Pakistan's intelligence ready to split with CIA

[foxhound]

Salaam......

ref:

ISI redefining terms of engagement with CIA
By Baqir Sajjad Syed | From the Newspaper
(11 hours ago) Today
CIA director Leon Panetta. — Photo by AP

ISLAMABAD: Incensed over the `shock revelation` about growing network of CIA spies in Pakistan, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is trying to redefine its terms of engagement with the American spy agency before any settlement of the row over immunity for Raymond Davis, the jailed US operative.

In an indication that Pakistan and the US were actively considering a review of parameters of their cooperation, the chief of the Office of (US) Defence Representative in Pakistan, Vice Admiral Michael LeFever for the first time attended monthly White House meeting recently through video teleconferencing.

The meeting reportedly discussed various options on the table for getting out of the stalemate, which has serious implications for the bilateral strategic relationship.

LeFever`s first appearance at the monthly White House meeting indicated that the Davis issue was now being handled mainly by the two militaries, even though American officials emphasise that it was strictly an issue for State Department to handle.

In Pakistan`s context, they broadly use the term `Government of Pakistan` while some others say `political reality is there` _ an indication that the Army was their main interlocutor.

US Ambassador Cameron Munter and LeFever have both been intensely involved in dealing with the diplomatic crisis after Davis`s arrest.

The Lahore High Court will resume its proceedings on March 14 for deciding the issue of immunity for Davis, where the government is expected to testify on his diplomatic status. But, sources suggest, the hearing will be preceded by a lot of `give and take` between the two sides and negotiations to that effect were already under way.

American sources also confirmed that communication was taking place at different levels to sort out different contentious issues, which although simmering for quite some time, have gained urgency following the Davis saga.

According to an official privy to the ongoing negotiations, the Davis issue, although still primary for the US, has been overtaken by other matters pertaining to working of the CIA in Pakistan, the operational freedom it (CIA) had been enjoying and more specifically its ties with the ISI. Davis`s fate, a source said, hinged to a large extent on the outcome of this CIA-ISI dialogue.

The ISI believes that it had been betrayed by the CIA. Although their complex relationship was always marred by mutual distrust, the ISI officials this time look particularly perturbed over the CIA reportedly developing its own network of undeclared spies and disregarding their institution and sacrifices of their colleagues – 300 of whom have been killed during the war on terror.
“There have been seven or eight major attacks on the ISI, whereas there has been only one on a CIA post in Khost,” an official said while comparing the brunt borne by the two spy outfits.

One of Pakistan`s demands at the talks between military and intelligence officials is a categorical assurance from the American spy agency for ending its undeclared activities and being transparent in its dealings with the ISI.

There were unconfirmed claims that the CIA in its bid to pacify the situation, which is deteriorating fast, has already started withdrawing into shell by removing some of its men from Pakistan and cutting certain questionable activities.
A senior military commander, speaking on background, however, said it was premature for him to say whether or not there was some forward movement.

Even as Pakistani officials claim that they were caught unawares about the CIA developing its network of spies and mounting undeclared operations, the Americans insist that Pakistanis were fully aware of the activities now being questioned.
Davis, revelation of whose CIA affiliation apparently caused the furore in Pakistani intelligence quarters, was declared by the US embassy as affiliated with Regional Affairs Office (RAO) in the registration request with the Foreign Office filed last year. The fact that the RAO is widely known to be linked to the CIA, therefore, raises questions as to why Pakistani security agencies couldn`t know who he was before the January 27 shooting incident in Lahore.

The lingering dispute, which has turned uglier with the public spat between the intelligence agencies of both countries, has started affecting their counter-terror cooperation.

A Pakistani general said the row had definitely impacted the Pak-US military-to-military relationship, because the ISI was a services intelligence agency and an extension of military. But, the brighter side, he maintained was that both sides continued to engage each other for resolving their disputes.

A senior American official seconded his view saying: “we are walking with the pebble in the shoe”.
Other sources, while trying to give an impression that military ties remained unhurt, pointed towards recent disbursement of $633 million in the Coalition Support Fund to Pakistan and delivery of long demanded night vision goggles. “We are now working on CSF disbursements for third and fourth quarter of 2010,” a source added.
While much of the media focus has been on the CIA and ISI washing their linen in public, sources say, disclosure about growing CIA network in Pakistan has further frayed civil-military ties in the country.

Military and officials are now questioning the grant of visas to some 450 Americans without any scrutiny allowing CIA spies to enter the country in great numbers.

At the same time, the ISI has also done a bit of soul-searching to find how they lost track of the CIA spies. This was followed by an internal reshuffle to express displeasure of the top brass, if not as part of fixing responsibility on the changed officials.

 

[ashok321]

David Ignatius - U.S., Pakistan could use a Muslim ritual to resolve Raymond Davis case

US to take Sharia short cut!!!

 

[masijames]

YouTube - Listening Post - The shootout, the US agent and the media

 

[foxhound]

ref:Unannounced settlement likely between Pak-US spy agencies

Unannounced settlement likely between Pak-US spy agencies
Updated at 1345 PST Monday, March 07, 2011

Amir Mir
LAHORE: With the CIA rapidly expanding its covert operations in Pakistan and the ISI in no mood to surrender its dominant presence in the region, the arrest of an undercover CIA agent Raymond Davis has pushed the two spy agencies into an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation, compelling both to review parameters of their cooperation.

One does not have to be a Sherlock Holmes fan to understand that the world of espionage and counter-espionage has rules of its own, with the most fundamental ones being: you don’t get caught, and you don’t get caught committing murders. These rules are even more critical if you happen to be an American spy working in Pakistan, a country already seething with anti-US sentiments. Raymond, who faces a double murder charge in Pakistan for killing two youngsters in Lahore on January 27, broke both these rules and eventually landed in jail to face a court trial, with the Americans scrambling to get him out.

The US, however, has a tough job in saving him, for his arrest has acquired dimensions that the ex-Army Special Forces soldier may not have dreamt of when he whipped out his Glock pistol and fired at two suspect-looking young men on a motorbike. For what Raymond’s arrest has achieved is to blow the lid off the scale and intensity of covert CIA operations on Pakistani soil — much of it without the knowledge or consent of the Pakistani intelligence establishment, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). This is also at the heart of the turf war between the CIA and ISI. Indeed, Raymond’s current predicament exemplifies this conflict.

Officials of the Obama administration have already tried both threats and persuasion to get Pakistan to release Raymond who, they claim, is a member of the American diplomatic mission, and hence immune from criminal prosecution under the Vienna Convention. But Pakistan’s refusal to accede to the American demand of granting diplomatic immunity to an undercover CIA agent has already led to a diplomatic row. Although, Raymond says he had killed both the boys in self-defence as they tried to rob him, some unconfirmed media reports say the victims were ISI operatives who had been tracking him. These reports were, however, vehemently rejected by the relevant quarters as baseless.

Even as the Raymond Davis fiasco raged, another suspected American was caught in Peshawar — Aaron Mark De Haven, who was arrested under Foreigners’ Act from Peshawar’s University Town. Aaron comes from Virginia and has been associated with a private firm called Catalyst Services, which rents buildings for US citizens in the area. The arrest of American nationals from Lahore and Peshawar point to the scale of American spy network in Pakistan, amidst media reports that thousands of ‘Raymonds’ live in posh localities of the four provincial capitals of Pakistan and the federal capital.

According to diplomatic sources in Islamabad, the number of American security contractors working for the US military and CIA in the region has exceeded the total strength of the US troops and CIA personnel. Furthermore, the presence of over 80,000 US military and intelligence contractors in Afghanistan and Pakistan has taken the privatisation of the war to an unprecedented level. There have been reports that Blackwater Worldwide, the private security firm (now called Xe Services), has been working with US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) on American Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) in various parts of Pakistan, including Karachi, on sensitive operations such as ‘snatch-and-grabs’ of high-value targets inside and outside Pakistan.

As the American stakes became higher in Pakistan than in Afghanistan or Iraq, the strength of the US Mission in Islamabad also swelled from around 300 to about 1,000, including a good number of CIA personnel, but without any formal agreement between the two governments.

The Davis issue comes in the wake of a major setback in the Pak-US ties when in November 2010, a US federal court issued a summons to the current head of the ISI, Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha, as well as to a number of senior office-bearers of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) for their alleged involvement in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. This episode deeply upset the Pakistani military establishment, which was of the view that the spy chief of a friendly country should not have been treated like this.

On December 16, 2010, almost a month after the November 19, 2010 issuance of the summons for the ISI chief and others, the Islamabad Police moved to register a murder case against the CIA station chief in Pakistan, Jonathan Banks, who was supervising the US drone campaign. The complainant was Kareem Khan, a resident of North Waziristan, who claimed his son and brother were killed in a drone attack on December 31, 2009. Jonathan Banks was charged with providing operational guidance for the drone strike. The Obama administration immediately withdrew Jonathan from Islamabad, citing security threats.

The US media then suspected ISI’s involvement in blowing the CIA station chief’s cover at a time Washington was pushing Islamabad to support the renewed American efforts to target al-Qaeda and Taliban militants on Pak-Afghan border.

The American agencies believe these militant groups, many of which are being backed by the ISI, are linked to anti-US elements, especially al-Qaeda and Taliban, which are quite active on either side of the Pak-Afghan border despite a decade-long American crusade against them.

The United States, therefore, wanted a bigger presence in Pakistan to pursue its strategic interests in the region, especially when an exit strategy for Afghanistan is already being chalked out. But as expected, the American reinforcement plans for Pakistan created ripples in the Khaki circles due to apprehensions that more and more US military and intelligence personnel would be brought to Pakistan under the cover of diplomatic assignments for covert operations. And just as the Americans were trying to allay the fears of the Pakistani establishment, Raymond Davis killed two youngsters in Lahore. But worse was to follow when the American media disclosed that he was in fact part of a covert intelligence network involving hundreds of contract spies, operating in Pakistan without the knowledge of the ISI.

Therefore, the Pakistani establishment is in no mood to free Raymond and apparently wants to use him as a bargaining chip to get the withdrawal of the civil lawsuit against the ISI chief. Well-informed diplomatic circles in Islamabad don’t rule out the likelihood of an unannounced settlement between the two spy agencies on both the cases — Raymond and Pasha — as they fully realise that the current stalemate is seriously affecting their counter terrorism cooperation against the common enemy i.e. al-Qaeda and Taliban.

 

[RazorMC]

David Ignatius - U.S., Pakistan could use a Muslim ritual to resolve Raymond Davis case

US to take Sharia short cut!!!

I am not sure but I think that the victim's family has the right whether to accept the blood-money or not or to choose death for the killer.

 

[RazorMC]

ref:Unannounced settlement likely between Pak-US spy agencies
On December 16, 2010, almost a month after the November 19, 2010 issuance of the summons for the ISI chief and others, the Islamabad Police moved to register a murder case against the CIA station chief in Pakistan, Jonathan Banks, who was supervising the US drone campaign. The complainant was Kareem Khan, a resident of North Waziristan, who claimed his son and brother were killed in a drone attack on December 31, 2009. Jonathan Banks was charged with providing operational guidance for the drone strike. The Obama administration immediately withdrew Jonathan from Islamabad, citing security threats.

So the article suggests that this is all revenge or something.

By the way, why isn't US so active in pursuing the Samjhota Express case?