The Afghan Tea Party

NEW YORK – NATO Secretary General Andrew Foghs Rassmussen agreed Saturday to Prime Minister Hamid Karzai’s 2014 target date for the handover of security responsibilities. “We have launched a process in which the Afghan people will again become masters in their own house,” Rasmussen said, adding that the rapid growth of Afghan security forces gave him confidence in the deadline. President Obama said the U.S. will stay “as long as it takes,” and the new accord between Karzai and NATO allows for some NATO presence after the turnover. Karzai stressed, however, that the U.S. must reduce its night presence around Afghan homes and roads..

As Afghan President Karzai and Obama agree to a NATO handover in 2014, Ann Marlowe, in Afghanistan, meets one man who has U.S. taxpayers’ interests at heart-Kabul’s anti-Karzai.

“In the presidential election, some people said I was the populist candidate. But this is wrong. I was the candidate of the American taxpayer,” says Dr. Ramazon Bashardost, sitting in his cramped office in the Afghan parliamentary office building. “For the $40 billion you’ve spent here, you could have built three Afghanistans. But in nine years you’ve not built one new dam! You have $18 billion in American aid that you cannot account for!”

As the Obama administration commits to a continuation of the costly U.S. presence in Afghanistan for at least four more years, it’s nice to know that someone has the American taxpayers’ interest in mind-even if it’s an Afghan politician.

And Dr. Bashardost-who holds three master’s degrees and a doctorate in law from French universities-is well worth American attention. While it’s unlikely he’ll ever lead Afghanistan, he offers a hard-hitting critique of American efforts from something very like the standpoint of an Afghan Tea Party.

The refined, soft-spoken and compactly built 45-year-old politician is best known for running his 2009 presidential campaign from a tent nearby. But this afternoon, the only evidence of eccentricity is his trademark white suit, trimmed in the red, black and green of the Afghan flag, that he designed himself.

“Old style colonialism was about extraction of resources. The new colonialism is about unlimited spending.”

This office is a hive of activity in a notoriously ineffective institution that has only in the last year or so begun to stand up to President Hamid Karzai. In Afghanistan, lawmakers are elected as individuals without official party affiliation, making for shadowy networks of influence and undisciplined individualism on the floor.

Currently, Afghans are waiting for the final results of September’s parliamentary elections, where more than 2,500 candidates competed. But accusations of fraud and disputes have deadlocked the situation for weeks.

A member of parliament from Kabul, Bashardost was the third-highest vote-getter in the August 2009 presidential elections, winning about 10 percent of the vote, employing a kind of barnstorming campaign almost unheard of here. In a country where even governors or parliamentarians get out much, Bashardost visited 28 of the country’s 34 provinces, railing against waste and corruption.

“It is time to listen to the ordinary people of Afghanistan,” he says, taking aim at most of the Afghan political class, including but not limited to President Karzai and his brothers. (Mahmoud is being investigated for corruption.) “When Afghans complain to me about the market economy, I tell them that we do not have market economy-we have mafia economy.”

Unlike nearly every other member of the Afghan elite, Bashardost maintains a seemingly genuine horror at the disparity between official perks and the standard of living of the average Afghan. When he was minister of planning (a position since abolished) in Karzai’s first administration, he would often spend his own salary to buy lunch for his ill-paid staffers. And an Afghan diplomat reports that when Bashardost was summoned to a meeting with other Afghan dignitaries at the Marriott hotel coffee shop, he took one look at the menu with its $8 coffees, threw the menu to the ground, and upbraided his colleagues for spending on a coffee what the average Afghan lives on for several days.

To an American, Bashardost looks like the local equivalent of a Tea Party candidate, and not the only one. Another highly educated Afghan politician, Dr. Ashraf Ghani,-the Beltway favorite who is now working for the very man he previously railed against, President Karzai-struck a similar theme during the election. Both men, who campaigned on anti-corruption platforms that relied heavily on their reputations for honesty, have doctorates and are serious intellectuals.

But while Ghani is also known for his violent temper and Pashtun nationalist views, Bashardost successfully played down his Hazara origins, and won respect and support among some of the Sunni Pashtun tribesmen who traditionally despise the Shia Hazara. (Earlier this year, I was surprised to hear rural Pashtun men in Khost say they had come very close to voting for Bashardost because he is not corrupt.) Bashardost’s problem is similar to that of Ghani: they’re both Tea Party candidates without a party, lacking a cohesive movement or political organization to back them. Both men were unwilling to make the compromises which are generally the lifeblood of politics and, unable to suppress their personal ambitions, failed to build a coalition that might have decisively defeated Karzai.

“I cannot choose between two corrupt politicians,” Bashardost insists. “I cannot support a warlord or corrupt politician. All Afghans in power are killers.”

What’s the way forward for the U.S. in Afghanistan? Bashardost envisions yet another sit-down in a country much given to sit-downs-this one of Western donor nation prime ministers, President Karzai, and major Afghan powerbrokers. “It is time to speak frankly. When you speak kindly with an Afghan politician, he will not think you are kind, but that you are weak or afraid.”

He also proposed a new ministry of anti-corruption with a dedicated police force to investigate the countless cases of government dishonesty. But a cynic might respond that, given the Afghan track record, we might then need another ministry to investigate the ministry of anti-corruption, and so on ad infinitum.

In one respect, Dr. Bashardost isn’t all that different from other politicians in power. While he rails against waste and corruption, he fundamentally believes that our massive aid transfer to Afghanistan should continue, undiminished, arguing that unless we continue to prop up Afghanistan, “al Qaeda will come back.”

For now, the foreign money pipe spews seemingly endless amounts of money. As a young business consultant here, Michael Guarino, told me the other day, “Old style colonialism was about extraction of resources. The new colonialism is about unlimited spending.”

Tactical shift?

Dr Maleeha Lodhi

Until a few weeks ago Delhi showed little enthusiasm for deepening the process of diplomatic engagement with Islamabad and even less interest in discussing issues of Pakistan’s concern.

But this seemed to change two weeks ago ahead of the start of the United Nations General Assembly session. Pakistani officials were approached by their Indian counterparts for a meeting between the foreign ministers of the two countries on the sidelines of the General Assembly at New York. Pakistan welcomed the diplomatic opening but asked what would be the substantive outcome of such parleys.

For days this query met with evasiveness. Instead, Indian diplomats placed the emphasis on the improved atmospherics that would emerge from such a meeting. Pakistani officials saw the futility of an aimless meeting and accordingly conveyed the foreign minister’s lack of interest in a photo opportunity.

But Islamabad did more. It sought to persuade Delhi to pick up from where the ill-fated July meeting between Foreign Ministers Shah Mahmood Qureshi and S M Krishna had left off. The talks in Islamabad on July 15 had resulted in deadlock with negotiations unable to reconcile differences over the agenda and modalities for the dialogue ahead. The deal breaker was the Indian refusal to include Kashmir, Siachen and peace and security in future talks within an agreed timeframe.

The Indian delegation had offered to proceed on other issues, insisting that the three issues of priority for Pakistan be discussed later at an unspecified “appropriate time”. The Indian focus remained almost exclusively on terrorism.

The effort to de-link substantive issues and disputes, including Kashmir, from the future dialogue was at odds with India’s publicly declared willingness to “discuss all issues”. This urged Pakistani officials to reject what they portrayed as a “selective” approach. Quite apart from the acrimony in which the Islamabad talks ended they left unanswered the question of how to align clashing priorities and approaches to the dialogue.

So when Indian officials approached Islamabad a fortnight ago for the New York meeting, Pakistani officials sought to test the Indian side by proposing an “outcome” statement that would emerge from such an encounter. This included discussion of “Jammu and Kashmir” and “Peace and Security” at foreign secretary-level talks which were suggested for October, ahead of the foreign ministers’ meeting now slated for early next year. The draft outcome paper also set out a roadmap for “comprehensive” talks on other issues.

While Delhi signalled willingness to discuss all issues and accept Islamabad’s draft outcome suggestion it said it expected Pakistan not to raise the Kashmir issue at the General Assembly and indicated it would reassess the matter in that light. The Indian desire for an anodyne Pakistani statement on Kashmir did not materialise. Nor could it especially given the inflamed situation in the Valley. Qureshi’s UN speech was a robust statement of Pakistan’s position on Kashmir, which he reiterated in other forums.

The sharp verbal clashes between the Pakistani and Indian foreign ministers quashed the possibility of any meeting. Mr Krishna accused Pakistan of stirring trouble in Kashmir to divert attention from its internal situation. At another forum he called on Pakistan to “vacate” the part of Kashmir it “occupies.” As the chance of a meeting vanished, a leak in The Times of India laid the blame for this on Qureshi who was seen to have “scuttled (the) expected meeting” by voicing “Islamabad’s familiar rhetoric on Kashmir.”

Several questions emerge from the latest diplomatic encounter between the two countries. Where does this leave the apparent agreement to discuss “all issues” in the months to come? Will the agreed roadmap of meetings survive the verbal tussle at the UN? What has brought about an ostensible change in Delhi’s posture? Is this stance just tactical?

Answers to the first two questions will have to await the passage of time. As for the other questions, two linked factors appear to be shaping India’s attitude towards talks with Pakistan. The first is the game-changing Kashmir uprising and the second President Barack Obama’s upcoming visit to India in November.

The mass protests in Kashmir have redefined the freedom struggle and put the issue on the front burner, however much anyone would want to wish this away. A bloody summer in the Valley has seen over a hundred civilians killed in just over a hundred days. Weeks of stifling curfews, unending strikes and youth-led popular demonstrations have escalated into a full-blown crisis. Kashmir has been on fire and Indian authorities have been at a loss about what to do. For years Delhi cast the Kashmiri movement as “terrorism,” but today that effort has collapsed in the face of a peaceful and indigenous struggle that has raged for three consecutive summers.

The Indian government’s dithering and faltering effort to defuse the crisis by offering an eight-point “confidence-building” package has been rejected by Kashmiri leaders. They have described the steps as an “eyewash” that fail to address the causes of the uprising. “Short-term management” rather than a commitment to resolve the substance of the dispute is how APHC leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq portrayed Delhi’s “peace” overture.

In this back drop agreeing to include Kashmir in future discussions with Islamabad is another way for Delhi to defuse this explosive situation, while also signalling to the international community that it is engaged in addressing the crisis. Whether this is just a tactical shift will be tested in the dialogue ahead, and especially by the seriousness India shows in addressing the substance and not just the manifestation of the Kashmir crisis.

There may be another reason for Delhi’s shifting posture on talks with Islamabad. This has to do with President Obama’s much anticipated visit to India. Delhi is anxious to pacify the protests in Kashmir and be seen as discussing Kashmir with Pakistan to ensure that the issue stays off the agenda with a president who, as candidate Obama, had acknowledged the need to solve the dispute to secure US objectives in Afghanistan. He became the first American politician to talk so pointedly about Kashmir.

With Kashmir in deep ferment, doubts linger in Delhi circles about whether President Obama might privately urge a Kashmir solution as a way of achieving regional stabilisation. The Times of India, for example, speculated last week that Obama might “push” Kashmir by offering “incremental” support for India’s candidature for the UN Security Council.
Exacerbating these anxieties is the attention that the Kashmiri protests continue to receive in the American media. Influential analysts in the US have also been arguing that the time has come for a diplomatic initiative on Kashmir.

For example, Bruce Reidel, who undertook the Obama administration’s first review of Afghan strategy, recently wrote: “Obama’s strategy for dealing with Afghanistan and Pakistan always needed a Kashmir component to succeed–that need is more urgent and obvious now.” And he stressed that the president’s trip to India “will be a key to addressing it.”
Similarly Steve Coll, president of the New America Foundation, wrote last month in the New Yorker that the US could benefit from a sense of urgency on Kashmir. In a more recent article, in the New York Review of Books, Coll called for a revised US approach and for Obama to return to his pre-election position on resolving Kashmir.

Whether or not any of this translates into urging Washington to consider a diplomatic effort — quiet or otherwise — it is already obliging Delhi to make pre-emptive moves, out of concern that these could be the leading edge of a growing trend. Meanwhile, the popular upsurge in Kashmir has sent a powerful and unmistakable message about what the people of Kashmir want. This cannot be cast aside or marginalised in any Pakistan-India dialogue. To do so would denude the peace process of substance and make it unsustainable.

The diplomatic challenge ahead for Pakistan is to engage the Indian government on the issue and to convince the international community that Kashmir needs to be addressed by resolving and not defusing the issue.

Is Blackwater’s Erik Prince moving to UAE?

Thaindian News

New York, The embattled owner of infamous Blackwater, Erik Prince is reportedly moving to the United Arab Emirates.

According to reports, Erik Prince has put up Blackwater for sale. A federal grand jury in April indicted five top executives of Blackwater for conspiracy, obstruction of justice and weapons. The indicted executives included the number two to Erik Prince, Gary Jackson who was also the former president of Blackwater.

However Erik Prince has not been formerly charged with any criminality, but investigators and Congressional committees are still investigating the company.

Several sources close to Blackwater have confirmed the report that Erik Prince is planning on leaving for the UAE, but Prince’s trusted adviser refused to confirm the story. According to The Nation, Corallo said that, “I have a policy on not discussing my client’s personal lives-especially when that client is a private citizen. It is nobody’s business where Mr. Prince (or anyone else) chooses to live. So I’m afraid I will not be able to confirm any rumors.”

When Prince gets to the UAE, he might avoid extradition because the United Arab Emirates has no extradition agreement with the United States.

Blackwater has been under investigations in its operations in Iraq. Former employees of Blackwater have claimed that Prince himself have carried ‘illegal’ weapons in his private plane to the Gulf nation. However investigators have not been able to have the evidence to formally charge Prince.

US says no criminal charge filed against Pakistani man

NEW YORK, A Pakistani man who was arrested in Massachusetts on immigration charges last month as part of the investigation into the attempted bombing in Times Square is expected to testify before a New York federal grand jury probing the botched May 1 incident, according to media reports.Aftab Ali Khan, 27, appeared Wednesday in US District Court in Manhattan for a hearing on whether he could afford to hire a lawyer or needed the court to appoint one at government expense to represent him since he has been called as a grand jury witness, the reports citing Saher Macarius, an attorney representing Khan in his pending Boston immigration case, said.

“I don’t know what the government expects him to say,” said Macarius, adding that Aftab Khan has told him that he had no connection to the attempted car bombing. “He is a good person, and he will try to help the government.” US Magistrate Judge Gabriel Gorenstein appointed Julie Clark, a Brooklyn, N.Y., criminal defense lawyer, to represent Khan in his role as a witness.

Lawyers are not allowed into grand jury proceedings, but witnesses may step outside to consult with them before answering questions. Yusill Scribner, a spokeswoman for US Attorney Preet Bharara of the Southern District of New York, declined to comment on the case, other than to say, “No criminal charges have been filed against Aftab Ali Khan”.

Khan, who worked at a gas station, is being held on civil immigration violations and is facing deportation. He was among three Pakistani men arrested May 13 during a series of raids in the greater Boston area that were conducted as part of the investigation into the attempted car bombing in Times Square. Also arrested were Khan’s cousin, Pir Khan, 43, a taxi driver who shared an apartment in Watertown with him; and Mohammad Shafiq Rahman, 33, a computer programmer from South Portland, Maine. All were charged with administrative immigration violations, not criminal charges.

Government officials have said that the three men might have handled informal money transfers for Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistan -born American accused in the failed bombing, but that it was unclear whether they knew the funds would be used for a terrorist attack.

A lawyer for US Customs and Immigration Enforcement alleged during an immigration hearing last month that Aftab Khan had Shahzad’s cellphone number stored in his cellphone and written on an envelope found in the Watertown apartment.

But Macarius said Aftab Khan denies the allegations. On May 27, an immigration judge rejected Aftab Khan’s request to be released so he could voluntarily return home to Pakistan,
ruling instead that he should be deported.

Khan’s lawyer said it could take longer for that order to be carried out. The Boston Globe reported Saturday that Khan’s cousin, Pir, and the other men who shared the apartment with him in Watertown had been subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury in Boston last Thursday, according to Macarius, who also represents Pir Khan.
Macarius, the attorney, said he believed that federal authorities in Boston were trying to build a marriage

fraud case against Aftab Khan, while at the same time prosecutors in New York are seeking his cooperation in the ongoing investigation there.

Aftab Khan worked at a US Army base in Kuwait as a civilian assisting with truck convoys before he came to the United States last August to marry an American soldier who met him on the base and was then living in Colorado.

An ICE agent testified during an immigration hearing in Boston a couple of weeks ago that the woman told Aftab Khan not to come to the United States because she had changed her mind, but he came anyway.

He said Aftab Khan offered the woman $5,000 to go through with the wedding, but she refused. On Nov. 17, the day Aftab Khan’s visa expired, he married another American woman at Cambridge City Hall in what authorities have described as a fraudulent marriage.

Macarius said Aftab Khan denies offering money to the Colorado woman and insists that she urged him to come to the United States, then jilted him. Last Friday, US deputy marshals moved Khan from the Suffolk County Jail in Boston to a jail in Rhode Island and transferred him Tuesday to a detention center in Brooklyn.

“I’m sure he will try to help the government here as he has done that before when he was responsible for providing food and equipment to our government soldiers overseas,” Macarius said.

Musharraf stopped from travelling over security threat

NEW YORK: Former president General (r) Pervez Musharraf was stopped from travelling on a flight to London on Tuesday night after authorities discovered that a passenger of Middle Eastern descent had a one-way ticket, according to local media reports.

The Trentonian, a New Jersey newspaper, said officials advised the 66-year-old former president not to travel on the Virgin Atlantic flight and according to another newspaper, he was shifted to a local hotel, while security agencies inspected all luggage from the plane at Newark airport in the neighbouring state of New Jersey. The search was completed on Wednesday morning and the flight eventually departed without Musharraf.

Report: Airport behavior units miss 16 terrorists

By EILEEN SULLIVAN

WASHINGTON – A new government report says at least 16 known terrorists have passed through U.S. airports where federal officials were trained to spot suspicious behavior.

The Government Accountability Office report says that between May 2004 and August 2008, behavior detection officers who work for the Transportation Security Administration made about 1,100 arrests. None were for terrorism.

Florida Republican Rep. John Mica says behavior detection officers were working at New York’s Kennedy airport when the Times Square bomb suspect passed through airport security undetected.

The program is designed to spot terrorists and others who pose a threat to aviation. The behavior detection program is one of 20 layers in the nation’s aviation security.

Anger, hope meet Ground Zero mosque plan

By Sebastian Smith

NEW YORK – An ambitious plan to build a mosque next to New York’s Ground Zero is prompting hope — and anger — in a city scarred by terrorism.

AFP/File – Construction cranes stand on the site of the World Trade Center in New York in February 2010. An ambitious …

There’s little to see now at the site, an abandoned clothing store two blocks from the former World Trade Center where nearly 3,000 people died on September 11, 2001.

But Feisal Abdul Rauf, a New York imam and a leader of the project, says the planned multi-storey Islamic center will transform both the drab lower Manhattan street and the way Americans have looked on Muslims since 9/11.

Boasting a mosque with sports facilities, a theater and possibly day care, the center would be open to all visitors to demonstrate that Muslims are part of their community, not some separate element.

“There’s nothing like this that we know of in the United States,” Rauf told AFP. “This will be a community center for everyone, not just for Muslims, but non-Muslims.”

These are tense times for American Muslims who find themselves increasingly painted both by the public and law enforcement bodies as a possible source of terrorism.

A failed car bomb in New York’s Times Square on May 1 was allegedly planted by a Pakistani-born American, prompting senior figures in Washington to recommend stripping basic rights from US passport holders suspected of Islamist militant links.

The Islamic center is part of Rauf’s program, called the Cordoba Initiative, meant to build bridges between the West and the Muslim world.

But because of the proposed mosque’s location, just around the corner from the gaping Ground Zero hole, Rauf’s call for peace is seen by some as a battle cry.

“The outrage continues,” says website www.nomosquesatgroundzero.wordpress.com under a close-up of the collapsing Twin Towers.

Accusing the Cordoba Initiative of trying to “sneak it through,” the protest site says the center will “cast a rude shadow over Ground Zero.”

Others compare the idea to building a German cultural center at Auschwitz.

“Spitting in the Face of Everyone Murdered on 9/11,” writes Blitz, a self-described “anti-jihadist newspaper.”

That level of anger is not uncommon among New Yorkers who blame Islam, rather than just Al-Qaeda or other militant groups, for 9/11 and the global confrontation with the United States.

“This is the wrong neighborhood to put the mosque in,” Scott Rachelson, 59, said as he went to his office. Rachelson, who works with people seeking compensation over 9/11 related damages, said his life changed forever the day that two hijacked airliners smashed into Manhattan.

“I was here. For me, and everyone else who was here, we have post-traumatic stress disorder,” he said. “It feels like yesterday.”

A woman living in the apartment building next to the proposed mosque said she couldn’t accept the project.

“I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me a little nervous,” said Jennifer Wood, 36, as she took her young son for a walk. “It seems a little in the face, a little too much too soon. I don’t know why it has to be here — this is a big city.”

An eloquent and erudite man, Rauf sounds slightly weary when asked about hardcore opposition, but says he hopes the center will become a catalyst for helping Muslims and the wider community to integrate.

“It’s about building an American Islamic identity, because we have second-, third-generation Muslims who don’t feel they are part of (the country),” he said.

“The complaint throughout the years has been: ‘Where’s the voice of the moderate Muslims?’” Rauf said. “Well, here we are.”

Many look forward to the center, which Rauf estimates will cost 105-140 million dollars to build, possibly financed with bonds.

Mohammed-Iqbal Hossain Chowdhury, a Bangladeshi immigrant running a newspaper kiosk across the street, called for an end to prejudice.

“The people who will come to pray here are working people. We are coming here to pray to God,” the 42-year-old said, lifting his hands skyward with a huge smile.

“Ground Zero — that is about terrorists. Terrorism is a different thing. There are a billion or more Muslims around the world. They aren’t all terrorists! I hope people will see us coming here and see that all of us come from one god.”

Walking past the shuttered-up Burlington Coat Factory retail store to catch a Subway train, local worker Angela Long, 60, said Muslims can be as American as anyone else.

“I don’t believe that Islam equals terrorism. There are crazy people everywhere,” she said.

And those arguing that a mosque has no right to exist near Ground Zero?

“They should read our Constitution,” she said.

US ratchets up security after car bomb plot

NEW YORK – US officials ratcheted up security in the wake of the botched Times Square bomb plot, amid a growing global probe into a Pakistani-American suspect’s possible links to foreign militant groups.

Washington tightened “no-fly” procedures after the chief suspect, Faisal Shahzad, managed to board a flight to Dubai from New York on Monday just before being apprehended.

The Pakistani-born US citizen, accused of planting a large but poorly made car bomb in Times Square on Saturday, was undergoing a second day of questioning.

Officials gave no word on when he would appear in court, but a law enforcement source told AFP he would almost certainly not appear Wednesday.

Analysts said the delay in presenting Shahzad before a judge indicated he had still not asked for a lawyer, and that statements by officials saying Shahzad has been cooperative with interrogators since his arrest were accurate.

“If he’d decided to get a lawyer, we would have heard very well by now,” said Center for Strategic and International Studies expert Thomas Sanderson.

“The fact that we haven’t and the fact that he appears to be spilling his guts lends even more credence to the claims that he is an amateur.”

Shahzad, 30, has been charged with five counts of terrorism, including attempted use of “a weapon of mass destruction.” He faces life in prison if convicted.

US authorities are pressing now to discover whether there is a link to organized terrorism, in Pakistan or elsewhere. Analysis:US faces new terror threats, tactics out of Pakistan

Though the attack bore the hallmarks of an amateur with only basic technical knowledge, Shahzad has allegedly admitted that he received “bomb-making training” in Pakistan’s lawless Waziristan region.

In Islamabad, the US ambassador consulted with Pakistani leaders, who pledged to investigate possible links to Saturday’s near horror.

The White House sounded an optimistic note, saying Al-Qaeda was turning to smaller, “less sophisticated” attacks as its capacity to mount September 11-style spectaculars diminished thanks to US action.

But in an interview with CBS television, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi warned that increased attacks should be expected in “retaliation” for US drone missile strikes killing anti-US insurgent leaders in Pakistan.

“You could expect that…. Let’s not be naive,” Qureshi said.

So far the only group to claim responsibility for the Times Square plot is a Pakistani Taliban group.

Even if the bomb was a dud and the suspect was rapidly caught, the incident rocked the US security establishment — particularly as Shahzad managed to board a plane before being nabbed. Related article:NY bomb suspect ‘knew jig was up’

The attack was stopped when a street vendor spotted smoke coming from the rigged car and alerted police.

Fifty three hours later, while the target of a massive manhunt, Shahzad drove to JFK airport, bought a ticket, passed passport control and boarded an Emirates Airlines flight before being arrested after the plane left the gate.

Attorney General Eric Holder insisted Tuesday there was never “any fear that we were in danger of losing him.”

But US aviation officials said Wednesday they had stepped up security requirements demanding airlines check “no fly” lists within two hours of learning of a “special” name, instead of the previous requirement of 24 hours.

“In his case, the airline seemingly didn’t check the name, and the suspect was allowed to purchase a ticket and obtain a boarding pass,” a Transportation Security Administration official told AFP.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg used Saturday’s incident to press Congress for more city security funds and to get lawmakers to ban the sale of weapons to people on an FBI terror watchlist.

“At a time when the threat of terrorism is still very real, as we in New York city know all too well, I think it is imperative that Congress close this terror gap in our gun laws, and close it quickly,” he said.

The main question now is whether Shahzad had outside help or was acting on behalf of a larger group.

Pakistan’s military said it had yet to establish a link between Shahzad, who is the son of a retired air force officer, and the country’s main militant stronghold in Waziristan.

“Until and unless the link is established, it will be premature to say that he had gone there,” army spokesman Athar Abbas told AFP.

Waziristan is the powerbase of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, which claimed Saturday’s attempted attack.

Afghanistan: Why Karzai Is Pushing Back Against the U.S.

By TONY KARON

To some it may seem as if President Hamid Karzai has a death wish. The Afghan leader has lately begun sticking it to the U.S. and its Western allies – the only force protecting him from a surging Taliban, which hanged the last foreign-backed President when it reached Kabul in 1996. Having infuriated the Obama Administration by continuing to drag his feet on corruption – and then cozying up to Iran and China when Washington turned up the heat – Karzai ratcheted up the rhetoric last week. He accused the U.S. of trying to dominate his country, blamed the West for last year’s electoral fraud (which his campaign was accused of masterminding) and made comments that verged on sanctifying the Taliban insurgency as a “national resistance” against foreign invaders. The New York Times reported on Sunday that Karzai even threatened, during a meeting with Afghan parliamentarians, to join the Taliban himself if the West continued to pressure him.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai speaks at the Independent Election Commission in Kabul

But bizarre as his behavior may seem, there may be a method in Karzai’s madness. For one thing, he has begun denouncing the Western powers in his country because he knows he can – Karzai would have been cut adrift some time ago if there were any other viable alternative on whom the U.S. could pin its strategy. The wily President knows that the presence of foreign forces in his country is deeply unpopular, particularly when civilians are killed in the course of NATO military operations. Karzai, moreover, is humiliated and shown to be powerless when his protestations over such operations are ignored by his Western patrons. So while he may have been installed by a U.S.-led invasion, if Karzai is to survive the departure of Western forces, he will have to reinvent himself as a national leader with an independent power base. He’s obviously determined not to go the way of Mohammad Najibullah, the former Soviet-backed leader who was executed by the Taliban seven years after the Red Army withdrew. So from Karzai’s point of view, he’s pushing back against the U.S. not only because he can, but also because he must if he is to survive politically.
(See “Karzai Talks to the Enemy, but Is the U.S. On Board?”)

It’s worth remembering that Karzai was essentially parachuted into the country in the course of the U.S. invasion, tapped to lead a new post-Taliban government that would be founded largely on the Northern Alliance – the coalition of ethnic Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara former mujahedin warlords who had always fought the Taliban. A chieftain in the Popolzai tribe, Karzai was a prominent leader in Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group, the Pashtun, which is also the social base of the Taliban. Still, his power base was limited, and creating an effective government forced him to cut deals with all manner of unsavory characters. The CIA, it should be remembered, was doing the same thing: the hundreds of millions of dollars in suitcases that the agency took into Afghanistan in the early days of the invasion was not aimed at funding women’s literacy projects; its purpose was to buy off the local warlords who control all the valleys, recognizing the fact that power changes hands in Afghanistan when those warlords switch their allegiances. Karzai probably considers the U.S. political leadership naive for believing that a pro-Western government there can survive without paying off a lot of unsavory characters.
(See a story about President Obama’s surprise visit to Afghanistan in March.)

Karzai also knows that the U.S. commitment in his country is finite, and the need to survive after the Americans leave makes him more inclined to rely on such established hard men as Uzbek warlord General Rashid Dostum and Tajik strongman General Mohammed Fahim – even if that means turning a blind eye to their transgressions. He is also keen to take charge of negotiating a political settlement with the Taliban on his own timetable, and with less of a role for Pakistan than Washington might be ready to concede to Islamabad. Just as U.S. influence in Iraq declined precipitously once its intention to withdraw became clear, so is Karzai’s game plan premised on getting along without the U.S., even though he’ll do his best to keep it there as long as possible. That means going through the motions of satisfying U.S. demands on corruption and reform, without alienating the hard men on whose support he may depend once the Americans leave.

It’s a common mistake for great powers to assume that those whom they engage as proxies to fight their battles or run their satrapies share the same agenda as their patrons just because their interests coincide at a given moment. But not all of Karzai’s enemies in the region are America’s enemies, and not all of America’s allies are Karzai’s allies. Nowhere is this more true than in the case of Pakistan, the original patron of the Taliban, which has also been going through the motions of indulging American concerns while continuing to enable the Afghan Taliban insurgency and identifying Karzai as an adversary because of his regime’s close ties with India.

Like Pakistan over the past eight years, Karzai has been biding his time, positioning himself for the battles and power shifts that will come when the Americans leave, his goal – like Islamabad’s – being to protect his power. And the arrival in Washington of the Obama Administration signaled the onset of the endgame. Driven by a desire to conclude America’s fiscally burdensome wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and alarmed by the downward security spiral in Afghanistan, the Obama Administration put Karzai on notice that failure to tackle the corruption that was deemed to be fueling the insurgency would jeopardize his ties with Washington. And in the weeks leading up to last August’s election, U.S. officials in Afghanistan were widely perceived to be backing rival candidates. Karzai has also noted that key U.S. officials like special envoy Richard Holbrooke have spoken frankly about giving Pakistan a greater role in shaping the political outcome in Afghanistan.

It should come as no surprise, then, that in the endgame, Karzai has revealed an agenda quite distinct from that of Washington – just as Pakistan has done. The premise of the U.S. policy, after all – just like that of the Pakistanis, Karzai, the Taliban and every other player in the game – is that sooner or later, the Americans will leave. And it’s that reality, now more than ever, that is shaping everyone’s game.

US to intensify efforts aimed at easing Pak-India tension: report

PakSiasat.com

NEW YORK : President Barack Obama has called for intensifying American diplomacy to ease tensions between India and Pakistan, asserting that without d’tente between the two rivals, the US efforts to win Pakistani cooperation in Afghanistan would suffer, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

The call was made in a secret directive he issued in December, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with its contents. The directive concluded that India must make resolving its tensions with Pakistan a priority for progress to be made on US goals in the region, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with its contents.

The US has invested heavily in its own relations with Pakistan in recent months, agreeing to a $7.5 billion aid package and sending top military and diplomatic officials to Islamabad on repeated visits, the Journal said.

The public embrace, which reached a high point last month in high-profile talks in Washington, reflects the Obama administration’s belief that Pakistan must be convinced to change its strategic calculus and take a more assertive stance against militants based in its western tribal regions over the course of the next year in order to turn the tide in Afghanistan.

A debate continues within the administration over how hard to push India, which has long resisted outside intervention in the conflict with its neighbour, according to the report. The Pentagon, in particular, has sought more pressure on New Delhi, it said, citing US and Indian officials.

Current and former US officials said the discussion in Washington over how to approach India has intensified as Pakistan ratchets up requests that the US intercede in a series of continuing disputes. Pakistan has long regarded Afghanistan as providing “strategic depth “essentially, a buffer zone” in a potential conflict with India, the Journal pointed out.

Some US officials believe Islamabad will remain reluctant to wholeheartedly fight the Islamic militants based on its Afghan border unless the sense of threat from India is reduced. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has already taken the political risk of pursuing peace talks with Pakistan, but faces significant domestic opposition the report said. US and Indian officials say the Obama administration has so far made few concrete demands of New Delhi.

According to US officials, the only specific request has been to discourage India from getting more involved in training the Afghan military, to ease Pakistani concerns about getting squeezed by India on two borders.

“This is an administration that’s deeply divided about the wisdom of leaning on India to solve US problems with Pakistan,” said Ashley Tellis, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who has discussed the issue with senior officials in the US and India.

“There are still important constituencies within the administration that have not given up hope that India represents the answer.” India has long resisted outside involvement in its differences with Pakistan, particularly over the disputed region of Kashmir.

But, according to a US government official, a 56-page dossier presented by the Pakistani government to the Obama administration ahead of high-level talks in Washington last month contained suggestions the US intercede to resolve Indo-Pakistan disputes.

The official said the document points out that India has never accepted Pakistan’s sovereignty as an independent state, and accuses India of diverting water from the Indus River and fomenting separatism in Balochistan.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has signaled that Washington isn’t interested in mediating on water issues, which are covered by a bilateral treaty. The White House declined to comment on Obama’s directive or on the debate within the administration over India policy. The directive to top foreign-policy and national-security officials was summarized in a memo written by National Security Adviser James Jones at the end of the White House’s three-month review of Afghan war policy in December.

An Indian government official said the US’s increasing attention to Pakistani concerns hasn’t hurt bilateral relations overall. “Our relationship is mature of course we have disagreements, but we’re trying not to have knee-jerk reactions,” the Indian official said. Citing US and Indian officials, the Journal said the Pentagon has emerged in internal Obama administration debates as an active lobbyist for more pressure on India, with some officials already informally pressing Indian officials to take Pakistan’s concerns more seriously.

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the US government’s prime interlocutor with Pakistani Army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, has been among the more vocal advocates of a greater Indian role, according to a US military official, encouraging New Delhi to be more “transparent” about its activities along the countries’ shared border and to cooperate more with Pakistan.

In interviews with the Journal, US military officials were circumspect about what specific moves they would like to see from New Delhi. But according to people who have discussed India policy with Pentagon officials, the ideas discussed in internal debates include reducing the number of Indian troops in Kashmir or pulling back forces along the border.

The State Department has resisted such moves to pressure India, the newspaper said, citing current and former US officials, insisting they could backfire. Separately, Pakistan has been more forcefully raising concerns about Indian activities in Afghanistan with the US

Senior Pakistani officials say India is using its Afghan aid missions as a cover to support separatists in Balochistan and the Pakistani Taliban, and say they have presented evidence of that to US officials.

Indian officials deny the accusations. A Pakistani security official said his government also has pressed the US about India’s ties to the Afghan intelligence agency, the National Security Directorate, and argued that Indian consulates in Jalalabad and Kandahar are outposts for India’s spy agency. “Something has to be done to stop Afghanistan from being a jumping-off point for Indian intelligence,” said the security official.

Meanwhile, Indian officials told the newspaper they have received no requests from the US to scale back India’s rebuilding efforts in Afghanistan, and don’t plan to change those initiatives.

Source: aajnews