How Pakistani Government Promotes Terrorism and US State Department looks the Other Way!
It is the same pattern isnt it? The Government and the Indian Prime Minister gets all of a peacenik and just when the Indian PM wears the Peace-Clothes, there is a big terrorist attack in India. And then despite the newly worn peace-clothes, the Indian PM gets to eat his words! And once the new clothes are off – the PM comes back to announce that it was the Pak-based terrorists who were behind it. Of course, the terrorists had the Pak Government backing. Well ISI is part of the Government establishment isnt it? Every Pak citizen and his brother goes around trying to distance the state policy from ISI’s working. For them, it might be different – but you know for us in India, we really do not give two hoots. As long as ISI is a Government-backed and funded organization, the complicity is clear and unequivocal! Whatever the grand announcements from Mushy!
This time Musharraf again made a grand announcement to give them proof – so India conveniently says – hmm how about handing over the Dawood bastard and Syed Sallahuddin! Naah, comes the reply. We cannot! In fact the Foreign Paki Minister thinks that is a strange requirement:
Asked if Pakistan will allow questioning of terrorist leaders by Indian police, he said: “You are asking very strange things. For example, we have not allowed the United States of America, which is our ally for the last 50 years (to question disgraced nuclear scientist A Q Khan).”
Where is US in all this? Well, if you were to listen to one of most well-known Intelligence commentator, you will know that the US State Department has time and again tried to stall any move on Pakistan. From the Khalistani terrorists to the Kashmiri terrorists to Dawood – they never ever listened to India or let CIA believe in India’s evidences. The question obviously is why? That is a tough question to answer. But I have seen a lot of times when US has given Pakistan a free hand on many clandestine activities. From the Nuclear Proliferation of AQ Khan to its relationship with China and North Korea.
Here are some of the times when Senior Indian Intelligence Officer B. Raman found it rather clearly the complicity of the US State Department with Pakistan’s corrupt and terrorist set-up!
1. After the 1962 Indo-China war, India Intelligence Bureau sought TECHINT capabilities from US. The US President Kennedy did give his approval too, but with the condition that India will only use that equipment against China and NOT Pakistan! In 1970, RM Kao, the RAW head visited US – he was told by the CIA Chief: “…. we all cheat in this profession. I know R&AW will cheat and use the equipment given by us for the collection of TECHINT about Pakistan. Make sure our State Department does not come to know of it. If it does, the State Department will demand that we cancel our cooperation with you and withdraw from you the equipment given by us. I will have to do this.”
2. In first half of 1980’s, Khalistani terrorists hijacked a number of planes. In one of the hijacking, the Khalistani terrorists took a plane without any arms while posing they were armed! They took the plane to Lahore. There the ISI officers gave them a revolver – a German-made revolver – and let them take off to Dubai. There the hijackers were caught and the revolver handed over to the Indian authorities. Indians had it checked with the West German Intelligence and they came back with the evidence that the revolver was part of one of the consignment sold by the Germans to Pakistan. This proof was rejected too by the US as an evidence of Pakistani complicity!
3. Kanishka bombing was another major disaster which had clear and direct action from Pakistan. Many worried Western Governments started monitoring the Khalistanis activities and collected enough evidence about their direct links to ISI and Pakistan. When B. Raman asked his counterparts in those Western Intelligence agencies to show the evidence to US, he was told: : “We know the CIA has more intelligence regarding the Pakistani sponsorship of terrorism against India than all of us together have. The CIA was convinced a long time ago about the ISI’s sponsorship of terrorism. The problem is not with the CIA. It is with the State Department, which does not want to act against Pakistan.”
4. After the 1993 Mumbai blasts, police recovered grenades of Austrian design. When Austrian experts flew into India and verified the design was Austrian and made in a Pakistani factory with Austrian technology and machine tools. There was also a timer, which was of US make. Naively, B. Raman sent the timer to US, for verification and certification. What he got back was an unsigned paper and as assertion on being queried that it was not enough proof of Pak complicity because it could have been stolen by the terrorists! When India asked for the timers to be returned, it was told that the timers were destroyed by mistake!
There were many other examples like these in his experience.
Another evidence of US State Department and Pakistan’s Jehadi ISI-Army nexus came just before the Afghan War through this report in the Wall Street Journal, where the US let Pakistan fly out iits Army officials – including at the ranks of Brigadiers – out of Kunduz. Of course, this report was initiated based on the story run by Indian newspapers and none of the Western newspapers. To wonder it was selectively leaked by Indian intelligence who were closely watching the Pakistanis at that time goes without saying!
Not one but multiple sorties were undertaken:
On Saturday, the same day as the second Indian report, the New York Times ran a story that caught my eye. “Pakistanis Again Said to Evacuate Allies of Taliban,” said the headline over a report filed, from a place called Bangi, near Kunduz, by Dexter Filkins and Carlotta Gall. They told of eyewitness accounts by Northern Alliance soldiers “that Pakistani airplanes had once again flown into the encircled city of Kunduz to evacuate Pakistanis who have been fighting alongside Afghan Taliban forces trapped there.” The Times reported that earlier in the week, “alliance officials said they had been told by a Taliban leader in Kunduz that at least three Pakistani Air Force planes had landed in recent days on similar missions.”
Tunku, the author of the WSJ report asks a valid question: why did the U.S. choose to turn a blind eye to their rescue? and answers it subsequently with a kind of resignation:
My guess is that Secretary of State Colin Powell, with whom the Pakistani dictator has developed an unseemly and unctuous rapport, called in all his chips on this one. The evasiveness of U.S. top brass on the subject suggests they are embarrassed over the affair. How could they not be? Weren’t the men the Pakistanis rescued the very men this country is at war with? And weren’t these some of the very men Mr. Rumsfeld said had only two choices before them at Kunduz, death or surrender?
Varadarajan ends with a hope: One day, when the war in Afghanistan is well and truly done, we will get answers to all these questions.
We all know the Afghan war has ended but did you get any answers?
Well the entire episode did not end here. ISI Chief Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad himself had USD 100,000 wired to Mohd. Atta before 9-11. This is what Pepe Escobar says about that:
In early October 2001, Indian intelligence learned that Mahmoud had ordered flamboyant Saeed Sheikh – the convicted mastermind of the kidnapping and killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl – to wire US$100,000 from Dubai to one of hijacker Mohamed Atta’s two bank accounts in Florida.
A juicy direct connection was also established between Mahmoud and Republican Congressman Porter Gross and Democratic Senator Bob Graham. They were all in Washington together discussing Osama bin Laden over breakfast when the attacks of September 11, 2001, happened.
Mahmoud’s involvement in September 11 might be dismissed as only Indian propaganda. But Indian intelligence swears by it, and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has confirmed the whole story: Indian intelligence even supplied Saeed’s cellular-phone numbers. Nobody has bothered to check what really happened. The 9-11 Commission should pose very specific questions about it to FBI director Robert Mueller when he testifies this month.
So what is US State Department’s beef in promotion of terrorism in South Asia and are the US Government’s tears just proverbial crocodile’s?
