Three US special forces soldiers were killed in northwest Pakistan this week, confirming that the US military is more deeply engaged on the ground in Pakistan than previously acknowledged by the White House and Pentagon (see ” The Secret US War in Pakistan,” November 23, 2009). The soldiers died Wednesday in Lower Dir when their convoy was hit by a car bomber in what appeared to be a targeted strike against the Americans. According to CENTCOM, the US soldiers were in the country on a mission to train the Pakistani Frontier Corps, a federal paramilitary force run by Pakistan’s Interior Ministry that patrols the country’s volatile border with Afghanistan. A Pakistani journalist who witnessed the attack said that some of the US soldiers were dressed in civilian clothes and had been identified by their Pakistani handlers as journalists. The New York Times estimates that there are sixty to a hundred such US special forces “trainers” in Pakistan. Capt. Jack Hanzlik, a spokesman for the United States Central Command said there are about 200 US military personnel in Pakistan.
Two Pakistani employees of an American defense contractor engaged by the US Embassy in Islamabad have been linked to two attacks on Pakistani military and the assassination of a Brigadier. If this is not alarming, then consider that US Ambassador Anne Patterson’s name has come up in an investigation where thousands of dollars were paid in bribes to Interior Ministry to smuggle illegal weapons into Pakistan. Not to mention how Washington is empowering India in Afghanistan at Pakistan’s cost. When Pakistan takes countermeasures, US officials like Mr. Gates and Mr. Holbrooke accuse Pakistan of ‘anti-Americanism’ and harassing US diplomats. Time for some straight talk.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—US Defense Secretary Robert Gates admitted during an interview with a Pakistani TV station that Blackwater [now ‘Xe International’] and DynCorp are operating in Pakistan. Immediately after the statement, Pentagon tried to put a spin on his words.
On Thursday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates confirmed that Blackwater is operating in Pakistan. In an interview on Express TV, Gates, who was visiting Islamabad, said, “They [Blackwater and another private security firm, DynCorp] are operating as individual companies here in Pakistan,” according to a DoD transcript of the interview. “There are rules concerning the contracting companies. If they’re contracting with us or with the State Department here in Pakistan, then there are very clear rules set forth by the State Department and by ourselves.”
Today, the country’s senior minister for the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), Bashir Bilour, also acknowledged that the company is operating in Pakistan’s frontier areas. Bilour told Pakistan’s Express News TV that Blackwater’s activities were taking place with the “consent and permission” of the Pakistani government, saying he had discussed the issue with officials at the US Consulate in Peshawar, who told him that Blackwater was training Pakistani forces.
After invading and waging a severely damaging war against Afghanistan, which was justified by a self-orchestrated attack on their own soil, storming and devastating Iraq on the basis of absolute falsehood and utter lies about the non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction, the so-called sole supreme power on Earth, the United States of America and its strategic allies are now in the third and most crucial phase of their master plan for the 21st century.
Before launching their global sinister plan, their desperate target is to de-stabilize, de-nuclearize, de-islamize and destroy Pakistan. The evil nexus of US, Israel, India and the Zionist movement realizes and understands that Pakistan is the biggest hurdle in the fulfillment of their pernicious intentions to make Israel the next super-state in the world and achieve their grand strategic goals. They know that Pakistan is a serious threat to their ideology and objectives, without subduing or destroying Pakistan, which is the final frontier of Islam and Muslims, they cannot accomplish their mission and their efforts will not come to fruition. That is the reason why, their main target is not Iraq, not Afghanistan, not Syria, not Yemen or not Iran; their crucial target is Pakistan and they are deploying all of the resources, employing all kinds of schemes to get it rid of this hurdle from their way.
A hearing in Sen. Claire McCaskill’s Contract Oversight subcommittee on contracting in Afghanistan has highlighted some important statistics that provide a window into the extent to which the Obama administration has picked up the Bush-era war privatization baton and sprinted with it. Overall, contractors now comprise a whopping 69% of the Department of Defense’s total workforce, “the highest ratio of contractors to military personnel in US history.” That’s not in one war zone—that’s the Pentagon in its entirety.
In Afghanistan, the Obama administration blows the Bush administration out of the privatized water. According to a memo [PDF] released by McCaskill’s staff, “From June 2009 to September 2009, there was a 40% increase in Defense Department contractors in Afghanistan. During the same period, the number of armed private security contractors working for the Defense Department in Afghanistan doubled, increasing from approximately 5,000 to more than 10,000.”
“My assessment is that they — either themselves or most probably through others, through the locals — do carry out some of the explosions”.
Former chief of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) General Mohammad Asad Durrani sits down with Press TV and talks about the presence of Blackwater in Pakistan. The following is the transcript of the interview:
Press TV: General Durrani, US intelligence officials say that the CIA has cancelled the Blackwater contract but other reports indicate that there are at least three thousand Blackwater agents in Pakistan. What do make of these conflicting reports?
General Durrani: This may be true that the Blackwater’s contract has been cancelled but then this is also understood that such people are under a different name, whether it is Xe or Dyncorp or in any other form of private contractor-ship that they can be employed. In our case, such people have been around for a number of years now. Lately their number has increased. Some rationalization had been made that these people were required to provide security to more Americans coming because of the package they have worked out for Pakistan. But then on ground, there [are] a number of them, some of them in training facilities trying to suggest that they are there to train the police or the army or the air force.
Is Rehman Malik Ready to Resign? Malik had said earlier that he will resign is Xe presence in Pakistan proved. CIA spokesman confirmed Xe (Blackwater) presence in Pakistan.
Despite repeated denials, the CIA has now confirmed that US security contractor Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater, has been operating in Pakistan. CIA spokesman George Little said that agency Director Leon Panetta has terminated a contract with Xe services that allowed the company’s employees to load bombs on CIA drones at secret airfields in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
A young Pakistani Assistant Superintendent of Police [ASP] chased a fleeing US embassy car for two kilometers after it sped through a police checkpoint on the outskirts of the Pakistani capital on Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2009.
When the diplomats refused to stop, the ASP drove past them and then sharply turned his car to force the US embassy vehicle to screech to a halt. He and his senior police officers insisted the US diplomats return to the police picket, apologize to the Pakistani police officers and submit to a security inspection of the inside of the car like all cars passing through the checkpoint, according to the exclusive report published by Lahore’s The Nation newspaper.
At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, “snatch and grabs” of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan, an investigation by The Nation has found. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help run a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus.
The source, who has worked on covert US military programs for years, including in Afghanistan and Pakistan, has direct knowledge of Blackwater’s involvement. He spoke to The Nationon condition of anonymity because the program is classified. The source said that the program is so “compartmentalized” that senior figures within the Obama administration and the US military chain of command may not be aware of its existence.
LAHORE, Pakistan, 7 November 2009 (The News) – The Lahore High Court [LHC] on Friday directed the [Pakistan] Interior Ministry [led by PPP corrupt traitor Abdur Rehman Malik and PPP corrupt traitor Tasneem Ahmed Qureshi] and the Inspector General Police [Syed Kaleem Imam], Islamabad, to file reply by November 20 [2009] on a petition seeking to disarm the U.S. diplomats, [American] marines and other [American, Canadian, Israeli, Indian, British, Dutch, Australian and European] officials in Pakistan, besides registration of criminal cases against those [terrorists, spies and imperialists] found involved in spying and other anti-state acts in violation of diplomatic codes and the [Pakistan] laws of the land, who were caught red-handed but [illegally] released on the pressure of the Interior Ministry.
The foreigners affiliated with the notorious private military contractor Blackwater, whose security company Blackwater was later renamed as Xe Services LLC, arrived in Islamabad on Tuesday through a PIA flight, sources told TheNation.
“Of the 274 passengers, who boarded Pakistan’s national flag carrier-PIA, flight PK-786 from Heathrow Airport UK, 202 were foreigners but they were fluently speaking Urdu language,” disclosed the sources. The officials on duty at Shaheed Benazir International Airport Islamabad said, “We had instructions to allow the foreigners entry without custom procedure.”
The sources said that the plane reached the Islamabad airport at 4:08am, and they had received the official instructions from the authorities not to inspect any of them and clear them immediately from the airport. An official of PIA confirmed that the PIA flight PK-786 from Heathrow reached Islamabad at its destination at 04:08 am and said that the plane had the capacity of 358 passengers but total 274 passengers travelled on the flight. He declined to comment the presence of large number of foreigners in the flight saying that they had no information in this regard.
In 2005, Iraqi Police arrested and locked up TWO British operatives in Basra who were dressed in local Arab gear, shooting at innocent civilians in a busy market with automatic rifles and driving a vehicle laden with explosives, intended to go off in the middle of the busy market. British tanks tore into the prison and rescued both these men. In Pakistan, it seems all the Americans need to do is make a call to the Interior Ministry and have their terrorists released.
There have been several incidents during the last few months of foreigners carrying illegal arms in the federal capital. Some foreigners were found not only carrying illegal weapons, but also threatening, harassing and frightening the public in Islamabad. The law enforcement agencies have been particularly efficient in tightening security measures around the city as a response to citizen complaints.
In the most recent incident, four American nationals who were disguised as Afghans were caught with illegal arms on Tuesday at a posh sector of Islamabad inhabited mostly by senior Pakistani diplomats and politicians. The police personnel intercepted two suspicious vehicles and recovered illegal weapons from in posession of the Americans in both vehicles.
Kestral Logistics, a warehouse located in the industrial area of Sector I-9/3, and involved in arms trading, is working as the subcontractor of US security company, Xe Worldwide (Blackwater), TheNation has learnt. The sources claimed that the company had arms deals with Blackwater and was importing heavy arms as well as ammunition for the US company for its ongoing illicit operations in Pakistan.
The sources said that Kestral Logistics was also involved in importing sensitive monitoring instruments for Blackwater, which had been installed at Sihala by the said security company to monitor activities of Khan Research Laboratories (KRL), Kahuta, as well as to keep an eye on the nuclear assets of Pakistan.
Despite denials by the US Embassy in Islamabad, this incident exposes the presence of American private security operations similar to Blackwater in Pakistan. The embassy and US citizens working for either the US government or the US military are recruiting retired and well connected Pakistani military officers in order to build a network of informants and special operations agents inside Pakistan. This is tantamount to creating a US military presence in Pakistani cities without sending the US army into Pakistan. To counter reports the growing reports of how the US is raising private security militias armed with heavy weapons to supplement the existing information-gathering network and the coming expansion in the US diplomatic presence in Pakistan; the mainstream US media is churning out stories that seek to discredit these reports as ‘conspiracy theories’.
Pakistan’s intelligence agencies have submitted their report regarding Xe (Blackwater) to the federal interior ministry. The report includes proofs of XE Services (also Blackwater) presence in Karachi besides shocking story of their nexus with the political party dominating the city.
The report also contains details of houses and hotels being used by Blackwater as its operational centre and lodging. Quoting highly reliable sources, the investigation cell of one of the large circulated dailies from Karachi has claimed.
Out of the proposed US aid to Pakistan for the year 2008-9, one billion dollars out of $1.8 billion, have been earmarked for the proposed extension of the US embassy. And there are reasons for the construction of a ‘mini-Pentagon’ in Pakistan. Firstly, the cornerstone of American global policy remains the containment of China. To accomplish it, it is necessary to bring together the countries of South Asia, West Asia and South-East Asia and the Central Asian countries in this alliance.
An indepth report on the origins of BlackWater, the infamous US Private Military Company that is under US Congress Investigation for murder of Iraqi civilians. Its origin, track record in Iraq and Afghanistan and the controversies surrounding it, and most importantly, their presence in Pakistan and what it means for us.
BlackWater started its operations in 2007 in Pakistan. Since then, it has been involved in many under cover operations and establishment of offices in Pakistan. After changing its name to XE Worldwide, the mercenary army has penetrated in Peshawar, Islamabad and Karachi. This report reveals the covert operations that Blackwater is performing in Pakistan. [ilim.tv]
Pakistan’s Ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani has written to the foreign secretary and ISI Cheif, warning them that harassing Americans or denying them visas hurts the country’s image and can have severe consequences, CNN-IBN reported on Saturday.
According to the channel, Haqqani’s letter, dated July 28, 2009, reveals that Pakistan has a blacklist of US journalists and non-government organisations (NGO) that are critical of Islamabad. The ambassador has warned that Pakistan risked hearings in the US Congress and potential restrictions on aid and military sales if US citizens were harassed or intimidated. The letter mentioned instances where US institutions or journalists were denied visas, harassed or put under surveillance. Haqqani has demanded explanations for these actions and a copy of the blacklist.
Mr. Haqqani’s plea to the Pakistani Intelligence agencies comes at a time when there is effectively a quiet occupation of Pakistan taking place by Americans arriving in one form or the other. There have been confirmed reports of over 200 houses being rented and barricaded all over Islamabad, 300 plus ‘military trainers’ setting up shop in Tarbela, new facilities being granted to the notorious ‘Blackwater’ – now with a new name, Xe Worldwide – in parts of Sindh, and the rather obvious CIA front, Create Associates International Inc (CAII) operating not only in Peshawar but also in Islamabad.
Dr. Shireen Mazari has had the honor of being one of the targets of the US Embassy in Islamabad particularly since 2008 when in her columns she broke the news of US Army’s General Hood coming to Pakistan and the 11 conditions that the Pakistani government was quietly planning to accept granting unfettered access in Pakistan for US personnel with no legal restraints.
In 2005, Iraqi Police arrested and locked up TWO British operatives in Basra who were dressed in local Arab gear, shooting at innocent civilians in a busy market with automatic rifles and driving a vehicle laden with explosives, intended to go off in the middle of the busy market. British tanks tore into the prison and rescued both these men. In Pakistan, it seems all the Americans need to do is make a call to the Interior Ministry and have their terrorists released.
