-election virtually assured, is now free to bask in the glow of his all-American victory in the global “war on terror”, which his administration had rechristened “overseas contingency operations” (OCO). The Osama Bin Laden hit on Monday was indeed an OCO – a swift, overseas “kinetic military action” surmounting innumerable contingencies such as the violation of the aerial space of a theoretically sovereign nation.
Yet US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s first reaction was to stress the “war on terror” in fact goes on forever, true to the spirit of the Pentagon’s own slogan, “The Long War”. That applies especially to the ultra-strategic AfPak theater. It’s as if commander-in-chief Obama could not but be a regal prisoner in a labyrinth not of his own making.
The White House’s move to break out of the labyrinth was to paradoxically go ballistic and seal the death of the 9/11 trauma, capitalized by the George W Bush administration as a license to kill evil – be it in itself or in the form of an axis – and thus affirm Jeffersonian freedom. From 2001 to 2008, those were the years when the hyperpower – on a mission from God and focused as a laser on a Hegel/Fukuyama “end of history” – simply trampled over international law.
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were supposed to be only the first two stops on the way to redemption (then there would be the road to Damascus, Tehran and even Tripoli …) What was christened as The Greater Middle East project was supposed to smash “terror” and the regimes that sheltered it; the Taliban Afghanistan and – in the neo-con vision – Saddamist Iraq. Others would inevitably fall like dominoes.
Almost a decade after 9/11 – and with the Bush “dead or alive” promise finally fulfilled Terminator-style – where does the former hyperpower goes next?
The strategic chessboard has completely changed. It’s hard to exercise hyperpower hegemony when you know China will overtake you as the world’s number one economy, possibly as soon as 2016 – and when you’re drowning in debt to, who else, strategic competitor China. Yet you’re still overextended military, and your never-ending “war on terror”, not to mention two-and-a-half wars, are costing trillions of dollars, paid up by, who else, your top banker China.
Your soft power is not as seductive as it used to be – although your hi-tech creativity is still matchless; and most of all nobody in the developing world, starting with the BRICS group, gives any credence to your Washington Consensus anymore.
And the winner is … China
So for now the winner of the “war on terror” is China, which for a number of reasons, paramount among them the Deng Xiaoping motto “to get rich is glorious”, is now close to the point where it was for 18 of the past 20 centuries, that is, on top.
Obama may be accused of many things – including of being a Nobel Peace Prize warmonger. But he’s also a smart intellectual. The president has surveyed the landscape and has seen how America’s Paul Kennedy-diagnosed imperial overextension has accelerated its decline. And he also has seen how in the process the US was totally corroded by the specter of “Islamic terror”.
And that may lead us to the answer of the magic bullet question about the timing of the Bin Laden hit.
When 9/11 happened, music genius Karlheinz Stockhausen said – to the outrage of millions of Americans – that “this was the greatest work of art the world has ever seen.” He had a point as 9/11 – in terms of its impact upon the collective unconscious of mankind, almost to the point of paralysis – reduced Albert Speer’s and Leni Riefenstahl’s specials to child’s play…..
If Bin Laden – and Muammar Gaddafi – may be selected for diplomacy by targeted assassination, why not the GHASTLY DICTATORSHIP in MYANMAR, or Islam Karimov in Uzbekistan? Moreover, the Pentagon will keep fighting with all its might to keep its Long War going on forever.
Obama the psychoanalyst has just baptized a new, post-Osama world. Let’s see how America reacts, or if it’s soon back to the couch.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
Kyaemon
May 7, 2011 at 6:49 pm
FORGOT THE LINK BELOW:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ME06Ak01.html
Kyaemon
May 8, 2011 at 6:19 pm
YouTube – Listening Post – Smoke and mirrors: The bin Laden death story
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3kZEzWXJ2U
What do we really know about the Osama bin Laden death story, and how do we know it? Also, a before and after look at the media movement that brought down the Tunisian regime.
3,247
Kyaemon
May 9, 2011 at 3:45 am
Adm. William McRaven: The terrorist hunter on whose shoulders Osama bin Laden raid rested
Adm. William McRaven: The terrorist hunter on whose shoulders Osama bin Laden raid rested. – The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/adm-william-mcraven-the-terrorist-hunter-on-whose-shoulders-osama-bin-laden-raid-rested/2011/05/04/AFsEv4rF_story.html
As U.S. helicopters secretly entered Pakistani airspace Sunday, the Joint Operations Center at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan was under the control of a square-jawed admiral from Texas who had labored for years to find Osama bin Laden’s elusive trail.
Vice Adm. William H. McRaven, one of the most experienced terrorist hunters in the U.S. government, had tapped a special unit of Navy SEALs for the mission two months earlier. A former SEAL himself, McRaven had overseen weeks of intensive training for a covert operation that could cripple al-Qaeda if it worked, or strain an already troubled alliance with Pakistan if it went awry.
The search for bin Laden was led by the CIA, which painstakingly pieced together scraps of intelligence that eventually pointed to a high-walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. But when President Obama gave the authorization to invade the site, CIA Director Leon Panetta delegated the raid to McRaven, who had been preparing for such a moment for most of his career.
He has worked almost exclusively on counterterrorism operations and strategy since 2001, when as a Navy captain he was assigned to the White House shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. The author of a textbook titled “Spec Ops,” McRaven had long emphasized six key requirements for any successful mission: surprise, speed, security, simplicity, purpose and repetition.
For the especially risky bin Laden operation, he insisted on another: precision.
“He understands the strategic importance of precision,” said a senior Obama administration official who worked closely with McRaven to find bin Laden, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the operation. “He demands high standards. That’s why we’ve been so successful.”
As leader of the military’s highly secretive Joint Special Operations Command, McRaven has overseen a rapid escalation of manhunts for Taliban leaders in Afghanistan and al-Qaeda figures around the world. Although he’s a three-star admiral, the muscular 55-year-old still sometimes accompanies his teams on snatch-and-grab missions…..
paukpauk
May 9, 2011 at 2:04 pm
ဘင်လာဒင်တွေများလှချေလားဗျာ။
သူကြီးဘာမှ မတည်းဖြတ်တော့ဘူးလား။
အဲလိုလုပ်လို့ရလား။
🙁
ကိုယ့်နိုင်ငံအရေးပဲပိုစိတ်ဝင်စားတယ်။
တော်ရုံပေါ့ဗျာ။
Kyaemon
May 11, 2011 at 6:53 pm
US broke deal with Osama hit
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/ME12Df02.html
ISLAMABAD – Pakistan’s military and intelligence community was fully aware of and lent assistance to the United States mission to get a high-value target in Abbottabad on May 2. What it did not know was that it was Osama bin Laden who was in the crosshairs of US Special Forces, and what angered the top brass even more was that Washington – in clear breach of an understanding – claimed sole ownership of the operation.
Over the years since Pakistan joined the US in the “war on terror” following the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 to oust the Taliban, the US has conducted numerous covert operations – apart from unleashing the missiles of unmanned Predator drones on militant targets – deep inside Pakistan.
For instance, the Los Angeles Times reported on July 27, 2008, “On occasions, US Special Forces teams have been sent into
Pakistan. In 2006, one of the nation’s most elite units, Seal Team 6, raided a suspected al-Qaeda compound at Damadola [in the Bajaur Agency of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas].”
Under this arrangement, the US would conduct raids against high-value targets and Pakistan would provide the necessary support, but Pakistan, for political reasons so that nobody would question that its sovereignty had been compromised, would claim responsibility for the raids.
Following the assassination of Bin Laden, though, within a few hours US President Barack Obama in an address to the American nation said that US Navy Seals had single-handedly conducted the operation.
The incident over Raymond Davis, a contractor with the Central Intelligence Agency, strained the understanding between Pakistan and the US over covert operations.
Davis killed two armed men in Lahore in January and although the US said he was protected by diplomatic immunity, he was jailed and charged with murder. He was released in March after the families of the two killed men were paid US$2.4 million in blood money. Judges acquitted him on all charges and Davis immediately departed Pakistan.
Pakistan then demanded a fresh agreement with the US that would better serve its strategic gains; it is already a major recipient of US aid and arms sales – approximately US$20 billion over the past decade. The Americans in turn wanted the continued right to undertake strikes, but specifically against high-value targets such as Taliban leader Mullah Omar, Bin Laden, his deputy Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri and a leading figure in the Taliban resistance, Sirajuddin Haqqani.
The US sent four warning letters to the Pakistan army through diplomatic channels in which it expressed its reservations on Pakistan’s cooperation in finding high-value sanctuaries. Pakistan responded by asking for better economic deals and a greater role in the Afghan end game.
The demands on both sides were such that international players were called in to mediate. These included top Saudi authorities and Prince Karim Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of the Shi’ite Ismaili community. They played a pivotal role in fostering a new strategic agreement of which the Abbottabad operation was a part. That is, Pakistan was on board but was kept in the dark over the target on the explicit understanding that it would take ownership.
The Saudis included ex-ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who had been sidelined for some years through illness and palace intrigue. He had helped resolve the Davis case and set the parameters for joint surgical strikes inside Pakistan against defiant al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders to pave the way for an end game in Afghanistan.
In the first week of April, the White House released a terror report charging Pakistan with being hand-in-glove with militants. Soon after, the director general of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, went to the US for a very short visit that according to the Associated Press centered on “intelligence cooperation”. Security sources confirmed to Asia Times Online that the new security arrangement was high on the agenda.
Pasha, instead of returning directly to Pakistan, stopped over in Paris where he met the Aga Khan, and then proceeded to Turkey for talks with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, who was in the country on an official visit, to appraise him of the new agreement.
In the last week of April, the US’s top man in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, met with Pakistan Army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani and informed him of the US Navy Seals operation to catch a high-value target. The deal was done.
Pakistan was therefore hugely stunned and embarrassed when Obama made his earth-shattering announcement taking all the credit for Osama’s death.
In an address to parliament on Monday, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said that unilateral actions such as the US’s killing of Bin Laden ran the risk of serious consequences, but he reiterated his earlier stance that the US Special Forces had reached the compound of Bin Laden in Abbottabad with the help of the ISI.
But White House Press Secretary Jay Carney made it clear that even if Pakistan asked for one, it would not receive an apology from the United States. “We obviously take the statements and concerns of the Pakistani government seriously, but we also do not apologize for the action that we took,” Carney said.
Despite this setback, Asia Times Online contacts say the spat does not mean the end of operations – they will go on as agreed, with all credit taken by Pakistan.
“This relationship is too important to walk away from,” Carney said this week.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online’s Pakistan Bureau Chief and author of upcoming book Inside al-Qaeda and the Taliban: Beyond Bin Laden and 9/11 published by Pluto Press, UK. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
Kyaemon
May 11, 2011 at 8:48 pm
Pakistani PM calls for national unity after Osama’s killing
English.news.cn 2011-05-11 17:52:26 FeedbackPrintRSS
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2011-05/11/c_13869879.htm
ISLAMABAD, May 11 (Xinhua) — Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Wednesday appealed to the nation to show unity as the country has been under tremendous pressure from the Western countries after last week’s killing of Osama bin Laden in U.S. forces operation.
The al-Qaida chief was killed at a compound in the northwestern city of Abbottabad on May 2, sparking a debate across the world as to how the most wanted man was hiding in a Pakistani garrison town.
“We are at the crossroads today and the situation demands resolve and commitment of the nation to stand-by the state institutions and defend our geographical and ideological frontiers, ” Gilani told the Senate, upper house of the parliament.
The U.S. is asking Pakistan to carry out investigation about the network, which was supporting Osama bin Laden.
Opposition parties are also demanding judicial inquiry as to why Pakistani radar system failed to detect the intrusion of the U. S. military helicopters, which carried out nearly 40 minutes operation on Pakistani soil.
“Osama was not a Pakistani citizen rather he was involved in heinous crimes while leading al-Qaida which is responsible for killing thousands of innocent Pakistanis during the last few years, ” Gilani said.
He said as Pakistan is facing serious threats and the situation demands more coordination between the political forces and all state institutions.
The prime minister said it is not time for point scoring but putting heads together to devise a comprehensive and workable strategy to safeguard the country.
“Anybody might have wrong perception of the situation but all are patriots and want to overcome these challenges. We can only save our country with unity and determination,” he said.
Gilani said the government has decided to convene in-camera session of the parliament on Friday in which the parliamentarians will be briefed about the situation arising of the Osama’s killing.
“We should not provide opportunity to others to case an evil on our country,” said the prime minister.
Related:
Osama’s wives, children still in Pakistan’s custody
ISLAMABAD, May 8 (Xinhua) –Pakistani Foreign Ministry said on Sunday that government officials were still interrogating wives and children of Osama bin Laden and no country had sought their extradition so far, according to a website report of a local English newspaper The Nation. Full story
Pakistan frees Osama’s neighbor
ISLAMABAD, May 7 (Xinhua) — Pakistani security forces have freed Shamraiz Khan, who lives in the small house opposite to the main entrance of the compound where Osama bin Laden had lived for five years, Khan’s son Qasim told Xinhua Saturday. Full story
Kyaemon
May 13, 2011 at 1:01 am
Big love: bin Laden’s six wives
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_theenvoy/20110512/wl_yblog_theenvoy/big-love-bin-ladens-six-wives;_ylt=AsJvWrXA8UcHw_DpSXmG5rxn.3QA;_ylu=X3oDMTNxOW5nYnZpBGFzc2V0A3libG9nX3RoZWVudm95LzIwMTEwNTEyL2JpZy1sb3ZlLWJpbi1sYWRlbnMtc2l4LXdpdmVzBGNjb2RlA3RvcGdtcGUEY3BvcwMxBHBvcwMxBHNlYwN5bl90b3Bfc3RvcmllcwRzbGsDYmlnbG92ZWJpbmxh
By Laura Rozen
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By Laura Rozen laura Rozen – Thu May 12, 12:48 pm ET
In all, the late al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had six wives. Three of them were living with him–along with 17 of his children–in the Abottabad, Pakistan, compound where bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces in a raid early this month.
Time Magazine’s Tim McGirk runs down the biographies of the six newly widowed bin Laden spouses. Technically, there are four widows and two ex-wives, since bin Laden divorced one of his wives, and a brief marriage was annulled. Three of bin Laden’s widows are now reportedly in Pakistani custody, where the United States is seeking to question them. Bin Laden’s first wife Najwa Ghamem, who is also his first cousin, comes from Syria and is thought to be living there now.
So who were the women who married the terrorist mastermind? Two of bin Laden’s wives come from Saudi Arabia and are well educated–one was a child psychologist, another a teacher of Arabic, McGirk writes. Both are currently in Pakistani custody.
Bin Laden’s fifth and youngest wife, Amal al-Sadah, 24, whom he wed in 2000, comes from Yemen. Amal–whose name on the passport released by the Pakistanis is Amal Ahmed Abdul Fatah–is currently in Pakistani custody, after being shot in the leg during the U.S. raid.
The identity and nationality of a sixth woman bin Laden briefly married in Sudan in 1994 before having the marriage annulled is not known, McGirk writes:……….
Kyaemon
May 13, 2011 at 8:35 am
A bin Laden Family AlbumNEXTBACK1 of 11
OMAR BIN LADEN FAMILY PHOTO COLLECTION
NEXTBACK
Mohammed bin Laden
The grand patriarch of the bin Laden family, a billionaire industrialist and father of Osama, appears in a 1964 painting.
Growing Up bin Laden: Osama’s Son Speaks
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1932380_1971869,00.html
click 11 pictures
Kyaemon
May 13, 2011 at 7:48 pm
U.S. intensifies drone aircraft attacks in Pakistan
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/12/us-binladen-idUSTRE7410D320110512
(Reuters) – A U.S. drone aircraft fired missiles at militants in Pakistan on Thursday, killing eight of them, Pakistani officials said, as American officials vowed to press forward with such attacks after U.S. forces killed Osama bin Laden in his Pakistani hideout.
The third such strike since bin Laden’s killing on May 2 indicated an intensification of the attacks compared with the weeks before the al Qaeda chief was shot dead in the U.S. raid on a compound in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad.
The U.S. bin Laden raid has embarrassed and enraged Pakistan’s military and worsened already strained U.S. ties.
In Washington, debate over whether Bush administration interrogation practices helped find bin Laden heated up when Senator John McCain said torture of detained militants did not help track down the al Qaeda leader.
Pakistani officials said they were expecting soon a $300 million payment from the United States for costs incurred in fighting militants in a payment that comes even as U.S. lawmakers question aid to Pakistan after bin Laden was found there.
The drone strikes anger many Pakistanis and are another source of friction between the allies. Pakistan officially objects to the attacks, although U.S. officials say they are carried out on an understanding with Pakistan.
“There are absolutely no plans at present to cease or scale back U.S. counterterrorism operations in Pakistan,” one U.S. official said on condition of anonymity. “Efforts to thwart terrorism will continue.
A drone fired two missiles at a vehicle in the North Waziristan region on Thursday headed toward the Afghan border, killing eight militants, Pakistani officials said.
The CIA regularly launches attacks with pilotless aircraft at militants in Pakistan’s Pashtun tribal lands who cross into Afghanistan to battle Western forces there.
The use of missile-armed Predator drones to attack militants has widened a diplomatic divide with Pakistan and sharpened anti-U.S. anger — but killed few senior militants.
A senior Pakistani security official, asked if Pakistan would take steps to stop the strikes, said there was “nothing of that sort” under way to derail the drone program.
“You have to realize that all (the) equipment you use is theirs, so you can’t afford confrontation with them,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
SIMULATED DROWNING
McCain said CIA Director Leon Panetta had told him the trail to bin Laden did not — as some aides to former President George W. Bush have asserted — begin with information from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-professed mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States who the U.S. government acknowledges was “waterboarded” 183 times.
McCain said he wanted to clear up “misinformation” that could make Americans think harsh treatment of prisoners was acceptable. Waterboarding, a former of simulated drowning, is deemed torture by human rights groups and others.
McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner during the Vietnam War, is an important Republican voice on national security matters and was his party’s presidential nominee in 2008.
“In short, it was not torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees that got us the major leads that ultimately enabled our intelligence community to find Osama bin Laden,” McCain said in the Senate.
Multiple U.S. intelligence officials told Reuters the real breakthrough that led to bin Laden came from a mysterious CIA detainee named Hassan Ghul. Ghul, who was not captured until 2004 at the earliest, was not subjected to waterboarding.
Waterboarding had been phased out by the time he was captured. Two U.S. officials said he may have been subjected to other coercive CIA tactics, possibly including stress positions, sleep deprivation and being slammed into a wall.
It was Ghul, the officials said, who after years of hints from other detainees provided the information that prompted the CIA to focus intensely on finding Abu Ahmed al Kuwaiti, a pseudonym for the courier who would lead them to bin Laden.
The U.S. raid to kill bin Laden has fueled suspicion in the United States that Pakistan knew where bin Laden was hiding, while angering Islamabad, which sees the operation as a violation of its sovereignty.
$300 MILLION PAYMENT
Pakistani officials said the country was likely to get $300 million from the United States from the Coalition Support Fund, or CSF, a program to reimburse nations that have incurred costs backing counterterrorism and counter-insurgency operations.
The United States has reimbursed Pakistan $7.4 billion under the CSF program since 2001, when Pakistan joined the U.S.-led campaign against militancy. Funds that come in through the CSF are not officially designated as U.S. foreign aid.
Some U.S. lawmakers have called for suspending aid to Pakistan. But President Barack Obama’s administration has stressed the importance of maintaining cooperation with Pakistan in the interests of battling militancy and bringing stability to neighboring Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s civilian government issued visas to more than 400 Americans without army security clearances starting in early 2010, possibly enabling the CIA to boost its presence, in a move that further angered the powerful military.
The visa issue has fueled tension between the military and the nuclear-armed country’s civilian leaders, whose relations are uneasy at the best of times.
In addition, Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani opened the country’s second Chinese-made nuclear power reactor on Thursday, praising support from its longtime ally China even as Pakistan faces international pressure over the discovery of bin Laden.
(Additional reporting by Caren Bohan, Tabassum Zakaria and Mark Hosenball in WASHINGTON, Sahar Ahmed in KARACHI, and Augustine Anthony and Michael Georgy in ISLAMABAD; Writing by Will Dunham; Editing by Peter Cooney)
Kyaemon
May 13, 2011 at 9:00 pm
Pakistani Police Doubt Bombing Was for Bin Laden
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/14/world/asia/14bomb.html?_r=1&hp
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Senior police officials said on Friday that a suicide attack that killed more than 80 cadets from a government paramilitary force was most likely retaliation for an army offensive in Pakistan’s tribal areas, and not for the death of Osama bin Laden, as the Pakistani Taliban claimed.
Shortly after the attack, which was aimed at members of the Frontier Constabulary in the town of Charsadda, the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility, saying it was retribution for the American raid on May 2 that killed Bin Laden in the small garrison city of Abbottabad, about 70 miles from the capital.
But the Pakistani Taliban have recently issued several statements claiming responsibility for attacks that they did not initiate, the police officials said, adding that they doubted that the attack was actually carried out by them, or that it was in revenge for the American raid.
They said the attack was instead most likely the work of a splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban that has been fighting the Pakistani Army in the nearby tribal region of Mohmand, where the army has struggled for two years to subdue the insurgents, who are led by Umar Khalid.
Recently, the army opened what it called the third phase of an offensive, suffering heavy losses.
The insurgents in Mohmand have been able to force the Pakistani Army into a lengthy campaign by seeking refuge in sanctuaries across the border in Afghanistan’s Kunar Province. NATO forces in Afghanistan have been assisting Pakistan by going after the militants as they escape across the border.
Sikandar Hayat Khan Sherpao, a member of the provincial assembly of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, said the training facility hit that was attacked, at Shabqadar Fort, had been a frequent target of militant attacks before. “Basically, the threat is from Mohmand Agency, where militants still have pockets and are active,” he said.
“I feel that this attack is not in retaliation to the Abbottabad incident,” he added. “Basically, in the last one and a half months, a new military operation has been started in Mohmand as the army is going against militants. So this attack can be seen as a retaliation to the Mohmand operation.”
Bashir Bilour, a senior minister in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa provincial government, told reporters that officials were withholding assessing blame for the deadly attack. “We don’t believe in directly blaming any country without any proof,” he said.
The bombing killed 82 cadets and wounded about 150 people, said Muhammad Akbar Hoti, the commandant of the Frontier Constabulary.
The death toll was expected to rise and could end up being the highest number of law enforcement officials killed in a terrorist attack in recent years, said Liaqat Khan, the police chief in nearby Peshawar. A second bomber was likely to have been involved in the attack, he said.
The suicide bomber attacked as the paramilitary soldiers were preparing to return to their homes on a 10-day leave after six months of training, Mr. Khan said. The bomber was in a car outside the fort when he detonated the explosives about 6 a.m.
The death toll was so high because the men were told to wait for their transport outside the gates of the facility, giving the attackers opportunity to target them in a cluster, a provincial security official said. Instead of waiting inside, they were milling around the entrance to the fort, he said.
“There are two occasions in one’s life to celebrate: wedding and going home on vacations at the end of six months of training,” said Mohammad Sardar, in his mid-20s, who was admitted to Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar with a head injury. “So we were all happy, celebrating the occasion, with bedrolls on our heads, thinking of home, when the first explosion occurred, followed by a second.”
The Frontier Constabulary forces who were the target of the suicide attack are not involved in the fighting in Mohmand. They serve as security guards at checkpoints in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, but their graduation, officials said, provided an accessible target for the militants to drive home their message.
The Frontier Constabulary, which dates from the 1800s, is run by the Pakistani police authorities and has about 70,000 paramilitary soldiers. In addition to patrolling checkpoints, they also provide security at foreign embassies and consulates in major cities. For the sons of many poor families, landing a job in the constabulary is considered a prize.
Kyaemon
May 14, 2011 at 12:52 am
SOURCE: ENGLISH AND BURMESE VERSIONS FROM MMTIMES.COM
Muted Reaction? But, Intense Interest accounting for the brisk sales of newspapers.
—————————————————————————————-
Muted reaction to bin Laden’s death
By Cherry Thein and Nan Tin Htwe
May 9 – 15, 2011
http://mmtimes.com/2011/news/574/news57408.html
A vendor reads a journal in downtown Yangon on May 5. Pic: Seng Mai
HERE was little visible reaction in Myanmar last week to the news that the United States finally got their man – al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. None of the chanting or celebrations seen in the United States – just curiosity as to how the world’s most wanted terrorist had been brought to justice, and how he had eluded his hunters for the best part of a decade after masterminding the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Centre towers in New York.
Sales of news journals were up sharply, spurred at first by breaking news about bin Laden’s death on May 1 and then more detailed reports as the week progressed.
Some expressed doubt as to the veracity of the reports, particularly after President Barack Obama on May 4 opted against releasing photos of bin Laden’s corpse.
“It is important for us to make sure that very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence, as a propaganda tool,” President Obama told CBS program 60 Minutes.
Obama said DNA and facial recognition testing had proved beyond doubt that the Saudi-born extremist was dead.
But U Thein Zaw, a 50-year-old from Pabedan township, said he was still skeptical because of previous rumours about bin Laden’s death that had turned out to be false. “I’m not saying that the body is not a real body, I’m just not sure whether it is actually bin Laden or not. Who can prove it is him?” he said. “And why did they kill him on the spot, rather than capture him? It’s very strange.”
“September 11 was a macabre act and we feel sorry for what happened and never want to see it again … We don’t like that bin Laden claimed to have a religious purpose. It is a crazy issue,” he added.
U Zaw Tun, 27, from Tarmwe township, said he thought bin Laden’s death would be politically beneficial for the Obama administration.
“It is a complicated issue, as it mixes politics with religion. But it was sure he had to die at the hands of America, and that his death will help the reelection of US President Barack Obama [in 2012],” he said.
Interest in bin Laden’s death sent sales of news journals soaring, with Naing Ngan Takar Yay Yar (International Weekly) apparently benefiting the most because of its production cycle, which sees it distributed early in the week.
“I just took 30 copies of International Weekly as normal [on May 3] but I had to go to the distributor again a few hours later to get another 30 copies as sales were so strong. For 7-Day News, I sold all 40 copies in one day. Normally, it takes two days to sell that many,” said Ko Soe Hlaing, a 37-year-old vendor based in Sanchaung township’s Myaynigone quarter.
U Mg Mg San, owner of Pabedan-based Mya Thawda, which distributes 20,000 to 30,000 journals and magazines a week, said he did not have enough copies of local news journals to meet demand.
“Normally, we sell 1200 copies of International Weekly but it was 1800 this week. For 7-Day News, the vendors wanted more but they have fixed print numbers … We weren’t able to get any more copies,” he said. “Myanmar Newsweek and Popular News also had higher sales.”
He said the news of bin Laden’s death had helped raise the profile of Real Time, an international news journal that launched in February. “Because it’s a new one it does not have many readers yet. We sell only 70 to 80 copies normally but this week it was 500. I think Real Time grabbed their opportunity this week and have probably gained some new readers.”
The story was similar outside of Yangon, where journals carrying news about the al-Qaeda leader’s demise sold like proverbial hot cakes.
“This week we sold 800 copies of International Weekly. Normal sales are about 500,” said Ma Myo Myo Thu, owner of Taunggyi-based Millionaire, which distributes journals to customers in the southern Shan State as well as Loikaw in Kayah State.
“7-Day News sold out basically as soon as it arrived. The difference is that we can order more copies of International Weekly if we need them but can’t for 7 Days. We simply didn’t have enough to meet demand because there was so much interest in this story.”
The owner of Ah Lain Mar, a small journal distributor in Hledan, said interest in bin Laden’s death had far outstripped the royal wedding on April 29. “We sold 100 copies of International Weekly by 8am on Tuesday. Normally, it takes the whole day to sell that many.”
Sales remained strong throughout the week as journals provided more detailed information on bin Laden’s death.
U Kyaw Saw, a 57-year-old resident of Myaynigone, said he bought International Weekly because it was the first to carry news about bin Laden. “I’ve been interested in bin Laden since the September 11 attacks, and especially given that [former President George W] Bush spent so long trying to catch him but couldn’t find him anywhere.”
http://www.myanmar.mmtimes.com/2011/news/517/news09.html
ဘင်လာဒင်သေဆုံးမှုသတင်းကြောင့် ဂျာနယ်များ ရောင်းအားတက်
နန်းတင်ထွေး
အတွဲ ၂၆ ၊ အမှတ် ၅၁ရ (၁၃ – ၁၉ ၊ ၅ ၊ ၂၀၁၁)
ဘင်လာဒင်သေဆုံးမှုသတင်းကို ဖတ်ရှုနေသူတစ်ဦးကို လွန်ခဲ့သည့်သီတင်းပတ်က ရန်ကုန်မြို့တွင် တွေ့ရစဉ်။
ဓာတ်ပုံ-ဆိုင်းမိုင်
အယ်လ်ကေဒါအဖွဲ့ခေါင်းဆောင် အိုစမာဘင်လာဒင်အား အမေရိကန် အထူးတပ်ဖွဲ့မှ အသေဖမ်းဆီးရမိခဲ့သည့် သတင်းသည် နိုင်ငံတကာ မီဒီယာ လောကကို အရှိန်ပြင်းပြင်းရိုက်ခတ်စေခဲ့သည့်နည်းတူ ပြည်တွင်းဂျာနယ် ဈေးကွက်ကိုလည်း လှုပ်ခတ်သွားစေခဲ့သည်။
‘ဘင်လာဒင်သေပြီ’ ဟူသော ခေါင်းစဉ်နှင့်အတူ မတ်လ ၃ ရက်နေ့ အင်္ဂါနေ့တွင် နိုုင်ငံတကာရေးရာဂျာနယ် ပထမဆုံးစတင်ထွက်ရှိလာပြီး ဆက်လက် ထွက်ရှိလာသည့် အခြားဂျာနယ်များ၏ မျက်နှာဖုံးများ တွင်လည်း ဘင်လာဒင် ၏ ဓာတ်ပုံကို ခေါင်းကြီးများနှင့်တကွ ထုတ်ဝေ လိုက်ကြခြင်းနှင့်အတူ သက်ဆိုင်ရာ ဂျာနယ်အားလုံးဝယ်လိုအား မြင့်တက်ခဲ့ကြောင်း သိရသည်။
“ကျွန်တော်ကိုယ်တိုင် ဘင်လာဒင် သေတဲ့သတင်းကို အင်္ဂါနေ့မနက် ဂျာနယ်သွားယူတော့မှ သိတာ။ ပုံမှန် ယူနေကျအတိုင်း နိုင်ငံတကာရေးရာကို အစောင် ၃ဝ ပဲယူခဲ့တာ။ ဒါပေမယ့် လူတွေက တောက် လျှောက်လာနေတာနဲ့ပဲ ၁ဝ နာရီလောက်မှာ တစ်ခါထပ်ပြီး အစောင် ၃ဝ သွားယူရတယ်”ဟု ရန်ကုန် မြို့၊ မြေနီကုန်း ဒဂုံစင်တာအနီး ဂျာနယ် ရောင်းသူ ကိုစိုးလှိုင်က ပြောသည်။
“ဗုဒ္ဓဟူးနေ့ထွက်လာတဲ့ 7 Days ဆိုရင်လည်း အစောင် ၄ဝ ကို တစ်ရက်တည်း ကုန်သွားတယ်။ ပုံမှန်အတိုင်းဆိုရင် နှစ်ရက်လောက် ကြာအောင် ရောင်းရတယ်”ဟု ၎င်းကပြောသည်။
ပန်းဘဲတန်းမြို့နယ်ရှိ မြသော်တာ စာပေဖြန့်ချိရေးပိုင်ရှင် ဦးမောင်မောင်စန်းကလည်း ဘင်လာဒင်သတင်းကြောင့် ဂျာနယ်များ ရောင်းမလောက် ဖြစ်ခဲ့ရကြောင်း ပြောသည်။
“ပုံမှန်အတိုင်းဆိုရင် တစ်ပတ်ကို နိုင်ငံတကာရေးရာဂျာနယ် ၁၂၀ဝ လောက်ပဲ ရောင်းရတာ။ ဒီတစ်ပတ်တော့ ၁,၈၀ဝ ဖြစ်သွားတယ်။ 7 Days ဆိုရင်လည်း ပိုလိုချင်ကြတယ်။ ဒါပေမယ့် မပေးနိုင်ဘူး။ ကျွန်တော်တို့ယူ မယ့်စောင်ရေကို စနေနေ့ညနောက်ဆုံး ပေးရတာ။ ဖြစ်သွားတာက တနင်္လာနေ့ ဆိုတော့ ဘယ်လိုမှမရတော့ဘူး”ဟု ၎င်းက ပြောသည်။
နိုင်ငံတကာသတင်းဦးစားပေး ဂျာနယ်တစ်ခုဖြစ်သည့် Real Time ကိုလည်း ၎င်းဆိုင်၌ ပုံမှန် တစ်ပတ်လျှင် စောင်ရေ ၇ဝ မှ ၈ဝ သာ ရောင်းကုန်ရာမှ စောင်ရေ ၅၀ဝ အထိ တိုးမြှင့်ရောင်းချခဲ့ရကြောင်း ဦးမောင်မောင်စိန်က ပြောသည်။
“စာစောင်သစ်ဆိုတော့ စာဖတ်သူ သိပ်မရှိဘူး။ အခုတော့ Real Time အတွက် အခွင့်အရေးတစ်ခုပဲ” ဟု ၎င်းက ပြောသည်။
စာဖတ်သူအများစုမှာ မင်းသားဝီလျံ၏ မင်္ဂလာဆောင်သတင်းအပေါ်တွင် စိတ်ဝင်စားမှုရှိခဲ့ကြသော်လည်း ဘင်လာဒင်သတင်း လောက် လှုပ်လှုပ်ခတ်ခတ်မရှိခဲ့ကြောင်း လှည်းတန်းရှိ အလိမ္မာစာပေ ဖြန့်ချိန်ရေးပိုင်ရှင်က ပြောသည်။
“နိုင်ငံတကာရေးရာ ဂျာနယ်အစောင် ၁၀ဝ မနက် ၈ နာရီလောက်မှာပဲ ကုန်သွားတယ်။ ပုံမှန်အတိုင်းဆိုရင် တစ်နေကုန်အောင် ရောင်းရတာ”ဟု ထိုဆိုင်၏ပိုင်ရှင်ဖြစ်သူက ပြောသည်။
“ဖြစ်ဖြစ်ချင်း ထွက်တဲ့ဂျာနယ်တွေက သတင်းဦးသတင်းဖျားလို ဖြစ်နေပေမယ့် နောက်ထွက်တဲ့ဂျာနယ်တွေက အချက်အလက် ပိုစုံစုံလင်လင်ပါကြတော့ နောက်ပိုင်းဂျာနယ်တွေလည်း ရောင်းရတယ်” ဟု ၎င်းကပြောသည်။
ဘင်လာဒင်သတင်းကြောင့် သတင်း ဂျာနယ်များ ရောင်းအားတက်မှုမှာ ရန်ကုန်တွင်သာမက နယ်များတွင်လည်း အလားတူဖြစ် ကြောင်း သိရသည်။
မန္တလေးမြို့ရှိ ထွန်းဦးစာပေဖြန့်ချိရေးမှ ကိုဝင်းကျော်က ဂျာနယ်များ လျင်မြန်စွာ ကုန်သွားသည့်အတွက် ထပ်မံမှာယူ ခဲ့ရကြောင်း ပြောသည်။
“နိုင်ငံတကာရေးရာ စောင်ရေ ၂,၀၀ဝ ပုံမှန်မှာတယ်။ အခု ၂၀ဝ ထပ်မှာ ထားတာကို စောင့်နေတယ်” ဟု ၎င်းက ပြောသည်။
တောင်ကြီးရှိ မီလျံနာစာပေဖြန့်ချိရေး၏ ပိုင်ရှင်ဖြစ်သူ မမျိုးမျိုးသူကလည်း ဘင်လာဒင်သေဆုံးမှုသတင်းလို လူတိုင်းစိတ်ဝင်စားခဲ့ကာ စောင်ရေ များတိုးမြှင့်ရောင်းချခဲ့ရကြောင်း ပြောသည်။
“7 Days ဆိုရင် ရောက်ရောက်ချင်းမှာပဲ ကုန်သွားတယ်။ ထပ်မှာလို့မရတော့ လောက်လောက်ငငမပေးနိုင်ဘူး” ဟု ၎င်းက ပြောသည်။
စာဖတ်သူများမှာမူ ဘင်လာဒင် သတင်းပေါ်တွင် စိတ်ဝင်စားသည်ဆိုခြင်းမှာ ၎င်းတကယ်သေမသေဆိုသည်ကို သေချာချင်သည့် အတွက်ကြောင့် ဖြစ်နိုင်ကြောင်း ကိုကျော်ကျော်က ပြောသည်။
“အရင်တုန်းကလည်း ခဏခဏ ကြုံရတယ်။ သေတယ်ပြောလိုက်မသေဘူး ပြောလိုက်နဲ့။ ဆက်ဒမ်ဟူစိန်တုန်းကရောပဲ။ သေတယ် ဆိုပြီး အလောင်းက မဟုတ်သလို ဘာလိုလို။ သေချာ သိချင်လို့ ဝယ်ဖတ်တာ”ဟု ၎င်းက ပြောသည်။
“ဘင်လာဒင်သတင်းကို စက်တင်ဘာ ၁၁ ဖြစ်ပြီးနောက်ပိုင်းကတည်းက စိတ်ဝင်စားတာ။ ဘွတ်ရှ်လက်ထက်မှာလည်း သူ့ကိုဖမ်းဖို့ ကြိုးစားကြပေမယ့်မမိခဲ့ဘူး။ နိုင်ငံတကာဂျာနယ် မျက်နှာဖုံးမှာ ခေါင်းစဉ်ပဲပါပေမယ့် အထဲမှာကျတော့ အသေးစိတ်ရော ပုံကောင်း ကောင်းရောပါတယ်”ဟု မြေနီကုန်းမှ အသက် ၅ရ နှစ်အရွယ် ဦးကျော်ဇောက ပြောသည်။
Kyaemon
May 14, 2011 at 7:00 pm
Rift Deepens Between U.S. and Pakistan Over Bin Laden – NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/us/politics/15diplo.html?ref=world
As Rift Deepens Between U.S. and Pakistan, Kerry Offers Carrots and Sticks
By DAVID E. SANGER and ERIC SCHMITT
Published: May 14, 2011
WASHINGTON — The United States and Pakistan are veering toward a deepening clash, with Pakistan’s Parliament demanding a permanent halt to all drone strikes just as the most senior American envoy since the killing of Osama bin Laden is to arrive with a stern message that the country has only months to show it is truly committed to rooting out the remnants of Al Qaeda and associated groups.
The United States has increased drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas in the past 10 days in an effort to exploit the uncertainty and disarray among militant ranks following Bin Laden’s death on May 2. The latest airstrikes, on Friday, came as Pakistan’s spy chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, in a rare appearance before Pakistan’s Parliament, denounced the American raid as a “sting operation.”
Parliament then passed a resolution declaring that the drone strikes were a violation of sovereignty equivalent to the secret attack on Bin Laden’s house in Abbottabad. The lawmakers warned that Pakistan could cut supply lines to American forces in Afghanistan if there were more such attacks. The resolution contained no condemnation of the Afghan Taliban, who killed more than 80 Pakistani paramilitary cadets the same day.
The stepping up of the condemnations of the United States came as Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and a longtime emissary to Pakistan in times of crisis, was preparing to land in Islamabad. He was arriving with a list of actions — and some offers from Washington to ease tensions — that he finalized in a meeting on Thursday with President Obama’s national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, and other top American security officials.
A senior administration official said Saturday that the United States would try to use as leverage the threat of Congressional cuts to the $3 billion in annual American aid to Pakistan as well as any evidence of Pakistani complicity in sheltering Bin Laden that is contained in the hundreds of computer flash drives and documents recovered in the commando raid on Bin Laden’s compound. So far, no such evidence has been found.
“In the Congress, this is a make or break moment” for aid to Pakistan, Mr. Kerry said in an interview just before he left for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Mr. Kerry said he would tell Pakistan that there needed to be “a real demonstration of commitment” to fighting terrorist groups in the next few months. But he will also reassure Pakistani officials that they will be a central part of any political accord with the Taliban in Afghanistan, to ease their fears that India will take over swaths of Afghanistan as the United States pulls out.
The Obama administration has said nothing about the public criticisms of the United States by the Pakistani government, hoping they are designed to alleviate the public’s anger and the Pakistani military’s embarrassment that American forces attacked the Bin Laden house without being detected by Pakistani warning systems. Mr. Donilon and other senior administration officials declined to be interviewed about the administration’s strategy.
The American reticence stems in part from the reality that such ultimatums have been sent before — most recently after the arrest earlier this year of Raymond Davis, a Central Intelligence Agency contractor who shot two Pakistanis during what he said was a robbery. Repeatedly, Pakistan has simply called the administration’s bluff and revealed the threats as hollow. The United States relies heavily on transit routes in Pakistan to supply American troops in Afghanistan, and any move to cut off aid would probably prompt Pakistan to shut the supply routes, as it has done during previous disputes.
The Kerry visit comes at the highest moment of tensions between the two countries since Pakistan, given little choice, formally broke with the Taliban and allied with the United States just after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Mr. Kerry said that the moment had come for both countries to make “fundamental choices” about their relationship. “I have had some of these conversations with Pakistan before,” he said, “but never in the context of the world’s No. 1 terrorist being found 35 miles from the capital, next door to Pakistan’s West Point, and with the discovery he was fully, fully operational.”
Mr. Kerry’s main piece of negotiating leverage is Pakistan’s uncertainty about what officials are finding in the trove of computer data — which Mr. Donilon has compared to “a small college library” — about Pakistani complicity hiding the Qaeda leader. American officials say they believe the top leaders of the country were genuinely surprised about Bin Laden’s whereabouts, based on their reaction to phone calls from the administration on the night of the raid and electronic surveillance of Pakistani government communications.
But the officials strongly suspect that others in the government, the military or the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, or ISI, the main intelligence service, were aware. So far the United States has not said what kind of inquiry Pakistan should conduct to answer those questions, and given the political atmosphere surrounding Bin Laden’s killing, they question whether any such investigation would be thorough or credible.
Mr. Kerry will also raise an issue that the administration has refused to discuss publicly: Pakistan’s escalating production of nuclear fuel to expand its arsenal of 100 or so nuclear weapons. Members of Congress, in closed sessions, have complained that since the $3 billion American annual aid to the Pakistani military is fungible, the United States is effectively helping bankroll the fastest-growing nuclear arsenal in the world. “It will jeopardize funding if that continues,” Mr. Kerry said.
In fact, according to some officials, the administration is on alert for signs that Pakistan’s reaction to the Bin Laden raid could be an expansion, or repositioning, of its nuclear forces.
“The very public discussion that the raid showed the nuclear assets could be vulnerable to seizure may lead them to disperse them, or increase their number,” one United States official involved in monitoring Pakistan’s nuclear program said. “It’s a significant worry because the more they spread it around, the higher the risk something gets loose.”
The Pakistani Parliament’s resolution warned of a “strong national response” if any nation — clearly it meant the United States — sought to seize or immobilize the country’s nuclear arsenal.
On Capitol Hill last week, senior lawmakers warned that without answers to questions of possible Pakistani complicity in harboring Bin Laden, American aid could be imperiled. The House speaker, John A. Boehner, who visited Pakistan last month, told reporters on Thursday that the United States should remain engaged with Pakistan as an ally against terrorists, but that Pakistani leaders must prove their resolve to fighting terrorist groups.
“It’s time to look the Pakistanis in the eye and get a commitment that they are fully onboard with us,” Mr. Boehner said. “If we’re going to continue to provide aid and strengthen this relationship, I think we need to have a clearer understanding.”
Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who heads the Armed Services Committee, went a step further, saying he would cut off $1.5 billion in annual nonmilitary aid unless Pakistan explained how Bin Laden could have gone undetected for years and militant groups like the Haqqani network use Pakistan as a haven for attacks into Afghanistan.
Kyaemon
May 14, 2011 at 7:16 pm
Bin Laden raid: Pakistan threatens reprisal for drone strikes after Bin Laden raid – latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-pakistan-bin-laden-20110515,0,891057.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fmostviewed+%28L.A.+Times+-+Most+Viewed+Stories%29
Kyaemon
May 18, 2011 at 1:56 am
No indication Pak officials complicit in hiding OBL: Kerry
http://nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Politics/18-May-2011/No-indication-Pak-officials-complicit-in-hiding-OBL-Kerry
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Pakistan, under renewed US pressure since the death of Osama bin Laden, is stepping up its efforts to battle extremists and help stabilise Afghanistan, senior US Senator John Kerry said Tuesday.
“Some of them are important things that are very important to us strategically, but they are not appropriate to discuss publicly,” said the Democratic lawmaker, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Kerry, newly returned from a whirlwind visit to both countries, said he had heard “frustration” from top Pakistani officials about the US raid that killed the Al-Qaeda leader, but had made clear Washington expects more from its ally.
“This relationship will not be measured by words or by communiques after meetings like the ones that I engaged in. It will only be measured by actions,” said the Democratic lawmaker.
“They are concrete, they are precise, they are measurable and they are in many cases joint – and we will know precisely what is happening with them in very, very short order,” he said. “I’m very, very confident about a number of those things having a major impact on the things we need to do,” said Kerry, who promised to detail the new initiatives to his colleagues in a closed-door session expected next week.
Kerry said high-level US-Pakistan talks “that will begin very, very soon” would touch on “some larger issues” and added that if they go well then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will decide “when and if” to visit Pakistan.
The senator, who is sometimes discussed as a possible successor to Clinton, said he had “no indication” during his trip to Islamabad that high-level Pakistani officials had been complicit in hiding bin Laden. “They admit things went wrong, they understand that mistakes were made, and they’re going to try to get at it. I’m convinced that they want to find out because they want to hold those folks accountable,” said Kerry.
Kyaemon
May 24, 2012 at 11:26 am
Bin Laden ဘင်လားဒင်အား မိအောင်ရှာဘို့ CIA စီအိုင်အေကိုကူညီခဲ့တဲ့
Pakistan ပါကစ်စတန် ဆရာဝန်အားထောင်ချ
အနှစ် ၃ဝ အနဲဆုံး လို့ပြော၊
အများကို ကာကွယ်ဆေးထိုးပေးမယ်ဆိုတဲ့ ဟန်ပြစီမံကိန်းနဲ့
ဘင်လားဒင်ရဲ့ကလေးတဦး ဆီက DNA သွေးနမူနာ ရအောင်ယူပေးတာ၊
Bin Laden ဘင်လားဒင် ဒီနေရာမှာ ရှိနိုင်ကြောင်း
ပိုသေချာအောင် CIA စီအိုင်အေကို ကူညီတာ၊
ဒါကို ပါကစ်စတန် နိုင်ငံတော် သစ်စာဖောက်တယ်ဆိုပြီး
ပြည်နယ်လူမျိုးစု ခုံရုံးကစီရင်ချက်ချလိုက်တာ၊
သတင်းနောက်ပိုင်းမှာ၊
Afghanistan အက်ဖဂန်နစ်စတန်မှာရှိတဲ့ NATO စစ်သား အတွက်
စစ်လက်နက် ခဲယမ်းမီးကျောက် ရိက်ခါများ
ထောက်ပို့ ဘို့ ဖြတ်သန်းခွင့် ကားကြေး တစီးကို
ယူအက်စ် ဒေါ်လာ (၂၅၀) က နေ (၅၀၀၀) နှုန်း နဲ့
Pakistan ပါကစ်စတန် အစိုးရ က ဈေးတင်လိုက်ကြောင်း
——————
(ယခင်က တင်ဆက်ခဲ့တဲ့ ဘင်လားဒင် အကြောင်းတွေ ဓာတ်ပုံတွေ ကို
တဖန် ကြည့်လို့ရအောင် Link လင့်ခ များ ကို အောက်ပိုင်းမှာ စုစည်းထားတာပါ)
Pakistan jails doctor who helped CIA find Bin Laden
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18175964
A Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA find Osama Bin Laden has been jailed for at least 30 years, officials say.
Shakil Afridi was charged with treason and tried under the tribal justice system for running a fake vaccination programme to gather information.
The US state department said there was “no basis” for the charges, but declined to make a specific comment on the doctor’s sentence.
Bin Laden was killed by US forces in Abbottabad in May 2011.
The killing triggered a rift between the US and Pakistan, whose government was seriously embarrassed as it emerged Bin Laden had been living in Pakistan.
Islamabad felt the covert US operation was a violation of its sovereignty. …
t is not clear if Dr Afridi knew who the target of the investigation was when the CIA recruited him, or what DNA he managed to collect in the fake hepatitis B vaccination programme.
The idea was to obtain a blood sample from one of the children living in the Abbottabad compound, so that DNA tests could determine whether or not they were relatives of Bin Laden, our correspondent says….
More recently, the issue of drone strikes and Pakistan’s refusal to re-open Nato supply routes to Afghanistan have made for a particularly uneasy relationship between the two allies, she says.
Pakistan’s parliament has called for an end to the use of drones, and says they are an attack on its sovereignty. A drone strike on Wednesday killed four people in the North Waziristan tribal area, security officials said.
The two countries also failed to reach agreement at the Nato summit in Chicago over the supply routes that were closed after a US air strike in 2011 killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.
Islamabad is demanding more than $5,000 (£3,200) per lorry, up from its previous rate of $250, to let supplies flow again.
ယခင် တင်ဆက်ခဲ့တဲ့ ဘင်လားဒင် အကြောင်း Link လင့်ခ များ
Boston’s Globe: The Big Picture on Bin Laden
– Kyaemon |1668- Hits|
http://myanmargazette.net/48193/arts-humanities/history-museums
SACRAMENTO BEE’S THE FRAME: Reaction to bin Laden death
– Kyaemon |1409- Hits|
http://myanmargazette.net/48180/arts-humanities/history-museums
DENVER POST’S THE P LOG: Captured: Osama bin Laden Killed, World Reacts
– Kyaemon |1354- Hits|
http://myanmargazette.net/48170/arts-humanities/history-museums
LOS ANGELES TIMES – THE FRAMEWORK – BIN LADEN PICS
– Kyaemon |1549- Hits|
http://myanmargazette.net/48158/arts-humanities/history-museums
Inside the compound where Bin Laden was found
– Kyaemon |1688- Hits|
http://myanmargazette.net/48005/arts-humanities/history-museums
REACTIONS TO BIN LADEN’S DEATH AND MORE NEWS
– Kyaemon |1504- Hits|
http://myanmargazette.net/47975/arts-humanities/history-museums
BIN LADEN IS DEAD!
– Kyaemon |1941- Hits|
http://myanmargazette.net/47927/arts-humanities/history-museums
Kyaemon
May 25, 2012 at 9:24 am
Bin Laden ဘင်လားဒင် မိအောင် CIA စီအိုင်အေ အား ကူညီတယ် ဆိုတဲ့
ပါကစ်စတန် ဆရာဝန်ကိုထောင်ချလို့ ယူအက်စ် က ပါကစ်စတန်ကို
ထောက်ပံ့ငွေတွေ ဖြတ်ချလိုက်ပြီ၊
ယူအက်စ် ဒေါ်လာ (၃၃) သန်းလို့ ဆိုတယ်
တောင်သက်တမ်းအလိုက် တနှစ်ကို တ သန်း ဒေါ်လာ လို့ပြော တာ၊
ဟီလာရီ ကလင်တန် ပြော တာ က
ဒီ အကျဉ်းသက်တမ်း ဟာ မ တရား ပါ၊ လိုလဲ မ လိုအပ် ပါ၊
ထောက်ပံ့ငွေတွေ ကို အစောပိုင်း က ဖြတ်တောက် ထား တာ ရဲ့ အပြင်၊
ထပ်လောင်းပြီး ဖြတ်ဘို့ လွှတ်တော် အဖွဲ့ငယ် က စီစဉ်တာ၊
ပါကစ်စတန် ဟာ “အရူး မဟာမိတ်” လို့
လွှတ်တော် အမတ် တ ဦး က အမည် တပ် ပါတယ်၊
မဟာမိတ် တောင် ဒီလိုဖြစ်နေရင်
အတိုက်အခံ တွေ ဆို မ ကြည့်ချင် အဆုံး လို့
လွှတ်တော် အမတ် နောက်တဦးကပြော တယ်၊
ကိုယ့် နိုင်ငံသားတဦးက အခြားနိုင်ငံအတွက်
သူလျှိုလုပ်ပေးနေတာကို တွေ့ရင်၊
ဘယ်နိုင်ငံမဆို မိမိတို့လိုအရေးယူ မှာပါဘဲ လို့
ပါကစ်စတန် က ရပ်တည်တယ်လို့ပြောတာ၊
US cuts Pakistan aid over jailing of ‘Bin Laden doctor’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18201077
A US Senate panel has cut $33m (£21m) in aid to Pakistan in response to the jailing of a Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA find Osama Bin Laden.
The Senate Appropriations Committee has said it will cut US aid by $1m for each year of Shakil Afridi’s sentence.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said his term was “unjust and unwarranted”.
Dr Afridi was tried for treason under a tribal justice system for running a fake vaccination programme to gather information for US intelligence.
Bin Laden was killed by US forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May 2011.
The move from the Senate panel follows earlier cuts to the White House’s budget request for Pakistan. The cuts would be part of a bill that would send $1bn in aid to Pakistan in the next financial year.
“We need Pakistan, Pakistan needs us, but we don’t need Pakistan double-dealing and not seeing the justice in bringing Osama Bin Laden to an end,” said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, calling Pakistan “a schizophrenic ally”.
Meanwhile Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy said: “It’s Alice in Wonderland at best. If this is co-operation, I’d hate like hell to see opposition.”
Correspondents say the cuts reflect mounting frustration in Congress over Pakistan’s role in fighting terrorism on its soil…..
ကြောင်ကြီး
May 25, 2012 at 11:25 am
Chen Guangcheng, ဆိုတဲ့ တရုတ်အစိုးရ ဆန့်ကျင်သူ မျက်မမြင် ရှေ့နေတဦး သူ့ကိုအကျယ်ချုပ် ချထားရာကနေ ပီးကင်းဂ အမေရိကန်သံရုံးထဲ ဝင်ပြေးလိုက်တာ အခု အမေရိကန်မှာ ကျောင်းတက်ခွင့်နဲ့ ခိုလှုံလို့ရသွားဘီ။ တရုတ်ကြီးကြည့်ရဒါ အမေရိကန်ကို အတော်ကြောက်ပုံရဒယ်နော်…။ ပါကစ္စတန်နိုင်ငံရဲ့ လုပ်ပုံနဲ့ နှိုင်းယှဉ်ပြီး တွေးကျိဒါဘာ။ ဒါနဲ့ တရုတ်ကြီးဂ အမေရိကန်ဂို အကြွေးနဲ့သိမ်းဒေါ့မယ်ဆိုဒဲ့ သဒင်းဘာထူးသေးလဲ…။ 🙄
(source: nytimes.com) Chen Guangcheng, the blind legal advocate who recently sought refuge in the American Embassy in Beijing, arrived in the heart of Greenwich Village on Saturday, holding the kind of open-air news conference that he could have never imagined while under virtual house arrest in China.
windtalker
May 25, 2012 at 10:50 am
ယူအက်စ် ဘရုတ်
ကြူအက်စ် သုပ်
သူဝှက် ထုတ်
ငဒူ တပ်ဆုတ်။