Posted on 11/11/2009 7:24:52 PM PST by AmericanInTokyo
Intel team returns home after US snub CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA, TNN 11 November 2009, 01:16am IST WASHINGTON/NEW DELHI: In a show of miscommunication if not outright discord between Washington and New Delhi, an Indian intelligence team returned home on Tuesday after being denied access to question two Pakistani expatriates accused of plotting terrorist attacks in India.
The Indian team had rushed to the US after the FBI last month apprehended Dave Headley alias Daood Gilani and Rana Tawassur in hopes of questioning them about their links to Pakistani terrorist organizations outlined in the FBI affidavit, and the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. But after cooling their heels in Washington DC for nearly a week while US authorities processed their request, the Indian side was told the two suspects could not be questioned by outside agencies under US laws. The team did not even go to Chicago, whether the two accused are in detention.
New Delhi is furious at the snub, but put on a smiley face, ascribing the setback to "procedural" and "bureaucratic" delays. While acknowledging that US authorities did share a "fair amount of information" on the case while the team was in Washington DC, sources said the US attitude contrasted sharply with the kind of cooperation India offered to the US investigators in the 26/11 Mumbai case.
The FBI was allowed to question Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, the lone survivor of the jihadi squad that killed 172 people, for nine hours last December. Subsequently, an FBI agent also testified in the trial court via videolink.
It appears that the Indian team was not accorded the same courtesies, attesting to a long history of spotty cooperation going back to the Mumbai bomb blasts of 1993. Asked why the Indian intel team was rushed to the US without first ascertaining if there will be full access, sources said events were moving very fast and New Delhi did not want to waste any time in getting people in place to get as much information as possible.
But Washington had legal issues in terms of proving access to the accused, something which the FBI liaison at the US Embassy in New Delhi does not appear to have foreseen. The FBI had not returned calls seeking the US version of the snafu at the time of writing and the Indian Embassy declined to comment on the matter.
There is also suspicion in the intelligence analysts' community that Washington is trying to protect its lines of cooperation with Islamabad at the expense of India, in the process obfuscating Pakistan's complicity in terrorism. In the FBI affidavit, US investigators have named Ilyas Kashmiri, one of the Pakistani contacts of the accused Headley and Rana, but left two other contacts unnamed, describing them merely as LeT Member A and Individual A. Suspicion in spook circles is Individual A belongs to the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI and the US is trying not to embarrass Pakistan, whose cooperation it needs to carry forward its war on al-Qaida, Taliban and allied extremists.
Such kid glove treatment of Pakistan at the expense of Indian blood has been criticized by two scholars in a recent paper. "Too often US officials have sought to downplay instances when Pakistan has failed to cooperate with US counterterrorism efforts in order to protect other channels of cooperation," Lisa Curtis and Ted Bromund of the Heritage Foundation said in a paper released Monday. "The US and the UK need to convince Pakistan that cases against terrorists who attack India should be treated no differently than cases against terrorists who act in other parts of the world."
Seeking "consistent policies toward Pakistan that hold the country's officials accountable for stopping all support to terrorists," their paper said "connections among al-Qaeda, the Kashmir-focused terrorist groups, and the Pakistani security establishment are troubling and pose a direct security threat to Britain, the US, and other Western democracies. The US and Britain should continue to pressure the Pakistan government to shut down Pakistan-based terrorist groups, such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, which increasingly threaten Pakistan's own stability."
"The US and the UK also need to address forthrightly Pakistani noncooperation against terrorist targets. Both Washington and London seek counterterrorism partnerships with Pakistan, but they need to be willing to tell their publics when efforts to cooperate with Pakistan fail," they said.
Just obama protecting jihadists (fully intentional). Nothing new here...
Of that there can be no denial.
However, after nearly a year of the American People getting to know him as their President, if he STILL enjoys fairly strong support (more in favor than in disfavor) after all the things that he has done to America at home and abroad, in economics and national security, as well as toward our allies, and now dead US military on his watch in Texas, then the problem I am afraid, is with the American People themselves. They have 2010 to prove to me as a final chance, beyond of a shadow of a doubt that they are not foolishly corrupted, not in a mass-cult mindset, and not ready to go over the cliff following after "The Messiah" and his band of worshipping, media sycophants. At least the majority
. They are either so asleep, or are hopelessly bought off through government largesse and actually WANT socialism as well as mass murders by Islamists on American soil.
Sorry to put it like that, but at the end of the day, you really do have to ask the American People at this stage whether they think they made a horrible mistake or not. More and more foreign media and government officials, looking at the United States from abroad, think that they did. What do the polls show?
Beware the law of unintended consequences.
Cooperation that goes back to the 1993 Bombay Bombings that killed over 300 has been spiked.
Remember, the Pakistani ConsulGeneral in Chicago has also been implicated in apparently greasing the visa path for the last plot. And one wonders about Hasan’s money transfers to Pakistan, his whole salary?
And the Lone Jihadi is one of the purposes of the Pakistani Jundullah grouping, advocating lone actions, unpredictable, unforeseeable (not in Hasan’s case) for maximum impact.
No connections to Pakistan in the Boston plot.
None in Illinois or Dallas or North Carolina either.
But Pakistani culpability in Jihad is glaringly clear except to those most wilfully blind.
Obama’s dithering on Afghania is paradoxically, leading to the very outcome he does not want - more unrest and strife in Pakistan, beginning to verge on civil war.
The most important people in Pakistan today, the 12 Army Corps Commanders.
You have indeed "done the necessary".
Excellent.
bump
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