Threat analysis and Situation report

By Syed Zaid Zaman Hamid

BrassTacks Threat analysis and Situation report which the treacherous media, idiotic politicians and the naive judiciary will NOT tell you:
Whatever we wrote in the last few weeks is rapidly being unfolded on all threat axis for Pakistan.

The US is now well and truly aggressive to provoke more wars within Pakistan and to force the Pak army to into a head-on collision with the tribes in North Waziristan and against Afghan resistance. The panic has already started to set in the tribes who are pondering over mass migration and exodus from the region, even towards Afghanistan where these Pakistani tribals would be easy prey for NATO and Indian military psy-ops operators to ignite their anger into rage against Pakistan and Pak army.
On the other hand, NATO is literally raining missiles in North Waziristan against pro-Pakistan tribals and against Afghan resistance.

The Drone warfare is now creating a major crisis for Pakistan army as the military leadership is coming under severe pressure and criticism from the nation over their failure to stop this blatant abuse of national dignity and slaughter of innocent citizens.

“The strategy deployed by NATO/CIA/RAW is:

1. To attack and destroy Pakistan’s surveillance and early warning systems of the Navy, PAF and army to incapacitate their military capability to forewarn of any invasion on the country.

2. The second axis is to ignite the sectarian wars in Pakistan, just as in Syria and Lebanon. Dozens of Shias are being assassinated in macabre style killings all across the country. Not just that it would ignite the local sectarian wars, it would also destroy Pakistan’s relations with Iran.

3. Massive attacks on Pakistan army continue in FATA, tribal areas and in Baluchistan to keep the army bogged down in internal high intensity wars and to bleed the military’s resources to weaken it substantially so that it is not able to resist the external invasion.

4. NATO is also testing the waters and challenging the Pakistan’s defenses on the Western theatre. After the attack on Salala check post last year, NATO had stopped coming close to the Pakistan border. But now, they are aggressively intruding closer and even attacking close to the Pakistan border.

5. NATO/CIA drone strikes have become more frequent, lethal and destructive. The objective is to ignite the tribes into open rebellion against Pakistan army for being “collaborators” of the US which is killing women and children of the Pakistani tribals as massive “collateral damage”.

6. In Baluchistan, security forces are being targeted in a renewed and bloody campaign led by both TTP and the BLA. The sudden upsurge in violence and its vicious intensity is coordinated with the other axis of violence in the country. In addition to the attacks on the forces, trains, buses and energy infrastructure is also being attacked to cripple the provincial administration and critical services.

7. Chinese assets, interests and personnel in Pakistan are being targeted to disrupt the strategic relationship between Pakistan and China.

8. The panic and chaos which this urban war has created is now breaking the back of national economy and morale, throwing the entire country into fits of panic and chaos. The desperate measures being adopted by the PPP regime are only adding to the meltdown and panic.

9. Pressure is also being increased on Pakistan to declare war on the Afghan resistance and against friendly own tribes in North Waziristan. The US strategy is to deploy Pakistan to do the fighting for the NATO. As the violence touches the red hot levels in the country and the army is already over stretched, US is forcing the army leadership to open new deadlier fronts which would totally destroy not just the army but also any prospects of Pakistan having any strategic assets in the Afghan Pashtuns. The war in North Waziristan would not hurt any TTP assets which may be there as they would simply draw the army in but them melt back into Afghanistan, leaving the army to fight the local tribes and afghan resistance.

10. Massive propaganda, information war and Psy-ops have also been launched by the Indians as well as the CIA to prove that Pakistan’s nuclear assets are unsafe, the country is in a meltdown and that Pakistan is involved in spreading violence and terrorism in the neighboring countries especially against US forces in Afghanistan and India.

The war against Pakistan is now crystal clear. It has reached the last stages of deployment while the Pakistan army is well and truly surrounded but still not responding on the entire axis. Every day lost in removing this regime will be paid in massive bloodshed and destruction of the state, society and the army.

Within the government, the anarchy reigns supreme. The government and the judiciary at war with each other oblivious of the grave existential threats the nation faces. Army has remained a silent spectator of this political and judicial war and this has indeed brought the country to the brink of annihilation. Pakistan army is the last hope in this total and complete anarchy and chaos. 

While the Pakistan army is indeed aware of the fatal encirclement of the state and the army, it is still reluctant to decisively intervene into the political chaos to salvage the country. The military leadership is still deliberating the crisis and has not made up their mind. In the next few weeks, they may not have the luxury of controlling the dynamics of the events, even if they want to then. Today, they can. After just a few weeks, the events would become out of control and then events would decide the destiny of the nation and the fate of its leaders. 

Saddam, Qaddafi, Mubarak and now Bashar ul Asad also thought that they have infinite amount of time at their disposal. For Pakistani leaders the moment of truth just seems around the corner now.

Pakistan army is only fighting back at the military axis but have no response strategy for political chaos, economic meltdown, media war and ongoing social chaos. On the military axis, they have achieved some major success in recent days.
The following news report about the assassination of a major TTP leader in Afghanistan is a clear indication that TTP is well and truly protected in Afghanistan and their wounded are being treated in Afghan military hospitals. The news report that he has been killed in a Drone strike is non-sense as CIA does not do drones in Kunar. The militant has been eliminated by a Pak army strike after he was returning to Afghanistan from an attack inside Pakistan.

The encirclement of Pakistan is rapid and total. Now the UN is planning to send in a mission to Baluchistan to observe HR violations. Baluchistan is the prized target of the US policy towards Pakistan to cut a strategic corridor to Afghanistan bypassing the mainland. In the past also, US has been taking great interest in the internal chaos of Baluchistan to use it as a pretext to intervene. The anarchy in Baluchistan is not total also with hundreds of training camps and terrorist bases operating from Afghanistan.

Within Pakistan, the political chaos is at its peak. 27th August would be another day of infamy in Pakistan’s history as the battles between the Supreme Court and the Government threatens to bring down the state itself.

Pakistan is not too far from becoming another “Syria”. The global media war, regional encirclement, UN intervention, support to insurgencies in FATA and Baluchistan, urban war through political terrorist gangs in Karachi, psychological warfare through the paid media and direct interference into Pakistan’s social and religious circles through US AID is now tightening the grip of US and India on Pakistan’s entire social, political, economic and military fabric.

The following picture is from Syria but it may pass as from being Pakistan also. This is what happens when armies are forced to fight urban high intensity wars within own cities. This is the 4thGW, where fighting lines are not on the borders but in the major cities and towns. The soldiers are not uniformed opponents from regular armies but rag tag urban insurgents backed by regional powers. You DO NOT fight a war within your own cities or else get what the Syrians are getting now and Iraqis and Libyans tasted before them.

 This is what is planned for Pakistan now but the leadership and the judiciary is stone dead, deaf, dumb, blind and even collaborative to the collapse. I only wonder how the history would judge this nation which saw it coming but decided to fiddle only ??

Now even if Pak Army intervenes, the cost of recovering the nation from this anarchic state would be staggering. If the army still does not intervene, then it will be all over within the next 4 months.

Khair inshAllah. Pakistan Zindabaad.

Terrorism is certainly not a Muslim monopoly

‘by SWAMINATHAN S ANKLESARIA AIYAR

''All Muslims may not be terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims..'' This comment, frequently heard after the Mumbai bomb blasts implies that terrorism is a Muslim specialty, if not a monopoly. The facts are very different.
First, there is nothing new about terrorism. In 1881, anarchists killed the Russian Tsar Alexander II and 21 bystanders. In 1901, anarchists killed US President McKinley as well as King Humbert I of Italy . World War I started in 1914 when anarchists killed Archduke Ferdinand of Austria . These terrorist attacks were not Muslim.
Terrorism is generally defined as the killing of civilians for political reasons. Going by this definition, the British Raj referred to Bhagat Singh, Chandrasekhar Azad and many other Indian freedom fighters as terrorists. These were Hindu and Sikh rather than Muslim.
Guerrilla fighters from Mao Zedong to Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro killed civilians during their revolutionary campaigns. They too were called terrorists until they triumphed. Nothing Muslim about them
In Palestine , after World War II, Jewish groups (the Haganah, Irgun and Stern Gang) fought for the creation of a Jewish state, bombing hotels and installations and killing civilians. The British, who then governed Palestine , rightly called these Jewish groups terrorists. Many of these terrorists later became leaders of independent Israel - Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin, Ariel Sharon. Ironically, these former terrorists then lambasted terrorism, applying this label only to Arabs fighting for the very same nationhood that the Jews had fought for earlier.

In Germany in 1968-92, the Baader-Meinhoff Gang killed dozens, including the head of Treuhand, the German privatization agency. In Italy , the Red Brigades kidnapped and killed Aldo Moro, former prime minister.
The Japanese Red Army was an Asian version of this. Japan was also the home of Aum Shinrikyo, a Buddhist cult that tried to kill thousands in the Tokyo metro system using nerve gas in 1995.
In Europe , the Irish Republican Army has been a Catholic terrorist organization for almost a century. Spain and France face a terrorist challenge from ETA, the Basque terrorist organization.

Africa is ravaged by so much civil war and internal strife that few people even bother to check which groups can be labeled terrorist. They stretch across the continent. Possibly the most notorious is the
Lord's Salvation Army in Uganda , a Christian outfit that uses children as warriors. While the West amplifies the plight Muslim Darfour region in the Sudan , the Western media has rellatively ignored this Christian sponsored conflict next door in Uganda and the Eastern Congo that has done horrendous crimes against women and children.

Tamil Tigers have long constituted one of the most vicious and formidable terrorist groups in the world. They were the first to train children as terrorists. They happen to be Hindus. Suicide bombing is widely associated with Muslim Palestinians and Iraqis, but the Tamil Tigers were the first to use this tactic on a large scale and surprisingly more suicide bombings have been associated with Tiger (400+ in 2003-2007) than all bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. One such suicide bomber assassinated Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.

In India , the militants in Kashmir are Muslim. But they are only one of several militant groups. The Punjab militants, led by Bhindranwale, were Sikhs. The United Liberation Front of Assam is a Hindu terrorist group that targets Muslims rather than the other way round. Tripura has witnessed the rise and fall of several terrorist groups, and so have Bodo strongholds in Assam . Christian Mizos mounted an insurrection for decades, and Christian Nagas are still heading militant groups.

But most important of all are the Maoist terrorist groups that now exist in no less than 150 out of India 's 600 districts. They have attacked police stations, and killed and razed entire villages that oppose them. These are secular terrorists (like the Baader Meinhof Gang or Red Brigades). In terms of membership and area controlled, secular terrorists are far ahead of Muslim terrorists.

In sum, terrorism is certainly not a Muslim monopoly. There are or have been terrorist groups among Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, and even Buddhists. Secular terrorists (anarchists, Maoists) have been the biggest killers in India .
Why then is there such a widespread impression that most or all terrorist groups are Muslim? I see two reasons. First, the Indian elite keenly and blindly follows the western media (they are the Brown British of the British Raj today, used to eating Roti and Roast Beef and BigMacs), and the West feels under attack from Islamic groups.
Catholic Irish terrorists have killed far more people in Britain than Muslims, yet the subway bombings in London and Madrid are what Europeans remember today. The Baader Meinhof Gang, IRA and Red Brigades no longer pose much of a threat, but after 9/11 Americans and Europeans fear that they could be hit anywhere anytime. So they focus attention on Islamic militancy. They pay little notice to other forms of terrorism in Africa, Sri Lanka or India : these pose no threat to the West.
Within India , Maoists pose a far greater threat than Muslim militants in 150 districts, one-third of India 's area. But major cities feel threatened only by Muslim groups. So the national elite and media focus overwhelmingly on Muslim terrorism. The elite are hardly aware that this is an elite phenomenon.
The real threat to India today are the Maouist groups who are getting bigger in numbers, exponentially, now being joined also by poor Muslims youth especially in South India.
“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they break your bones, then you win" Mahatma Gandh
Terrorism is not a new phenomenon of the last few decades. It just has acquired a newer flavour.
It was there when man lived in caves, to the Middle Ages, to the classical Egyptian/Greek/Roman empires, to the European colonial era, to communist era, to the Nazis, to apartheid era, and today.
When we talk about terrorism it is not only by a group of individuals but also the states.
Since mankind started to live in communities it found a need to establish law and order in order to provide equity amongst the individuals sharing common resources. When this social order establishes injustices and ignores the inherent rights of others and disenfranchises the weak, then there are always a few who would take the law into their own hands without the consent of the community because the community has been rendered impotent by the greed of the most powerful.
When such disenfranchised groups get organized, both the powerful elite and the group of angry individuals have a showdown.
This is when both the parties lose their moral values of human decency on the pretext that "the end justifies the means" and this is when the innocent civilians get caught in the fight as the so called "co-lateral damage".
This carnage of the civilians in their midst continues until the injustices are addressed by the reasonable and thinking people and communities of the world.
For that reason the root of the post war resurgence in terrorism, whether one likes it or not, started and happens to be the plight of the six million Palestinians (both 15% Christians and 85% Muslims) who have been made homeless and humiliated for the last six decades or more and the unconditional support given to the state of Israel by some of the guilt ridden leadership in Europe, US and in the West, because of Europe's Nazi past.
The fact that these "terrorists" are born in the Muslims homes is incidental because Palestine has evoked natural sympathies from Muslims youth of the world in the beginning but now has evoked the same sympathies (the Gaza Flotilla) from the previously indifferent youth of the West too who were not only brought up in Christian homes but also in the Jewish homes too.
Remember that apartheid South Africa collapsed not only when the disenfranchised poor black communities were marching and protesting on the streets but when the youth of the world started marching with them in their own cities of the world in the seventies and eighties.
Also, more importantly, apartheid regime collapsed because the children of the white parents who supported apartheid in S Africa also started questioning their parents' crimes against humanity such that it not only bankrupted South Africa but also began to tear apart their white family structure too.

ISI: US Special Forces Back Terror Attack on Pakistan’s Kamra Base

ISI: US Special Forces Back Terror Attack on Pakistan’s Kamra Base
Militants who attacked the Minhas Air Base in the aviation city of Kamra had highly-sophisticated equipment and possessed a very tactical standard of guerrilla warfare training which no ordinary Taliban brigade has.
by Zaki Khalid

As the sacred Islamic month of Ramadan was at its peak in Pakistan, the serene city of Kamra near Islamabad (known as the Aviation City for housing a number of aircraft production/maintenance factories) was attacked by a horde of terrorists in the dark hours of the night.
The final overview of the attack made it clear that it was, fortunately, a humiliating failure for the improvised militants whose core objective was to give a series of strategic blows to the Pakistani military, especially the airforce since two very important assets of the country were parked at that base: JF-17 Thunder jets which were jointly manufactured with China and the Saab AWACS tasked with gathering aerial intelligence for the country’s defence establishment.
Had this terror operation proven successful, another major loss for the Pakistan Air Force would have taken place like the one before it when similarly-trained guerrillas managed to destroy Orion surveillance planes at the PNS Mehran base in the port city of Karachi.
However, thanks to the enhanced training for Pakistani Special Forces regiments such as the Special Services Group (SSG) Commandos and the exclusive Special Service Wing (SSW) Commandos of the airforce, a dreadful repeat was averted. Like the previous occurrence, the fingers were immediately raised towards India as the arch-rival.
But as my team presented in its report last year, this assertion is what was planned by the actual layout officials. The assortment of sophisticated hi-tech equipment, ammunition and training which the terrorists had was found to be too advanced for what the Indian intelligence RAW is capable of.
As always, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades were found along with suicide jackets. This time, there was a new addition: For the attack on PNS Mehran in Karachi, the militants then had static preset coordinates set for the operation and communicated just via satellite phones; but during the recent attack on Kamra, the terrorists besides these had real-time GPS enabled touchpads fixed on their bodies, two BlackBerry smartphones (exact quantity could not be confirmed from secondary source), infrared devices, daggers inside pockets and more items which were not disclosed by sources for various reasons.
As always, the planners always forget to leave their marks (mostly by accident), and this time the mark they left was that the GPS devices were of a make used only by US troops. They might not have had the intention to let the devices come in Pakistani hands since the recruits were strapped with suicide vests to blow themselves off after the stunt, but the vest-strapped attackers were all gunned down by sniper shots where only one blew himself up beforehand. This helped forensic experts from the ISI and MI gather evidence which remained intact. Using BlackBerry phones was a smart option because of its highly secure encrypted communication logs.
In an ominous backdrop, just a day before the attack, Leon Panetta held a press conference at the Pentagon in which he said:
“The great danger we’ve always feared is that if terrorism is not controlled in their country (Pakistan), then those nuclear weapons could fall into the wrong hands”
I am not saying that the attack was planned right after that overnight. Surely such pinpoint operations take months of regular practice before the recruits are sent on their mission by being told that they are ‘doing a great service to Islam‘.
The attacks are executed on symbolic occasions: that night was the most holiest night of Ramadan in the country and the Independence Day (August 14) had just passed. Pakistani security officials have maintained that almost all militants who come from Afghanistan are jointly trained by the Afghan NDS and Indian RAW or directly by the US, in this case the latter was found involved knee-deep.
“It is very easy to assess that the attackers were backed by a group more technologically advanced since the Afghan intelligence has considerably zero TECHINT capability and neither did our ground sources find any archived leads which showed that the Indian RAW had links to this particular misadventure,” said an official on condition of anonymity. “Almost all the militants were traced to the Khost area of Afghanistan. Leads from that region suggest that majority of the attackers comprised of recruits from various Kandaks (battalions) of the Afghan National Army Commando Brigade working under the directorate of the US Special Operations forces had been trained for incursion into Pakistan. They were deployed to the mainland of the country for a grand operation and had local assistance by Pakistani militia also”.
The Minhas Air Base has a false notion attributed to it. Miscreant journalists tasked with writing propaganda such as Declan Walsh of Guardian fame (now in the New York Times) wrote an article on the attack with the crispy headline ‘Pakistani Air Force base with nuclear ties is attacked‘.
Just where the heck did he come out with the supposed relation is beyond many; since my primary subject of discourse is intelligence affairs, I happen to be a regular reader of the DEBKAFile website which has close ties to the Israeli intelligence. The site had written a report titled ‘Two Pakistani N-bombs available to Saudi Arabia‘. An excerpt from the article reads:
‘Saudi Arabia has jumped ahead of Iran by obtaining the use of two Pakistani nuclear bombs or guided missile warheads. debkafile’s Gulf sources believe the weapons are ready for delivery upon royal summons in Pakistan’s nuclear air base at Kamra in the northern district of Attock. Already delivered is a quantity of Pakistan’s Ghauri-II missile with an extended range of 2,300 kilometers. They are tucked away in silos in the underground city of Al-Sulaiyil, south of the capital Riyadh’
Pakistan indeed has nuclear cooperation with Saudi Arabia but the details aforementioned are quite distorted and far from reality. This is a separate topic for discussion and might be highlighted later someday. What is to be noted above is that it is DEBKAFile which is the first known news source to allege Kamra as a nuclear base whereas it is not factually true.
The Minhas Air Base was never used for emergency nuclear assembly neither is Pakistan’s National Command Authority so unprofessional that it will store disassembled warheads on a base which is in a region infested with growing threats from the CIA-sponsored Punjabi Taliban. For the part, this proves Mr. Walsh’s research is either absolutely faulty or it was purposely added for nefarious reasons known better to himself.
It has long been an American strategy to push for an Indo-Pakistan war. Admiral Mullen was the first to push for one, and so was McRaven, who is now at SOCOM. His successor Lt Gen Joseph Votel is proving to be even more of an enthusiastic officer. What is clear though is that whichever special operations team was involved, SOCOM or JSOC, the quality of intelligence which the attackers had was courtesy of the notorious CIA.
To be honest, the US gains nothing by destroying the Saabs and JF-17s under Pakistan’s possession. All this was meant, as I have been consistently saying, to provoke Pakistan into triggering a regional war. India could surely have garnered strategic leverage but it could not afford a misadventure into Pakistan of this magnitude. India’s RAW in association with the CIA already has its hands full providing for the TTP militancy in northern and central Pakistan.
I personally think that the American Task Force 373 (TF373) could be behind this attack keeping in light its bloody past and bases in Khost and Kunar from where major terrorism comes into Pakistan. However, it might not be so since the TF373 act as more of standalone contractors rather than trainers and the level of training imparted to the terrorist Afghan Commandos was very high which can lead one to safely suggest that such specified exercise could only be the handiwork of the elite US Special Operations forces scattered across Afghanistan.
But then why did the TTP accept responsibility for the attack?
“Routine PR,” says the official. “Tomorrow a false-flag happens in Europe or the US, they will be told to come out again and ‘accept responsibility’. Its all about repeatedly stressing that Waziristan is the supposed epicentre of global terror.
The Kamra attack is a notable addition to this demand. They are challenging the Pakistan Army to come to North Waziristan and believe me, the military leadership including General Kayani do not want to go there”.
“Has the military expressed its concerns with the government?” I asked.
“Yes it has. But to no avail”, came the reply.

Conclusion

I would like to reiterate what I briefed in my interview to Press TV not long ago. It provides a comprehensive summary of why the US is constantly provoking Pakistan’s military establishment and what adverse effects it could have for the entire world. Please spare out some minutes to listen to my statement:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS9--J174A4&feature=player_embedded
Zaki Khalid is the Director and Chief Editor of www.terminalx.org, Pakistan's most authoritative portal on Defence, Intelligence and Geopolitics.
Source of article