In 2004, soldiers stationed in Balad, Iraq, demanded that two young Iraqis who had angered them jump off a dam into the Tigris River. Their battalion commander helped them cover up the offense. In 2006, soldiers from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne operated in a brutal manner in Iraq, following a tone established by its commander,
Colonel Michael Steele.
The CIA Death Squads can be heard by the loud bombs blowing up schools and seen in the streets of Karachi where the black tarmac turns red when a CIA hit is successful. The feeble and unbelievable denial by the obsequious leaders doesn't quite cut it. The world knows what is going on. Someone will pay the price of this bloody game either at the voting booth or at the gallows.
Why is the Pakistani media silent about this. Why are the political parties distracted by the sideshow of Aafia Siddiqui. Don't get me wrong, Aafia Siddiqui is a travesty of justice and huge personal tragedy–however the CIA Death Squads are an ongoing nightmare which continues to create more Aafia Siddiquis.
Stories about the presence of the 3000 strong CIA Death Squads in Pakistan keep cropping up–in news reports published on AhmedQuraishi.com, on WikiLeaks and now finally in book form by Bob Woodward. When the reports first appeared on AQ, our liberal friends brushed them off as the ravings of a lunatic. AQ had actually shown video clips of camps and pictures of the strange behavior of Blackwater/Xe in Pakistan. Rupee News reported on this extensively and clearly stated our position that the TTP was foreign backed.
The CIA Death Squads are active in many parts of the world. Nil Nikandrov describes what is going on in Hunduras.
"President of Honduras Manuel Zelaya was displaced slightly over a year ago in a coup staged by the local oligarchy and the US intelligence community. The coup came as a punishment for Zelaya's alignment with H. Chavez and other populist Latin American leaders. Since the time, the news flow from Honduras abounds with stories of political assassinations, the victims being activists of trade unions, peasant and student organizations, and the National Popular Resistance Front opposing the pro-US regime of Porfirio Lobo. Ten journalists who expressed support for the ousted Honduran president have been killed this year alone.
The most recent case of the type was the murder of Israel Zelaya, 56, who was kidnapped by an armed group which easily crossed by car numerous police checkpoints set up as a part of the security-tightening campaign. The journalist was taken to a secluded location, tortured, and shot two times in the head and once – in the chest.
Dozens of similar incidents show that a program of "political cleansing" is underway in Honduras".
The Afghan war and the mayhem that it has caused gives fuel to the so called Liberals who want to take the agenda of the Rawalpindi Conspiracy and impose it on the people of Pakistan. There are many newspaper "columnists" who continue to propagate their agenda to disparage Pakistan, as it if it is an anomaly and as if Islam is the root cause of all evil.
Jim Lobe of Inter Press Service recently defined the salient points of a major biennial survey, "Constrained Internationalism: Adapting to New Realities," by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs (CCGA). Here's how Lobe describes it:
"The survey's main message, however, was that the U.S. public is looking increasingly toward reducing Washington's role in world affairs, especially in conflicts that do not directly concern it. While two-thirds of citizens believe Washington should take an 'active part in world affairs,' 49% — by far the highest percentage since the CCGA first started asking the question in the mid-1970s — agreed with the proposition that the U.S. should 'mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own.'
"Moreover, 91% of respondents agreed that it was 'more important at this time for the [U.S.] to fix problems at home' than to address challenges to the (U.S.) abroad — up from 82% who responded to that question in CCGA's last survey in 2008."
CIA Army or no army, the truth is evident to the US Generals too. It time to pack up and leave Afghanistan.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had called for a substantial buildup of forces, to be followed by a withdrawal beginning next July. Gates recently defended his actions and supported the plan withdraw troops. The top military brass see no changes in American policy–which means that the US will begin withdrawing their forces in 2011, giving enough time to the Republicans to coronate General Pettaeus as their nominee for President. The Wikileaks and Bob Woodward's "Obama's War" are an inconvenient truth for those who have been doubting Pakistani policy in Afghanistan. Rupee News has always called the TTP the "CIA Army". Thanks to Bob Woodward, the 3000 strong "CIA Army" is exposed and today stands naked in Pakistan.
Obviously it takes a "Gora shaib's" testimony to make it believable for the likes of Omar Ali, and Mohammad Taqi who will not believe anything unless it is published in the New York Times or the "Gora Press". in fact they will believe everything that is published in the US press, no matter how outrageous. Taqi of course will rummage through the pages of history to find quotes from Hindu Fascists and other unknowns as long as they belong to the "elite caste" and as long as they label thmselves as "liberal". It is astonishing that Bharati Liberals remain staunchly patriotic and beholden to the Tri-Colors. Thus the Brahmans of the Indian national Congress are totally committed to the Indian state–t is the so called Pakistanis who wish to wear the label of Liberal who subscribe to anti-sate activities.
It is amazing that it is only the Pakistanis who write for rags like The Daily Times that support the Akhan Bharat concept. Case in point. Bangaldesh was formed on the basis of secular Bengali nationalism. Bengalis who lived in Kolkota were told that Bengalisism was prime and they would get full support from the Hindu Bengalis. They did–as long as they could absorb Muslim Bengal into predominantly Hindu India. It is astonishing that the very same Hindus establishment which agitated against the partition of Bengal in 1906–would not join a country of the Bengalis called Bangladesh.
Thus Bangladeshi secularism went into comma on December 16th, 1971 and eventually was assassinated on August 14th, 1975 when the dictator for life Mr. Mujibur Rehman was killed by Bangladeshi patriots and his body thrown into the streets of Dhaka as a warning to those who opposed the Two Nation Theory (TNT). The Bangladeshi National Party resurrected the TNT as the basis of Bangladesh's separatism from predominantly Hindu Bharat.
Today the same so called "Secular Establishment" tries to create Pakistan in their own image–seeking refuge from a religion they dislike and a people they abhor.
The CIA is operating in Pakistan with the connivance of the enemy. Blackwater is operating in Pakistan with impunity. Bob Woodward did not reveal anything new. Pakistanis have known this for a decade. Hence the Anti-Americanism in the streets.
A Senator asked some poignant questions about Aid to Pakistan. The newly appointed Ambassador Designate to Pakistan was unable to explain to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Pakistanis don't hate America, the abhor the American foreign policy that sends death squads to Pakistan. It is obvious that the CIA Army is not in Pakistan for picnics and BBQs. Their mission it to soften up the population, terrorize the civilians and demoralize the people so that they agree to US diktats.
Tom Engelhardt in an article provocatively titled "One and a Half Cheers for American Decline" says it rether bluntly.
"Now, I'm not a betting man, but I'd head for Vegas tomorrow and put my money down against the general and on Americans generally when it comes to assessing the future. I'd put money on the fact that the United States is indeed "in a state of decline" and I'd make a wager at odds that U.S. troops won't be in Afghanistan."
This is not music to the ears of those who have been banking or a permanent US presence in Afghanistan.
Pepe Escobar writes brilliantly when he is off his high horse of Pakistunistan. In a recent article published in the Asia Times he says.
"And so as that self-appointed court stenographer Bob Woodward reveals in his latest court opus Obama's Wars – conveniently leaked to the Washington Post and the New York Times – the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is shelling out the moolah for its own, 3,000-assassin-plus Murder Inc to roam in AfPak. These paramilitary – brigade-size – outfits, "elite and well trained", have been branded Counter-terrorist Pursuit Teams (CPT).
Much is being made in US corporate media that this shady CPT posse is able to "cross-over" to the tribal areas in Pakistani territory and, like in that famous Heineken ad campaign, reach the parts US intelligence are not able to reach. Aware Latin Americans – with a shrug – will see this as Bad Joke redux: the "Salvador option" is back. As much as these Afghan assassins have been flown to the US for training, the infamous School of the Americas in the 1970s and 1980s trained death squads of natives to kill their compatriots from Chile to El Salvador. The CIA not exactly excels on thinking outside the box."
Escobar is right. He alone has the guts to say it. The obsequious mainstream Pakistani press is complaint because they gets ads from "Voice of America" or silent because they are remunerated under the table by the "CIA Army". The Death Squads of El Salvador and Nicaragua are in action in Pakistan.
Escobar's warning is poignant and pertinent. The CIA created the "Goyem" of the Pakhtuns, and it then turned against its benefactor.
"Old Afghan hands will also be thrilled; this is a small-scale remix of the Afghan mujahideen fighting the anti-Soviet 1980s jihad. Everyone knows what happened afterwards to those bad asses Ronald Reagan called "freedom fighters"; they turned against the US. Maybe some enterprising CIA analysts should share a kebab with their old pal on a payroll, former Afghan prime minister Gulbuddin "bomb, bomb Kabul" Hekmatyar, an eternal mujahid today on Washington's most wanted list."
The old news about the American Murder Army in Pakistan is not rally new news–Bob Woodward simply consecrates what is already known by the people. One Faisel, a Rupee News reader eloquently described it as such "the level of IQ and information available in the typical Pakistani barber shop shadown the monographs and thesis written by the $80 billion think tank industry". The reason–the barber shops simply display the facts, and the Think Tanks have an agenda with a wish list.
Escobar portrays the truth very eloquently. "Calling Jack Bauer. Every grain of sand in the Hindu Kush has known since 2001 that the Americans, be they Pentagon, CIA – some Pakistanis say even the Federal Bureau of Investigation – employ a "secret army" in AfPak. The Pentagon's Murder Inc was unveiled by Wikileaks only three months ago. Now it's Woodward unveiling the CIA's. What next? A Jack Bauer unit, serialized on cable?"
The revelations in print should answer the question often asked by the people of Pakistan "Who is blowing up the schools, and placing bombs in the Imam-Baras, Ahmedi Temples, Mosques, and Hospital, who is setting fires to Pakistan factories, and who is dong the targeted killings in Pakistani cities". The CIA Army, 3000 strong will do whatever is necessary to get information, create chaos and mold the opinions of the Pakistanis against those who fight the US and NATO. Thus it will include the targeted assassination of intellectuals and professionals–usually done along ethnic lines so that the peace can be spoiled. It also gives the so called Liberals leverage to speak up against anything Islamic or Muslim. The ANP and other so called "Secularists" for example morning, propagates the falsehood that Pakistan should not have supported the Mujahiden against the USSR. The ANP at the time was allied with the Soviets and did not want the Soviets to withdraw from Afghanistan.
"Civilian "collateral damage" by the Pentagon's Murder Inc has been splashed on the news virtually every week. As for the CIA's, still there are no numbers. The Hindu Kush grains of sand are also aware that the concept of Pakistani "sovereignty" is a myth. Everyone should expect from now on another rainfall of denials from Islamabad – notwithstanding the fact of Pentagon and CIA killer drones raising hell over large swathes of Pakistani territory (more than 70 strikes in 2010 alone).
If this is a war against al-Qaeda, as the George W Bush/Barack Obama continuum insists, Langley, we got a problem; there's fewer than 50 Arab al-Qaeda jihadis in Afghanistan, as every US intelligence agency proclaims. And there are fewer than 100 jihadis in the Waziristans. If Washington really wants to know where the leadership is, the easiest way is to bribe mid-level Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence operatives in Rawalpindi/Islamabad. The ISI-al Qaeda-Taliban connection is and will remain unbreakable – part of Islamabad's obsession with "strategic depth". This is the connection that killed Northern Alliance commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Lion of the Panjshir, on September 9, 2001, two days before 9/11 – thus precluding a true Afghan nationalist from reaching power instead of that Zalmay "Bush's Afghan' Khalilzad asset, Hamid Karzai."
Escobar usually goes a long way when he gets started on the Durand Line. His current article in the Asia Times remains guarded and within the means of acceptable journalism. He is 100% right. The world's friendlies border is not between Canada and the US, it is between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the cute acronym Af-Pak describes the nature of the inseparable conjoined twins. Millions of Afghan live in Pakistan. Balochistan is in danger of losing its Baloch majority because so many Pakhtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras have decided not to return to Afghanistan. Bogus propaganda describes it as "The Quetta Shura". the fact remains that the tent cities around Quetta have now been transformed into bustling markets and business centers where Afghans set up businesses to increase trade between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"Across what is in effect Pashtunistan, the "border" does not exist – after all the Durand Line was a British invention to split the Pashtuns; everyone has interwoven webs of Pashtun "cousins", everyone is "family". Some family members may rat on others for financial gain, but nothing extremely substantive will come out of it."
The CIA with all its power and force cannot comprehend the unbreakable ties of ethnicity and religion. Of course the "Secularists" choose to play dumb–sending American boys to their deaths in the Hindu Kush.
"I was in Tora Bora in late 2001 when US Special Forces were bribing and advising local commanders on how to attack al-Qaeda. The commanders gleefully took US money, made a pose of throwing a few shells with their outdated Soviet tanks, and helped al-Qaeda – Osama bin Laden included – to escape the other way, to Parachinar, towards the Pakistani tribal areas. They even "advised" the American B52s to bomb the wrong mountains…"All this brings us to the current situation where CIA Assassins are roaming the streets of Karachi causing mayhem, and scaring the civilian population by blowing up building in Peshawar. What is egregious is that the same people then turn around and lecture Pakistan on "stability' and "terror".
"Washington is now deploying its full metal jacket – from the Pentagon and CIA secret armies to killer drones to special forces commando raids to Blackwater-conducted "snatch and grab" commandos. All these special effects for what? To kill a few tribal Pakistani Taliban commanders – replaced the same week by a blood relative – and a few jihadis, replaced the same week by a steady stream from the Gulf.Rupee News has been reporting on the presidential ambitions of General Petraeus. Escobar mimics those sentiments.
"Never lose sight of the spectrum. This whole scheme is essentially what passes for General David "I'm always positioning myself to 2012″ Petraeus' grandiose COIN strategy; co-opted locals ranged in death squads and paid with Samsonites full of cash (plus a drone war as "back up"). It worked for Petraeus in Iraq – leading him to boast to a gullible corporate media he had "won" the war. Petraeus believes he can pull a remix in AfPak. The Pentagon seems to be at least a bit wary of warlords – as warlord-hostage Hamid Karzai cannot rule even over his throne in Kabul. But the CIA doesn't care about warlords – it goes for broke."
"Nothing will change on the ground in terms of the ISI-Taliban nexus. But the game gets much more interesting when one factors what enlightened Pakistani public opinion – in the major urban centers – already fed up with Islamabad's subservience to Washington, will make of Woodward's disclosure.The key – one may say tragic – point of Woodward's book is that Obama not only cannot end the Afghan war; he cannot even downscale it to target only the fewer than 100 jihadis and the Pakistani Taliban sheltered in the tribal areas without incurring blowback. Woodward says that Obama is seriously betting on his exit strategy – he wants by all means a progressive withdrawal from Afghanistan starting next summer. But "his" general, Petraeus – the Pentagon in fact – wants infinite war."
The American people have begun to question the "Obama Wars". Woodward reports that President Obama wants to leave Afghanistan despite Bharati objections. The PNAC gurus recast as Foreign Policy Analysts are bucking for perpetual mimetic warfare. Obama says he cannot afford to throw away another Trillion. Who will win?
Escobar tries to answer that question. "What Woodward's book – and the corporate media orchestrated narrative – will never tell is "why" infinite war. Because of the New Great Game in Eurasia. Because of the need of military bases to spy on strategic competitors Russia and China. Because of the US's obsession with Pipelineistan in Central Asia bypassing both Russia and Iran. Because of the Pentagon's full spectrum dominance doctrine – which justifies infinitely ballooning military budgets."
Domestic politics may force the administration to change course and leave Afghanistan. A retired General espousing an end to the war may be more credible than a Liberal whose middle name is Hussein.
"If Obama has really admitted, "I can't lose the whole Democratic Party", he knows he is really in a jam; Obama thought he had 2011 and 2012 to wrap-up some kind of AfPak "victory" before US public opinion turned against him. Well, public opinion is already against him (Bill Clinton is encouraging the president to "embrace people's anger" …) As for wily Petraeus, he has now unleashed a media blitz revolving around one single theme – he won't be rushed, and the war could go on until 2020. In the book, Obama is quoted as saying, "I'm not doing 10 years … I'm not doing long-term nation-building. I am not spending a trillion dollars".
So what should Obama do? He could call his backers in Hollywood – which after all won the Vietnam war on film. Hollywood also won the Iraq War – via The Hurt Locker. The president could even win an Oscar – much cooler than a Nobel.
Now seriously. In real life, history eschews Hollywood. AfPak may swallow this president, the next president, the CIA and row after row of full spectrum dominance-decorated generals faster than one can say "Faster CIA! Kill! Kill!" Goodbye Kabul? More like Good morning, Vietnam."
The CIA has had a history of failures. It tried to sotp the Maosit revolution and prop of Chiang Ka Shek. It tried to halt the march of Iranian Revolution. The El-Salvador death squads came and went. The assassination of Che Guevara was able to kill the man but not the myth. Those who embargo Cuba were unable to stop the Bolivar Revolution in Venezuela.
In a few years the "CIA Army" for Pakistan will be abandoned. As Escobar says, those it trained may turn against their benefactors and join other armies which may not be amicable to the US. The CIA never learns.
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). THE ROVING EYE. It's Obama vs infinite war By Pepe Escobar.
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