Pakistan Shift Could Curtail Drone Strikes

By ERIC SCHMITT and DAVID E. SANGER

Published: February 22, 2008

WASHINGTON — American officials reached a quiet understanding with Pakistan’s leader last month to intensify secret strikes against suspected terrorists by pilotless aircraft launched in Pakistan, senior officials in both governments say. But the prospect of changes in Pakistan’s government has the Bush administration worried that the new operations could be curtailed.

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Pakistanis Strike Political Accord (February 22, 2008)

Among other things, the new arrangements allowed an increase in the number and scope of patrols and strikes by armed Predator surveillance aircraft launched from a secret base in Pakistan — a far more aggressive strategy to attack Al Qaeda and the Taliban than had existed before.

But since opposition parties emerged victorious from the parliamentary election early this week, American officials are worried that the new, more permissive arrangement could be choked off in its infancy.

In the weeks before Monday’s election, a series of meetings among President Bush’s national security advisers resulted in a significant relaxation of the rules under which American forces could aim attacks at suspected Qaeda and Taliban fighters in the tribal areas near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan.

The change, described by senior American and Pakistani officials who would not speak for attribution because of the classified nature of the program, allows American military commanders greater leeway to choose from what one official who took part in the debate called “a Chinese menu” of strike options.

Instead of having to confirm the identity of a suspected militant leader before attacking, this shift allowed American operators to strike convoys of vehicles that bear the characteristics of Qaeda or Taliban leaders on the run, for instance, so long as the risk of civilian casualties is judged to be low.

The new, looser rules of engagement may have their biggest impact at a secret Central Intelligence Agency base in Pakistan whose existence was described by American and Pakistani officials who had previously kept it secret to avoid embarrassing President Pervez Musharraf politically. Mr. Musharraf, whose party lost in this week’s election by margins that surprised American officials, has been accused by political rivals of being too close to the United States.

The base in Pakistan is home to a handful of Predators — unmanned aircraft that are controlled from the United States. Two Hellfire missiles from one of those Predators are believed to have killed a senior Qaeda commander, Abu Laith al-Libi, in northwest Pakistan last month, though a senior Pakistani official said his government had still not confirmed that Mr. Libi was among the dead. A C.I.A. spokesman declined on Thursday to comment on any operations in Pakistan.

SOURCE:MORE:

bILL

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Pakistan strikes Bhutto assassin stronghold

By Associated Press
Monday, January 21, 2008 - Updated 4h ago

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The Pakistani military pounded an extremist stronghold yesterday near the Afghan border where a rebel leader blamed for the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is believed to be hiding, officials and witnesses said.

The strikes came after authorities said Saturday they had arrested a 15-year-old boy in northwestern Pakistan alleged to have been involved in the Dec. 27 slaying of Bhutto, an

opposition leader critical of rising Islamic extremism in the country.

The central government has never had much control over South Waziristan, a tribal area where several top al-Qaeda terrorists, Taliban and Pakistani extremists are believed to live. They included Baitullah Mehsud, a Pakistani accused by the government and the CIA of masterminding the killing of Bhutto.

Officials said the boy had confessed to taking part in a plot to kill Bhutto in a gun and suicide bomb attack in the garrison town of Rawalpindi. His role in the mission to kill Bhutto was as a backup in case the shooter or the suicide attacker failed, according to an intelligence official who has seen his interrogation records.

The boy said the slaying was organized by Mehsud, who has previously denied any involvement in the attack, according to the official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

Authorities say the boy received terrorist training in neighboring Afghanistan before taking part in the mission. He told interrogators he trained for 40 days in a camp run by Mehsud in the Kotai area of South Waziristan before going to Helmand province Afghanistan in 2007 for another 40 days of “practical training.”

Meanwhile, Sunni extremists fired small arms and mortars at a Shiite procession commemorating Ashoura, a Shiite Muslim holiday that is often scarred by sectarian violence, the military said in a statement. Nine civilians and three security troops were injured in the incident in northwestern Hangu town, which ended after troops fired tear gas from a helicopter, it said.

Fighting in South Waziristan in recent days has killed more than 100 soldiers and militants.

The violence comes as the nuclear-armed country prepares for Feb. 18 elections that many predict will weaken President Pervez Musharraf’s grip on power.

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WANA, Pakistan (AFP) — Pakistani helicopter gunships and artillery pounded militant positions in a restive tribal area bordering Afghanistan, residents and officials said.

The military said they fired artillery after coming under attack in Ladha village of restive South Waziristan district, where a Taliban commander linked to the assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto is said to be hiding.

Ladha Fort

"At 0100 hours miscreants fired 12.7 millimetres gun from old Ladha to Ladha observation post. Security forces retaliated with artillery guns fire," a military statement said, but gave no casualties.

Ladha Fort

Residents however said that shells fired from six helicopter gunships killed two people and left seven others wounded, but officials were not immediately available to confirm the deaths.

The military said Saturday that troops captured 50 Islamist militants in an operation in the rugged Chaghmalai and Ladha areas of South Waziristan.

The clashes started after hundreds of heavily armed militants overran a Pakistani paramilitary fort on Wednesday, killing seven soldiers and leaving another 15 troops missing, presumed kidnapped.

The fierce clashes were the latest in a series to rock the tribal region, the stronghold of wanted Islamist warlord Baitullah Mehsud and his Al-Qaeda and Taliban allies.

Militants have stepped up attacks on troops in the region since Bhutto was killed in a gun and bomb attack last month.

Pakistan was already on high alert for the Muslim festival of Ashura, being observed on Sunday.

Pakistan gunships pound militant stronghold: residents

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bY VANCOUVER:( sorry had wrong link up, fixed now )

........ It's interesting that Ayman al-Zawahari's "town hall meeting" video is overdue by at least three days, and there is no longer a banner about it at Ekhlaas. The production might have been destroyed, or at least interrupted, in the recent fighting in Waziristan.

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Additional nuclear sites ( STRIKES ) in Syria?

Additional nuclear sites in Syria?

By Olivier Guitta

While proof of a Syrian nuclear site is trickling down, including in this Washington Post article, the question now remains: what exactly do we know about the Syrian nuclear program?

Last night, The Croissant ran a story from the Kuwaiti Al Seyassah about potential new secret nuclear sites in Syria.
Here is an excerpt:

Western sources think that Syrian intelligence provided some information on the facility bombed on September 6 by the Israeli air force in order to focus the attention just on this particular site while work goes on at other secret sites.
Indeed, observation satellites have allegedly located in Syria at least 2 other sites similar to the one destroyed last month.

Back in December 2006, I wrote an article for The Examiner on Syria's nuclear program.
Here is an excerpt:

Indeed, while world attention is rightly focused on the nuclear capabilities of Iran and North Korea, Syria has been quietly — but quickly — advancing its own secret nuclear program.

The first signs appeared in 2003 when the Russian Foreign Ministry inadvertently revealed that a Russian-Syrian agreement for the delivery of a nuclear power plant in an undisclosed Syrian location had been signed.

In 2004, Syrian President Bashar Assad made a point to say that Syria would not dispose of its WMD program until Israel did the same. “Since some of my country is occupied,” Assad added, “Syria can legitimately use all the necessary means to liberate its territories.”

German magazine Der Spiegel revealed in March 2004 that Swedish authorities and the CIA were investigating a very likely Syrian nuclear program secretly developed in Homs in the northern part of the country. That July, investigators looking into the Pakistani nuclear network of A.Q. Khan pointed out that Syria may have procured centrifuges capable of enriching uranium to produce a bomb.

This fact was confirmed in May 2006 in a declassified report to the U.S. Congress on the acquisition of technology relating to weapons of mass destruction. Before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Syria also got help from Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Keep in mind that Syria’s economy was very dependent on Iraq’s trade, especially oil-smuggling revenues. Sunday Telegraph journalist Con Coughlin affirmed in a September 2004 article that 12 Iraqi nuclear scientists — who were transferred to Syria and given new identities before the war — were on their way to Iran to assist their counterparts there in building a nuclear weapon. “The results of the research would then be shared with Syria,” Coughlin added.

But what really broke the camel’s back was a recent report from the well-informed Kuwaiti daily newspaper Al Seyassah. It quoted European intelligence sources as saying that “Syria has an advanced nuclear program” in a secret site located in the province of Al Hassaka, close to the Turkish and Iraqi borders. British sources quoted by the paper believe that “it is President Assad’s brother, Colonel Maher Assad and his cousin Rami Makhlouf, who supervise the program.”

You can read the rest here.

Syria: MAKING A DIRTY NUKE BOMB?

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Toro Bora TRAP

GHAZNI, Afghanistan | The U.S. military received "credible reporting" of a sizable Taliban force at Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan, leading to the latest offensive in that area, a top American general said Thursday.

Army Lt. Gen. Carter Ham, director for operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in Washington that the number of enemy killed or captured so far in the operation by coalition and Afghan troops was "in the teens."

He said he was not aware of any high-value Taliban targets being found in the area and said the intelligence report did not indicate the presence of al-Qaida fighters.

On Wednesday, U.S. officials announced that hundreds of coalition soldiers had launched an offensive in Tora Bora targeting foreign fighters, whom they initially said included al-Qaida.

Internet Anthropologist reported huge Taliban and Al Qaeda crowd from the 28 bases in Patki, moved to Toro Bora, reported yesterday.

Gerald
http://www.wilmingtonstar.com/article/20070817/NEWS/708170342/-1/State