Posted on 08/15/2006 3:11:39 AM PDT by markomalley
A Pakistani charity that received 10 million dollars from Britain for earthquake relief last year helped finance the alleged bomb plot to blow up US-bound passenger jets, The Washington Post said.
"The innocent Pakistani souls in Britain who contributed so generously for the victims of the earthquake didn't know that their money would actually be used for one of the biggest terrorist operations," a Pakistani intelligence official told the daily.
The charity was not mentioned by name, but the official said the funds traced to it helped investigators uncover the alleged plot British authorities thwarted last week and which US officials have tentantively linked to Al-Qaeda.
Another senior Pakistani intelligence official said the charity had received some five million pounds (10 million dollars) from Britain, but that less than half was used for relief operations in the October earthquake that killed 73,000 people.
"British intelligence smelled foul play the moment the transfer was made in December last year," said the senior official, who like his colleague asked not to be identified due to the ongoing nature of the investigation.
The New York Times on Monday said the British authorities were investigating whether the Jamaat-ud-Dawa Charity, active in the mosques of Britain's largest cities, had provided money to some of the 23 suspects under arrest for the foiled bomb plot.
The charity, according to Pakistani and US officials cited by the Times, is believed to be the successor of Lashkar-e-Taiba, an Islamic militant group which the Pakistani government banned in 2002.
A British terrorism expert consulted by The Washington Post said the chaos that followed the devastating earthquake in northern Pakistan last year allowed Pakistani intelligence agents to learn more about the militant groups operating in the area.
A spokesman for Jamaat-Ud-Dawa reached by the Post denied any funding by his group of the bomb plot in Britain, insisting that the group condemned terrorism and that it was not under investigation by the Pakistani government.
Pretty sad. So many times money given by generous and charitable people are used for purposes other than it was intended.
Charity begins at home...at least that's what my father used to say. It may very sadly be time for 'charity' dollars to stay at home.
It is pitiful that hatred for other people is greater for Islamics than the love for earthquake stricken Pakistani people.
Islamic charities are often radicalized. They take care of people and gain converts and followers...much the way Hezbollah used social services in Lebanon to gain trust, confidence and support.
On Pakistan and Terror War:
More Questions than Answers
By John E. Carey
August 15, 2006
Pakistan and others are touting the regime's support for the war on terror. Arab newspapers like the Kaleej Times are reverberating with the news: Pakistan is the leader of the war against terror. And yet, according to much of the Arab media, the U.S. and Britain take all the credit.
Others disagree, saying Pakistan, in fact, is the home to more terrorist than any other nation.
After Britain’s dramatic bagging of suspected airline bombers, one of the subtexts of the story that is still emerging is the key cooperation and involvement of Pakistan’s government and intelligence services.
Widespread media reporting on Pakistan’s role as super-partner of the U.S. and Britain in the war against terror needs to be taken with a grain of salt.
The complexities of Pakistan are not well understood in the west. As Sumit Ganguly, author of “Conflict Unending: India-Pakistan Tensions Since 1947,” reported in Foreign Affairs, “Given the signal importance of Pakistan to U.S. foreign policy these days, the lack of informed commentary on the country is striking.”
Dr. Ganguly is Professor of Political Science at the University of Indiana, Bloomington, and a respected analyst of Pakistan's political situation.
We caught up with Professor Ganguly as he traveled between Singapore and India. We asked him, "Is Pakistan really committed to the war against terror?"
Dr. Ganguly answered, without much pause: "It is not. The commitment is merely expediential. I well realize that my view is heretical but the task of an academic is to speak truth to power. General Musharraf and his colleagues, I have long maintained, are only doing enough to ensure a steady supply of American economic and military assistance."
Dr. Ganguly was born in India, which makes some doubt his assessment. Yet he expressed the opinion of a wide spectrum of analysts who watch Pakistan.
Pakistan’s military government is headed by President/General Pervez Musharraf. He took power by military coup and heads a difficult coalition that enforces loyalty to one man and one country.
But there is no one country.
Pakistan has a well known underground of Islamic extremists and terrorists and has long been suspected of harboring Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda.
Along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, long a disputed kind of rebel territory the Pakistani Army stayed clear of, most western intelligence experts believe Osama bib Laden and al Qaida, the leadership of the Taliban, and other Islamic terror camps now house terrorists from Uzbekistan and groups from Chechnya to Indonesia.
These terrorists groups in the secret underground of radicals within Pakistan itself operate in virtually self governed enclaves, much the way Hezbollah has operated within Lebanon for years.
But this is only a part of the story. Many analysts believe much of Islamabad, Lahore and other large urban areas within Pakistan have become radicalized; their madras’s, charities and mosques teaching terrorism or serving as fronts for illicit activity.
According to Nasir Ahmed, a member of the British House of Lords and leader among Britain’s Pakistanis, several of the 23 suspects in the airline bombing plot traveled to Pakistan last year. Many told friends and relatives they were involved in earthquake relief efforts.
The problem is this: as with Hezbollah in Lebanon, the most extreme forms of Islam often appeal to disillusioned youth and find them through charity work. “In the first few days [after the earthquake], it was only religious organizations, the militant organizations, that were prepared to dig out people and provide relief supplies,” Mr. Ahmed said. “It is possible that young people, many people, who have gone from U.K., may have fallen into hands of organizations like Jamaat Ud Dawa.”
Jamaat ud Dawa, an Islamic charity whose name means the Association of the Call to Righteousness, is also active in Britain’s mosques.
Police in Britain are now tracking the associations between the men arrested in the airline bomb plot and Jamat ud Dawa. The story has been broken by The New York Times.
So, many analysts of Pakistan fear the widespread radicalized Islamic bedrock: a string of schools and churches and charities that has become a way of life. Terrorism and hatred of the west isn’t just in small pockets in Pakistan any more.
And what about the Pakistani government?
Inside Pakistan, some of the answers lie in the secret intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
Widely reported as one of the heroes in thwarting the London airline pilot plot, the ISI has a record shrouded in secrecy and double dealing. The ISI helps keep Musharraf in power even as he cultivates the west.
Many believe the ISI also allows Islamic extremists and Al-Qaeda to operate within Pakistan.
Just after the terror train bombing in India on July 11, 2006, India’s well respected Hundustan Times reported, “[Indian] Intelligence agencies on Thursday confirmed that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was the ‘mastermind’ of the blasts that killed about 200 people.”
An informed observer of the ISI from inside Pakistan told me, “The ISI control the Pakistani government and Musharraf.”
Critics of Pakistan and the ISI quickly point ton the story of A. Q. Khan.
A. Q. Khan is the “Father of Pakistan’s Nuclear Bomb.” He was sacked from the position unceremoniously in January 2004 during an investigation into allegations that he gave or sold nuclear secrets to nations and groups outside Pakistan.
He confessed and apologized.
Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker in March 2004, “His confession was accepted by a stony-faced Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s President, who is a former Army general, and who dressed for the occasion in commando fatigues. The next day, on television again, Musharraf, who claimed to be shocked by Khan’s misdeeds, nonetheless pardoned him, citing his service to Pakistan (he called Khan “my hero”).
This kind of two-faced action is indicative of Pakistan and its President Musharraf in particular.A smooth, urbane man, Musharraf has carefully developed his relationships with the west, including with President Bush, FBI Director Mueller and many others.
A year after Musharraf’s coup to assume power in Pakistan, the BBC started a report on Pakistan this way: “A year after the coup, the military authorities in Pakistan are under pressure from the international community to speed up the restoration of democracy.”
The questions are: what happened to Pakistan’s drive toward democracy and what happened to the west’s, particularly the U.S. interest in democracy in Pakistan?
President Bush has reiterated several times that a key element to the war against terror is the fostering of democracy. Last May in a Chicago press conference, the president summed up his rationale in a few short words: “democracies don't war with each other.”
So why has the U.S. ignored Pakistan’s lack of democracy and apparent disregard for nuclear non-proliferation?
The U.S. may feel that it has done enough in the war against terror with Pakistan and further persuasion of Musharraf would pay few dividends.
“The administration is knee-deep in the Iraq quagmire and beset by other crises,” says Michael Krepon of the Henry L Stimson Center. “A crackdown on militant groups supported by the religious parties Musharraf now colludes with does not seem to be in the cards.”
We also wondered why more experts in Pakistan are not speaking out about the war on terror and Pakistan’s role.
A Pakistani professor who carefully follows politics and security issues from within Pakistan told us, “The ISI would make things extremely uncomfortable for any critics speaking to the international press. I correct that. Any press.”
"They will cooperate to the extent it suits them," said Dr. Ganguly, referring to Pakistan's work with the U.S. on the war on terror.
So there are just more questions than answers about Pakistan’s role in the war against terror.
We certainly take with a grain of salt the mainstream media’s proclamations this week that Pakistan is a full and reliable partner in the war against terror.
http://peace-and-freedom.blogspot.com/
The basic lesson is don't give aid to anybody. I didn't give to quake relief, I didn't give to tsunami relief, and I didn't give to support the displaced welfare class from Katrina.
Consider this an "I told you so!" ping. In the aftermath of the earthquake, I was saying: We should ask the Pakistanis what they know about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden before sending them a dime of aid.
It seems to me that Pakistan wants to be on both sides of the war on terror. Pakistan is like a csr driving down the middle of the highway, getting hit by cars from both directions.
BUMP
The only reason Musharraf gets US support is that anyone succeeding him would be worse. :') Oh boy.
As far as the rest of the world. Sorry.
Pakistan is a fountainhead of terror. Far from being an ally, its sponging off US aid, and most of that money is going to end up in activities like this!
The lashkar-e-taiba was set up by the pakistani Inter Services Intelligence to wage a low intensity terror campaign in Indian kashmir. This is all just blowback.
I agree. All my donations go to my church and local charities which work on local problems.
If all these backwards, Islamic nations weren't blowing so much cash trying to build nuclear weapons and fighting the west, maybe they could do a lot better job of taking care of their own.
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