 A U.S.-born Al Qaeda spokesman, in a newly released English-language video, denies the group was behind a series of bombings in Pakistan that have killed hundreds of civilians, calling such attacks un-Islamic. Adam Gadahn, who commonly delivers the terror organization's English messages, said the extremist network was being framed for the bloodshed by the U.S. and Pakistani intelligence services. "The perpetration of such deplorable acts and the pinning of responsibility for them on the mujahedeen only serves the enemies of Islam and Muslims, who are today staring defeat in the face," he said, blaming the "puppet media" for implicating Al Qaeda in the attacks. "The mercenaries of the ISI, RAW, CIA or Blackwater are the real culprits behind these senseless and un-Islamic bombings," he added. The ISI and RAW are the Pakistani and Indian intelligence agencies, respectively, while Blackwater is the private security firm — now called Xe Services — whose involvement in the killings of Iraqi civilians have tarnished its reputation throughout the Muslim world. More than 500 people have died in a slew of attacks in Pakistan that began in October, just as the Pakistani army started waging a ground offensive against the Taliban in South Waziristan, a tribal region bordering Afghanistan. A single truck bomb in the northwest city of Peshawar killed more than 100 people at a market that sells mostly women's clothes and children's toys. More recently, twin bombs at a similar market in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore killed nearly 50. Pakistani authorities have laid blame for the recent spate of attacks on the Pakistani Taliban or their affiliates, which include Al Qaeda and other local militant groups. Such groups, which analysts say are increasingly intertwined, most often to attack security targets. But the militants generally avoid claiming responsibility for assaults that kill a large number of civilians. In a transcript of the video released by the SITE Intelligence Group, a Washington-based monitor of militant Web sites, Gadahn told Pakistanis their real enemies were secular regimes, corrupt police, judges and tribal nationalists. Gadahn's message may resonate in Pakistan, where conspiracy theories are rife, support for militancy has only recently taken a downturn and anti-Americanism is widespread. After the market blast in Peshawar, many Pakistanis expressed disbelief that Islamist groups could have attacked other Muslims in such a manner. And in some corners of the Pakistani media, Blackwater has increasingly been floated as a culprit in nefarious events. Gadahn grew up in Los Angeles and then moved to Pakistan in 1998, according to the FBI. He is said to have attended an Al Qaeda training camp six years later, serving as a translator and consultant for the group. Al Qaeda's media arm, al-Sahab, is increasingly using English-language videos to address Muslims in Pakistan who are unlikely to speak Arabic. Gadahn's message specifically addressed Muslims in south Asia, including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. FoxNews 
 IRAQI Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has sacked Baghdad's security chief over a string of coordinated car and truck bombings claimed by an al-Qa'ida group that killed 127 people. The Islamic State of Iraq issued a statement on a forum for Muslim extremists saying it carried out Tuesday's bombings at ministries and courthouses that also wounded 450 people, according to US monitoring group SITE. The statement, translated by SITE, threatened more attacks, saying the latest carnage was the “third wave” in an ISI campaign following bloody days on August 19 and October 25 that left more than 100 people dead. “The list of targets will not end, with permission from Allah, until the flag of monotheism is raised once against on the land of Baghdad and the sharia of Allah rules the land and the worshippers,” it said. The group also claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in Tikrit, the hometown of executed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, that killed a senior anti-terror officer on December 3. A senior policeman, meanwhile, said the explosives used in the attacks were manufactured abroad and that the bombers were backed by groups in Syria or Saudi Arabia. “This material could not have been manufactured in Baghdad, it came from abroad,” explosives unit chief Major General Jihad al-Jaabiri said. “Neighbouring countries helped them. The operation required lots of funding, which came from Syria or Saudi Arabia.” Security was beefed up at checkpoints across Baghdad, although roads were reopened after being shut in the wake of the five coordinated attacks. Mr Maliki, who has been sharply criticised by politicians since the bombings, appealed for unity among Iraqi leaders. “I call (on all politicians)... to avoid using these disasters to create conflicts during the election campaign because if the temple falls, it falls on everyone, and no one will be spared,” he said in a televised address. Yet MPs demanded that Mr Maliki and his ministers answer for any failings that led to the attacks. “MPs are angry, and the people are even more angry,” influential independent Kurdish MP Mahmud Othman said. “We want to know what is going on. What is the security plan? Have they revised the plans since the explosions in August and October? What are the results of their investigations? “Why do these explosions keep happening?” Another spate of deadly attacks rocked the capital yesterday as a roadside bomb in the predominantly Sunni northern Baghdad district of Adhamiyah killed two people and wounded seven, according to an interior ministry official. Also in Adhamiyah, a sniper killed a policeman and a bomb hidden inside a minibus exploded, killing two people and wounding 11. In Mahmudiyah, an ethnically mixed town just south of Baghdad, another bomb concealed inside a minibus killed three people and injured eight. Tuesday morning's bombs all exploded within minutes of each other. One suicide attacker detonated his payload at a finance ministry office, another struck at a tunnel leading to the labour ministry and a third drove a four-wheel-drive car into a courthouse. A fourth in a car struck a police patrol in Dora in south Baghdad, while a car bomb hit interior ministry offices in the city centre. Violence across Iraq dropped dramatically last month, with the fewest deaths in attacks recorded since the 2003 invasion. Official figures showed a total of 122 people were killed in November. Both the Baghdad government and the US military have warned of a rise in attacks in the run-up to the election. The Australian
 By ZAHID HUSSAIN ISLAMABAD -- Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari holds $1.5 billion in assets across the world, Pakistan's main anticorruption body alleged in a report delivered Tuesday to the country's Supreme Court. The court is considering the constitutionality of an amnesty protecting the embattled leader and thousands of other officials from corruption charges.
The National Accountability Bureau, a politically independent government investigative body, gave the court a list of allegations involving Mr. Zardari, following a request by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry. Mr. Zardari's spokesman denied the allegations and said the asset list was inaccurate and fabricated to victimize Mr. Zardari. "Reports of $1.5 billion of national and foreign assets allegedly belonging to President Zardari are no more than a regurgitation of decade-old unproven politically motivated allegations," said Farhatullah Babar, the chief spokesman for the president. The court will also consider whether a presidential immunity provided by the constitution applies to cases of alleged corruption that took place before Mr. Zardari took office last year. The hearings could open the way for challenges to the legality of Mr. Zardari's presidency, constitutional law experts said.
That would add further tension in Pakistan at a time when the U.S. ally has been hit by a series of militant attacks across country. On Tuesday, suspected Islamist militants launched a gun, rocket and suicide attack on an intelligence office in the central Pakistan city of Multan, killing 12 people. The raid came a day after twin bombings at a market in the eastern city of Lahore killed 49. Tuesday's attack ripped the facades off several buildings in a part of the town largely reserved for government and security agencies. Also damaged was a building housing an office of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency. The National Accountability Bureau alleged that Mr. Zardari accumulated wealth "beyond his means." The bureau said Mr. Zardari owned properties and bank accounts in the U.S., U.K., Spain and several other countries. This wealth was largely accumulated while his wife, Benazir Bhutto, was serving as prime minister in the 1990s, investigators said. They alleged the money had come from kickbacks and commissions on government deals. Mr. Zardari spent a total of 11 years in jail in Pakistan while facing trial for corruption and murder charges. He was released on bail in 2004 and allowed to leave the country. Six cases against him remained open, relating to alleged corruption. Those charges were dropped under an amnesty enforced in October 2007. The amnesty, which was brokered by the U.S. and U.K., was introduced through a decree by former President Pervez Musharraf under a deal that paved the way for Ms. Bhutto to return home from self-imposed exile. Ms. Bhutto was assassinated two months later, leaving Mr. Zardari to lead her party to victory in general elections in February 2008 and then become president after Gen. Musharraf resigned in August 2008. A 17-member bench of the Supreme Court on Monday began hearing appeals by two political opponents of Mr. Zardari against the amnesty, which expired on Nov. 28 when an effort to renew it failed in Parliament. The anticorruption body's report said Mr. Zardari had bought properties in the U.S., Britain, Spain, France and other countries through offshore companies he owned and through frontmen, according to Retired Lt. Gen. Shahid Aziz, a former chief of the National Accountability Bureau who resigned in July 2007 to protest the termination of investigations into Mr. Zardari's activities. In the largest single payment, investigators said they had discovered a company dealing in gold in the Middle East deposited at least $10 million into an account controlled by Mr. Zardari after the Bhutto government gave the dealer a monopoly on gold imports. The money was then deposited into several bank accounts of companies owned by Mr. Zardari, investigators said. Charges in the case were dropped with the amnesty in 2007, and the gold dealer denied wrongdoing. WSJ
 Reliably sympathetic to non-Western lies, the BBC reported yesterday that a prisoner in Pakistani custody knows a guy who saw Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan last January. Headlines! Now, Osama may, indeed, pop over the border into Afghanistan now and then -- but this report is a shameless Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence agency concoction. Why? Because the Pakistanis have taken a lot of heat recently over suspicions -- including those raised in The Post -- that they know where Osama is but shield him for their own benefit. Even party-line US government officials have grown skeptical about the Pakistani government's deaf-and-dumb show. The Pakistani solution? With remarkable luck, you suddenly discover a captive who knows somebody who recently dusted Osama's slippers -- in Afghanistan, not Pakistan. As long as Osama's at large in the AfPak border area, the aid keeps flooding into Islamabad. But after we locate Osama's lair, the porkbarrel goes bare. When the Pakistanis handed the "scoop" to the BBC -- which is only skeptical of Western claims -- they knew just what they were doing. Without pausing to raise a single question, our "mainstream" media rushed to report the "breaking news." Score a major victory for Pakistani information warfare. Of course, we shouldn't be surprised: They learned the value of media manipulation from the Taliban and al Qaeda. Again, I'm not claiming that bin Laden never slips across the border into Afghanistan. I wouldn't be surprised if he traveled with a protective escort provided by Pakistan's intelligence mafia. But as a former intelligence officer, I'd stamp this report "Bogus." Another reason the Pakistanis "leaked" this now was that President Obama's statement that we'd start exiting stage left in July, 2011, shocked them. They want us to leave Afghanistan eventually -- but not before they've milked us dry and rebuilt "their" Taliban sufficiently to seize power. Make no mistake: The only "take-away" from Obama's West Point speech for Pakistanis, Afghans, the Taliban and al Qaeda was "July 2011." That's all they heard. And it doesn't matter how many US Cabinet officers, generals and admirals backtrack and claim that our president didn't really mean it, that any troop withdrawals will be "conditions based." Forget it. The Taliban's new recruiting slogan is simply, "July, 2011. Join now, or pay later." And how Obama thinks he's going to attract more young Afghans to join the Karzai government's (in)security forces is beyond my mental faculties. They weren't joining in adequate numbers before, so why would they sign up in hordes after our president sent them an advance bye-bye note? Meanwhile, 25 percent of the Afghan army we've already trained deserts rather than fight. It's disheartening to see how much smarter the Taliban spinmeisters and even the Pakistanis are than our president's inept speechwriters -- who focused purely on the US audience, never asking how Obama's West Point soliloquy would play in the war zone. Of course, the Obama crowd spins everything as a triumph. The White House claims of success remind me of Saddam Hussein's information minister insisting that America's military had been annihilated -- as our Army and Marines entered downtown Baghdad. As for NATO's display of cooperation at yesterday's session in Belgium, well, all our strong-arming to get allied troop increases finally paid off -- thanks to the West Point speech. Our NATO partners, too, heard "July, 2011." They figure they can afford a brief show of solidarity, now that they won't be expected to produce results or fight. We'll get 7,000 more NATO troops. They'll show up, but they won't step up. This is Obama's Afghan Farewell Tour, with supporting acts. Seats are going cheap. Afghanistan's over. More splendid American men and women in uniform will die or suffer terrible wounds, but it was over when our self-absorbed president put the 2012 presidential election above our national security last Tuesday. It was over the moment he uttered the words that doomed his presidency: "July, 2011." It's enough to make you trust the Pakistanis. Ralph Peters' latest book is "The War After Armageddon." NYPost
 One year after terrorists struck at the heart of India's financial hub, Mumbai is still reeling from the shock of the attacks that left 183 people dead, including nine terrorists, and hundreds more injured. At nightfall on November 26, armed terrorists came ashore in Mumbai, having left the Pakistani port city of Karachi by boat. They attacked several high profile targets throughout the city, including two luxury hotels – the Taj Mahal Palace and the Oberoi-Trident – along with the main railway terminal, a Jewish cultural center, a café frequented by westerners, a movie theater and two hospitals. Six Americans were among the 26 foreigners reported killed. This was not a first for the city of Mumbai. In March 1993, several car bombs were set off at important landmarks across the city, including the stock exchange, killing around 250 people. In July 2006, another series of blasts ripped through Mumbai's commuter train network killing more than 200 people. However, even having "been here before," the attacks that transpired on November 26th were not just more of the same; the 2008 attacks featured stark differences from the past and mark an important step in the evolution of urban terrorism in India.
Terrorists for the first time employed frontal assault techniques and sophisticated technology, including global positioning system handsets, satellite phones, and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone service to stay in touch with their handlers in Pakistan.
Those handlers – watching events in real time on television – orchestrated the attacks from several thousand miles away. Before November 26th, terrorists used bombs triggered by timers to wage jihad on Indian cities, with the notable exception of an attack by five armed men on the Indian Parliament in December 2001. "The Mumbai attacks last November were unprecedented in terms of scale and intensity," Brahma Chellaney, a top strategic expert at a leading think tank in New Delhi, said in an interview with the Investigative Project on Terrorism. "The terrorists were careful to choose those [targets] that would create rage across India." They "took on the rich and the wealthy in India by targeting those two luxury hotels, and by taking on a Jewish center in Mumbai, they took on some foreigners who were present in that Jewish Center in addition to those who were present in the two hotels." "Even a year later now on the anniversary of the Mumbai attacks, India hasn't recovered from those attacks," Chellaney added. Read more at IPT
 By MATTHEW ROSENBERG ISLAMABAD -- The Islamist militant group behind the deadly attack in Mumbai one year ago remains a potent force determined to strike India and the West, and a source of acrimony between South Asia's nuclear-armed rivals, say officials and members of the militant faction. Indian officials and experts say at least six new plots against Mumbai by the Pakistan-based group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, have been disrupted in the 12 months since 10 gunmen wrought three days of havoc on India's financial capital, killing 166 people. Lashkar's infiltration of India's part of Kashmir is again on the upswing, the officials say; and a U.S. citizen with alleged ties to Lashkar was recently arrested in Chicago, evidence of the group's reach, U.S. officials say. "Our aims are the same today as they were 10 years ago," said a man who identified himself as a former Lashkar militant now working with its charity arm. "We are waging war on the enemies of Islam." U.S. officials and experts say hitting India remains the primary focus for Lashkar, which was nurtured in the 1990s by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency for use as a proxy against Indian forces in the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir. Pakistan banned the group in 2002 and officials here say they cut ties with it at the time. But no one disputes that Lashkar continued to operate from Pakistan, repeatedly striking Indian targets in recent years. Another Mumbai-style attack, say officials from both countries, risks sparking a fourth war between the neighbors. At the very least, Lashkar's continued existence presents a major obstacle to peace between the rivals. The tension also jeopardizes U.S. efforts in Afghanistan by keeping the bulk of Pakistan's sizable army focused on India, not the Taliban, say U.S. officials. Yet Lashkar endures today because Pakistan's pledges to dismantle it in the wake of the Mumbai attack remain largely unfulfilled, say U.S., Indian and some Pakistani officials. The group's long ties to Pakistan's powerful security establishment and the deep roots it has put down in towns and villages through its charity arm leave the government with a difficult challenge. Many Pakistanis still doubt Lashkar's role in the attack, and officials here privately say they fear a popular backlash if they move too forcefully against the group. Timeline - Nov. 26, 2008: 10 men from the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba begin a gun-and-grenade assault on targets in Mumbai, lasting nearly three days and leaving at least 174 people dead.
- Dec. 11, 2008: Pakistan moves against Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the charity front of Lashkar, arresting the group's leaders and shuttering its offices a day after the U.N. sanctioned the group. Days earlier, Pakistan also began arresting suspected members of Lashkar.
- Jan. 5, 2009: India gives Pakistan its first dossier of what it says is evidence that Lashkar orchestrated the Mumbai attack. The two countries have since repeatedly exchanged additional dossiers, although each side has complained about the information provided by the other.
- Jan. 6, 2009: After weeks of denials, Pakistan acknowledges that the single gunmen captured by Indian police in Mumbai, Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, is a Pakistani citizen.
- Feb. 12, 2009: Pakistan publicly acknowledges for the first time that the Mumbai attack was partly planned on its soil and says it has arrested most of the key plotters, including the alleged operations chief of Lashkar, Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhvi.
- June 2, 2009: A Pakistani court orders the founder of Lashkar, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, released from house arrest, finding that the government does not have enough evidence to hold him. Mr. Saeed maintains that he runs a charity, nothing more.
- July 20, 2009: The single attacker captured by Indian police, Mohammaed Ajmal Kasab, confesses in open court that he took part in the assault. He says he was trained by Lashkar in Pakistan.
Pakistani officials also worry about taking on a potent enemy as they are trying to beat back the Taliban, which has killed hundreds of people in terrorist attacks in Pakistan since early October. U.S. officials and analysts also say factions within Pakistan's military still see Lashkar as a potential weapon to be used in any future conflicts with India. Lashkar "has historically been Pakistan's most reliable proxy against India and elements within the military clearly wish to maintain this capability," according to a report this week by security analyst Stephen Tankel in the CTC Sentinel, published by the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Pakistan, following India and the U.S., concluded in the weeks after the Mumbai attack that it was carried out by Lashkar. Islamabad moved against the group, arresting dozens of people and banning its charity wing, Jamaat-ud-Dawa. More at WSJ
 Come Friday prayers in Lahore, it is not hard to find the alleged mastermind of the Mumbai attacks. Hafiz Mohammed Saeed is neither in hiding nor in jail. The founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba is instead delivering a sermon to thousands of devoteees at the Jamia al-Qadsia mosque — one of the biggest in the city. “God has promised to make Muslims a superpower if we follow the right path,” Mr Saeed told his followers, who listened in rapt silence. Outside, policemen with machineguns stood guard and bearded security men frisked all those entering. “Our rulers are the slave of America and have sold their conscience for a few dollars,” continued the diminutive former university teacher, his long beard dyed red with henna. Analysts say that the problem lies with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, which backed Mr Saeed when he founded Lashkar-e-Taiba in 1990 to fight Indian rule in the disputed region of Kashmir. Under pressure from the US, Pakistan banned the group in 2002, but it continued to operate under the banner of Jamaat-ud Dawa, which Mr Saeed also founded and calls a charity organisation. A UN Security Council resolution last December declared Jamaat-ud Dawa a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba, forcing Pakistan to freeze its assets and jail many of its activists. Mr Saeed was put under house detention, but released after a few months when a court ruled that action against him and his group was illegal. This week a Lahore court threw out two anti-terrorism cases against him. The court also found no evidence that Jamaat-ud Dawa was involved in terrorism, and it should be allowed to operate freely.
Pakistani officials say that they are serious about cracking down on militant groups, but there is not enough evidence to put Mr Saeed back on trial. Times Online
 Fiend, er, Friend and Ally Update. "EXCLUSIVE: Taliban chief hides in Pakistan," by Eli Lake, Sara A. Carter, and Barbara Slavin for the Washington Times, November 20 Mullah Mohammed Omar, the one-eyed leader of the Afghan Taliban, has fled a Pakistani city on the border with Afghanistan and found refuge from potential U.S. attacks in the teeming Pakistani port city of Karachi with the assistance of Pakistan's intelligence service, three current and former U.S. intelligence officials said. Mullah Omar, who hosted Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders when they plotted the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, had been residing in Quetta, where the Afghan Taliban shura -- or council -- had moved from Kandahar after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Two senior U.S. intelligence officials and one former senior CIA officer told The Washington Times that Mullah Omar traveled to Karachi last month after the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. He inaugurated a new senior leadership council in Karachi, a city that so far has escaped U.S. and Pakistani counterterrorism campaigns, the officials said. The officials, two of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the topic, said Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, the ISI, helped the Taliban leaders move from Quetta, where they were exposed to attacks by unmanned U.S. drones. The development reinforces suspicions that the ISI, which helped create the Taliban in the 1990s to expand Pakistani influence in Afghanistan, is working against U.S. interests in Afghanistan as the Obama administration prepares to send more U.S. troops to fight there. Bruce Riedel, a CIA veteran and analyst on al Qaeda and the Taliban, confirmed that Mullah Omar had been spotted in Karachi recently. "Some sources claim the ISI decided to move him further from the battlefield to keep him safe" from U.S. drone attacks, said Mr. Riedel, who headed the Obama administration's review of policy for Afghanistan and Pakistan last spring. "There are huge madrassas in Karachi where Mullah Omar could easily be kept." Mr. Riedel also noted that there had been few suicide bombings in Karachi, which he attributed to the Taliban and al Qaeda not wanting to "foul their own nest." A U.S. counterterrorism official said, "There are indications of some kind of bleed-out of Taliban types from Quetta to Karachi, but no one should assume at this point that the entire Afghan Taliban leadership has packed up its bags and headed for another Pakistani city." A second senior intelligence officer who specializes in monitoring al Qaeda said U.S. intelligence had confirmed Mullah Omar's move through both electronic and human sources as well as intelligence from an unnamed allied service....
 At least 19 people have been killed in a suicide bomb blast outside the main gate of a court building in Peshawar. Thursday's attack was the seventh deadly explosion to hit the northwestern Pakistani city in less than two weeks.
Officials said about 30 people were wounded in the attack, which occurred during rush hour when the area is normally crowded with lawyers, administrative personnel and the public. Later in the day, a second attack targeted a police patrol vehicle in the city, police said.
"One policemen has been martyred and four injured in the attack," Mohammad Karim Khan, a senior police official, said. The court building were the first blast took place is located on Khyber Road, across the street from the Pearl Continental Hotel, which was the target of a deadly bomb attack in June. "It happened outside the judicial complex," Abdul Wali, a police officer, told the Reuters news agency. Sahibzada Anees, the head of Peshawar city administration, said that a suicide bomber carried out the attack. "The attacker was on foot and blew himself when guards tried to search him at the gates of the court," he said. Three policemen were among the dead, Anees said.
Up to 17 bodies had been brought to Peshawar's Lady Reading Hospital, Sahib Gul, the most senior official, said.
Al Jazeera's Kamal Hyder, reporting from Islamabad, said the attacker was trying to enter the court's complex when he was stopped by security personnel.
"The attack took place at 10:20am [local time] when the Khyber Road is jam packed with traffic as well as people," he said.
"As that suicide bomber tried to enter the court, the police decided to conduct a search at which point he detonated the device, with devastating consequences."
A wave of attacks have targeted police checkpoints, police stations and the provincial headquarters of Pakistan's spy agency, ISI, this month, killing dozens of people.
The Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility for several of the attacks, but Yusuf Reza Gilani, Pakistan's prime minister, said that many of the group's commanders were on the run.
"They are using the weapons they have scattered here and there," he said. "God willing, it will take some time, but I assure you things will return to normal soon."
The blast comes as military battles members of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, one of the main anti-government groups, in the country's semi-autonomous tribal region of South Waziristan.
The military launched its offensive nearly three weeks ago, pitting about 30,000 troops against an estimated 10 to 12,000 Taliban fighters in South Waziristan. Al Jazeera (English)
 The Pakistani Army ran training camps for a Muslim extremist group, at least until recently, with the acceptance of the US Central Intelligence Agency, according to France’s foremost anti-terrorist expert. Jean-Louis Bruguière, who retired in 2007 after 15 years as chief investigating judge for counter-terrorism, reached this conclusion after interrogating a French militant who had been trained by Lashkar-e-Taiba and arrested in Australia in 2003. In a book in his counter-terrorism years, Mr Bruguière says that Lashkar-e-Taiba, which was set up to fight India over disputed Kashmir territory, had become part of the international Islamic network of al-Qaeda. Willy Brigitte, the suspect, told Mr Bruguière, that the Pakistani military were running the Lashkar-e-Taiba training camp where he spent 2½ months in 2001-02. Along with two Britons and two Americans, Brigitte was driven in a 4x4 through army roadblocks to the high-altitude camp where more than 2,000 men were being trained by Pakistani regular army officers, he said. The US agency carried out spot checks to ensure that Pakistan was sticking to an agreement not to train any foreigners at the militant organisation, the judge said. “After 9/11, the Americans put pressure on the Pakistani Government to put more effective controls on the activities of the Islamic organisations linked to al-Qaeda,” he said. Mr Brigitte, originally from the French West Indies, and other foreign personnel were moved out to another camp when the CIA was due to visit, Mr Bruguière said. The judge said that it was possible that the Americans had been turning a blind eye to the organisation’s training of foreign operatives. It was not clear whether the Pakistani armed forces and ISI intelligence service were “playing the same game” as the Pakistani Government over Islamic terrorism, said the judge, whose book is titled Some Things that I Wasn’t Able to Say. Times Online
 BOMBS tore through security offices in northwest Pakistan today, killing at least 10 people and heavily damaging the Peshawar headquarters of the country's top intelligence agency. The latest assaults on Pakistan's police and intelligence agents come with the military pressing its most ambitious offensive to date against homegrown Taliban networks in the lawless tribal belt on the Afghan border. The Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) building in the northwestern city was heavily damaged in the blast, with huge clouds of smoke spewing into the sky and debris littering the ground, witnesses said. The building was almost destroyed and the road littered with debris and tree trunks ripped off by the force of the explosion in Peshawar, which lies on the edge of Pakistan's lawless tribal belt infested with Al-Qaeda and Taliban. The United States has put Pakistan on the frontline of its war against Al-Qaeda and has been increasingly disturbed by deteriorating security in the country where attacks and bombings have killed about 2,500 people in 28 months. Most of them were civilians, he added. A doctor at the city's main Lady Reading Hospital confirmed the casualties. A security official said it was a bomb blast, but it was not immediately clear whether the explosives were planted in a vehicle, elsewhere, or detonated by a suicide bomber. An AFP reporter saw at three bodies lying on the ground, but soldiers opened fire into the air preventing other people from approaching until army vehicles arrived and cordoned off the area. Television footage showed scenes of panic at one hospital, with blood-stained men being admitted and relatives starting to gather outside. A second bomb ripped through a suburban police station in the garrison city of Bannu, southwest of Peshawar, killing three policemen and wounding five others, police said. "It appears to be a suicide attack, Bakakhel police station building has been damaged very badly, three policemen are dead and five others are injured," local police official Hameed Khan told AFP. Peshawar, which runs into Pakistan's lawless tribal belt where US officials say Al-Qaeda are plotting attacks on the West and where Pakistani troops are pressing a major anti-Taliban offensive, is frequently hit by attacks. The most devastating bomb attack in Pakistan in two years killed at least 118 people in a crowded market of Peshawar on October 28 as militants put ordinary civilians firmly in the crosshairs of their bloody campaign. Pakistan's powerful and shadowy intelligence agencies have a history of supporting Islamist groups in a bid to counter rival India, but militant attacks have increasingly focused on domestic targets in the last two years. Friday's Peshawar bombing was the first major attack outside an ISI installation since May, when a suicide attack on a police building in the city of Lahore killed 24 people beside its Punjab provincial headquarters. The government blames increasing attacks on Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is the target of the ongoing offensive and which wants to avenge the killing of their leader Baitullah Mehsud by a US missile in August. Today's bombing comes after stiff Taliban resistance killed at least 17 Pakistani soldiers Thursday in the military's deadliest day since launching a major offensive in South Waziristan, security officials said. Pakistan has pressed around 30,000 forces, backed by war planes and attack helicopters, into battle in a US-endorsed mission to wipe out the chief strongholds of Tehreek-e-Taliban in the tribal district of South Waziristan. On Tuesday, a Taliban spokesman told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location that the militia had embarked on a guerrilla war from the mountains of South Waziristan and would attack cities as a matter of course. "The attacks in cities are a part of our permanent strategy. These attacks will continue and we will attack everyone who wants to harm us," said the spokesman, Azam Tariq. Source: The Australian
 Muslim scholars have questioned plans by the head of Egypt's most famous university to ban female students from veiling their faces on its premises and affiliated educational establishments. Shaikh Ali Abu al-Hasan, the former head of the Fatwa Council at the Islamic Studies Institute (ISI) in Cairo, said although it was not required by Islam for women to cover their faces, Al-Azhar University should allow women to chose what they want to wear. "No official has the right to order a young lady to remove a form of dress that was sanctioned by none other than Umar ibn al-Khattab, except for the purposes of identification for security reasons," he said. "The niqab [face veil] is not in contravention of the sharia or Egyptian law." Shaikh Safwat Hijazi, a scholar and preacher, said he would personally sue anyone who prevented his daughter or wife wearing full niqab from going about her daily life, including entering government offices. "Preventing a woman from wearing what she wants is a crime," Hijazi said. "Whoever says the niqab is a custom is not respectable." Husam Bahgat, of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, said the series of government decisions against the niqab are "arbitrary" and while designed to combat extremism, only end up being discriminatory against women. "[Veiled female students] are barred from government subsidised housing and nutrition because they are considered extremists," he said. But other Egyptian scholars, such as the ISI's Abd ul-Hamid al-Atrash, said there would be nothing wrong with such a ruling at a time when the anonymity afforded by the face veil was being abused by people intent on causing trouble. "There have even been instances of men entering [schools for girls] under cover. So there is no reason why a ruling that benefits the people and the nation cannot be issued", al-Atrash said. And Abd ul-Moati Bayumi, a scholar in an al-Azhar affiliated research centre, said most scholars would back Tantawi if he issued the order. "We all agree that niqab is not a religious requirement," Bayoumi said.
"Taliban forces women to wear the niqab ... . The phenomena is spreading" and it has to be confronted. "The time has come." Read more here,,,, Source: Al Jazeera English
 NEW DELHI: In a new shift in tactics, Pakistan is planning to push as many as 60 "surrendered" Taliban into Jammu and Kashmir to become part of the "jihad" against India. The ISI is said to have offered the extremists the option of either going to jail or crossing the Line of Control.
The "jail or jihad" option offered to the Taliban seems a useful diversion for ISI. The Pakistan military establishment has had to fight the Taliban, once its close allies in Afghanistan, but is looking to turn the situation to its advantage.
Apprehensions in Indian security circles that the crackdown by the Pakistan army on Taliban — seen as a last resort after the jihadis turned their guns on the Pakistani state — could mean trouble in Kashmir are being proved correct. Not only have infiltration attempts by regular jihadi outfits like Lashkar-e-Taiba gone up, the presence of Taliban poses a new threat.
Highly placed sources said BSF and the Army had been alerted about the developments after intelligence intercepted talk about infiltration bids in the next 15 to 20 days.
"Although the Taliban is yet to successfully infiltrate into India, the coming days will pose a challenge as their attempts to sneak in are expected before the onset of winter," said a senior official. The infiltration is closely controlled and monitored by the ISI and Pakistan army which is often involved in the crossings.
The issue cropped up as a major security concern during the two-day visit to Srinagar by a high-powered central team led by cabinet secretary K M Chandrashekhar and comprising home secretary G K Pillai, defence secretary Pradeep Kumar and other senior officials.
Top security and intelligence officials deliberated over the move by state actors in Pakistan to utilize the Taliban for their objectives in Kashmir. Taking note of the assessment, officials are learnt to have unequivocally noted during the reviews in Srinagar that there was no change in Pakistan's support to terror groups post 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks.
The Taliban, who recently fought against Pakistan army in Swat Valley and other areas along the Pak-Afghan border, were well trained and battle-hardened. They could put their experience of fighting US troops to use in Kashmir.
Apart from the group of 60, there are nearly 250 to 300 jihadis — armed with sophisticated weapons, Thuraya satellite phones and Indian mobile SIM cards — poised at launch pads along LoC. This feeds into the view that violence could escalate in J&K in the winter months.
The meeting in Srinagar, attended by senior Army and paramilitary personnel, also took note of repeated use of Pakistani Air Force helicopters to evacuate injured infiltrators along the LoC and as many as 42 terror camps in PoK and Pakistan.
"Such incidents (like use of choppers) clearly show the involvement of Pakistani authorities in facilitating infiltration. Though our forces are fully alert to thwart Pakistani designs, the next 15-20 days are quite crucial as this is the period when they will do everything to infiltrate as many terrorists as possible," said a senior official. That is when winter will begin to set in.
Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Go-to-jail-or-join-jihad-against-India-ISI-tells-surrendered-Taliban/articleshow/5095277.cms
 By LYDIA POLGREEN and SOUAD MEKHENNET KARACHI, Pakistan — Ten months after the devastating attacks in Mumbai by Pakistan-based militants, the group behind the assault remains largely intact and determined to strike India again, according to current and former members of the group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and intelligence officials. Despite pledges from Pakistan to dismantle militant groups operating on its soil, and the arrest of a handful of operatives, Lashkar has persisted, even flourished, since 10 recruits killed 163 people in a rampage through Mumbai, India’s financial capital, last November. Indian and Pakistani dossiers on the Mumbai investigations, copies of which were obtained by The New York Times, offer a detailed picture of the operations of a Lashkar network that spans Pakistan.
It included four houses and two training camps here in this sprawling southern port city that were used to prepare the attacks. Among the organizers, the Pakistani document says, was Hammad Amin Sadiq, a homeopathic pharmacist, who arranged bank accounts and secured supplies. He and six others begin their formal trial on Saturday in Pakistan, though Indian authorities say the prosecution stops well short of top Lashkar leaders. Indeed, Lashkar’s broader network endures, and can be mobilized quickly for elaborate attacks with relatively few resources, according to a dozen current and former Lashkar militants and intelligence officials from the United States, Europe, India and Pakistan. In interviews with The Times, they presented a troubling portrait of Lashkar’s capabilities, its popularity in Pakistan and the support it has received from former officials of Pakistan’s military and intelligence establishment. Pakistan’s chief spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, or ISI, helped create Lashkar two decades ago to challenge Indian control in Kashmir, the disputed territory that lies at the heart of the conflict between the nuclear-armed neighbors. Read more here,,,, Source: NYT H/T: GH
 Anthony Loyd and Zahid Hussain The hunt for Osama bin Laden has been at best complicated, and at worst obstructed, by Pakistan’s ambiguous relationship with the Taleban and al-Qaeda. The relationship dates from the 1980s when the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency helped the CIA to funnel cash and arms to bin Laden and other members of the Mujahidin resistance against Soviet forces. In the 1990s the ISI tried to offset Indian influence in Afghanistan by supporting the Taleban. The militants were sheltering bin Laden, who had by then turned his attention to attacking the US. After 9/11 America made it clear that Pakistan had no choice but to co-operate in the War on Terror — and pressed it to purge the ISI of Taleban and al-Qaeda sympathisers.
But it continued to play a double game — most controversially airlifting hundreds, possibly thousands, of Taleban, al-Qaeda and ISI operatives out of the northern Afghan region of Kunduz in November 2001. Later that month more al-Qaeda fighters — probably including bin Laden — escaped from the southeastern Afghan region of Tora Bora by slipping over the border into Pakistan. Pakistani intelligence officials said that it had become difficult to track bin Laden after that because he stopped using satellite phones. In 2006 al-Zawahiri had narrowly escaped death in Bajaur when he was targeted by a US drone. Western military commanders tend to scoff at Pakistan’s failure to deal with bin Laden.Those with longer memories draw parallels with the Faqir of Ipi, an insurgent commander who dragged the British into one of their most costly counter-insurgency campaigns of the 20th century. Between 1936 and 1947 he tied up thousands of British troops along the same tribal frontier in a futile series of operations to capture him. The Faqir died in 1960, alone, at peace, and still very much at liberty 14 years after the British had departed. Source: Times Online
Anna Mahjar-Barducci | April 15 The apparent capitulation of the Pakistani authorities to the demands of the Taliban is actually a part of a long-standing alliance between them. The Pakistani military - that actually created and trained the Taliban in the 1990s - has long been using this movement to control Afghanistan and as a tool in its confrontation with the West. The Taliban, for its part, uses the support and protection of Pakistan to consolidate its strength and gain control over increasingly large areas in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It has long been alleged that some within ISI, the Pakistani intelligence, have retained links to the Taliban. Last year, the head of the CIA flew to Islamabad to present evidence that showed that ISI elements were involved in a deadly bomb attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul. Officials in Washington now say that, according to human intelligence and electronic intercepts, the ISI, through its "S Wing," which officials say directs intelligence operations outside Pakistan, is involved in operations in Afghanistan by supporting more militant networks than was previously thought, including ... More »Source: Hudson New York
 Amanda Hodge, South Asia correspondent | February 25, 2009
THE sole surviving terrorist involved in last year's deadly Mumbai attacks was charged today with waging war against India - the most serious offence under the country's legal code - and could face the death penalty if found guilty.
Pakistani national Mohammed Ajmal Amir Iman - known as Kasab - also faces 11 additional charges ranging from murder and terrorism, to immigration and cyber crimes, illegal weapons smuggling and even unlawfully entering a railway station without a ticket in a charge sheet that is believed to run to more than 5000 pages.
“Kasab has been booked under various acts including the Arms Act, Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, Explosives Act, Customs Act, waging war against the country and various other sections of the Railway Act,” joint police commissioner Rakesh Maria said.
“Entering the railway premises without a proper ticket is also one among the various offences registered against him.”
Indian police lodged the massive document with Mumbai’s Metropolitan Magistrates Court yesterday, three months after ten gunmen believed to be linked to Pakistan-based terror group Lashkar-e-Toiba, attacked a string of targets in the financial capital including several luxury hotels, a crowded railway station, a cafe and a Jewish centre.
More than 170 people lost their lives and some 308 were injured during the November 26, 2008, attacks which brought the Indian financial capital to a standstill for more than 72 hours.
Nine of the ten attackers were also killed, leaving Kasab, 21, alone to face the Indian justice system.
Indian media reported yesterday that the charge sheet would name 19 others believed to have been involved in the attacks, including the suspected mastermind Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhvi - a founding member of the LeT.
A separate Pakistan government investigation this month admitted for the first time that the 26/11 attacks were partly planned and coordinated on its soil and identified an additional eight Pakistani nationals suspected of involvement.
While the Pakistan government maintains six of the eight have already been arrested, it has consistently refused India’s requests to extradite them to face trial in Mumbai saying instead that they will be tried in a closed Pakistani court.
Relations between India and Pakistan have significantly deteriorated since the November attacks, with India accusing Pakistani “state actors”, notably its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, of involvement.
The massive chargesheet is understood to detail evidence collected by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation into the attacks - including lengthy transcripts of conversations between the ten gunmen and their handlers, as well as security camera footage of the terrorists attacking Mumbai’s central railway station, Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, where scores of people died.
Indian law requires that a charge sheet be filed in court against a suspect within 90 days of detention. Kasab was arrested on November 28. Special public prosecutor Ujwal Nikam said yesterday the chargesheet would be forwarded from the Magistrates Court to the Special Court in coming days.
He said two other suspected LeT members, currently being held in custody in Mumbai on accusations of scouting for the group, would also be charged. Source: The Australian
  Shashi Tharoor January 19, 2009
AS Israeli planes and tanks exact a heavy toll on Gaza, India's leaders and strategic thinkers have been watching with an unusual degree of interest, and some empathy.
Unsurprisingly, India's Government has joined the rest of the world in calling for an end to the military action, but its criticism of Israel has been muted. As Israel demonstrates anew its determination to end attacks on its civilians by militants based in Hamas-controlled territory, many in India, still smarting from the horrors of the Mumbai attacks in November, have been asking: Why can't we do the same?
For many Indians, the temptation to identify with Israel was strengthened by the terrorists' seizure of Mumbai's Chabad House Jewish centre and the painful awareness that India and Israel share many of the same enemies. India, with its 150-million strong Muslim population, has long been a strong supporter of the Palestinian cause and remains staunchly committed to an independent Palestinian state. But the Mumbai attacks confirmed what has become apparent in recent years: the forces of global Islamist terror have added Indians to their target list of reviled "Jews and crusaders".
Just as Israel has frequently been attacked by rockets fired from across its border with Gaza, India has suffered repeated assaults by killers trained, equipped, financed, and directed by elements based next door in Pakistan. When US President George W.Bush's press secretary equated members of Hamas with the Mumbai killers, her comments were widely circulated in India.
Yet there the parallels end.
Israel is a small country living in a permanent state of siege, highly security conscious and surrounded by forces hostile to it; India is a giant country with notoriously permeable borders and an open society known for its lax and easygoing ways.
Whereas many regard Israel's toughness as its principal characteristic, India's citizens view their country as a soft state, its underbelly easily penetrated by determined terrorists. Whereas Israel notoriously exacts grim retribution for every attack on its soil, India has endured with numbing stoicism an endless series of bomb blasts, including at least six major assaults in different locations in 2008 alone. Terrorism has taken more lives in India than in any country other than Iraq, and yet, unlike Israel, India has seemed unable to do anything about it.
Moreover, whereas Israel's principal adversary is presently Hamas, India faces a slew of terrorist organisations: Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Jamaat-ud-Dawa and others. But whereas Hamas operates without international recognition from Gaza - its legitimacy questioned even by the Palestinian Authority - India's tormentors function from Pakistan, a sovereign member of the UN. And that makes all the difference.
Hamas is in no position to repay Israel's air and ground attacks in kind, whereas an Indian attack on Pakistani territory, even one targeting terrorist bases and training camps, would invite swift retaliation from the Pakistani army. Israel can dictate the terms of its military incursion and end it at will, whereas an Indian military action would immediately spark a war with a well-armed neighbour that neither side could win. And, at the end of the day, one chilling fact would prevent India from thinking that it could use Israel's playbook: the country that condones, if not foments, the terror attacks on India is a nuclear power.
So India has gone to the international community with evidence to prove that the Mumbai attacks were planned in Pakistan and conducted by Pakistani citizens, who maintained contact with handlers in Pakistan throughout the operation. While India's Government had briefly hoped the proof could enable Pakistan's weak civilian Government to rein in the malign elements in its society, the Pakistani authorities' reaction has been one of denial.
Yet no one doubts that Pakistan's all-powerful military intelligence has, over the past two decades, created and supported terrorist organisations as instruments of Pakistani policy in Afghanistan and India.
When India's embassy in Kabul was hit by a suicide bomber last July, US intelligence sources revealed that not only was Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence behind the attack, but that it made little effort to cover its tracks. The ISI knew perfectly well that India would not go to war with Pakistan to avenge the killing of its diplomatic personnel.
The fact is that India knows that war will accomplish nothing. Indeed, it is just what the terrorists want: a cause that would rally all Pakistanis to the flag and provide Pakistan's army an excuse to abandon the unpopular fight against the Taliban and al-Qa'ida in the west for the more familiar terrain of the Indian border in the east. India's Government sees no reason to play into the hands of those who seek that outcome.
Yet, when Indians watch Israel take the fight to the enemy, killing those who launched rockets against it and dismantling many of the sites from which the rockets flew, some cannot resist wishing that they could do something similar in Pakistan. India understands, though, that the collateral damage would be too high, the price in civilian lives unacceptable, and the risks of the conflict spiralling out of control too acute to contemplate such an option. So Indians place their trust in international diplomacy and watch with ill-disguised wistfulness as Israel does what they could never permit themselves to do.
Shashi Tharoor, an acclaimed novelist and commentator, is a former undersecretary-general of the UN. Source: The Australian
New Delhi: Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) has very recently proposed to double the financial support to terrorist groups operating in Jammu and Kashmir, India's external intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) has warned in a ‘top secret’ report. A RAW report sent to the Prime Minister and other authorities stated that in a briefing given to President Pervez Musharraf, the ISI stated that the jihadi groups had lost resoluteness resulting in weakening of the so called `freedom movement' and financial constraints was one of the major factors. The agency stated that the Indian security forces had wrested the initiative and seemed to have got control over the situation. India's external intelligence wing's warning against Pakistan army intentions to intensify jihadi operations in Jammu and Kashmir has come at a time as the counter-terrorism talks between India and Pakistan are to resume later this month. Read more ...Source: Sify News
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A U.S.-born Al Qaeda spokesman, in a newly released English-language video, denies the group was behind a series of bombings in Pakistan that have killed hundreds of civilians, calling such attacks un-Islamic.
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