Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Pakistan/Afghanistan: On Ground Updates - September 21, 2011

Pakistan/Afghanistan: On Ground Updates
U.S. officials say mounting evidence that Pakistan's chief intelligence agency has been encouraging Pakistan-based militant network to attack U.S. targets
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
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* Reuters.com brings us the following report late this Tuesday evening and their report starts off like this… U.S. officials say there is mounting evidence that Pakistan's chief intelligence agency has been encouraging a Pakistan-based militant network to attack U.S. targets[Say it isn’t SO!!!] The allegations, if fully confirmed, heighten a painful dilemma for President Barack Obama's administration. Washington is under growing political pressure to take action against the Haqqani network after a spate of deadly attacks U.S. officials have attributed to it. These include last week's strike against the American Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan… Some U.S. intelligence reporting alleges that Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence directorate (ISI) specifically directed, or urged, the Haqqani network to carry out the September 13 attack on the embassy and a NATO headquarters in Kabul, according two U.S. officials and a source familiar with recent U.S.-Pakistan official contacts…
Read the rest of this troubling news at link below…
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* DAWN.com has this take on the news… The United States has increased pressure on Pakistan to take immediate military action against the Haqqani network, using a series of meetings between military and civilian leaders of the two countries to convey the message, diplomatic sources told Dawn… The ISI chief, Gen Shuja Pasha, who left Washington for home on Tuesday night after a meeting with Gen David Petraeus, is believed to have heard directly from the CIA chief that the US wanted an immediate military operation against the network… Gen Pasha also met another senior Obama administration official before leaving for home but both sides are declining to disclose the official’s name…
Read the rest at link below…
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* TimesOfIndia.com has more for this late evening and their reports goes in part like this… The Obama administration is going full court press on Pakistan, warning the chaotic country that it must give up its policy of using terrorism, or face US wrath. "If you are against terrorism, you have to be against all forms of terrorism," defence secretary Leon Panetta said at the Pentagon on Tuesday in some of the bluntest language used against Pakistan… "You cannot have the Haqqanis coming across the border attacking our forces and (Afghans) and disappearing back into a safe haven. That is not tolerable, and we have urged them to take steps."… Separately, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday that "In what amounts to an ultimatum, administration officials have indicated that the US will act unilaterally if Pakistan does not comply." Washington pundits mused at length about how the Obama Administration has moved much of its supply routes to Afghanistan to the Northern Distribution Network , reducing its dependence on Pakistan so that it can have greater leverage on the country increasingly seen as having gone rogue…
Read the full report at link below…
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Going to be VERY interesting these next so many weeks as to just how this mess pans out.
AubreyJ………
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Above Old File Photo by MNF-I - Army Gen David H Petraeus
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