Bharat Rakshak

A top Saudi Arabian counter-terrorism official had told United States’ Af-Pak envoy Richard Holbrooke that he had little trust in Pakistan’s ISI when it comes to sharing information with it on terrorism, a U.S. cable released by WikiLeaks cable reveals.

Major General Khalid al-Humaydan (“Abu Ali”), who has been leading operations against terrorists and those involved in sending funds to terror outfits based in Pakistan, had said his security forces had detained numerous individuals from Pakistan and were seeking cooperation to probe their activities.

In a meeting with Mr. Holbrooke, the Counterterrorism Advisor to the Ministry of the Interior Saudi Arabia, said his agencies have to think “ten times” before approaching the ISI.

“He (al-Humaydan) added that ‘we talk to ISI and get a good response, but we think ten times before approaching them; things are changing there and we are advised to be careful,” the cable said.

“Political unrest and new ISI leadership were the principal changes, he said,” said the telegram issued by the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia, after the meeting on May 16, 2009.

“As a result', he concluded, ‘we only trust face-to-face transmission of information. The MOI had shared information with ISI on Pakistanis in Saudi Arabia suspected of terror finance, but ISI had not responded,” said the cable.

The United States, which has charged the WikiLeaks of indulging in a criminal act by stealing and releasing these cables, has neither confirmed nor denied the authenticity of these documents.

During the meeting, Holbrooke noted that Pakistan was also a centre for terrorist financing through Islamic charities and asked whether the Saudis were monitoring the large Pakistani community in Saudi Arabia, and whether the Saudis were consulting with the governments of Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh over the issue.

sanjeevpunj wrote:It is sad to see that Julian Assange's family is being threatened, and he is expected to be arrested - for sharing information.They cook up "sexual offenses" as an excuse to arrest him! Any whore in Europe could be bribed to vouch that he had sexually assaulted her, this is a usual ply of politicians all over the world.

The State Department has stated in a cable from Peshawar, Pakistan, that it is skeptical about eventually winning the military struggle in Pakistan's badlands, saying peace talks go nowhere and murderous militants control key towns.

Chief among them is the late Mehsud's group, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, which is dedicated to overthrowing the Pakistani government. Pakistan's "divide and rule" strategy calls for isolating the TTP, but tribal leaders were "too cowed" to move against a man the cable called "the most notorious militant in Pakistan." His successor and cousin, Hakimullah Mehsud, is just as ruthless. He masterminded a 2008 suicide bombing of a jirga (peace conference) that, the cable stated, "killed over 50 tribal maliks [leaders] and broke virtually all organized resistance to TTP control."

US forced to shake up embassies around the world after WikiLeaks revelations
By Guy Adams and Kim Sengupta
Monday, 6 December 2010

Battered by a scandal which seems to provide a fresh wave of embarrassment with each passing day, the US government is being forced to undertake a major reshuffle of the embassy staff, military personnel and intelligence operatives whose work has been laid bare by the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks.


The Obama administration was yesterday facing a crisis in its diplomatic service, amid growing evidence that the ongoing publication of a tranche of supposedly-confidential communiqués will make normal work difficult, if not dangerous, for important State Department employees across the world.

A mere 1,100 of the roughly 250,000 secret documents obtained by the website have so far been published, leading to fears that the unhelpful revelations will continue for months to come, destabilising US relations with almost all of its key allies and inflaming tensions with already-hostile governments in the Middle East and beyond. "In the short run, we're almost out of business," a senior US diplomat told the Reuters news agency, saying it could take five years to rebuild trust. "It is really, really bad. I cannot exaggerate it. In all honesty, nobody wants to talk to us ... Some people still have to, particularly (in) government but ... they are already asking us things like, 'Are you going to write about this?'"

The Pentagon, the CIA and the State Department are reported to be identifying which members of staff have been named as the authors of the most unhelpful memos to have been published by WikiLeaks. They will need to be removed from what are among America's most strategically-important postings.

Among those whose private thoughts have been embarrassingly revealed is Gene Cretz, the US ambassador to Libya who wrote a now-notorious cable to Washington in 2009 noting that that the country's leader Muammar Gaddafi never travels without his "voluptuous blonde" Ukranian nurse.

America's current envoy to the United Nations has also been criticised following the revelation that Hillary Clinton instructed them to procure credit card and frequent flyer numbers, mobile phone numbers, email addresses, passwords and other data from foreign diplomats and top UN officials, including the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

The difficulty regarding the future of America's diplomatic service is the fact that the authors of many of the most important emails in the WikiLeaks tranche are among their most-experienced senior staff, and will therefore be tough, if not impossible, to replace. None of the countries that were affected by the WikiLeaks cables had requested the withdrawal of any American diplomatic staff.

"That's another part of the tragedy of this," a senior US national-security official told The Daily Beast website, which yesterday detailed the extent of the crisis on the ground and claimed that the reassignment of affected diplomats had already been planned and would take place in the coming months.

"We're going to have to pull out some of our best people – the diplomats who best represented the United States and were the most thoughtful in their analysis – because they dared to report back the truth about the nations in which they serve."

Among the foreign governments to have already expressed outrage about the contents of some of the files are those of supposed allies like France, Italy and Turkey, whose Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to sue the former US Ambassador Eric Edelman over a memo he wrote suggesting that Erdogan had hidden wealth in Swiss bank accounts.

Old enemies of the US are also upset. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was described in one memo as playing Robin to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's Batman. Cuba and Venezuela were branded an "Axis of Mischief" in a document released at the weekend.

When the first cables were made public, the White House condemned the release saying it "put at risk our diplomats, intelligence professionals, and people around the world who come to the US for assistance in promoting democracy and open government".

Although there have yet to be formal moves to oust the diplomats responsible for the most awkward memos so far revealed, foreign governments are expected to soon begin "PNG-ing" US diplomats, a practice which involves demanding the removal of an official by branding them "persona non grata".

"We think it's only a matter of time, though," one State Department official told The Daily Beast. Diplomatic sources told The Independent that there no immediate plans to move staff because that would suggest they had done something wrong and damage confidence.

Tensions with Arab states

The latest leaked memos reveal that Hillary Clinton criticised the Saudi government, saying the country was the world's largest source of funds for Islamist militant groups but that its politicians were reluctant to stem the flow of money. In the memo, dated December 2009, she told US diplomats that "Riyadh has taken only limited action" to interrupt the flow of money to the Taliban and groups launching attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. She added that Hamas raised millions in Saudi, often from Hajj and Ramadan pilgrims. The note also highlighted Qatar, Kuwait and the UAE as sources of militant money and singled Qatar out as "the worst in the region" for not co-operating with Washington.

BTW, wouldn't the MEA be better be advised to read BRF and see the posts here and write in that style. It will be colourful, insightful and too the point with a strong dose of every possible shades of analysis and opinion, and of course piskological observations, plus of course there is the famous BENIS thread for variety and light reading. A good summation of all topics told in the most entertaining manner.

Vashishtha wrote:

BTW, wouldn't the MEA be better be advised to read BRF and see the posts here and write in that style. It will be colourful, insightful and too the point with a strong dose of every possible shades of analysis and opinion, and of course piskological observations, plus of course there is the famous BENIS thread for variety and light reading. A good summation of all topics told in the most entertaining manner.

A serious question to forum admins and BR site managers.....What can be done to increase viewership of br among babus and most importantly the media??

Gagan wrote:Julian Assange has responded to moves being made to shut down wikileaks and moves against him and his family.

I was watching CNN yesterday and apparently he has threatened to relase a 'Poison Set' of documents that reveal details on Guantanamo Bay and the drone war in Af-Pak, if wikileaks is shut down.

What does that mean? He won't expose real juicy stuff if US won't attempt to shut him down?

Hiten wrote: the threat, I had read, is to release them without redacting the sensitive details - assuming, otherwise it will be released later with relevant censoring if he is not harmed

Two little known chromite mines in Orissa and Karnataka, besides a factory in Gujarat that manufactures critical chemotherapy drugs are among global "key infrastructures" which could pose a danger to America’s national security if they come under terrorist attack, a secret US cable released by WikiLeaks has revealed.

The classified State Department cable dated February 18, 2009 asks its diplomatic posts to update a secret list of key infrastructures across the globe which are vital of America's national security interests and needs to be protected from any terrorist attacks.

The secret list includes only three infrastructure projects from India. "Orissa (chromite mines) and Karnataka (chromite mines) Generamedix Gujurat: Chemotherapy agents, including florouracil and methotrexate," the cable said.

"Loss" of these infrastructures in foreign countries "could critically impact the public health, economic security, and/or national and homeland security of the United States," it underlined.

Suspicions are arising that Twitter may be hampering wikileaks related tweets from becoming trending topics. Comments in these blogs and replys to @wikileaks regarding the possible censorship show people appear to believe twitter is being nefarious rather than incompetent in accurately measuring the people's voice.

Wikileaks-related terms did not really trend almost at all last week. The only related trend today that currently trends in a few countries is the much less popular #imwikileaks! Pretty suspicious. If this is real censorship, it is much more profoundly unacceptable than just deleting someone's account, because it's not like trying to block that one account, that one voice, but like censoring and manipulating the collective voice.

A comprehensive inventory of what the United States considers “critical infrastructure and key resources,” has been published online by WikiLeaks, the whistleblower website, raising the pitch of the debate surrounding its exposé of secret U.S. State Department cables.

According to the cable, dated February 18 2009 and sent from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to all U.S. diplomatic outposts abroad, the State Department requested diplomats to update the “vital” sites list, which included telecommunication infrastructure, gas pipelines, mineral mines, medical research facilities, weapons components manufacturers and transportation hubs.

The sites mentioned in India include chromite mines in Orissa and Karnataka and a company called Generamedix in Gujurat, which the cable suggests is involved in producing chemotherapy agents, including florouracil and methotrexate.

Issuing a request for action to U.S. diplomatic posts world over the Secretary’s cable said the State Department required “compilation and annual update of a of critical infrastructure and key resources that are located outside U.S. borders and whose loss could critically impact the public health, economic security, and/or national and homeland security of the U.S.” The cable added that under the U.S. Patriot Act of 2001 “critical infrastructure” was defined as systems and assets, whether physical or virtual, “so vital to the U.S. [that] the incapacitation or destruction of such systems and assets would have a debilitating impact” on U.S. national security.

Condemnation of the release of the list followed swiftly, particularly in the United Kingdom, where a Downing Street spokesman was quoted as saying, “We unequivocally condemn the unauthorised release of classified information. The leaks and their publication are damaging to national security in the U.S., Britain and elsewhere.”

However Mark Stephens, the lawyer representing WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange, who is on the run from authorities, was said to have denied that Wikileaks was putting people and facilities at risk.

According to the BBC he said, “I do not think there is anything new in that... What I think is new is the fact that it has been published by Wikileaks and of course we have the Wikileaks factor because a number of governments have been embarrassed by what has happened.”

vera_k wrote:Gujarat ATS probes LeT plan

Looks like the intelligence in the cable was a) either not shared with Indian authorities or b) held back from Gujarat police by Delhi intelligence. It is likely the latter, after taking into account the other cable about 26/11 which mentions an intelligence failure on the Indian side.

ramana wrote:Yeah. I spent quite some time to explain why calling some one "sala" or brother-in-law is really an insult while calling him "bhai" or brother is a great compliment!

ramana wrote:The cable is marked "no forn" i.e. not to be shared with foreingers including govts.

brihaspati wrote:Does anyone have the following feelings:

arjunm wrote:
Assange may surrender to British police

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101206/ap_ ... /wikileaks

ramana wrote:The cable is marked "no forn" i.e. not to be shared with foreingers including govts.

So no question of Delhi having sat on it.
To me this new name is interesting. So L-e-T is now getting more and more new people.