Posted on 01/20/2002 9:25:53 AM PST by CreekerFreeper
MAG: SECRET PAKISTANI AIRLIFT AIDED TALIBAN, AL QAEDA FIGHTERS
Sun Jan 20 2002 12:15:41 ET
American intelligence officials and high-ranking military officers say that Pakistani Army military and intelligence advisers who had been working with the Taliban in Afghanistan were flown to safety in Pakistan during the siege of Kunduz last November, in a series of nighttime airlifts by the Pakistani Air Force!
Controversial Seymour Hersh returns to the pages of the NEW YORKER, according to publishing sources, in the January 28, 2002 edition, hitting racks Monday.
The airlifts "were approved by the Bush Administration," Hersh reports.
The evacuation, which had been conceived of as a limited operation, "apparently slipped out of control, and, as an unintended consequence, an unknown number of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters managed to join in the exodus."
MORE
One American defense adviser tells Hersh, "Everyone brought their friends with them. You're not going to leave them behind to get their throats cut."
As one senior intelligence official puts it, "Dirt got through the screen."
Indian intelligence officials tell Hersh that they number the escaped officials and fighters at four or five thousand; American intelligence officials put the total far lower. But "the Bush Administration may have done more than simply acquiesce in the rescue effort," Hersh reports.
"At the height of the standoff, according to both a C.I.A. official and a military analyst who has worked with the Delta Force...the Administration ordered the United States Central Command to set up a special air corridor help insure the safety of Pakistani rescue flights from Kunduz to the northwest corner of Pakistan."
The Department of Defense did not respond to a request for comment.
Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf won American support for the evacuation, Hersh reports, by warning that losing a large number of Pakistanis would jeopardize his political survival.
In India, a recently retired Indian diplomat tells Hersh, the feeling is that "Musharraf has two-timed you. What have you gained? Have you captured Osama bin Laden?"
A senior Indian intelligence official says, "Musharraf can't afford to keep the Taliban in Pakistan. They're dangerous to his own regime. Our reading is that the fighters can go only to Kashmir."
Kashmir remains the flashpoint. "The situation is bloody explosive," a senior Pakistani diplomat says, suggesting that Musharraf has not been given enough credit by the Indian government for the "sweeping changes" he's brought to Pakistan.
A retired C.I.A. officer who served as a station chief in South Asia tells Hersh he found it especially disturbing that each country had "imperfect intelligence" about the other. "Couple that with the fact that these guys have a propensity to believe the worst of each other, and have nuclear weapons, and you end up saying, 'My God, get me the hell out of here.'"
Developing...
We pretty much mangled every airstrip in the country to the point that nothing as big as a cargo plane was going to be able to use it for much of anything more than a parking ramp. Just think of how long it took us to repair the airports at Bagram and Kandahar. Or even that little airstrip at Camp Rhino for a really good example since it wasn't even a major airport, yet we still had to go and repair it before we could use it well.
So I would have a whole lot of doubts about any story that claims that large aircraft were landing and taking off anywhere in Afghanistan in November, no matter what the source was. They'd have to have the video and it would have to have really well known landmarks in it, and even then I'd be tempted to pull an Oliver Stone on it and think it had been somehow doctored.
Another aspect of these stories that has me doubting them is that when they were first being reported, they couldn't make up their minds whether they were being flown out using cargo planes or helicopters. They kept flipping back and forth, depending on what made the story work better at the time. Or at least that's what it looked like to me.
Oh well, those are my thoughts anyway.
He can't complete a sentence that isn't well prepared for him beforehand. That sucks because conservatism needs a voice and he can't provide. His cliches and one liners are great for the opening of the war but beyond that he has failed to satisfy. Thank god he has great advisors skilled in international affairs. If you have nothing important to say get off the sight.
Silly comment.
I remember reading about this when it happened back in November. Some of my Afghan friends were pissed off about this and I couldn't come up with any good reason why the U.S. Government allowed this to happen right under the nose of our military who were there watching it happen. The only thing I could think of was that there were some connections with higher ups in the Pakistani government who were in this group and Bush used it as leverage to get the Pakistani government fully on board with the U.S. (and some sort of unknown agreement was made, perhaps a stronger than usual commitment from the Paks to work with us in an unknown way).
Ping!
Ping!
Considering there wasn't a single runway in the whole country at the time that wasn't landmined, blown apart, or otherwise totally disabled, the type of vehicle is very, very important.
My own choice has been the "flying carpet". First of all it's traditional. Secondly it can land anywhere. And third, and most important, it can operate independently, or with a pilot and 5,000 passengers.
Given a choice, I am sure the Pakistani Intelligence folks would have chosen the carpet.
There are two fundamental divisions in the Balkans that make all the difference. One is very ancient and that concerns whether the territory was in the Western Roman Empire or the Eastern Roman Empire. This is a very persistent split.
The more recent division concerns which side the populace willingly took in WWII.
NATO is much more willing to aid the folks who supported and/or joined the NAZIs than it is the people who fought against the NAZIs.
No one is really all that certain why this is the case, but it is. We should be asking if the fault is that of NATO, or an EU "personal" bias, or something in the Balkans. The Greeks started waking up to this when they saw their very own defense alliance, NATO, preparing to bomb their cultural affiliate, Serbia.
This has very little to do with religion, as conditions in Gary/Hammond/East Chicago demonstrate - there these people are considered "all same thing", and after 75+ years of settlement one gets the idea that they consider themselves pretty much the same thing as well.
Oh, yes, almost forgot another division in the Balkans. Do they raise goats or do they raise sheep? That's a big one. And under democratic conditions it's the kind of thing that can win or lose votes in the rural districts.
Now, did the Administration know about such an airlift?
The only folks in the area with enough helicopters to do the job are the Indians. Do you think maybe it's possible the Indian Army saved their friends from school in England from the US bombing?
Well, that's a clue.
The CIA has obviously not severed all their relations with their Al Qaeda assets in the Balkans, and now this is happening on Bush's watch!
Clearly Tenet isn't the only Clinton holdover.
Everyone must be liars if they agree with Debka!
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