Hameed GUL A Roaring Lion

Part 1

US Military Bases ‘Will Destabilize Pakistan’

“The Americans are going to set up a large intelligence network inside Pakistan. And for that the excuse is that because we are spending this money directly on projects, therefore we need the security guards and we are bringing in the contractors. But in reality, what I fear is that, they really want to go for Pakistan’s nuclear assets. They are inching close to those nuclear assets day by day. They are getting very close and I am sure they are, because of their intelligence tentacles there, they are trying to gather information so that whatever surgical operation they have to carry out against our nuclear assets in connivance with Israel and India those will be totally taken out and nothing will be left in the hands of Pakistan”, General Hamid Gul

The following is a transcript of a Press TV interview with Pakistan’s former Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Hamid Gul.

Security Breach In Pakistan: Military Must Reign In Its Ex Sleuths

Makhdoom Babar

Time for Services Chiefs and Chairman JCSC to take action

Three cheers to these custodians of national secrets and national solidarity and hats off to our television hosts – or anchor persons as we call them in Pakistan – who not only encourage these retired officers to talk but willingly provide them a platform to air national secrets, live, across the world, without care for the price the nation will have to pay for this collective act of grave indiscretion. It is time that the Services Chiefs of Pakistan Army, Pakistan Air Force and Pakistan Navy should sit together under the Chair of Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee and end this soap opera at national cost.

Hamid Gul: Purpose of New Afghan Intelligence Agency RAMA Is ‘to destabilize Pakistan’

In an exclusive interview with Foreign Policy Journal, retired Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul responds to charges that he supports terrorism, discusses 9/11 and ulterior motives for the war on Afghanistan, claims that the U.S., Israel, and India are behind efforts to destabilize Pakistan, and charges the U.S. and its allies with responsibility for the lucrative Afghan drug trade.

Retired Lieutenant General Hamid Gul was the Director General of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) from 1987 to 1989, during which time he worked closely with the CIA to provide support for the mujahedeen fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Though once deemed a close ally of the United States, in more recent years his name has been the subject of considerable controversy. He has been outspoken with the claim that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were an “inside job”. He has been called “the most dangerous man in Pakistan”, and the U.S. government has accused him of supporting the Taliban, even recommending him to the United Nations Security Council for inclusion on the list of international terrorists.

Loud & Clear Episode 3: HAMID GUL

Exclusive: How ISI Kept CIA At Bay As Recounted By Hamid Gul

In the third episode of PKKH’s own production in association with AhmedQuraishi.com, (Loud & Clear from Islamabad – Pakistan’s first and only Web-TV show) – Former ISI Chief Gen. Hamid Gul details how he once prevented the US ambassador from traveling to Peshawar without permission and how subsequent Pakistani rulers changed the practice, why he believes Pakistani nationalist officers within the military won’t let the outsiders and their Pakistani collaborators get their hands on our nuclear weapons. Watch him also reveal the details of a meeting he says former President Musharraf held with American emissaries five days after the coup where he gave the first of many concessions to America.

Also includes a fascinating message from Gen. Hamid Gul to the Pakistani Youth. MUST WATCH.

Part 1

Waqt TV: Youm-e-Takbir Special

An excellent program about Pakistan’s nuclear program with comments from Zaid Hamid, Sheikh Rasheed, Senator Professor Khurshid Ahmed, and Hamid Gul. MUST WATCH!!!

Part 1/4

Gen. Hamid Gul vs Bharat Verma

Bharat Verma seems to have learnt nothing from the showdown with Zaid Hamid and shows up on a Pakistani Channel once again, only to be shot down by another patriot, Gen Rtd Hamid Gul. Another must watch show.

Part 1

TTP getting support from CIA: Hamid Gul

Read Full Interview: Part 1 | Part 2

Enemy Propaganda on ‘Pakistani’ TV

General Hamid Gul on Azfar & Mani Show

General Gul (r) quotes Bush Senior as “clip the wings of ISI”. Further talks about how in Pakistan, we do not have democracy, neither dictatorship nor even humanitarian-ship. Sheds some light on “modern day terrorism”, talks about his meeting with Osama Bin Laden, a report called “World at Risk” is given to Obama which concludes that all roads of terrorism and nucleus of weapons of mass destruction are from Pakistan. General Gul (r) says that Israeli belief, from Ben Gurion to Netanyahu, that Pakistan is the only threat and should be neutralized, and confirms that there are two Talibaans, one true and pro-Pakistan who are being missiled by US drones and the other American sponsored anti-Pakistani terrorists.

He also talks about General (r) Musharraf very frankly as his student and as a soldier and that he has suspicions on Americans for Ojri Camp incident.

He mentions that three points were given to him by Benazir and an American ambassador for Talibaans to be recognized as a Government and conveying these to Talibaans in Afghanistan were his biggest mistake in life.

MUST WATCH

Part 1:

Focus on Kashmir

In order to achieve peace along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, the US should help resolve the dispute over Kashmir

 

Until the recent terror attacks in Mumbai, the incoming Obama administration might have been tempted to push the Kashmir dispute to the back burner. That is no longer possible. Kashmir is at the centre of the spreading web of crisis that now threatens to destabilise the subcontinent. As long as this conflict remains unsolved, there will be little hope for tranquillity in India, peace in Afghanistan or stability in Pakistan.

The standoff in Kashmir has for years been filed in the world’s “frozen conflicts” drawer, along with others in places like Nagorno-Karabagh andTransdinistria. Obama should pull it out of that drawer and place it near the top of his foreign policy priority list.

Since its earliest days as a nation, Pakistan has focused on what its leaders consider their single overwhelming security threat: India. Fear of India shapes all of Pakistan’s security policies. Why has Pakistan worked so hard to promote pro-Pakistani groups in Afghanistan, including a host of pro-Taliban warlords? Not simply because of Afghanistan itself, but because it wants to assure that Afghanistan does not tilt toward India.

President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, who is deeply unhappy with Pakistan’s refusal or inability to crack down on militants in the border region, appears to be tilting just that way. He has allowed India to open consulates in several cities, and suggested that he might invite India to train Afghan troops or build dams near the Pakistani border. This drives Pakistan, and especially the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency, to paroxysms of fear and outrage. Many in the region believe the ISI was connected to the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul last July, in which more than 40 people were killed. Disturbing evidence ties the ISI to terrorists who staged the recent Mumbai attacks.

The ISI, for its part, believes India is using Afghan territory and assets to foment trouble inside Pakistan. It sees India’s hand, for example, behind ethnic upheaval in its western province of Baluchistan. Pakistan and India have turned Afghanistan into the scene of even more spy-versus-spy intrigue than it was during the days of the Great Game, when two different powers, Britain and Russia, jousted to control it.

Kashmir is the single greatest flashpoint in the troubled Pakistan-India relationship. The two countries fought wars there in 1947-48, 1965 and 1999. They and their proxies are still engaged in a relentless conflict amid the region’s magnificent lakes and hills. Bombings, assassinations and disappearances have been part of life for as long as most Kashmiri people can remember.

Both Pakistan and India claim that Kashmir is rightly theirs. Both support militant Kashmiri factions while insisting publicly that they do nothing of the kind. Each fears that the other wants to use Kashmir for hostile purposes.

No country can fairly be expected to make security concessions unless it feels safe. Pakistan will not move decisively to crush Taliban and al-Qaida forces as long as it sees those forces as part of its defence against spreading Indian power. That makes reshaping India-Pakistan relations a key priority for the US – and they cannot be reshaped without some resolution in Kashmir.

Untangling the Kashmir conflict will not be easy, but the stakes are high. Intensive diplomacy involving Washington, Islamabad and New Delhi might produce a formula for peace. Accords that have ended other communal conflicts, perhaps including the Belfast Agreement of 1998, could serve as models.

Officials of the incoming administration are suggesting that they may recommend sending more US troops to Afghanistan. This would be folly. Afghans have always rallied against foreign troops, and every time a US attack kills civilians in a “collateral damage” incident, more outraged Afghans turn to the Taliban. More broadly, no military strategy can work in Afghanistan as long as India and Pakistan use Afghan territory as a stage on which to play out their strategic rivalry.

Afghanistan will remain unstable until that rivalry is calmed. It will not be calmed as long as the Kashmir dispute rages. The road to stability in Afghanistan, then, runs first through Kashmir.

Stephen Kinzer | Guardian, UK

Behind Mumbai Lies Kashmir

WASHINGTON December 15, 2008 | Eric Margolis

The respected US strategic think tank, RAND Corp, estimated that a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan would initially kill two million people, wound 100 million, and send clouds of radioactive dust around the globe.

That was ten years ago. Since then, India and Pakistan have quadrupled their nuclear forces, which are now on high alert as a result of the Mumbai massacre earlier this month.

Fears an enraged India would attack Pakistan in revenge for the Mumbai massacre provoked great alarm here in Washington. So, too, the threat Islamabad would withdraw two Pakistani army corps supporting the US war in Afghanistan and redeploy them to face India.

In fact, India did come very closer to launching retaliatory military operations against Pakistan during the week of 7-14 December, according to sources close to the Pentagon.

Washington quickly forced Pakistan to arrest the leaders of the militant group Lashkar-e-Toiba that India blames for the attack. Fortunately, India’s commendable restraint and Pakistan’s action in shutting down Kashmiri militant groups defused the military crisis. But this palliative actions did nothing to address the underlying conflict between old foes India and Pakistan.

Lashkar was founded at the end of the anti-Soviet Afghan War to channel jihadist energies into a new struggle aimed at freeing the two-thirds of divided Kashmir ruled by India. Pakistan and India have fought three major wars over Kashmir since 1947 and countless skirmishes along their tense border.

Kashmir is India’s only Muslim majority state. Muslim Kashmiris have sought independence from India since 1947. Most desired union with Pakistan, though an important minority called for total independence of the Himalayan mountain state, a position opposed by both India and Pakistan. Kashmir’s Hindu and Sikh minority, about 35-40% of Kashmir’s 11 million citizens, wanted to remain part of the Indian Union.

In 1989, an anti-Indian uprising erupted. Some 22 Kashmiri Muslim jihadist groups, some secretly aided by Pakistani intelligence, battled 500,000 Indian troops and police in a brutal, dirty war marked by constant atrocities on both sides. In the process, between 40,000 and 80,000 Kashmiris died, the majority, Muslims. Indian human rights groups have repeatedly criticized India’s tactics of repression in Kashmir that have included collective punishment, arson, assassinations, and gang rapes of Muslim women.

I visited many of the Kashmiri mujihadin guerilla camps in the Pakistani-controlled third of Kashmir, clustered around Muzzafarabad, and accompanied Kashmiri mujihadin on their operations against Indian forces, as I recount in my book, `War at the Top of the World,’ which is all about Afghanistan and the 61-year old Indian-Pakistani conflict over Kashmir.

Two jihadi groups, Lashkar and Jaish-e-Mohammed, ran the biggest camps. Both were armed and financed until 2002 by ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence service which used them as proxies in Kashmir and as a way of keeping India off balance and on the defensive.

India and the US quickly condemned Lashkar and other Kashmiri jihadis of the Mumbai outrage. Delhi accused Pakistan and ISI of being behind the murderous attacks, but has yet to offer proof to outsiders. India routinely blames ISI for violent incidents. Pakistan, in turn, accuses India of fomenting violence on its Northwest Frontier and strife-torn Karachi.

Washington also claimed its old ally, former ISI chief Hamid Gul, was involved. General Gul is well known to me from the days of the anti-Soviet Afghan jihad.

Gul is a Pakistani patriot, not a terrorist. His real crime in US eyes: calling Taliban `freedom fighters’ and blaming the US government for the 9/11 attacks, a view 30% of Americans also share.

Pakistan bowed to US pressure and arrested Lashkar’s leaders.
Pakistan is bankrupt. Its cash reserves were stolen during Musharraf’s dictatorship. Pakistan now subsists entirely on American money, a humiliating comedown for a nation founded as a beacon of good government, justice and Islamic rectitude.

Most Pakistanis ardently support the Kashmiri liberation struggle as Pakistan’s national cause and most important strategic concern.

But after 9/11, the US put a gun to Pakistan’s head, forcing Musharraf to both support to the US war in Afghanistan, and denounce Pakistan’s ally, Taliban, and the Kashmiri jihadis, as `terrorists.’

The US and India were delighted. India always claimed the Kashmir uprising was due to `cross-border terrorism’ from Pakistan, though the revolt was a genuine national uprising against Indian misrule.

Pakistanis were outraged by this double betrayal, calling Musharraf an American stooge. Now, President Asif Zardari’s feeble new government is continuing the same policy under US pressure, to the anger and contempt of many Pakistanis. He is seen as being even more subservient to Washington than his hated predecessor, Pervez Musharraf.

Pakistan has two governments: civilian and military. The generals and ISI have never abandoned their goal of a Pakistani-dominated Afghanistan, or continuing the Kashmir jihad. Both are seen as vital national interests. Pakistan’s generals look with derision and distaste on Zardari, who is dogged by accusations of gross corruption and malfeasance.

Washington has rented 130,000 Pakistani soldiers to wage war against Pashtun tribesmen allied to Taliban on Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier. The US pays their salaries and provides them with food and transport. These rented soldiers, or `sepoys,’ as the British Raj used to call its native troops, detest their mission. The once proud Pakistani army has become a mercenary force.

Now, in response to the deteriorating military situation in Afghanistan, the Pentagon is putting together a plan to send more divisions of its rented Pakistani Army to fight Taliban and other resistance forces in Afghanistan.

Few Americans understand the growing radicalization of Pakistan caused by Washington forcing its rulers and soldiers to go against the sentiments and interests of the nation.

Instead, the US keeps listening to the westernized Pakistani elite, less than 1% of the population, and left-leaning `experts,’ like Ahmad Rashid, who keep telling Washington what it wants to hear, rather than hard truths.

The festering Kashmir conflict that pits nuclear armed India and Pakistan against each other lies behind the Mumbai massacre. Solving this dangerous business must be as high a priority for the great powers as ending murderous attacks on civilians.

Endlessly repeating the mantra about `fighting terrorism’ will not solve the dangerous conflicts in South Asia or the Mideast.

Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2008 Toronto Sun.

Related:
Lashkar Bashing
Kashmir – the Forgotten Occupation

Thanks to Mubasher for sending this in.

Push Our Opinion Makers To Get Tough

In his article, India’s hysterical response to Mumbai carnage, published by PakistanThinkTank.org, Brig. Gen.Asif Haroon Raja (Retd.) explains how a few media commentators and outlets filled the void created by the current Pakistani government in responding to Indian arrogance. We want to add to this list. If you are in contact with Pakistani politicians, journalists, and television news executives/anchors/hosts, and radio hosts, please ask them to stop being apologetic, see the Indian arrogance for what it is, and pressure our government to show some spine:

“Uncalled for belligerence was provocative and sickening but it is to the credit of Pakistani leaders and media that the maddening jibes were absorbed coolly. Sanity prevailed throughout the heightened crisis period and none got provoked to counter the ever increasing antagonism. It was only when Indian hawks persisted with their truculence that one to two media channels decided to launch a small counter stroke which flabbergasted the Indians. The few brave ones were Zaid Hamid, Ahmed Quraishi, Mubasher Luqman, Shireen Mazari, Lt Gen Hameed Gul, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, leading PML-N leaders and some others.

While Pakistan leaders are eager to ease tensions and revert to peaceful co-existence policy envisaged in Composite Dialogue, Indian leaders influenced by the hawks within establishment, military and religious cadres are in no mood to reciprocate. They are finding excuses to maximise pressure and put Pakistan in the dock. Karachi riots were triggered to add to the pressure. The Indian air force has been put on high alert and Pakistan’s air space violated at two points on night of 13 December to test the response of Pakistan. A message was given that if the nominated accused were not handed over it would hit suspected targets like Muredke, HQ of Jamaat-ud Daawa headed by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, on the pattern of US drone attacks.”

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