US Diplomat Quit over Afghanistan

A senior US diplomat in Afghanistan has become the first such person to resign in protest at the war against the Taliban, the Washington Post reported. State department employee Matthew Hoh, posted to Zabul province, said he quit because he had doubts about why the US was fighting, the paper reported. His resignation letter, written last month, prompted officials to offer him alternative jobs, but he declined.

President Barack Obama is considering future US strategy in Afghanistan. In quotes published in the Washington Post, Mr Hoh wrote to the US state department personnel section: “I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan. “I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end.”

Anti-US Wave Imperiling Efforts in Pakistan

Karen DeYoung and Pamela Constable | Washington Post

A new wave of anti-American sentiment in Pakistan has slowed the arrival of hundreds of U.S. civilian and military officials charged with implementing assistance programs, undermined cooperation in the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and put American lives at risk, according to officials from both countries.

In recent weeks, Pakistan has rejected as “incomplete” at least 180 U.S. government visa requests. Its own ambassador in Washington has criticized what he called a “blacklist” used by the Pakistani intelligence service to deny visas or to conduct “rigorous, intrusive and obviously crude surveillance” of journalists and nongovernmental aid organizations it dislikes, including the Congress-funded International Republican Institute and National Democratic Institute.

CIA’s involvement in campaigns against the Military / ISI

The American CIA almost killed Musharraf. The ISI is familiar with terrorism inside Pakistan by the spy agencies of many countries. Even Libya’s Gaddafi once ordered a couple of bombings here after the execution of his friend Mr. Bhutto. But this is the first time that the CIA is found directly involved in working against Pakistani interests. The U.S. spy organization is sponsoring the multibillion dollar Afghan drug trade, helped by the Indians. CIA’s latest trash is a statement by a U.S. congresswoman and a book by a third-rate American journalist both aimed at discrediting the ISI in the eyes of its own people. The million dollar question is this: Why is CIA sponsoring the campaign to tarnish Pakistani image worldwide, from the nuclear scare to the breakup scare to the ‘terrorist’ scare? The answer is astonishing.