Terrorist Islamic Republic of Pakistan (TSP): Apr. 11, 2010

[abhishek_sharma]

Support will continue: Qureshi

http://www.hindu.com/2010/05/05/stories ... 331300.htm

[abhishek_sharma]

China must seek NSG exception, says U.S.

http://www.hindu.com/2010/05/05/stories ... 151600.htm

[abhishek_sharma]

Failed Times Square attack comes at delicate time for U.S.-Pakistan ties

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts ... istan_ties

On the sidelines of the strategic dialogue, there was a private session that involved Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and Mullen. From the Pakistani side, only Kayani, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, and Defense Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar attended.

That's where the new agreement on military and intelligence cooperation was discussed. Here is a readout that Sourabh Gupta, a senior researcher with Samuels International Associates (SIA), published in the Nelson Report, a daily Washington insider's newsletter published by SIA's Chris Nelson. Our sources say this readout is "almost exactly right."

Key Pakistani political demands: Non-negotiable requirement for friendly successor regime in Kabul; significant downgrading of Indian presence and influence in Afghanistan, including New Delhi's training of Afghan military; preference for extended-term American presence in Afghanistan/strategic neighborhood, notwithstanding drawdown of forces next year.

Secondary set of political-military demands: faster delivery of upgraded weapons package; expedited payment for outstanding dues related to AfPak support operations and assistance with civil infrastructure rebuilding in frontier territories; U.S. to lay-off from Islamabad's nuclear program (given latter's need to ramp-up fissile material production in absence of bestowal of India-equivalent civil nuclear deal); U.S. to intensify diplomatic effort to facilitate productive Islamabad-New Delhi dialogue on 'core' issues - Kashmir and water (upper riparian/lower riparian) issues.

Key U.S. demands: Islamabad to re-direct primary counter-insurgency energies against key Islamist groups based/operating out of North Waziristan (Al Qaeda, Afghan Taliban Haqqani network, local talibanized tribal warlords); unfettered drone strikes in N. Waziristan/other tribal territories to continue; expanded CIA intel. operations/listening posts in Pakistani cities - Islamabad to subsequently allow access to Taliban leaders arrested by way of real-time communication intercepts; Islamabad to rein-in larger infrastructure of jihad that it has casually tolerated, even supported.

Gupta goes on to say that Islamabad is also arguing for a seat at the table for any discussions about a successor regime in Kabul and that if the current U.S. ground offensive in Afghanistan doesn't produce results, the momentum will shift back to the Pakistani Army and intelligence services, which could upset the balance of the current U.S.-Pakistan negotiations.

[pgbhat]

Daddy's on the run ....
Pakistan questions at least 7 about New York bomb plot

Shahzad's father, Baharul Haq, a former senior Air Force officer, lives in an upscale suburb of Peshawar, according to security officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. Said to be a retired Air Vice Marshall, Haq hurriedly left the large family home in the Hayatabad suburb Tuesday, along with the rest of the family, when Pakistani media found the house.

Is'nt that where the talibunny leaders like Haqqanis and other Quetta Shura are/were based according to Amrullah Saleh?

[abhishek_sharma]

From Suburban Father to a Terrorism Suspect

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/nyreg ... ofile.html

Pakistani officials said Mr. Shahzad was either a son or a grandson of Baharul Haq, who retired as a vice air marshal in 1992 and then joined the Civil Aviation Authority.

A Pakistani official said Mr. Shahzad might have had affiliations with Ilyas Kashmiri, a militant linked to Al Qaeda who was formerly associated with Lashkar-e-Taiba, an anti-India militant group once nurtured by the Pakistani state. But friends said the family was well respected and nonpolitical.

...

Mr. Shahzad apparently went back and forth to Pakistan often, returning most recently in February after what he said was five months visiting his family, prosecutors said. A Pakistani intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Mr. Shahzad had traveled with three passports, two from Pakistan and one from the United States; he last secured a Pakistani passport in 2000, describing his nationality as “Kashmiri.”

[abhishek_sharma]

Terrorism Suspect, Charged, Admits to Role in Bomb Plot

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/nyregion/05bomb.html

Mr. Shahzad is believed to be originally from Kashmir and is among a handful of Pakistani-Americans who have recently faced terrorism accusations in the United States or abroad.

The United States, which has provided Pakistan with billions of dollars in counterterrorism aid since 2001, has pressed Pakistan to crack down on militants inside its borders, and an American official said Pakistan’s response to this attempted attack would have serious implications for the country’s strategic relationship with the United States.

He received four calls from a number in Pakistan hours before he bought the vehicle, the complaint says.

The prepaid cellular phone, according to the complaint, was also used to call a fireworks store in Pennsylvania that sells M-88 firecrackers like those that were used as part of the bomb. The phone was last used on April 28, according to the complaint.

Mr. Chomiak usually saw Mr. Shahzad only when the rent was due, but Mr. Chomiak described his tenant as a nice guy who furnished his apartment sparsely and had claimed he made a living selling jewelry in New Haven.

In March, a Pakistani-American man, David C. Headley, pleaded guilty to helping plan the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India. And last December, five young men from Virginia — two of them with Pakistani backgrounds — were arrested in Pakistan on accusations of plotting attacks against targets there and in Afghanistan.

[archan]

Haqqani was on TV today with Wolf Blitzer. I lost count on how many times he "reiterated" the fact that Pakistan is "with" the US in this war on terror. Wolf has this ability to look serious while you know he is going inside.
I would like to remind Mr. Haqqani of this sher:
Khatawaar samjhegi duniya tujhe,
Ab itni ziyada safaai na dey...
(the world will begin to suspect you of wrongdoing, if you don't quit giving so much clarification...)

[RamaY]

If a half Indian identity counts as patriotism is there any surprise that nationalism is dilute in India?

Excellent point Shiv-ji. Pranams!

[Prem]

If a half Indian identity counts as patriotism is there any surprise that nationalism is dilute in India?

Excellent point Shiv-ji. Pranams!

What is half Indian Identity? Last time i heard this was frommthe mouth of famous Patient Zakir Naik exponding on India and Arabia as his maibaap.

[Fidel Guevara]

The amount of blog chatter among Pakis, devoted to the dumb-a$$ Faisal, is way more than when the Predators take out some of their villagers.

The drone strikes used to get a lot more publicity, but now the Pakis need to watch out for much more direct personal interests (especially the Non-Resident Pakis).

Anyone of us jingos here who knew a "decent" Paki and feels sorry for the problems faced by this acquaintance?

[anupmisra]

Good ol' paki days
Back to the future!

Old Kashmir policy stands revived

It was Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi’s day in the National Assembly on Tuesday when he said Pakistan had returned to its ‘historical’ stand on Kashmir issue after “wavering” by the previous regime and would fight all possible legal battles with India for water rights.

“The present government has returned to that (old) position,”

“We are trying to recover from the damage done to Pakistan’s case then,”

The minister said the term ‘composite dialogue’ was coined by India before the process began in 2004 while Pakistan had originally sought a ‘comprehensive dialogue’

[anupmisra]

What is the man in the back trying to do?

[bahdada]

Anyone of us jingos here who knew a "decent" Paki and feels sorry for the problems faced by this acquaintance?

Yes, and she refers to herself as Indian when asked at work and socially. In her mind it isn't a stretch as she says her ancestors are Indian and she identifies more with India than Pakistan.

Most of the FOB Paki turds I know dance around the issue especially socially with their most favored cop out being that they are "Punjabi". The word Pakistani has become exponentially more toxic and elicits a automatic cringe and "yewww" factor. I for one enjoy reminding them.

[CRamS]

Given the alacrity with which TSP acted, and the Guboing by its diplomats, I don't see much of a negative fall out for Pakis from this. Issue is will LET be excluded from US demands Pakis to crack down on terrorists after this incident?

[Muppalla]

Anyone of us jingos here who knew a "decent" Paki and feels sorry for the problems faced by this acquaintance?

Yes, and she refers to herself as Indian when asked at work and socially. In her mind it isn't a stretch as she says her ancestors are Indian and she identifies more with India than Pakistan.

Most of the FOB Paki turds I know dance around the issue especially socially with their most favored cop out being that they are "Punjabi". The word Pakistani has become exponentially more toxic and elicits a automatic cringe and "yewww" factor. I for one enjoy reminding them.

These days I stopped telling to Pakis that I am from Hyd. Otherwise I endup hearing that some uncle or aunt is actually from Hyd deccan. 9 out of 10 will talk about some extreme relation in India. Now Pakistan has only non-state actors.

[Prem]

I think mainly Shias and Balochi ( Lost contact with decent guy name Aftab Baloch) from TSP use this tact of being indian to save themselves from being associated with Puckerjabis from Puckerland.

[Rangudu]

Issue is will LET be excluded from US demands Pakis to crack down on terrorists after this incident?

Yes.

[Prem]

Issue is will LET be excluded from US demands Pakis to crack down on terrorists after this incident?

Yes.

In this case , it Will be interesting to watch weather Pentagon or State Department put up case for the LET exclusion . IF Both, then it might open few close eyes in Dilli.

[Sanjay M]

More on Faisal Shazad:



Bah - I don't see any of the shrill activists protesting against Arizona's ID-check law giving a hoot about the fact that this nut was going to commit a massacre in the heart of a major city.

The decline of the American Empire - they're becoming like India.
It's now just every man for himself.

This guy is a wanna-be Kasab.

(And don't give me any BS about how the bank foreclosure on his house drove him over the edge. Things like this happen everyday in every economy - it can't be made into a justification for mass-murder.)

[Carl_T]

Wiki profile. Born in kashmir?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faisal_Shahzad

[milindc]

From Suburban Father to a Terrorism Suspect

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/nyreg ... ofile.html

Pakistani officials said Mr. Shahzad was either a son or a grandson {or both }of Baharul Haq, who retired as a vice air marshal in 1992 and then joined the Civil Aviation Authority.

Only the pakis

[Sanjay M]

I love how Muslim activists/spokesmen always plead for calm and patience when it comes to any feared backlash over jihadi attacks, but they never care enough to similarly shut up when it comes Dutch cartoonists.



The phrase 'moral hazard' comes to mind here - enough 'tolerance' will only engender hypocrisy and obscure fundamental issues of credibility. As I've said before, you ultimately cannot legislate credibility, no matter what the human rights activists say. Blindly tolerant societies are only setting the stage for another kind of bubble - one whose bursting would lead to catastrophic social consequences. In that contest, the natural prejudices within us all are a safeguard against the inflation of such a bubble to extraordinary proportions, with its attendant consequences.

[ramana]

Wiki profile. Born in kashmir?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faisal_Shahzad

It says born in Karachi or Kashmir. The former is city and the later a region! Total paki propagandu

[Dipanker]

Given the alacrity with which TSP acted, and the Guboing by its diplomats, I don't see much of a negative fall out for Pakis from this. Issue is will LET be excluded from US demands Pakis to crack down on terrorists after this incident?

What about the round the clock media focus on Terrorist State of Pakistan, you don't consider that a negative fallout to begin with ??

[Kamboja]

Asking whether LeT will be let off the hook by the US assumes (rightly, for now) that there is still a meaningful distinction between LeT and other jihadi groups in terms of the former being much more under the control of the PA. But for how much longer?

We've heard so much about how the lines between the jihadi groups is blurring as Punjabis, Pathans, Arabs, Chechens, Uzbeks, and sundry others mingle in Pakistan. I'm sure LeT cadres already train, interact, and discuss the finer points of jihad and how to execute the koophar with like-minded Jihadis. Haven't LeT terrorists turned up in other parts of the world in terror attacks completely unrelated to India or Kashmir? Their ambitions are slowly but surely going global.

In the long run LeT is a threat to the West as much as it is to India. Deluded and blind though the US may be, this surely cannot escape their notice indefinitely... right?

Or do I underestimate the American capacity for idiocy when it comes to understanding Pakistaniyat?

[Singha]

NYT

Smoking Car to an Arrest in 53 Hours
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM and AL BAKER
Published: May 4, 2010

The keys found in the ignition of the sport utility vehicle that was left to explode in Times Square on Saturday evening did more than just start cars: one opened the front door to Faisal Shahzad’s home.

The young woman in Bridgeport who last month sold Mr. Shahzad the rusting 1993 Nissan Pathfinder prosecutors say he used in the failed attack did not remember his name. But she had his telephone number.

That number was traced back to a prepaid cellular phone purchased by Mr. Shahzad, one that received four calls from Pakistan in the hours before he bought the S.U.V.

It was 53 hours and 20 minutes from the moment the authorities say Mr. Shahzad, undetected, left his failed car bomb in the heart of Manhattan until the moment he was taken off a plane at Kennedy Airport and charged with trying to kill untold numbers of the city’s residents and tourists.

“In the real world,” said the New York police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, whose detectives investigated the case with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, “53 is a pretty good number.”

In the most basic calculus, the success of the investigation of the attempted car bombing in Times Square is measured by the authorities only one way: a suspect was caught and charged, and now faces life in prison if convicted.

But based on interviews and court records, those 53 hours included good breaks, dead ends, real scares, plain detective work and high-tech sophistication. There were moments of keen insight, and perhaps fearsome oversight.

The police detectives and federal agents of the Joint Terrorist Task Force, for instance, interviewed the occupants of 242 rooms of the Marriott Marquis and 92 staff workers. They spoke to theatergoers from the stages of two Broadway plays to determine if anyone had glimpsed a man fleeing the Pathfinder shortly after 6:30 p.m. on Saturday.

They did a 24-hour street canvass and fanned out to Pennsylvania and other places to talk to manufacturers of the bomb’s components: two clocks, three propane tanks, gas cans, a gun box, M88 firecrackers.

But according to several people with knowledge of the investigation, federal agents who had Mr. Shahzad under surveillance lost him at one point, a development that probably allowed him to make it to the airport and briefly board the plane bound for the Middle East.

Spokesmen for the F.B.I. in New York and Washington would not comment on any possible lapse in surveillance.

If the lapse occurred, it was not final, or fatal. Mr. Shahzad, according to court papers, confessed to trying to set off a bomb in Times Square shortly after he was taken off the plane.

The route to that capture began in Midtown Manhattan, just off Broadway on a warm night of high drama.

At 6:28 p.m. on Saturday, the authorities say Mr. Shahzad steered his newly acquired Pathfinder west on West 45th Street, in Times Square, a move caught on film by a police security camera as it crossed Broadway.

He bailed out seconds later. Then a street vendor — wearing an “I love New York T-shirt” — waved down a mounted officer, who saw the white smoke collecting inside the still idling vehicle and made a call that got the bomb squad there by about 7 p.m.

It took the bomb squad, according to court papers, eight hours of work simply to render the S.U.V. safe enough to approach. Once the authorities did, they found keys hanging from the ignition. Hours later, after they towed the car to a Queens forensic garage, they found an even more important clue when a police Auto Crime Unit detective crawled underneath the vehicle.

“The break in this case took place when a New York City detective was able to go under the vehicle and get the hidden VIN number,” Mr. Kelly said at a news conference in Washington on Tuesday. “This identified the owner of record, who in turn, as we know, sold it to the suspect.”

It had been something of a feat to get the city’s most senior officials to the scene of the attempted bombing.

Mr. Kelly had been in Washington, for the annual White House Correspondents Dinner, when his cellphone rang. At 8 p.m., he walked over to where his boss, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, was sitting and spread the news. At 10:55 p.m. the two men left, taking the mayor’s private jet and touching down at 12:20 a.m. at La Guardia Airport.

Fifteen minutes later, the two men, still in fancy suits, were inside a drab storage area of a building on West 44th Street, pulling up folding chairs with police and F.B.I. investigators around a Formica table and reviewing X-ray photos of the Pathfinder’s contents.

And soon, investigators fanned out to find the driver.

All Sunday afternoon, the agents and police searched for the Pathfinder’s owner of record — a man they knew had bought it used from a lot in Connecticut. By 6 p.m., they found the man, in Bridgeport. He said it was his daughter they needed.

“I give it to her,” the man, Lagnes Colas, said in an interview, noting that she had decided to sell it recently so she could get a better car.

Within 20 minutes, the investigators were talking with his daughter, Peggy.

She said she met on April 24 with a man who answered her online advertisements. He bargained the price down to $1,300 from $1,800, she told investigators. He paid with $100 bills. He looked Middle Eastern or Hispanic. And it was, investigators learned, a strange transaction: one conducted in a supermarket parking lot, without paperwork or receipts, and involving a man who explained that a bill of sale was unnecessary and who seemed uninterested in the vehicle’s long-term prospects.

Mr. Shahzad, according to court papers, “inspected the interior seating and cargo area” but not the engine. He was told the chassis was not in good shape, but he bought it anyway.

“I thought maybe he might bring the car back,” Mr. Colas said in an interview.

The investigative trail was warming up.

Later Sunday, a sketch artist was brought in from the Connecticut State Police to work with Ms. Colas on a portrait of the man who had bought the S.U.V. The work was promising.

On Monday, police and federal agents were back. Now, they had photographs of six men. She picked out the one of Mr. Shahzad, the court papers said.

Meanwhile, officials dug through Verizon Wireless records to learn more about the number she provided, one they found was attached to a prepaid phone activated April 16.

Though they declined to say precisely how they tracked such an anonymous number, they established not only that Mr. Shahzad was the buyer of the Pathfinder, but also that he got four phone calls from a Pakistani number associated with him in the hour before he made his final calls to arrange the purchase of the vehicle, according to the papers.

But there was more. The records had logged a call made by Mr. Shahzad’s disposable cellphone on April 25, the day after he bought the Pathfinder. It was to a rural Pennsylvania fireworks store, “that sells M-88 fireworks,” the court papers said.

Such fireworks were a part of the bomb in the Pathfinder: the would-be detonator.

On Monday, F.B.I. agents spoke to Mr. Shahzad’s landlord in Bridgeport, the court papers said. In an interview, the landlord, Stanislaw Chomiak, 44, said his tenant had signed a one-year lease for a two-bedroom apartment on the second floor around three months ago.

“He said he’d recently come from his country,” Mr. Chomiak said.

Soon after interviewing the landlord on Monday, investigators first “got eyes on” Mr. Shahzad, according to law enforcement officials. He was in another car, one registered in his name, returning to his apartment from the grocery store.

Exactly how long investigators had him under surveillance is unclear. But officials said investigators watched him come home and go inside his house. He emerged later to get back in his car, headed south.

It seems clear, according to interviews with a variety of officials, the investigators must have lost track of Mr. Shahzad at some point. He made it all the way down the jetway and into his seat.

Before the plane pulled away from the gate, though, investigators had caught up with him. He was taken out of his seat and into custody.

The 53 hours of work and uncertainty were over.

[CRamS]

Issue is will LET be excluded from US demands Pakis to crack down on terrorists after this incident?

Yes.

Why?

There was a clear requirement on the need to crack down on LET in the Kerry Lugar (KL) bill. Has the LET reference been removed from the KL bill?

Kamboja:

LET is the most savage terrorist group of them all. Its basically a Pakijabi para military wing of TSPA with motivated cadres ready to go to their 72 by taking down infidels, especially India. In other words, its part & parcel of TSPA. Thus, US demanding crackdown on LET is tantamount to demanding that TSPA crack down on itself. But TSPA will do this much. They will moderate the behavior of LET to stay away from US and west and keep it exclusively focused on India. Without the threat of LET, India will see no reason to give TSP the time of the day. All this suits USA and the west just fine.

[Singha]

his fathers home in peshawar is palatial , with vast amt of white marble and a capacious area of park cars - per pic in NYT

just what one expects from a retired PAF vice air marshal.

[Gagan]

The US in not blind. They just look after their own security, which they do uncompromisingly.

One can see that they are even paying off the Jihadi Army and the terrorists themselves to not attack US and US interests.
That is the level of commitment to their own security they have. Meanwhile they are undercutting the jihadis so that they are not a potent force themselves.

India has limited traction in Pakistan, we must be aware of this. The mere mention of India stops anything that is making progress there drop dead in its tracks. This is because of the lies surrounding India and the projection of India as a mortal enemy that the Pakistani army has spread there.

Despite this, India is engaged in Afghanistan, has contacts with most political parties in Pakistan, meets political leaders there. Indulges in track II diplomacy with the civvies and the wardis alike, all for what? To keep the terror tap under check. Pakistani leaders and wardis privately admit that they can't all of a sudden turn off that terror tap, India wants then to regulate it for now and keep the rhetoric under a certain level.

One thing I will say. India's babus and netas are not fools or blind to what pakistan is. They all know where power flows from in pakistan, and the exact amount of power and ability of both Zardari and Geelani. Still the PM goes and meets Geelani - for one I must appreciate them holding back the nauseating feeling they would be expected to have in the vicinity of such slime-balls. I suppose the most logical explanation is that India stands to gain something from that meeting and from regular talks.

Pakistan's age old excuse has been that India does not talk and that it has to resort to 'other' measures to bring India to the table. The west traditionally viewed India-Pak as two truant boys fighting, so keep them engaged with each other. Except that India's economy has now taken off and Pakistan is exporting its IT services to the western world.

The only conclusion that I can derive is that India wants to keep Pakistan humoured with talks and pander to all the grievances that they have, without anything substantial being given on the ground. IOW the world sees that India is talking to Pakistan, and Pakistan continues to export IT to India and the rest of the world. This used to matter in the days gone by. With India's economic and political rise, what other nations think matters lesser and lesser.

I suppose the people in power somehow believe that talking to the pakistanis does control / temper the terror directed at India.

[Gagan]

his fathers home in peshawar is palatial , with vast amt of white marble and a capacious area of park cars - per pic in NYT

just what one expects from a retired PAF vice air marshal.

Any senior officer in the Pakistan Fauj (Brigadiers and above) and the equivalents in the fizzaiya and beheriya will have their hands in the money train. No wonder pakistan quickly acquires military equipment to fend off those kafir Indians to the east.

[Gagan]

Pakistanis are immature!

This idiot Paki who I am convinced grew up in a feudal luxury back home in Pakistan, with several servants around the house because his daddy was a ghooskhor afsar in the fizzaiya.

The idiot paki gets miffed because the bank forecloses his house ( I am again convinced that the paki would have been shocked that the bank expected not only the loan capital back but also interest on it) This is not the way things are done in Pakistan. In Pakistan you take a bank loan and then use your contacts to get the bank to write off that loan - simple. (That is what the NRO is seemingly all about - except that it is being used to target the PPP chaps.)

So anyhow, the paki is miffed that he has to pay the money back, and he has to live in a small apartment, and he has to carry the trash out, and do his own washing and cleaning and ironing. Where as he had come to umreeka dreaming of blonde girls on his arms just like in those bollywood movies! Instead the white women keep away from him.

What was he expecting? He would bomb times square, hide out in Pakistan for a few months, and then go back and the americans will forgive and forget and accept that he was wronged and take him back in? I'm sure he was convinced this is the way things will pan out!

No one's proven that Pakistanis are mature or sane yet.

[Carl_T]

They need to interrogate his wife. He may be a trained jihadi and resistant to interrogation techniques but his wife may not be.

[Gagan]

This guy grew up in feudal luxury. Expectedly he will sing like a canary - which as per news reports he is.

His wife will probably spill some more gory details. Apparently she was NOT living with him ever since he went to Pakistan and returned back.

He might turn out to be well steeped in the pakistani tradition of wife beating and abusing women in general. Meanwhile watch this space.

[R Vaidya]

My two paise thoughts
He seems to have had two Pak Passports and one of USA-- In one of the Passports he has mentioned his nationality as Kashmiri!! Did US give him visa[ earlier] on that passport--if so does it recognise Kashmir as a country?
Many things do not Jell-- I think this is Headley type but low level and domestic situation. He might have been working for some US agencies --who gave him lots of cash etc to go to Pakistan/Peshawar and spy. To prove his worth to some three letter abreviated pindaris of Pakistan he might have attempted to do this smoking fertiliser harvest--with the knowledge of some US agency. But it got botched-- that is he got caught so easily.
I still feel that one agency [ more pure] wanted him out of USA--so he got into that plane but another agency or individual [ less pure] would have brought him back.
Other possibility is that-- since terrorism is like sex --it is between the two ears. As long as there are enough Pakis in USA --with two ears and in between-- we will find more of this in the coming months.

R Vaidya

[arun]

Daddy's on the run ....

Pakistan questions at least 7 about New York bomb plot

Shahzad's father, Baharul Haq, a former senior Air Force officer, lives in an upscale suburb of Peshawar, according to security officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. Said to be a retired Air Vice Marshall, Haq hurriedly left the large family home in the Hayatabad suburb Tuesday, along with the rest of the family, when Pakistani media found the house.

The “ Jihad-fi-Sabilillah” or translated “Jihad in the path of Allah” part of the motto of the Army of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan seems to have leaked across service lines and indoctrinated the offspring of those who served into attempting to commit acts of Jihad half way across the world.

Meanwhile yet another news report confirming that would be Pakistani descent car bomber of New York’s Times Square, Faisal Shahzad’s father, Baharul Haq, was a retired Air Vice Marshal of the Air Force of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and then went on to serve as the head of the Islamic Republic’s Civil Aviation Authority:

NY bomber's father big shot in Pak military

The would be Pakistani origin Times Square car bomber’s connections to the top levels of the Military of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan does not end there. Faisal Shahzad was the nephew of Major General (Retd) Tajul Haq who served as the Inspector General of Frontier Corps (IGFC):

Faisal Shahzad’s father vacates Peshawar house

[Venkarl]

Bosslog,

Just now finished reading the comments section on NYT....woww...so many paki bashers .......party time....am loving it...

Venkat

[Carl_T]

My two paise thoughts
He seems to have had two Pak Passports and one of USA-- In one of the Passports he has mentioned his nationality as Kashmiri!! Did US give him visa[ earlier] on that passport--if so does it recognise Kashmir as a country?
Many things do not Jell-- I think this is Headley type but low level and domestic situation. He might have been working for some US agencies --who gave him lots of cash etc to go to Pakistan/Peshawar and spy. To prove his worth to some three letter abreviated pindaris of Pakistan he might have attempted to do this smoking fertiliser harvest--with the knowledge of some US agency. But it got botched-- that is he got caught so easily.
I still feel that one agency [ more pure] wanted him out of USA--so he got into that plane but another agency or individual [ less pure] would have brought him back.
Other possibility is that-- since terrorism is like sex --it is between the two ears. As long as there are enough Pakis in USA --with two ears and in between-- we will find more of this in the coming months.

R Vaidya

I think "nationality" might refer to ethnicity, as in Pashtun or w/e. I think Kashmiri may be legitimate as a nationality for a TSP passport bc PoK is officially autonomous in TSP. But I doubt if it is true. The "Kashmiri" part must be the group behind him talking.


As for double agent...that could be...I feel that if he was a true jihadi, the attack would have worked. It may be that US intel latched on to a RAPE with major military connections and tried to use him. My issue with that is that he only became a US citizen a year ago, and if intel agencies wanted to use him as a double agent, I think they would have preferred a US passport guy so he could move freely between the nations.

[CRamS]

This Kashmir connection could by a sly attempt by TSP to highlight "core issue". In other words, it Gubos to US and does all the cracking down as US demands. As its stock increases, at some point when the heat is off, TSP will be back to its rhetoric; no resolution of "core issue" breeds extremism citing this guy as an example and urging US to do the resolution.

[arun]

X Posted.

The Wall Street Journal citing the cases of Islamic Terrorists Faisal Shahzad, Najibullah Zazi, Daood Gilani aka David Coleman Headley and Bryant Neal Vinas on the Islamic Republic of Pakistan’s “prominence in recent years as a place where individuals, including American citizens, can receive training in the use of weapons and explosives for attacks back in the U.S.”:

Pakistan Still Magnet for U.S. Terror Suspects

[A_Gupta]

Wiki profile. Born in kashmir?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faisal_Shahzad

Based on NYTimes
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/nyreg ... ne.html?hp

Birthplace Unknown

Mr. Shahzad stated on a college application that the place was Karachi, but a Pakistani official said he was born in Kashmir. Rehman Malik, the Pakistani interior minister, told Reuters Mr. Shahzad was born in Pabbi, east of Peshawar.

I updated Wiki to now read:

Shahzad is a naturalized U.S. citizen, born in Karachi or Kashmir or Pabbi (a village east of Peshwar), Pakistan.[9][12][13][14]