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| India-Pakistan |
| Pakistani Spymasters Protect bin Laden |
| 2003-03-14 |
| I don't think much of the source, but this article seems to carry some pretty good info about the Pak Generals, who surely have to rank among the Learned Elders of Islam A deadly combine of influential retired chiefs of Pakistan's premier spy service, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), and multimillionaire transnational gold-and-drug smugglers whose operations span the gold-glittering free ports of Dubai and Singapore appear to be shielding Osama bin Laden from the hands of U.S. justice, amid reports that U.S. forces are zeroing in on the dreaded jihadist. The Washington Insititute in a recent report by senior fellow Matthew Levitt said "In the past, according to one account, al-Qaeda raised as much as 35 percent of its operating funds from the drug trade." Just like the Taliban and the Chechen Mujahideen, it's hard to know where the criminal ends and the terrorist begins. Top U.S. journalist, Daniel Pearl of the Wall Street Journal, was killed last year trying to unravel the al Qaeda and its links with a transnational smuggling ring, while two well-known Pakistani journalist who assisted Pearl and in their separate ways bared different aspects of this deadly combine were hounded by the ISI. Bin Laden's top sponsors — the spymasters — are former army generals, who headed the ISI, and who established close links with bin Laden. They are namely General Mehmud Ahmed and his even more notorious predecessor General Hamid Gul, while the drug-cum-gold smuggling ring includes formerly Dubai-based mafia don Dawood Ibrahim, the man wanted for the bomb blasts in the Indian city of Bombay that left 300 dead in 1993. Ibrahim, whose gold-and-drug smuggling operations span from Dubai in the Mideast to Singapore in the Far East is said to be leading a princely life-in-exile in Pakistan, since his ouster from Dubai in 1995. However, Musharraf has publicly, repeatedly denied his presence in Pakistan. Ibrahim is the don of a mafi known as 'D-Company', that split along religous lines following the anti-Muslim riots in India after the tearing down of the Babri mosque a decade ago. The Muslim members of the gang (who made up the majority of it's membership) got in touch with the ISI who helpfully gave some of the gangsters bomb making training and sent them back to Mumbai where there handiwork would kill 300 people, in order to teach the Hindus a 'lesson'. Dawood and the rest of the top gangsters fled to Pakistan and Dubai with new Pakistani passports occassionally used for wet works by the ISI General Mehmud Ahmed, was the main architect of the October 1999 coup that catapulted Musharraf into power. At that time he was the corps commander of Rawalpindi, considered one of the most powerful posts within the army hierarchy since Rawalpindi is closest to capital Islamabad and the soldiers there are in the vanguard of any army coup. It is often overlooked that Musharaff didn't actually mount the coup that brought him to power, he was flying over Karachi at the time, but Islamist Generals, angry at the Pakistani PM forcing them to pull their troops from India's Kargil region under US pressure, kicked out the politician and chose the non-Islamist Musharaff as someone who would be more acceptable to America than any of them. General Ahmed was later promoted to become the chief of the Inter Services Intelligence and incredibly was in the U.S. on September 11, 2001. He went to Afghanistan at the head of a team to ostensibly persuade the then Taliba'an leader Mullah Omar to hand over Osama bin Laden to the U.S. President Bush had initially set a deadline for the Taliban regime to surrender bin Laden. However, members of Ahmed's team that included Pakistan's top clergy instead of persuading Mullah Omar to listen to the U.S. demand, assured him full support in his war against America. With U.S. backing, Musharraf sacked General Ahmed. Still nearly half dozen attacks on Musharraf's life suggests Ahmed may be enjoying more clout than Musharraf in the rank-and-file soldiers as he belongs to the army's stronghold of Punjab, Pakistan's most populous province. On the contrary, Musharraf was born in India and is looked down upon in the army's old boys network. Ahmed almost openly rebelled against Musharraf for joining the U.S. coalition in the war on terror, but had to call quits because of an unfavorable regional situation. Likewise, General Hamid Gul is a former ISI chief who had aspired to become the army chief and possibly Pakistan's chief executive, some of his close relatives told this correspondent, but was dispensed with after the changed situation with the demise of communism a decade earlier. With the rise of the Taliban regime, press reports confirm Gul was deemed an uncrowned king of that country and the most frequent vistor to Mullah Omar and bin Laden. For days at a stretch, Gul would vanish traceless from Pakistan, to be ensconsced in secret talks with Mullah Omar and bin Laden. Most Pakistan observers believe Musharraf is fully aware these two former spymasters and generals are instrumental in shielding bin Laden, but can not lay hands on them as it would create a huge rift within the army — the sacred cow of Pakistan politics. And with every political party from the Communists to the far right religous parties dispising him, the army is his only powerbase. |
| Posted by:Paul Moloney |
| #3 Hey, didn't the State Department once inquire about putting out a contract on Fidel to the Mob professionals? If memory serves, I think they said "thainks, but no thainks." |
| Posted by: Ptah 2003-03-14 15:17:47 |
| #2 So howzabout a free-market contract on 'em, Perv? Then you can be "shocked, shocked!" that someone would kill your good and loyal friends, etc, etc... |
| Posted by: mojo 2003-03-14 13:45:18 |
| #1 Had to call it quits because of an unfavorable regional situation???? |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2003-03-14 12:28:16 |