Concern is mounting over the health of John Solecki, an American working for the UNHCR, who was kidnapped from the Pakistani city of Quetta 45 days ago.

The UN said it was worried about an apparent deterioration in his health after a little known Baluch group, which says it is holding him, called a local news agency saying he was seriously ill with a heart condition.

Three deadlines set by a group calling itself the Baluchistan Liberation United Front have passed and a new one was meant to end on Thursday. The group wants the release of 1,000 Baluch prisoners, including women, said to be held in Pakistan government cells.

With little sign of any resolution Pakistani media are questioning the seriousness of the effort to secure Solecki’s release. Neither the Baluch government nor the government in Islamabad had taken the task seriously, the liberal Daily Times said. “No matter who kidnapped Solecki, observers say the government cannot absolve itself of the primary responsibility of protecting all those in Pakistan’s territory,” it said.

And the News wrote of the “casual cruelty” involved in picking up an unarmed aid worker on his way to work. It said there were credible reports that extremist groups had a a sort of “rate card” of potential victims. grading them by their public profile and relative value. And since the number of foreigners on Pakistani soil is dwindling fast, the value of those who remain such as Solecki is high. 

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America’s deadly Predator unmanned planes won’t go away from the skies above Pakistan’s troubled northwest, and the controversy over whether these aircraft operate from Pakistani soil only gets more intense.

Following a U.S. senator disclosure that the drones, which have wrecked such havoc and are the cause of much popular anger against the United States, were being flown from within the country, Pakistan’s The News conducted its own investigation.

It has found old Google earth satellite pictures from 2006 showing U.S. drones parked on a runway whose coordinates 27 degrees 51 minutes north, 65 degrees and 10 minutes east place it in Baluchistan.

While the paper identified the three robotic planes parked on the runway as the massive Global Hawks, the specialists over at Danger Room say they are more likely to be the Predators that the United States has come to rely upon heavily on the Afghan-Pakistan border.

Britain’s Times also said it had a copy of the Google image showing drones outside a hangar at the edge of a runway whose coordinates placed it in Pakistan.

(more…)

U.S. missile strikes in Pakistan have killed more than 50 people in the past three days in what appears to be an escalation of the military campaign in the troubled region along the Afghan border, conducted largely by unmanned drone aircraft.

On Saturday, a remote-controlled US drone bombed compounds in South Waziristan, killing at least 25 people. And on Monday, another US drone struck the Kurram tribal region, killing 26. Kurram had not been targeted earlier, so in that sense it represented a broadening of the campaign, while the high death toll speaks for the intensity of the strikes.

Both attacks appeared aimed at militants loyal to Baitullah Mehsud, the Taliban leader in Pakistan, the New York Times said.

The United States has now targetted Pakistan four times since President Barack Obama took office last month, ending any lingering expectations that he might reverse the course set by the previous administration in hunting al Qaeda and the Taliban holed up in the northwest region. Indeed the strikes are a reminder of Obama’s campaign promise that the United States would go after al Qaeda inside Pakistan if it was unable or unwilling to do so.

For Pakistan the strikes come at a time when it is seething over remarks by a U.S. senator who said that Predator drone aircraft that were carrying out the strikes were being flown from an air base inside Pakistan. With Pakistani newspapers latching on to Senator Diane Feinstein’s remarks at a Senate intelligence committee hearing, a weak civilian government is running for cover.

Up until now, as Danger Room blog  said, Islamabad had sort of kept up a “don’t ask don’t tell” policy on the Predator strikes which are deeply unpopular in the country.  Officials would denounce the strikes in public while also taking a sneak look at the planes’ video feeds, it said.

But it is a high risk game, and some military experts are warning that continuing  strikes on Pakistani villages would prove to be counterproductive.

Dave Kilcullen, a counterinsurgency expert, told the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee earlier this month that  “the current approach is having a severely destabilizing effect on Pakistan and risks spreading the conflict further, or even prompting the collapse of the Pakistani state, a scenario that would dwarf any of the problems we have yet faced in Iraq or Afghanistan.”

Or as Pakistani defence analyst  Shireen M. Mazari wrote in The News : ”Where there is no law and where the state becomes the perpetrator of extrajudicial killings – which is what the drone attack victims are in essence – the legal and moral void will continue to be filled with an ever increasing cycle of violence.”

Chilling words from both of them.

[Photos of Pakistani tribesmen holding funeral prayers for victims of missile attack and unmanned Predator plane]

America’s ramped-up Predator drone campaign against al Qaeda in Pakistan’s northwest is starting to pay off, according to U.S. and Pakistani intelligence authorities quoted in a clutch of media reports.

Eleven of the group’s top 20 “high value targets” along the Afghan border have been eliminated in the past six months  Newsweek magazine reports, citing Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

The strikes by the unmanned drones circling high above Pakistan’s rugged tribal areas have been so pin-pointed that in one case a missile fired at a hideout in North Waziristan didn’t just hit the right house, but the room in which Mustafa al-Misri (”Mustafa the Egyptian”) and several other Qaeda operatives were holed up. the magazine reports, quoting a Taliban sub-commander.

A U.S. counter-terrorism official goes so far as to suggest that the CIA-directed strikes have been so successful that it was possible to foresee a “complete al Qaeda defeat” in the mountainous region , according to this report in America’s National Public Radio.

Is that stretching the gains,  a bit too triumphalist a picture?

Al Qaeda’s leadership cadre had been “decimated” with up to a dozen senior and mid-level operatives killed as a  result of the strikes and the remaining leaders reeling from the attacks, U.S. officials say in the NPR report, adding achievements of the past several months should not be under-stated.

“In the past, you could take out the No. 3 al-Qaeda leader, and No. 4 just moved up to take his place,”  NPR quoted a U.S. official as saying. “Well, if you take out No. 3, No. 4 and then 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10, it suddenly becomes a lot more difficult to revive the leadership cadre.”

(more…)

Former Pakistan ambassador to London and Washington Maleeha
Lodhi has given a taste of what Richard Holbrooke can expect when
he makes his maiden visit to Islamabad next week in his new role as
President Barack Obama’s special envoy to Pakistan and
Afghanistan.

She may have owed her diplomatic career to General Pervez Musharraf,  but being an ex-official does not mean she has lost touch.

Writing in The News, the paper she used to edit, Lodhi listed an eight-point agenda for Pakistan as it braces for Holbrooke, a diplomat with a reputation for playing hardball.

Lines have to be drawn to make the United States respect Pakistani sovereignty and understand the limits of cooperation, Lodhi writes in an opinion piece titled “Back to the Future”.

Here’s the Pakistani agenda as she sees it :
1. U.S. missile attacks on Pakistani territory should end.
2. Assistance under the Biden-Luger bill should be offered
with no strings attached.
3. Give Pakistan helicopters, night vision, radar to fight a counter-insurgency, it doesn’t need conventional arms from America.
4. Give Pakistan a break in trade agreements. The all- important textile industry needs a lifeline.
5. Make India part of the equation for stabilising Kashmir, by recognising Pakistan’s security concerns on its eastern border.
6. The United States should reshape its Afghan policy to take into account Pakistan’s security concerns, otherwise no strategy will work.
7. Pakistan must also tell the United States that sending more troops to Afghanistan without a change in strategy will backfire.
8. Policies to stabilise Afghanistan should not end up destabilising Pakistan. The Taliban should be prised away from al Qaeda, and a reconciliation process with the Taliban begun.

President Asif Ali Zardari in an op-ed piece for the Washington Post also covered some of that ground, urging the new U.S. administration to boost both military and non-military aid to help Pakistan fight extremists. “Give us the tools and we will get the job done,” he wrote.

And he made clear too he expected Holbrooke to work with both Pakistan and India on the issue of Kashmir, although as special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, India was technically not part of his remit.

 ”Much as the Palestine issue remains the core obstacle to peace in the Middle East, the question of Kashmir must be addressed in some meaningful way to bring stability to the region,” Zardari said.

Reasonable expectations of a sovereign nation ? Or is the time for expectations over ?

[Pics of Richard Holbrooke and a protest in Karachi against U.S. missile strikes in the northwest]

The first U.S. missiles have struck Pakistan since U.S. President Barack Obama  took office, dispelling any possibility that he might relent on these raids that have so angered Pakistanis, many of whom think it only engenders reprisal attacks from militants on their cities.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari protested to the U.S. ambassador over Friday’s twin raids in South and North Waziristan and  newspaper editorialists and commentators are worried this is just a foretaste of things to come. The strikes, the first since Jan 2, have led the Dawn newspaper to recall Obama’s statements during the presidential camapaign when he repeatedly said he would “take out high value terrorist targets” inside Pakistan if it was unable or unwilling to do so.

“Three days into Obama’s presidency, we have the first evidence of how his promise will translate into action. Drone attacks in South and North Waziristan have killed at least 14 people, including what the media now routinely refers to as ‘foreign militants’, ” the newspaper said.

Early signs from Washington suggest that it will continue military action on Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), considered to be place where al Qaeda has reconstituted itself, the newspaper said.  At the same time it will demand that Pakistan do more against the militants, tying aid to the armed forces with achieving concrete results.

The News wrote that the ‘rather optimistic assurance” given by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani earlier on that the Predator drone attacks would stop once Obama took charge had been dashed. And it added that it wasn’t clear why or how Gilani made such a statement when he was in no position to issue a guarantee on behalf of the Americans.

The missile attacks, and there have been around 30 over the past year, have caused both physical and psychological damage in Pakistan, it said. But what is the way out? Islamabad must somehow persuade the Americans that fighting the militants on its soil was something best left to Pakistani forces. ”The U.S. decision-makers need to be persuaded of the damage caused by the drone attacks and how they contribute to the growth of militancy,” it said.

Juan Cole writing in Salon.com said that for Obama to bomb Pakistan territory in his very first week in office after promising a civilian-friendly policy focused on human development was ominous.

“This resort to violence from the skies even before Obama had initiated discussions with Islamabad is a bad sign. It is not clear if Obama really believes that the fractious tribes of the Pakistani northwest can be subdued with some airstrikes and if he really believes that U.S. security depends on what happens in Waziristan,” Cole writes in the piece headlined “Obama’s Vietnam?”

 ”If he thinks the drone attacks on FATA are a painless way to signal to the world that he is no wimp, he may find, as Lyndon Johnson did, that such military operations take on a momentum of their own, and produce popular discontents that can prove deadly to the military mission.”

[Photos of a protest in Karachi against U.S. missile strikes, U.S.President Barack Obama and Richard Holbrooke, envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and coffins of a victims of a missile attack in northwest Pakistan]

Not long ago India was basking in the glow of a new-found strategic partnership with the United States, one that pitched it as a global player. A breakthrough civilian nuclear deal that virtually  recognised New Delhi as a nuclear weapon state after decades of isolation was the centrepiece of this new relationship.

But the attacks in Mumbai have tested this partnership and some of the lustre is fading. America has been unequivocally telling the Indians to exercise restraint   in responding to the attacks which New Delhi says were orchestrated from Pakistan. (This while U.S. Predator drones
carried out more attacks on the militants in Pakistan’s northwest)

In recent weeks, much to the Indians’ dismay, the mantra of  restraint has now moved to the suggestion from some U.S. analysts that both India and  Pakistan must resolve their dispute over Kashmir to help bring stability to the region. One U.S. editorial suggested India must let go of Kashmir,  thus freeing up Pakistan’s military resources so that it can focus on the war on its western front. And although other analysts are saying the idea - floated long before the Mumbai attacks - is misguided, the American response to the assault on India’s financial capital has left many disappointed.

“India was sold a dream that Washington was determined to  make it a first class world power. The dream lies broken. The carpetbaggers who peddled the dream are nowhere to be seen,” wrote M.K.Bhadrakumar, a former Indian diplomat, in Outlook magazine.

(more…)

U.S. military operations crossed another threshold in Pakistan this week when a Predator ‘drone’ aircraft fired missiles into Bannu area in North West Frontier Province (NWFP), away from the seven Federally Administered Tribal Areas where it has conducted raids with impunity.

Attacking the self-governing and semi-autonomous FATA on the Afghan border, considered a haven for al Qaeda and Taliban,  is one thing. Targeting the North West Frontier Province, or settled areas as Pakistanis call it, is quite another.

This is a  province governed by the national assembly - unlike the tribal areas which are not subject to the national assembly - and therefore  represents an expansion of U.S. operating area into Pakistan proper.

Pakistanis are worrying that if the United States can attack deep inside the North West Frontier Province, then what stops them from raining down missiles on Pakistani cities in pursuit of al Qaeda, according to a report in The Hindu. They are wondering just how far will the United States go in its battle against the militants. (more…)

In the dying days of the Bush administration, the United States military has stepped up missile strikes by remotely piloted Predator aircraft against militants in the mountains of Pakistan.

The raids have become deeper - as much as 25 miles into Pakistani territory – and more targeted like the latest one in a compound in South Waziristan where militants had gathered to mourn the victims of a previous strike two days before.

The U.S. has launched 18 Predator attacks since the beginning of August. compared with five strikes during the first seven months of 2008, the New York Times  reported . It said that the White House was relying on air strikes after a ground operation by U.S. Special Forces triggered a furious reaction from the Pakistani government.

But arguably, the drones armed with deadly missiles can cause more destruction than any ground operation. Pakistan’s The News, citing  Interior Ministry figures, says 355 people have been killed and 248 wounded in cross-border strikes, Predator and ground attacks carried out by Afghan-based American forces in Pakistan so far this year. (more…)

Last week, the Pakistan Army said it had recovered the wreckage of an unmanned aerial vehicle in the South Waziristan region, but it didn’t identify the aircraft.

The United States military, which has stepped up flights of the Predator, its main unmanned aerial vehicle, on the Afghan-Pakistan border and into Pakistan in recent months, said none of its planes had gone down inside Pakistan. One of its aerial vehicles had crashed but that was in Afghanistan, about  60 miles west of the Pakistani border and U.S. forces had immediately recovered the aircraft.

So whose unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was it that the Pakistan military found and why have they not revealed its identity? Tribesmen earlier said they had brought down the plane with fire, but the Pakistan military said there weren’t any bullet marks and it appeared to have crashed because of  mechanical failure.

If it was a Predator and this is  by no means certain, then you can narrow down the list to a small group of countriies.  Predator-maker General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc.   names the Italian Air Force, the Turkish army and the Royal Air Force (RAF) as customers of the Predator family of unmanned spy planes, besides the United States. All three have forces in Afghanistan but so far none has been known to fly missions into Pakistan.

Danger Room blog, which has been asking the same question about the downed drone,  says a General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc spokesman said they also have classified sales which they wouldn’t discuss.

 So what really is going on in the skies over Pakistan’s northwest ? Are there other players getting involved in the face of now almost visceral opposition to strikes by the United States? There aren’t any obvious answers out there.

Or perhaps it wasn’t a Predator at all, and was some other pilotless surveillance plane. Which then opens a whole range of countries that fly such planes including Pakistan itself, and even India. Reuters quotes a Pakistani intelligence official as saying that the aircraft that they recovered was about 3 feet (1 meter) long with a wingspan of about 5 feet. If those dimensions are correct, that would make the aircraft much smaller than the Predator.