Gordon Brown: Pakistan linked to 75% of all UK terror plots

[cem]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5339975.ece?print=yes& randnum=1229265158031

excerpt from Pakistan 'linked to 75% of all UK terror plots', warns Gordon Brown

by Sam Coates and Jeremy Page, Sunday Times, 14 December 2008

[fish5133]

Just watched fahrenheit 911 again and noticed the infamous gas pipeline runs from the coast through Pakistan. Obviously gonna need some permanent US bases along its length to protect it ?

[TonyGosling]

Is that because the Pakistani govenment refused to sign the War On Terror Co-operation agreement yesterday?

This article says it all - the Pakistani political classes and opinion formers are not as stupid as the UK/US/Israeli propaganda based axis of evil would like them to be.

Phone Call Hoax From India to Pakistan Yet Another Mossad Operation?
http://www.daily.pk/pakistan/pakistannews/8504-phone-call-hoax-from-in dia-to-pakistan-yet-another-mossad-operation.html

[TonyGosling]

Now feeling the sharp end of the Axis of Evil's sword after their failure to step up world war three with Iran, Pakistan is producing some of the best news coverage in the world......

Proxy war between India and Pakistan will benefit 'divide and conquer' agenda of the USA and Israel
Monday, 15 December 2008 18:49
The USA has been the chief supporter of Pakistan for the past several decades. During the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, the USA funneled vast amounts of war materiel to Afghanistan through Pakistan, and much of that war material was diverted, with US permission, to Pakistani Terrorism against India. The USA actually created Al Qaeda, and Osama bin Laden worked as a CIA asset in Afghanistan and also in Kosovo.
During the past several decades the US government and the CIA have not only turned a blind eye to the Pakistani government's support of Terrorist training and Terrorist attacks against India, but the ongoing financial, training, and logistical support which the USA has provided for Pakistan shows that the USA has been a willing co-conspirator with the Pakistani government's efforts to attack and destabilize India.

Saddam Hussein was hired at the age of nineteen to work as an assassin for the CIA, and after Saddam's bungled assassination attempt against the Iraqi President, Saddam retreated to Cairo, where he was a frequent visitor to the US Embassy, and Saddam remained on the CIA payroll. During the Iran/Iraq War, in which more than a million people died, the USA openly supported Iraq and secretly supported Iran with arms sales as part of the CIA's illegal Iran/Contra operation. 'Divide and Conquer' is the game that the USA played during the Iran/Iraq War, and today the USA continues to play 'Divide and Conquer' with Iraq and Iran...............

http://www.daily.pk/world/asia/8573-proxy-war-between-india-and-pakist an-will-benefit-divide-and-conquer-agenda-of-the-usa-and-israel.html

[cem]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors  /article5341882.ece

We are fighting the same terrorist disease

The President of Afghanistan thanks the British soldiers who are dying for his country

by Hamid Karzai, Times, 15 December 2008


In Afghanistan, and across the Muslim world, we have just celebrated the great Festival of Sacrifice - the Eid al-Adha. We came together with our families to mark an event known also to Jews and Christians: the willingness of Abraham (or Ibrahim, as we call him) to sacrifice his son in obedience to God.

But God intervened, and provided a lamb instead for the sacrifice. Which is why hundreds of millions of Muslims will have feasted this week on lamb - or whatever they can afford - to mark Abraham's acceptance of the will of God. And among them, in and around the holy city of Mecca, will have been millions - including tens of thousands of Afghans and Britons - who have completed the rigours of the great haj pilgrimage.

On Saturday I welcomed Gordon Brown to Kabul, for the third time since he became Prime Minister. A couple of weeks earlier I saw, here in Kabul, your Foreign Secretary, David Miliband. And a month ago I was in London for talks with British ministers, and as a proud guest at my dear friend Prince Charles's 60th birthday celebrations. Before that, I had received in Kabul, on the day of her burial here, in a land she loved, the family of Gayle Williams, the dedicated British charity worker tragically murdered here by terrorists.

In all those meetings, I made clear two things. First, and above all, my profound gratitude, and that of my people, for the sacrifice that thousands of British soldiers are making every day, in Helmand and across Afghanistan. Separated from their loved ones, alongside the Afghan Army and police, and allies from 40 other nations, they are fighting, and sometimes dying, for the sake of my long-suffering country. No words can express how truly grateful we Afghans are for that.

My second point was more subtle: that, for all the tensions of our present travails, the ties that bind our two countries are stronger and deeper than anything that separates us. As I have so often told my British friends, I, like so many Afghans, educated in Afghanistan, or abroad, grew up on British culture. Your knowledge of my country, and of this continent, of its history and geography, both physical and human, is more profound, and more sensitive, than that of any other nation.

Which is why I ask for your continuing understanding and support as my country struggles to treat a disease that has infected not just our Afghan lands but also, as we have seen from the attacks in Mumbai and on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, much of the region too: violence fed by uncompromising religious extremism. An extremism which profanes the religion that I share with two million British Muslims. We all need to remember always that the main reason why your brave troops are fighting here, alongside ours, is because that violence also threatens you in the West.

In Afghanistan we have endured 30 years of war. Some two million of my compatriots have been killed. Millions more have been maimed. Seven millions fled this land. But since 2001 five million refugees have returned. Schools have reopened.

After the long tyranny of the Taleban, our girls have been able to return to education, and, if they so choose, to work. For the first time, more than eight out of ten of my people have basic healthcare. And we have a vibrant democracy, and a vigorous free press.

All of that is thanks to your efforts, and those of our American and other partners, who have done so much to help us over the seven years since we gathered in Bonn after the fall of the Taleban. And all of it would be put in jeopardy without your continuing support. Not only that, but the disease of violent religious extremism that we are together trying to treat would spread and worsen.

As the struggle goes forward, you will see us assuming more and more of the burden. Already our army, trained and equipped by its American and British friends, is leading more than half the military operations against the terrorists. With my new Interior Minister, we are working hard with you to improve our police. Thanks to your generosity, and our imagination, we are together developing innovative ways of quelling the violence. You will see us taking more of a lead too in fighting the poverty and the propaganda on which the unrest feeds.

So, as you gather with your families this Christmas, and remember your countrymen's continuing sacrifice in my faraway land, I send you from the bottom of my heart the thanks of all Afghans everywhere. And, as you enjoy your Christmas dinner, I ask you to remember too the poor people of my country. While they give thanks for your sacrifice, so they sustain their own sacrifices in the fight against deprivation and ignorance, and against the cruel violence that feeds on both.

In the interval between the festival of sacrifice and the festival of Christ's birth let us renew our pledge to our common struggle.

[cem]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/3778462/The-Br itons-with-us-in-their-sights.html

The Britons with us in their sights

British-born terrorists are returning to the UK after learning deadly skills in the world’s most dangerous country.

by Con Coughlin, Daily Telegraph, 16 December 2008


Every month, thousands of young British Muslims travel to Pakistan on holiday to visit family and friends. For most it is an opportunity to celebrate important religious festivals, such as the Eid feast that marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan, or simply to spend time in the country of their own or their family's origin.

But in a small number of cases their reasons for leaving their adopted country are more sinister. Despite the efforts of British and Pakistani security officials monitoring the movements of the estimated 400,000 "Brit-Paks" (British passport holders of Pakistani descent) travelling between the two countries, some simply disappear the moment they arrive. Months later, and trained as terrorists, they slip back into the crowds of innocent fellow-Muslims at the airport and board a return flight to Britain.

It is a two-way traffic between Britain and Pakistan which proved deadly on 7/7 and becomes ever more worrying with growing instability in a nuclear-armed state which is earning a reputation as the world's most dangerous country.

The Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, revealed at the weekend that, at any given time, our security forces are having to contend with at least 20 active terror plots that originate from Pakistan, mainly involving small groups of "Brit-Paks" who have been radicalised and trained in Pakistan and managed to return undetected to Britain.

It worries the Americans, who ask why they should continue allowing a visa-waiver programme with Britain when it is possible for an Islamist terrorist with a UK passport to be in a terrorist camp in Pakistan one week, a British town the next and on a plane to the United States only days after that.

Britain, it appears, is still producing teenagers who have been through the nation's education system but are so poorly integrated that they despise this country enough to become terrorists dedicated to causing it and its citizens harm.

The route being taken by disaffected young British Muslims is difficult to track precisely, but it is clear that some make their way to one of the thousands of Saudi-funded madrassas specialising in indoctrinating impressionable young minds in the militant brand of Islamic fundamentalism that provides the ideological framework for Islamist terror groups. Others, those who have passed what terrorism experts describe as the first phase of radicalisation, are taken to secret training camps in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), the lawless region straddling the country's porous border with Afghanistan, where the majority of al-Qaeda's training bases are located.

It is there that they are taught how to make home-made bombs that can either be used in suicide attacks or for attacking coalition forces across the border in Afghanistan. They receive basic instruction in self-defence techniques, and how to handle themselves in the event of being captured. When the training is complete the majority return to Britain, ready and primed to carry out the next series of terror plots being conceived by
al-Qaeda's leaders.

But there are some – described by security officials as "hard core" al-Qaeda sympathisers – who travel across the border to Afghanistan to join the "jihad" against British and other coalition forces fighting the Taliban in southern Afghanistan. In a recent interview with The Daily Telegraph, Brigadier Ed Butler, the commander of British forces when they first deployed to southern Afghanistan two-and-a-half-years ago, revealed that British passport holders who live in the UK were being found in Kandahar, one of the main recruitment headquarters of the Taliban's violent insurgency against Nato forces, and that RAF Nimrod spy planes had heard militants speaking in broad Yorkshire and Midlands accents.

Another senior British Army officer who has recently returned from Afghanistan said there was mounting evidence that British Muslims were taking up arms against British soldiers. "They make their way across the border from Pakistan into Afghanistan with one intention – to attack British forces. It's almost as though we are becoming involved in fighting a civil war."

The number of British Muslims joining the "jihad" against coalition forces in southern Afghanistan, though, still remains small. "You are talking double digit figures, rather than large numbers," said a security official. "It is not a significant threat at present, but one that needs to be watched."

The real threat to British security, as the Prime Minister identified, is in Britain. The presence of British-born, fully trained and operational al-Qaeda foot soldiers on the streets of Britain is the main reason the country remains on high alert.

It is also the reason that Britain and its allies in the war against terrorism are becoming increasingly frustrated at the conduct of the Pakistani government, which they believe is not doing enough to eradicate the organisational infrastructure that allows al-Qaeda to remain a potent threat against western security. Iran, Iraq and North Korea may have formed the original "Axis of Evil" after the September 11 attacks, but since then Pakistan has rapidly emerged as the country most closely associated with Islamist terror groups.

It is not only Britain that finds itself in the crosshairs of Pakistan's Islamist militants. The recent terror attacks in Mumbai revealed yet another dimension to the threat posed by Pakistan-based Islamist militants. Most of the terrorists responsible for the attacks were impoverished and impressionable young Punjabis who had been indoctrinated and trained by radical clerics associated with Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the Pakistani-sponsored Islamist group that is campaigning for the Indian-controlled province of Kashmir to be returned to Muslim rule.

In the immediate aftermath of the Mumbai attacks, Pakistan reverted to what has now become its default position when it is suspected of being the source of a major atrocity, with the government of Asif Ali Zardari promising full co-operation with the Indian government to bring the culprits to justice.

But just as Islamabad promised to work closely with Washington after the September 11 attacks, and the British government following the July 7 bombings, the Pakistani government's ability to deliver on its promises is highly questionable, leading to some within the West's security establishment to ask whether the Pakistanis are really serious about rooting out the terrorists.

The reason successive Pakistani governments have struggled to mount an effective campaign against Islamist terror cells is the country's all-pervasive Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), which created most of the terror groups in the first place. Al-Qaeda was the product of the ISI's support for Islamist radicals fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, while LeT was created by ISI to pressure Delhi into relinquishing control of Kashmir. Although the Pakistani government has outlawed both groups, and has launched a number of military campaigns against the lawless FATA region, the view of the West's security establishment is that the clampdown has been half-hearted, and that no political will exists in Islamabad to tackle the problem.

Even Islamabad's crackdown on LeT's activities following the Mumbai attacks, with several prominent clerics being detained and suspected training camps closed down, has raised questions about Islamabad's commitment to curtailing the group's activities, with many Western officials asking whether the Pakistanis are merely making token gestures to placate India.

In the past, Pakistan has escaped censure by the West because, for all its faults, it is regarded as a crucial ally in the campaign to eradicate the menace of Islamist terrorism.

But unless the Pakistani authorities start taking effective measures to tackle the monster they have allowed to develop within their midst that will change. The leaders of the world's most dangerous country are rapidly reaching the point at which they will run out of excuses.

[Disco_Destroyer]