Bharat Rakshak

SSridhar wrote:Narcotics in Pakistani boat may have been to fund terror - Dipanjan Roy Chaudhury, Economic Times

Government officials suspect that narcotics worth hundreds of crores found in a Pakistani boat seized off Gujarat coast earlier this week was perhaps meant to finance terror with institutional backing even as Islamabad has blamed New Delhi for not sharing information on the vessel.

Government sources told ET that while it is too early to say whether cross-border terror groups had any sinister design and that interrogation of the crew members only could reveal the truth, the motive behind smuggling drugs could have been to finance terror. Indian Navy and Coast Guard had in a joint operation seized a boat carrying 232 kg of heroin, with estimated street value of Rs 600 crore, and eight Pakistani crew members from international waters off Gujarat coast on Monday.

Some media reports claimed that both boats had the same handlers.

Anindya wrote:Interesting bait and it seems some people took the bait...

Multiple shootings, possible bomb at AFDI/Jihad Watch free speech event in Texas - See more at: http://pamelageller.com/2015/05/shooting-possible-bomb-at-afdijihad-watch-free-speech-event-in-texas.html/#sthash.omXqQNyi.dpuf

also Cop. Two Suspects Shot Outside 'Draw Muhammad' Contest in Texas

SSridhar wrote:

Jhujar wrote:Cricket with Poakroacheds!!

http://www.promptexecutivehire.co.uk/index.php

Militants attacked Kabul guesthouse thinking Indian ambassador was present

It is an ISI-LeT-Haqqani joint operation, as usual.

Now that China has established itself firmly in Pakistan and would be doing so sooner in Afghanistan, the Pakistani bravado will go skyhigh. We should expect attacks on Indian interests in Afghanistan. Pakistan may try to attack Indian borders as well.

NTSB: Train accelerated moments before crash

When the US found Osama bin Laden found hiding in a walled compound less than a mile from Pakistan's elite military academy, questions arose about what the country's intelligence agency (ISI) knew about the world's most wanted terrorist hiding in its own backyard.

Journalist Seymour Hersh recently wrote that the US Navy SEAL raid was not unilateral as reported. Instead, Hersh asserts, the mission was fully backed by Pakistan's army commander and the head of the ISI after the US threatened to expose that the ISI had been sheltering bin Laden for at least five years.

Journalists and experts disputed much of Hersh's thinly sourced account. Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's ambassador to the US at the time of the May 2011 raid, subsequently wrote that Hersh's claims regarding Pakistan's role in and knowledge of the raid "simply do not add up."

What did Pakistan know?

In any case, a wealth of information has been uncovered in recent years pointing to ISI complicity in harboring bin Laden, even as the Obama administration's interest in demanding answers from the Pakistani government waned rather quickly in the months following the successful raid.

Among the information pointing to ISI knowledge of bin Laden's whereabouts:

In March 2014, New York Times correspondent Carlotta Gall wrote that a Pakistani official told her that the US "had direct evidence that the ISI chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, knew of Bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad."

Gall recently wrote that she "learned from a high-level member of the Pakistani intelligence service that the ISI had been hiding bin Laden and ran a desk specifically to handle him as an intelligence asset."

A cell phone found during the raid belonging to bin Laden's most-trusted courier contained contacts to Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen, a militant group and longtime asset to the ISI that had been allowed to operate in Pakistan for at least 20 years, the Times reported in 2011.

Gall reported that handwritten notes, letters, and computer files collected from bin Laden's compound during the raid "revealed regular correspondence" between bin Laden and militant leaders who were closely protected by, and loyal to, the ISI.

Bin Laden's compound was not inconspicuous: It was a mansion that locals found "strange," Pakistan's former civilian intelligence chief told Gall. Intelligence officials would have searched it, if they had wanted to — especially given its proximity to the military academy.

The Pakistani government has staunchly denied that they even knew bin Laden was hiding in the Abbottabad compound, let alone that he was being protected by the ISI.

Still, many have raised doubts about the plausibility of Pakistan's claims. And the country looks bad either way.

“If Bin Laden’s presence was not known to Pakistan’s security agencies when he was located so close to important military installation, it will be viewed as their incompetence or overconfidence,” Hasan Askari Rizvi, a military analyst in Lahore, told the New York Times in 2011.

“If they knew about his presence but did not take action, this will raise questions about the agenda of Pakistan’s security agencies for fighting terrorism,” he added.

Bin Laden's support system

John O. Brennan, Obama's chief counterterrorism adviser at the time of the raid, described it as "inconceivable" that Bin Laden "did not have a support system in the country that allowed him to remain there for an extended period of time."

According to Haqqani, the former Pakistani ambassador, the key question after the raid was to determine whether bin Laden’s support system near Pakistan's version of West Point Military Academy lay “within the government and the state of Pakistan or within the society of Pakistan.”

The possibility that the ISI provided bin Laden with this support system is plausible given the agency's 30-year-old strategy of protecting militant groups and using them as intelligence assets and proxy forces to gain leverage over extremists in Afghanistan.

Gall reported that compounds and safe houses much like bin Laden's Abbottabad "home" are frequently used by the ISI for interrogations, "enforced seclusions," and protective custody for leaders of banned military groups. Police officers would then be warned to back off if they try to search the houses or undermine an intelligence operation.
What does the US know?

Haqqani concedes that someone in Pakistan clearly protected bin Laden from 2006 to 2011.

While denying that the ISI knew bin Laden's whereabouts, Haqqani concludes that "the failure of both Washington and Islamabad to disclose a more complete understanding of what transpired in the years leading up to the raid" led to conspiratorial stories like Hersh's.

All in all, an uncomfortable mystery remains about how much Islamabad knew — and why the US never provided an explanation for who harbored Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

Haqqani, for his part, thinks we may never fully know because it "might not be in either Islamabad’s or Washington’s interest to wake sleeping dogs."

NOW WATCH: We went inside a secret basement under Grand Central that was one of the biggest World War II targets

At the outset of World War II, far from the battlefields of Europe, British colonial officials in India bought themselves a jihad. They secretly spread cash all along the turbulent Afghan frontier, encouraging mullahs in the fiercely Islamic tribal region to whip up sentiment against Britain’s enemies: first the godless Soviets and their then-allies the Nazis, later the brutal Japanese, and eventually Indian leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, who were refusing to back the war effort. The strategy was low-cost and surprisingly effective. “In some areas,” marveled Sir George Cunningham, governor of the North-West Frontier Province, “religious Talibs [students] were encouraged to go into the Army — a thing which . . . was unknown before.”

Today, Pakistan — one of two nations born out of the former British India — is paying a high price for pursuing what once seemed like an equally smart and economical strategy. Years of backing for Islamic militants as tools of the state have spawned a hydra-headed monster: Some groups have received official favor to bleed Indian forces in Kashmir; others have turned against their masters, fighting the Pakistani government and costing the lives of an estimated 50,000 soldiers and civilians over the past decade. Insurgents have brazenly attacked army headquarters and an air base thought to house nuclear weapons, among other high-profile targets. Top generals, architects of the proxy strategy, now admit the militants pose a greater threat to Pakistan’s stability and security than even arch-rival India.

Pakistan should be an object lesson for countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran, which are busily arming their own surrogates in Sunni-Shiite proxy wars from Syria to Iraq to Yemen. These shadow armies may seem like an efficient way to undermine rivals without committing to an official course of war. They’re far easier to raise, though, than they are to rein in.

Pakistan began to learn this lesson barely two months after its founding as an independent nation in August 1947. That fall, a cabal of adventurist Pakistani officials set in motion a plan that involved recruiting Pashtun tribesmen from the frontier region to invade Kashmir, an independent kingdom whose Hindu maharajah was threatening to join rival India — and to take his mostly Muslim subjects with him. To this day, many Indians believe that Pakistan’s founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, masterminded the operation. In fact, Jinnah appears to have been unaware of what his subordinates were planning and initially tried to distance himself from the plot in order to preserve his deniability: “Don’t tell me anything about it!” he interjected when an aide tried to brief him about 10 days before the invasion. “My conscience must be clear.”

After Indian troops raced to Kashmir to repel the tribesmen, Jinnah hoped to counter openly, using regular Pakistani units. But British generals — who continued to command the Indian and Pakistani militaries for the first couple of years after independence — feared a wider war and had strict instructions not to fight each other. On Oct. 28, they pressured Jinnah to retract his orders.

A summit meeting was hastily arranged for the next day in Lahore. Jinnah wanted an immediate plebiscite that would allow Kashmir’s citizens, who were overwhelmingly Muslim, to decide which country they preferred to join. Nehru, India’s first prime minister, had already promised to accept the results of any credible vote. The gap between the two sides should have been bridgeable.

At a cabinet meeting in Delhi that evening, however, Nehru’s colleagues rounded on him angrily. “For the prime minister to go crawling to Mr. Jinnah when we were the stronger side and in the right would never be forgiven by the people of India,” declared “Sardar” Vallabhbhai Patel, India’s hard-line home minister. Cowed by the adamant opposition, Nehru took to his bed ill that night “looking very seedy and sorry for himself,” as Mountbatten recorded. The summit was hastily called off.

Cunningham, who had agreed to serve as governor of the North-West Frontier Province again after independence, saw Jinnah the next morning. The Pakistani leader suspected that Nehru’s cancellation “was just a plot to delay things while more Indian troops were flown into Kashmir,” Cunningham recorded in his diary. “He said he felt his hands were now free, legally as well as morally, to take any line he liked about Kashmir.” If India was not going to play straight, why should Pakistan?

The attractions of a proxy war now became evident. If the tribesmen could tie down Indian forces for two to three months, Pakistan would gain leverage in negotiations at little diplomatic or financial cost. Huddling around the bedside of Pakistani Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, who was recovering from a heart attack, Jinnah and his top aides decided to reinforce the insurgents, sending up drafts to relieve tired fighters and maintaining a contingent of at least 5,000 tribesmen in the Kashmir Valley. The plan was for Pakistani provincial officials to supply arms and ammunition. Cunningham would provide 100,000 rounds from village stockpiles.

The tribesmen would be paid in cash when they came back from the front. Jinnah agreed to enlist a few non-British army officers in the effort, led by Col. Akbar Khan, the director of weapons and stores and one of the original conspirators. They would be put on leave to maintain the fiction that the militants were operating independently.

Still, it was impossible to keep such an operation secret. “Whatever Jinnah and others may say the fullest assistance is in fact being given to the tribesmen,” British diplomat Hugh Stephenson reported to his superiors a few weeks later. Another British diplomat visited Abbottabad, a town near the Kashmir border, and found that “the tribesmen were conspicuous with their rifles over their shoulders, girt with bandoliers and looking thoroughly piratical.”

To keep them focused on fighting India instead of robbing fellow Pakistanis, officials housed the militants on a former stud farm, three miles outside of town. From there a steady stream of trucks departed for the border at night to avoid Indian reconnaissance planes. Members of the ruling Muslim League party openly campaigned for volunteers to defend Kashmir’s Muslims from their tyrant king and his Indian allies.

Top Pakistan army officials knew generally of the scope of operations. The British commander in chief, Gen. Sir Frank Messervy, was walking over to Liaquat’s bungalow one night after the insurgency had gotten underway. He “saw a bearded figure rush out of the room where Liaquat was and disappear round the corner of the house. I said to Liaquat, ‘That was Akbar, wasn’t it?’ He hesitated and said, ‘Yes.’ ” The prime minister admitted that several Pakistani officers, including Col. Khan, had been sent to Kashmir to impose some order on the tribal offensive. “I agreed to this,” Messervy later admitted, “and in fact I expect that the number of officers seconded to the tribal forces was increased.”

With Jinnah’s embrace of the tribesmen, any hope of quickly resolving the crisis vanished. The decision prompted wild reports in Delhi, including that the invaders were being “provided with motor transport, automatic weapons, artillery and even flame-throwers.” It confirmed the belief — an article of faith among many Indians today — that Pakistan’s word could not be trusted and that any opposition to Indian rule in Kashmir had to be alien and illegitimate.

Nehru refused to contemplate any plebiscite until all of Pakistan’s “raiders” had been driven from the kingdom. He poured Indian troops into the theater and threatened to withhold Pakistan’s share of the British Raj’s reserves, which was worth nearly $2 billion in today’s dollars.

Indeed, the costs of the operation mounted more quickly than Jinnah had anticipated. After promoting the campaign as a holy war, Pakistan could hardly back down. Yet its fledgling government was essentially running on fumes; by December 1947, only about $65 million (in today’s dollars) were left in its accounts. The jihad, Cunningham told a British diplomat, had “hopelessly undermined all discipline and mutual confidence in the [civil] services,” as junior officials were encouraged to abuse their authority, siphon off equipment, mislead their superiors — anything that could be justified as support for the shadow war.

The threat of escalation loomed, too. After the tribesmen overran an isolated garrison of Indian troops on Dec. 23, a furious Nehru ordered Indian generals to prepare to cross the border. He wanted to wipe out the insurgents’ “bases and nerve centers” in Pakistani territory — a dangerous idea that still rears its head after Pakistan-linked outrages, such as the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. Only after the United Nations agreed to take up the Kashmir case did Nehru back off from his threat.

That first Kashmir war ended with the state effectively partitioned and the strategically-valuable Kashmir Valley in the hands of India. Yet over the ensuing decades, Pakistan returned to its tactics again and again. The deployment of anti-India jihadists would lead to two more major conflicts in Kashmir — in 1965 and 1999 — the last of which nearly went nuclear. In the 1990s, Pakistan threw its support behind the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan as well, hoping to block Indian influence in Kabul.

Today, with troops battling the Pakistani Taliban in the wilds of North Waziristan, army leaders are understandably reluctant to add to their challenges by taking on the Afghan Taliban and Kashmir-focused militants such as Lashkar-e-Taiba. Ignoring such groups carries its own costs, however. Official tolerance of Lashkar — whose operational commander, accused of masterminding the Mumbai attacks, was recently set free on bail — continues to poison relations with India. Cross-border attacks in the Indian half of Kashmir last year derailed tentative talks between the two sides; they’ve yet to be fully revived.

Meanwhile, the Afghan Taliban has undermined a budding rapprochement between Islamabad and the new Afghan government by refusing to come to the negotiating table, instead launching a vicious offensive from its havens inside Pakistan. The ongoing instability threatens $46 billion in infrastructure investments recently pledged by China — a relationship that’s far more vital to Pakistan’s future than the fate of Kashmir or even Afghanistan.

Middle Eastern powers are beginning to experience some of the same blowback from their own machinations. It’s now clear that the money Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf monarchies poured into Sunni militant groups in Syria inadvertently helped propel the rise of the Islamic State. To their consternation, that’s led to a bizarre scenario in which the United States finds itself fighting the Islamic State in Iraq alongside Shiite militias backed by Iran. Rather than toppling Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, Washington is bombing his enemies.

Nor should Iran take much comfort in its apparent successes. Its Hezbollah proxies may have the upper hand in Syria, and its influence over the Baghdad government may be unmatched. But Tehran’s gains have united Sunni Arab leaders, who have agreed to establish a regional military force implicitly directed against Iran. A nuclear deal that leaves the Iranian enrichment program in place could spur a regional arms race and drive Saudi Arabia to develop its own bomb, possibly with help from Pakistan.

Meanwhile, Iranian leaders appear to be ramping up their support for Houthi rebels in Yemen. If Pakistan’s experience is anything to go by, the last thing they should expect is a clean victory.

PAKISTAN, AFGHANISTAN, AND AL-QAEDA
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EXPLAINING THE PHENOMENON
IRAN, HEZBOLLAH, AND AL-QAEDA
PAKISTAN, AFGHANISTAN, AND...
EGYPT, THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, AND...
UNWISE SPREAD OF WESTERN TTPs...
UNDERESTIMATING THE OPPOSITION

Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) Directorate's connection to the British should come as no surprise, given that the Pakistani army emerged out of the British Indian army after India gained its independence from the British Empire in 1947.40 In fact, Major General R. Cawthome, a British army officer, formed the Pakistani ISI Directorate in 1948, after the unsatisfactory performance of Pakistani intelligence during the Indo-Pakistani War over Kashmir in 1947–1948.41 Moreover, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross notes that “the senior echelons [of the Pakistani army] were still British officers who had opted to stay on [after independence],” and importantly, “they were in turn succeeded by their native clones, men who saw the army as a unique institution, separate and apart from the rest of civil society and authority.”42 Thus, any intelligence training that British officers possessed at the time of their transfer to the Pakistani military was more than likely disseminated to their subordinates and successors. In other words, Pakistan's ISI has been infused with British Intelligence TTPs since its inception.
In time, the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) and ISI developed a working relationship, which began during the Nixon Administration, and focused on the Khalistan movement in the Punjab43—a campaign to establish a separate and independent Sikh state of Khalistan in the Indian state of Punjab.44 Perhaps the best-known relationship between the ISI and the IC involved the CIA and the Afghan mujahedeen in the 1980s. According to Gartenstein-Ross, “the relationship between the CIA and ISI developed on the ISI's terms, with Zia [the president of Pakistan from 1978 to 1988] minimizing contact between the Americans and the Afghan mujahideen. This arrangement was mutually advantageous. It gave the Americans plausible deniability, gave the Pakistanis access to a large amount of American money, and allowed Pakistani officials to forge their own relationships with the mujahideen.”45
Additionally, the relationship between the ISI and the CIA resulted in the enhancement of the ISI's covert intelligence capabilities.46 For example, several ISI personnel received intelligence training in the U.S., and the CIA also attached experts to the ISI as operational advisors.47
Likewise, the ISI established contacts with large numbers of mujahedeen commanders, supplying them with weapons,48 and presumably at least some rudimentary intelligence training, given the nature of the Pakistani organization as an intelligence agency. For example, agents would have to be trained in surveillance and counter-surveillance of targets; maneuvering undetected behind enemy lines; clandestine communications; and conducting battle damage assessments, among other basic intelligence practices. Additionally, more advanced intelligence tradecraft would have had to be provided to some mujahedeen for the purposes of agent handling and intelligence collection in Soviet-occupied areas denied to the Pakistani ISI and the CIA. Moreover, during this time the ISI established a relationship with Osama bin Laden, the future leader of al-Qaeda.49
In 1989, the Soviet Union withdrew its troops from Afghanistan, and with it the U.S.'s covert support for the mujahedeen ended. However, the American endeavor, as noted by former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, resulted in “short-term gain for longer-term pain,”50 meaning that the immediate gain achieved by the U.S. in supporting the mujahedeen would cause lasting problems for the country. For example, in his memoir Musharraf laments that
We helped create the mujahideen, fired them with religious zeal in seminaries, armed them, paid them, fed them, and sent them to a jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. We did not stop to think how we would divert them to productive life after the jihad was won. This mistake cost Afghanistan and Pakistan more dearly than any other country. Neither did the United States realize what a rich, educated person like Osama bin Laden might later do with the organization that we all had enabled him to establish.51
Later, in May 1996, bin Laden arrived in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, along with various Arabs who had left the country after the Soviets had withdrawn.52 And while Musharraf asserted in his 2006 memoir, In the Line of Fire, that al-Qaeda and other radicals including “Uzbeks, Bangladeshis, Chechens, Chinese Uygurs, and Muslims from south India, Europe, America, and even Australia started to arrive in Afghanistan to help the Taliban cause,”53 Mark J. Roberts has suggested that Pakistan's motives for supporting bin Laden were to solidify the Taliban's control over the country, and then establish training camps for Kashmiri militants.54 In fact, the ISI allegedly asked Saudi Arabian Intelligence for prior permission to sponsor bin Laden since the ISI received Saudi funds to operate madrassas in Pakistan, and did not want to sour its relationship with the Kingdom.55 And while Musharraf suggests that bin Laden was in Afghanistan merely to assist the Taliban, Roberts's assertion that the relationship between bin Laden and Pakistan was more complex seems accurate. For example, the ISI requested permission from the Saudi Kingdom to sponsor bin Laden, an important point because by this time the Saudi government disapproved of Osama and may have attempted to assassinate him.56 But bin Laden had the ability to establish training camps and attract large numbers of radical followers who could assist the ISI in waging a covert war against India in Kashmir, which was exactly what the ISI wanted, and therefore justified its requesting permission from the Saudis who might have been offended if not consulted.57 In fact, according to Roberts:
Pakistani support to Kashmiri jihadists “fundamentally changed the nature of the struggle. … Pakistani backing enabled the Kashmiris to sustain and expand what other- wise might have been a limited and short-lived struggle.” This expanded the conflict's scope by “helping organize and insert large numbers of foreign militants into the struggle.” The foreign fighters were “trained in the killing fields of Afghanistan and paid and supplied” by ISI. As late as 2002, 25 to 50 percent of the terrorists fighting in Kashmir were ISI-recruited foreign fighters, not Kashmiris.58
Furthermore, Roberts notes that ISI personnel did not limit themselves to funding al-Qaeda training camps, but also actively participated in training militants.59 In fact, in 1998, when then-U.S. President Bill Clinton ordered missile strikes against al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan in retaliation for the organization's role in the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, bin Laden escaped but several ISI officers were killed in the attack.60 Given the fact that Pakistani intelligence officers were actively training militants in al-Qaeda training camps, and based on the fact that intelligence officers instructed courses, the training they provided most probably included ISI and CIA TTPs because those techniques were known to both the ISI and Hezbollah, and both disseminated their intelligence knowledge to al-Qaeda. This conclusion is further supported by author Lawrence Wright's claims that al-Qaeda ran several camps focused on intelligence and counterintelligence training. Wright also noted that intelligence training was part of al-Qaeda's course offerings at camps in Afghanistan prior to 9/11.61
The ISI's relationship with al-Qaeda persisted until 2001, when the U.S. issued an ultimatum.62 According to former President Musharraf, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage stated strongly that
… not only that we [the Pakistani government] had to decide whether we were with America or with the terrorists, but that if we chose the terrorists, then we should be prepared to be bombed back to the Stone Age. This was a shockingly barefaced threat, but it was obvious that the United States had decided to hit back, and hit back hard.63
Despite that warning, according to Gartenstein-Ross, the ISI–al-Qaeda links continued as late as 2008, as noted by U.S. documents provided to the Pakistani government linking at least one retired ISI intelligence officer with al-Qaeda and the Taliban.64
In sum, as with Iran, Pakistan's ISI Directorate was created and staffed by British army officers whose intelligence knowledge formed the core of the organization. Later, the ISI's intelligence TTPs were enhanced by CIA training as both the ISI and CIA battled, by proxy, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the ISI established links with the mujahedeen, and to an eccentric millionaire by the name of Osama bin Laden. After the withdrawal of the Soviet army from Afghanistan, the ISI maintained its relationship with former mujahedeen, including bin Laden, as it fought a covert battle with India in Kashmir. The ISI had funded, supplied, and trained the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and other groups of radical militants that made their way to Afghanistan during the 1990s as part of their covert war against India in Kashmir. Thus, intelligence TTPs were in all likelihood proliferated from ISI, which itself originated with the British, and included TTPs from the CIA, as part of the spider web of intelligence relationships among the major powers and their allies, to al-Qaeda.

Maximum prison sentences for 2 Pakistani-born brothers in plot to bomb New York City landmarks

By CURT ANDERSON AP Legal Affairs Writer
First Posted: June 11, 2015 - 11:09 am
Last Updated: June 11, 2015 - 11:11 am

MIAMI — A federal judge imposed the maximum possible prison sentences Thursday on two Pakistani-born brothers who admitted trying to pull off a terrorist bomb attack against New York City landmarks and later assaulted two deputy U.S. marshals while in custody.

U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom compared the plot, which never got past the planning stages, to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings in which the two attackers used commonplace pressure cookers. In the Florida case, evidence shows the younger brother, 22-year-old Raees Alam Qazi, researched how to make bombs on the Internet using readily available items such as Christmas tree lights and chemicals.

"You are a terrorist. Evil in nature and evil in your deeds," Bloom said to Raees Qazi. "You chose to engage in conduct that can only be described as evil and reprehensible."

The judge sentenced Raees Qazi to 35 years in prison while his brother, 32-year-old Sheheryar Alam Qazi, was sentenced to 20 years behind bars. Both sentences were three years above those recommended by prosecutors and defense attorneys in a March plea deal. ………………………………

Clicky

17-year-old is 'UK's youngest ever suicide bomber'
PTI | Jun 15, 2015, 04.59 AM IST

…………….. Talha Asmal was one of four suicide bombers who attacked security forces near an oil refinery south of Baiji.

Isis social media reports said Asmal, going by the name of Abu Yusuf al-Britani, had taken part in the attack.

His family, believed to be of Pakistani origin, said they were "devastated" at the news.

If confirmed, Asmal, from Dewsbury, would be Britain's youngest known suicide bomber. ………………………..

The Pakistani military undertook operations against groups that conducted attacks within Pakistan such as TTP, but did not take action against other groups such as Lashkar e-Tayyiba, which continued to operate, train, rally, propagandize, and fundraise in Pakistan. Afghan Taliban and HQN leadership continued to find safe haven in Pakistan, and although Pakistan military operations disrupted the actions of these groups, it did not directly target them.

Lashkar e-Tayyiba (LeT) and its alias organizations continued to operate freely in Pakistan, and there were no indications that Pakistan took significant enforcement actions against the group.

UN-designated terrorist organizations continued to skirt sanctions by reconstituting themselves under different names, often with little effort to hide their connections to previously banned groups, and the government does not prosecute CFT cases.

Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying's Regular Press Conference on July 9, 2015 ……………

Q: Yesterday, Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Ufa. Is there any update on this meeting? Some Indian official said after the meeting that Prime Minister Modi expressed concerns about the technical hold placed by China on India's move to ask the UNSC 1267 committee to review Pakistan’s release on bail of Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, the suspect of the Mumbai terrorist attacks. What's your comment on this?

A: Yesterday, President Xi Jinping met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Ufa. Relevant information has already been released. Both leaders commented positively on the sound momentum of growth of bilateral relations and further identified the key areas and future direction to enhance bilateral cooperation.

President Xi Jinping noted that in Xi'an last May, he and Prime Minister Modi reached important consensus on enriching the bilateral strategic partnership and forging a closer partnership for development. This sends a positive signal of China-India cooperation and common development to our two peoples as well as the international community. With concerted efforts by both sides, the consensus reached between the two leaders are now being translated into steady progress in bilateral cooperation on legislative institutions, railways, industrial parks and smart cities. Our two sides should make joint efforts to maintain the sound momentum of growth for bilateral relations and break new ground in pursuing win-win cooperation. Two sides should also continue to maintain frequent high-level exchanges, enhance strategic communication on all levels, complete feasibility studies on major cooperation projects as planned and develop flagship programs for China-India cooperation. Efforts shall also be made to implement the China-India cultural exchange program, step up think-tank, media and local cooperation, properly manage the differences and join hands to maintain peace and tranquility in the border areas. China and India should work together to push forward the development of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB) and the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor (BCIM), and explore ways to effectively connect China's Belt and Road initiatives with India's relevant development plans, in a bid to achieve mutually beneficial cooperation and common development.

Prime Minister Modi pointed out that now China and India enjoy sound growth of bilateral relations and enhanced mutual trust. High-level officials from two sides maintain close communication. Bilateral trade and economic cooperation continue to deepen in various areas as science and technology, outer space and infrastructure. India welcomes investment by more Chinese enterprises and stands ready to enhance strategic communication and coordination to properly handle the boundary question and other differences between the two countries.

As for your specific question, I’d like to say that China opposes terrorism of all forms, supports the central coordinating role of the UN in global efforts against terrorism, and actively participates in international anti-terrorist cooperation. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, China always addresses issues related with the UNSC 1267 Committee based on facts with a fair and objective position. China has maintained close communication with all parties concerned, including India, on issues related with the UNSC 1267 Committee.

Clicky

Within hours of the bloodshed, law officers with guns drawn swarmed what was believed to be Abdulazeez's house, and two females were led away in handcuffs.

A dozen law enforcement vehicles, including a bomb-squad truck and an open-sided Army green truck carrying armed men, rolled into the Hixson neighborhood, and police closed off streets and turned away people trying to reach their homes.

A Muslim delivery driver used his rides to scout the largest U.S. air base in Britain, all the while planning to run over an American serviceman, kill him with a knife and detonate a suicide vest, according to UK prosecutor Mark Dawson.

Authorities in Britain charged two Muslim relatives on Tuesday with terror-related offenses, alleging that one was plotting an attack against U.S. military personnel in the UK and the other planned to go to the Middle East to join ISIS.

Junead Ahmed Khan, 24, is accused of trying to plan the attack sometime between May 10 and July 14, officials said. Khan and his uncle, 22-year-old Shazib Ahmed Khan, are also charged with planning to travel to Syria to join ISIS, according to a statement from the Crown Prosecution Service.

A young jihadist who once dreamed of becoming Britain’s first Asian Prime Minister before later joining Isil has reportedly been killed in a drone strike.

Reyaad Khan, 21, from Cardiff, was one of the first Britons to appear in an Isil propaganda video last year, alongside two other British fanatics.

Speaking from his Cardiff him, his father Nazim Khan, 46, said he had not had any contact from Syria to tell him his son was dead.

Terrorists in Gurdaspur Attack Were Muslim: Police ……………………….

"The inspection of the bodies shows that the assailants were Muslims,"

Gurdaspur attackers in early 20s, had trimmed beard, shaved chest, GPS devices ……………………..

Three heavily armed terrorists behind Monday’s audacious attack in Gurdaspur district were ostensibly Muslims, said official sources ……………………….

“The gunmen, in their early 20s, were found to be circumcised and had their chests shaved and beards trimmed. In most of the previous attacks we have found suicide or fidayeen attackers shave their chest before embarking on suicide mission,” said a senior government functionary who was involved in the operation to neutralise them. …………………………..

Also, when Punjab Police cornered them, they were repeatedly heard raising slogans such as “Allah-hu-Akbar” and “Pakistan Zinbaad”.

“The gunmen had two global positioning system (GPS) devices to help them move towards their intended locations. Tracking of these GPS devices has clearly indicated that the terrorists came from the Pakistani side towards Pathankot, said a senior police officer.

“This is first time that terrorists after sneaking in from Pakistan in Jammu area have come towards Punjab. There is heavy police bandobast in Jammu and Kashmir due to the annual Amarnath Yatra. That might be the reason they may have come down to bordering district in Punjab,”

"The preliminary analyses of GPS data indicate that terrorists had infiltrated from Pakistan through the area near Tash in Gurdaspur district where the Ravi River enters Pakistan. It is also suspected that the same terrorists planted five IEDs on the railway tracks near village Talwandi between Dinnanaagr and Jhakoladi which was subsequently defused by the bomb disposal squad," Rajnath said in the Rajya Sabha.

In early 2011, then-CIA Director Leon Panetta confronted the president of Pakistan with a disturbing piece of intelligence. The spy agency had learned that ­Mohammad Omar, the Taliban leader who had become one of the world’s most wanted fugitives after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, was being treated at a hospital in southern Pakistan.

The American spy chief even identified the facility — the Aga Khan University Hospital in Karachi — and said the CIA had “some raw intelligence on this” that would soon be shared with its Pakistani counterpart, according to diplomatic files that summarize the exchange.

U.S. intelligence officials now think that Omar probably died two years later, in 2013, and Afghan officials said this week that he succumbed while being treated for a serious illness in a Karachi hospital, just as those earlier intelligence reports had indicated.

arun wrote: 'I came to kill Hindus': All you need to know about the militant who was captured in Udhampur

muraliravi wrote:



Too late for NDTV and sickulars, ZEE and ABP and playing this live

I told you all many times, stop wasting time on rudalis, listen to zee/india tv

After Kabul Attack, Afghan Leader Points Finger at Pakistan for Failing to Stop Taliban

By MUJIB MASHAL AUG. 10, 2015 ……………………….

“The incidents of the past two months in general, and the recent days in particular, show that the suicide training camps and the bomb-making facilities used to target and murder our innocent people still operate, as in the past, in Pakistan,” ……………………….

The Afghan First Vice President Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum joined the Afghan security institutions and top government officials for blaming Pakistan’s military intelligence for the ongoing violence in the country.

Gen. Dostum is currently in northern Faryab province of Afghanistan to coordinate military operations against the anti-government armed militant groups amid deteriorating security situation in this province.

He said the Pakistani military generals and the country’s powerful military intelligence – Inter service Intelligence (ISI) are plotting and coordinating attacks across Afghanistan, under the name of al Qaeda, Islamic State affiliates and Taliban militants.

According to Gen. Dostum, the ongoing violence in Afghanistan could end only if Pakistan’s military and ISI truely coopeate with the Afghan government.

ISLAMABAD: In a move that has blocked the disbursement of the next tranche of Coalition Support Fund (CSF), the United States has told Pakistan that it would not be certifying to the Congress that its (Pakistani) counter-terrorism operation in North Waziristan damaged the Haqqani network.

This was conveyed by the US Department of Defence to the Pakistani mission in Washington as well as to the authorities in Islamabad, according to a highly placed source.

JE Menon wrote:A second terrorist has been arrested for the Erawan attack on the Thai-Cambodia border. Judging from his looks he could be of Pak origin from Sindh/Pakjab. Reportedly he was carrying a Chinese passport, and there are suspicions of an Uighur connection - though he looks anything but. Body structure suggests Pak link.

SSridhar wrote:When the blast was reported here and somebody raised a Paki connection that was the most prudent assumption to make and proceed with the investigation on that basis. There are a lot of Pakistani fake passport makers also in Thailand apart from Thailand being a huge safe-house of the ISI. Of course, Thailand is also used by the ISI as a transit point to send Fake Indian Currency Notes(FICN) into India.

Let us recall some Pakistani jihadi terror involvement with Thailand.

•On July 5, 2003, Saifullah Paracha (father of Uzair Paracha) was arrested in Thailand on terror related charges. He has been formally charged with trying to export nuclear weapons under the guise of his textile import-export business. He has also been charged with trying to get Majid Khan (On Mar. 5, 2003, Majid Khan, a relative of convicted Al-Qaeda operative Lyman Faris was arrested in Pakistan for planning to detonate US gas stations. He also provided funds to Jemmah Islamiyah of Indonesia ) a visa to enter the US and indulge in terrorist activities
•On Oct. 13, 2010, the Thailand police arrested 15 Pakistanis on money transfer from the Islamist-insurgency hit southern Thailand to international terror suspects overseas
•On Dec. 01, 2010, the Spanish police arrested six Pakistanis who were helping the LeT and Al Qaeda organizations with forged documents such as passports and ID cards for their terror activities. The mastermind was a Pakistani, Muhammad Ather Butt, operating out of Thailand who was also simultaneously arrested there along with another Pakistani accomplice, Zezan Azzan Butt