Posted on 06/17/2004 11:16:30 PM PDT by AdmSmith
D’oh! Sorry guys. Someone posted a link to this thread on another thread and I assumed it was recent (thought it was about the most recent missile strike). Then I saw the date and realized it was from 2004...whoops!
lol. yes, we’ve been following this for a while now.......
LOL! and when can we close it?
We close this thread ONLY when Z and OBL both leave this earth.
Some updates on Z:
But FBI should update this old info http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/wanted_terrorists/ayman-al-zawahiri
Languages: Z can speak English
Scars and Marks: Z has a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prayer_bump on his forehead
Updates
The Bin Ladens’ life on the run + Abbottabad Commission report
http://m.aljazeera.com/story/2013781444498188
Pakistan’s New Generation of Terrorists
Pakistani authorities have long had ties to domestic militant groups that help advance the country’s core foreign policy interests, namely in connection with Afghanistan and India.
http://www.cfr.org/pakistan/pakistans-new-generation-terrorists/p15422
If this evolves into something solid we can close this thread:
“This madness has to end,” is the bottom line of the recently-published book “Spy Chronicles: RAW, ISI and the Illusion of Peace” co-authored by former chief of the Indian Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) Amarjit Singh Dulat, ex-chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Asad Durrani and Indian journalist Aditya Sinha.
“That is what our book is actually about in a way,” A.S. Dulat, who led the Indian spy agency RAW from 1999 to 2000, told me during a telephonic interview. Being an optimist who strictly believes in peaceful co-existence between India and Pakistan, A.S. Dulat said, “it is difficult to say when, but it has to end one day.”
When I asked Dulat how much he trusts Durrani’s claim that it was Pakistan that provided intelligence about Osama bin Ladin’s whereabouts to the Americans, he said he believes the Pakistanis knew where Osama was.”I think the Americans somehow got window (of information) and they told the Pakistanis that look, we know where he is and then told them (Pakistan) to stay out of it,” he said.
The Spy Chronicles is a plain discussion on a host of thorny issues confronting the neighbours. Aditya Sinha recorded 170,000 words as the two former spy chiefs first met in Istanbul, then in Bangkok, then Kathmandu and again in Bangkok. Sinha told me he had to sift through and separate around 75,000 words for the final draft.
About the unique style of the book, Sinha is confident it would save the readers from going through boring and difficult-to-read styles of books written by Indian and Pakistani officials. “This is like a buffet menu where each subject could be read separately than the rest of the book,” he explained. About the editing criterion, he told me that certain things were removed, for example “General Durrani used quite the spicy language when talking about Ajit Doval, the Indian national security advisor, who is known in Pakistan as Ajit Devil.”The two former spy chiefs also made sure something may not run counter to the official secret acts of their respective countries and, “we did some edits from that point of view as well.”
Unfortunately, while Dulat did not face any trouble in India, Durrani found himself in hot waters soon after the circulation of the free online version of the book, which Aditya Sinha believes is distressing, but good to bring more publicity.
https://dailytimes.com.pk/254334/a-former-spymasters-hope-for-end-to-the-india-pakistan-madness/
more:
https://swarajyamag.com/defence/speaking-with-the-enemy-delving-deep-into-the-heart-of-an-isi-chief
https://nation.com.pk/16-Jun-2018/raw-declares-hybrid-war
https://intelnews.org/2018/05/30/01-2329/
The book has been reviewed and vetted in both India and Pakistan, despite the present problems for Durrani, so it is wise to read it. https://www.amazon.com/Spy-Chronicles-RAW-Illusion-Peace/dp/9352779258
check as well https://twitter.com/autumnshade
Durrani has written a new book https://www.hindustantimes.com/books/excerpt-pakistan-adrift-navigating-troubled-waters-by-asad-durrani/story-guNEn6DXHSUyZcg0RytXWL.html
Aspiring for a position in IK new government?
Twelfth report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team submitted pursuant to resolution 2557 (2020) concerning the Taliban and other associated individuals and entities constituting a threat to the peace stability and security of Afghanistan. June 1, 2021
The key development between May 2020 and April 2021 has been the evolution of the peace process in Afghanistan pursuant to the agreement signed in Doha in February 2020 and the stated intention of the United States of America and allied forces to complete their withdrawal from Afghanistan by September 2021.
The issue of narcotics in Afghanistan – the production and trafficking of poppybased drugs and methamphetamine – remains unaddressed as yet in the Afghan peace process. This remains the Taliban's largest single source of income. It also has a destabilizing and corrupting effect within Afghanistan and contributes significantly to the narcotics challenges facing the wider international community.
A significant part of the leadership of Al-Qaida resides in the Afghanistan and Pakistan border region, alongside Al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent. Large numbers of Al-Qaida fighters and other foreign extremist elements aligned with the Taliban are located in various parts of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida continued to suffer attrition during the period under review, with a number of senior figures killed, often alongside Taliban associates while co-located with them.
The primary component of the Taliban in dealing with Al-Qaida is the Haqqani Network. Ties between the two groups remain close, based on ideological alignment, relationships forged through common struggle and intermarriage.
Al-Qaida and likeminded militants continue to celebrate developments in Afghanistan as a victory for the Taliban's cause and thus for global radicalism. The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant-Khorasan (ISIL-K) remains diminished from its zenith, following successive military setbacks that began in Jowzjan in summer 2018. However, since June 2020, it has had an ambitious new leader, Shahab al-Muhajir, and it remains active and dangerous, particularly if it is able, by positioning itself as the sole pure rejectionist group in Afghanistan, to recruit disaffected Taliban and other militants to swell its ranks.
Member States have varying assessments of the extent of ISIL-K and al-Muhajir’s links with the Haqqani Network. Meanwhile, the Al-Sadiq office is co-located with ISIL-K in Afghanistan, pursuing a regional agenda in Central and South Asia on behalf of the ISIL core.
In August 2020 (misprint in the document as it states 2021), the Afghan Government released over 5,000 Taliban prisoners, including 400 that required the decision of a specially convened loya jirga by President Ghani, who had previously expressed reluctance to release them due to the seriousness of their offences. According to Afghan officials, of 5,494 Taliban prisoners released, 720 have since returned to the battlefield. Of these, 24 were reported to be currently serving as shadow district governors and 54 as heads of Taliban military units, including Taliban special forces known as red units. A total of five have been recaptured and 13 killed.
Al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent operates under the Taliban umbrella from Kandahar, Helmand (notably Baramcha) and Nimruz Provinces. The group reportedly consists of primarily Afghan and Pakistani nationals, but also individuals from Bangladesh, India and Myanmar. Its current leader is Osama Mahmood (not listed), who succeeded the late Asim Umar (not listed). The group is reported to be such an “organic” or essential part of the insurgency that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to separate it from its Taliban allies. Several Member States characterized this relationship by noting that the wife of the former leader of Al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent, Asim Umar (see S/2020/415, para. 36), was among 5,000 Taliban prisoners freed by the Afghan Government in 2020 as part of the Doha agreement. The killing of several Al-Qaida commanders in Taliban-controlled territory underscores the closeness of the two groups.
more details https://www.undocs.org/en/S/2021/486
Afghanistan: Who's who in the Taliban leadership
Sirajuddin Haqqani is another of the group's top deputy leaders.
After the death of his father, Jalaluddin Haqqani, he became the new leader of the Haqqani network, which has been credited with some of the most violent attacks that have occurred in Afghanistan against Afghan forces and their Western allies in recent years.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58235639
Let the terrorist war begin...
Unfortunately it is a lot of truth in this article “These epic American blunders made this an unwinnable war” by Christine Fair https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-biggest-american-fuck-ups-that-screwed-afghanistan
Thanks. You just can’t let go of old Nek, can ya? ha
This is significant also...
” According to Afghan officials, of 5,494 Taliban prisoners released, 720 have since returned to the battlefield. Of these, 24 were reported to be currently serving as shadow district governors and 54 as heads of Taliban military units, including Taliban special forces known as red units. A total of five have been recaptured and 13 killed.”
That’s how the Taliban were able to take over the country so quickly, by having their men in place ahead of time.
Apparently this went unnoticed by the CIA and/or military.? How else could everyone in the Biden Admin. say they had no idea Taliban takeover would be so swift? It was coming at them like a tidal wave, and they did nothing to stop it.
Not at all, but almost nothing was done about the info. See this https://topsecretumbra.substack.com/p/the-black-snake-devours-the-biden and the report linked above dated June 1, it got a lot of info from the IC.
Listen to this Implications for the Kabul Catastrophe Former CIA analyst and Georgetown University terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman explains the drastic implications of the Taliban triumph, and journalist Toby Harnden talks about his new book on the first CIA team to enter Afghanistan.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/implications-for-the-kabul-catastrophe/id1560016782
Military officials have said that for weeks they urged the State Department to move faster in evacuating its diplomatic personnel. State Department officials have said they were operating based on intelligence assessments that suggested they had more time, but intelligence officials insist that they had long reported the possibility of a rapid Taliban takeover.
An intelligence assessment produced within the last month assessed that the Taliban were pursuing a total military victory in Afghanistan, a source familiar with the intelligence said, despite ostensibly negotiating for peace in Doha and even as the administration continued to express confidence in those talks.
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/17/politics/biden-afghanistan-blame-shifting/index.html
Well, we know nothing was done about it.
But this clearly puts the onus to do something on Biden & his Admin. They were warned 4 months ago.
“look at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s IC 2021 Annual Threat Assessment, which was published in early April of this year. It cut straight to the point on Afghanistan:
We assess that prospects for a peace deal will remain low during the next year. The Taliban is likely to make gains on the battlefield, and the Afghan Government will struggle to hold the Taliban at bay if the coalition withdraws support.
· Kabul continues to face setbacks on the battlefield, and the Taliban is confident it can achieve military victory.
· Afghan forces continue to secure major cities and other government strongholds, but they remain tied down in defensive missions and have struggled to hold recaptured territory or reestablish a presence in areas abandoned in 2020.
That take was admirably clear and borne out by recent events. It’s also the IC’s unclassified take, for public release, so we should assume that the Top Secret intelligence which was passed to the Biden White House on the Taliban and their military capabilities was considerably more detailed about what was likely to happen in the event that the Pentagon pulled out of Afghanistan.”
And what about the allied countries who are now trying to get their citizens out? Were they unaware? Or just following Biden’s (their pal) lead?
“State Department officials have said they were operating based on intelligence assessments that suggested they had more time,”
An outright lie. If Biden wans any chance to try to save his presidency, he should reveal the lie and put the blame for the disaster on them. He’s good at blaming everyone else anyway.
Yes, and bad decisions have been done for many years.
More about ISI and the Talibans by Sarah Chayes:
You may have heard that the Taliban first emerged in the early 1990s, in Kandahar. That is incorrect. I conducted dozens of conversations and interviews over the course of years, both with actors in the drama and ordinary people who watched events unfold in Kandahar and in Quetta, Pakistan. All of them said the Taliban first emerged in Pakistan.
The Taliban were a strategic project of the Pakistani military intelligence agency, the ISI. It even conducted market surveys in the villages around Kandahar, to test the label and the messaging. “Taliban” worked well. The image evoked was of the young students who apprenticed themselves to village religious leaders. They were known as sober, studious, and gentle. These Taliban, according to the ISI messaging, had no interest in government. They just wanted to get the militiamen who infested the city to stop extorting people at every turn in the road.
Both label and message were lies.
Within a few years, Usama bin Laden found his home with the Taliban, in their de facto capital, Kandahar, hardly an hour’s drive from Quetta. Then he organized the 9/11 attacks. Then he fled to Pakistan, where we finally found him, living in a safe house in Abbottabad, practically on the grounds of the Pakistani military academy. Even knowing what I knew, I was shocked. I never expected the ISI to be that brazen.
Meanwhile, ever since 2002, the ISI had been re-configuring the Taliban: helping it regroup, training and equipping units, developing military strategy, saving key operatives when U.S. personnel identified and targeted them. That’s why the Pakistani government got no advance warning of the Bin Laden raid. U.S. officials feared the ISI would warn him.
By 2011, my boss, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Taliban were a “virtual arm of the ISI.”
https://www.sarahchayes.org/post/the-ides-of-august
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