Top US officials debate drone strikes in Pakistan

The program, which targets Pakistani-based al Qaeda and other militants, has jumped from fewer than 50 in the Bush administration, to more than 200 strikes in Pakistan's ungoverned tribal areas since President Barack Obama took office. Strikes are carried out with tacit Pakistani assent, by drones that fly from Afghanistan. — File Photo

ASPEN: The White House’s top adviser on Afghanistan and Pakistan said Friday that taking out three to five key al Qaeda leaders could amount to a ”knockout punch” against the group.
Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum, retired Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute said now is the time to keep up US counterterrorist actions in Pakistan, even if they upset the Pakistani government.
Lute said killing al Qaeda successor Ayman al-Zawahri and four of his lieutenants in the next six months could ”significantly jeopardize al Qaeda’s capacity to regenerate.”
His comments came in response to former US intelligence chief Dennis Blair, who said that the US should stop its drone campaign in Pakistan. The CIA’s unmanned aircraft operation aimed at al Qaeda is backfiring by damaging the US-Pakistan relationship, he said.
The program, which targets Pakistani-based al Qaeda and other militants, has jumped from fewer than 50 in the Bush administration, to more than 200 strikes in Pakistan’s ungoverned tribal areas since President Barack Obama took office. Strikes are carried out with tacit Pakistani assent, by drones that fly from Afghanistan.
Publicly, Pakistani officials decry the hits. That tension grew worse after the US unilateral raid into Pakistan on May 2 to kill al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and an earlier incident, in January, when a CIA contractor was held for killing two Pakistani men in Lahore whom he said were trying to rob him.
Pakistan’s ambassador Husain Haqqani acknowledged the drone strikes, but said his government was pushing for a reduction because they’d begun to fray public support.
”Part of the agreement is neither side is going to talk too much about the drone strikes,” he said. ”They’ve taken out many people who needed to be taken out but if the cost is if support for the overall war starts to decline, you have to take that into account.”
Blair suggested that now is the time to give Pakistan more say in what gets hit by drone strikes and when, despite Pakistan’s record of tipping off militants when it gets advance word of US action.
”We should offer the Pakistanis to put two hands on the trigger,” he said, as well as encourage them to send more troops to the ungoverned areas, to challenge the militants.
Blair said the continuing drone strikes are more of a nuisance than a real threat to al Qaeda, and that only a ground campaign by Pakistan would truly threaten it and other militant organizations. The US had been training forces for that purpose until the program was canceled by Pakistan in retaliation for the raid to kill bin Laden.
Al Qaeda ”can sustain its level of resistance to an air-only campaign,” Blair said. ”I just see us with that strategy walking out on a thinner and thinner ledge and if even we get to the far end of it, we are not going to lower the fundamental threat to the US any lower than we have it now.”
Lute countered: ”This is a period of turbulence in an organization which is our arch enemy. This is a period, therefore, that all military doctrine suggests you need to go for the knockout punch.”
Other conference speakers agreed, including Bush administration veteran Fran Townsend, the former chief counterterrorism adviser in the White House.
”This has been the key tool in degrading the al Qaeda leadership,” Townsend said. Without it, she said, al Qaeda would be a far greater threat to the US Stephen Hadley, former national security adviser to President George W. Bush, said the Pakistani government in the past had assented to the strikes, if they were used against major targets.
”The line they drew was boots on the ground, special (operations) forces in Pakistan,” Hadley said. ”We did a limited cross-border operation and it caused a huge outcry to the point where we said we’re not going to do that anymore” unless it was to get bin Laden or his then-deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, ”knowing you’re going to pay in Pakistan public opinion. And we did” after bin Laden was killed.
Blair, who was forced to resign by the Obama administration, says the White House undermined his authority as director of national intelligence by siding with the CIA, instead of telling it to listen to him.
”They sided enough with the CIA in ways that were public enough that it undercut my position,” he said.

11 soldiers, militants killed in Yemen clashes

A local official in Dofas, 15 kilometres (nine miles) south of Abyan's provincial capital of Zinjibar, said that five members of the extremist network were also killed during the attack and four more were wounded. - File Photo

ADEN: Eleven people including top officers have been killed in fierce clashes between Yemen’s army and suspected al Qaeda militants in the country’s restive south, military and local officials said on Saturday.
“al Qaeda elements stationed in Dofas (Abyan province) attacked army units there using machine guns on Friday, killing two officers and four soldiers, and wounding nine others,” a military official in the village told AFP.
The official identified the dead officers as Colonel Mohammed al-Salahi and Colonel Hilal Shamsan.
Medics at a military hospital in the strategic southern port city of Aden confirmed the toll.
A local official in Dofas, 15 kilometres (nine miles) south of Abyan’s provincial capital of Zinjibar, said that five members of the extremist network were also killed during the attack and four more were wounded.
Militants belonging to the “Partisans of Sharia” (Islamic law), which is suspected of links to al Qaeda, took over much of Zinjibar in May. Thousands of residents have since been displaced by fighting there.
Deputy Information Minister Abdo al-Janadi said last week that the United States had provided logistical support to the Yemen military’s 25th Mechanised Brigade, which was until recently besieged by the militants in Zinjibar.
US commanders have repeatedly expressed concern that the jihadists have been taking advantage of a protracted power vacuum in Sanaa to expand their operations.
Since January, protesters have been demanding the ouster of veteran President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been in hospital in Saudi Arabia since early June being treated for wounds sustained in a blast at his palace.

Abu Sayyaf kills seven Philippine soldiers: military

Seven Philippine soldiers were killed and 21 were wounded. - AFP (File Photo)

ZAMBOANGA, Philippines: Seven Philippine soldiers were killed and 21 were wounded in fierce clashes with al Qaeda-linked Islamic militants in the southern Philippines on Thursday, the military said.
The soldiers encountered members of the Abu Sayyaf group in one of their hideouts in the forests of Jolo Island before dawn, local military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Randolf Cabangbang told reporters.
“The encounter was fierce and troops encountered a big group of the Abu Sayyaf,” he said, adding extra forces and air support had since been called into the area.
Cabangbang said it appeared the soldiers stumbled into a major Abu Sayyaf camp as they chased a small group of the militants.
“I think what happened was, the troops were on manoeuvres during the entire night, and in the morning that’s when they realised they were already in the (Abu Sayyaf) camp.
That explains why we have so many casualties,” he said.
Cabangbang said it was believed the militants were under the control of senior Abu Sayyaf figures wanted for previous kidnappings of Americans and Filipinos in the southern Philippines.
One of those leaders is Isnilon Hapilon, the subject of a dollar 5-million-dollar reward from the US government for information leading to his capture.
Another is Radullan Sahiron, an ageing Abu Sayyaf figure who has a dollar 1-million-dollar bounty on his head and is easily distinguished because he lost his right hand fighting security forces in the 1970s.
However Cabangbang said it was not clear whether Hapilon and Sahiron were directly involved in Thursday’s clashes.
He also said the military was not yet able to say if there were any Abu Sayyaf casualties.
The Abu Sayyaf, a small gang of self-styled Islamist militants founded in the 1990s with seed money from Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network, is blamed for the country’s worst terrorist attacks.
These include the bombing of a passenger ferry in Manila Bay in 2004 that killed more than 100 people, as well as a string of high-profile abductions targeting foreigners and locals.
Hundreds of US troops have been deployed on Jolo and other parts of the southern Philippines since 2002 to help eliminate the Abu Sayyaf.
However they are only allowed to train Filipino soldiers, and not engage in any combat operations.
The Philippine and US militaries have described their joint operations in the south as a success, saying the Abu Sayyaf threat has diminished and their militant numbers are down to just a few hundred.
However incidents such as Thursday’s clashes show the Abu Sayyaf remains able to conduct deadly operations.
There have also been a string of kidnappings in the south in recent months that authorities suspect have involved the Abu Sayyaf.
The military and police blamed the Abu Sayyaf for kidnapping a Malaysian trader on Jolo in May. The kidnappers have demanded eight million pesos (dollar 185,000) for his release.
The Abu Sayyaf was also blamed for kidnapping an Indian man who was visiting his Filipina wife’s hometown on Jolo last month. No ransom demand, if any, has been made public.

Saudi terror law ‘would strangle peaceful protest’

The legislation would also give the authorities power to imprison for at least 10 years anybody who questions the integrity of King Abdullah or Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, it said in a statement. - File Photo

LONDON: A proposed Saudi anti-terror law threatens to strangle peaceful dissent in the Muslim kingdom, Amnesty International said Friday, calling on King Abdullah to reconsider the changes.
Under the Draft Penal Law for Terrorism Crimes and Financing Terrorism, the authorities could detain people “potentially indefinitely” without charge or trial, said Amnesty, adding it had obtained a leaked copy of the law.
The legislation would also give the authorities power to imprison for at least 10 years anybody who questions the integrity of King Abdullah or Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, it said in a statement.
The London-based human rights watchdog warned the proposed anti-terror law “would strangle peaceful protest.”
“This draft law poses a serious threat to freedom of expression in the kingdom in the name of preventing terrorism,” Philip Luther, Amnesty’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, was quoted as saying.
“If passed, it would pave the way for even the smallest acts of peaceful dissent to be branded terrorism and risk massive human rights violations.”
Amnesty said a Saudi government security committee had reviewed the draft law in June but that it was “unknown when or if it might be passed”.
It warned the “definition of ‘terrorist crimes’ in the draft is so broad that it lends itself to wide interpretation and abuse, and would in effect criminalise legitimate dissent.”
“Terrorist crimes would include such actions as ‘endangering national unity’, ‘halting the basic law or some of its articles’, or ‘harming the reputation of the state or its position’,” said Amnesty.
Under the draft law, which went against the Gulf state’s international legal obligations including the UN Convention against Torture, violations would carry “harsh punishments,” it added.
“The death penalty would be applied to cases of taking up arms against the state or for any ‘terrorist crimes’ that result in death.”
Saudi Arabia has beheaded 33 people so far this year, according to an AFP tally based on official and human rights group reports.
Earlier this month, Amnesty called on Riyadh to stop applying the death penalty, saying there had been a significant rise in the number of executions in previous weeks.
Amnesty said Friday that under the draft law, “terror suspects” could be taken into custody arbitrarily and be held “in incommunicado detention for up to 120 days, or for longer periods — potentially indefinitely.”
“At a time when people throughout the Middle East and North Africa have been exercising their legitimate right to express dissent and call for change, Saudi Arabian authorities have been seeking to squash this right for its citizens,” said Luther.
“King Abdullah must reconsider this law and ensure that his people’s legitimate right to freedom of expression is not curtailed in the name of fighting terrorism.”
Saudi Arabia’s prosecution said in April that more than 5,000 “terror”suspects were being tried or have already been sentenced in the kingdom, which battled a wave of Al-Qaeda attacks in 2003-2006.
A secretive Riyadh court specialised in “terror crimes” has been set up to try those suspected of links to the jihadist network.

Gas pipeline to reach border next year: Iran

A handout picture released by the official website of the Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei shows him (R) meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (L) and his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari in Tehran on July 16, 2011. – Photo by AFP

TEHRAN: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Saturday that Tehran was hopeful of completing its section of the Pakistan-Iran gas pipeline by the end of next year.
“Construction of the pipeline to export Iranian gas to Pakistan is under way, and we hope it will reach the frontier by the end of 2012,” he said of the multi-billion-dollar project after a meeting with President Asif Ali Zardari.
President Zardari, who arrived in Tehran on a day-long visit, held two rounds of talks with President Ahmadinejad — first delegation-level talks and then a one-on-one meeting.
The two leaders also reviewed progress on a proposal for the transmission of electricity from Iran to Balochistan.
They expressed confidence that joint efforts would prove helpful in countering terrorism, terming the menace a common enemy for the region and the world.
Mr Ahmadinejad said his country looked forward to a new era in relations with Pakistan.
“Iran is ready to reinforce its cooperation with Pakistan in every field,” the Iranian president said.
Mr Zardari said relations between the neighbours should be strengthened, and proposed that “trade between the two countries be conducted in local currency, and not the dollar, to curb smuggling”. He also proposed a bilateral free trade agreement.
The President said Pakistan was already in negotiations with Turkey, Sri Lanka and China for the currency swap arrangement.
He denounced “efforts by our enemies who seek to show that the Pakistan government is unstable by provoking trouble,” saying that those responsible would face justice.
President Zardari praised Iran’s constructive engagement in the trilateral process, recalling last month’s Pakistan-Iran-Afghanistan summit hosted by Tehran.
He urged the Iranian government to consider the creation of an integrated border management regime for tackling militancy and extremism. He said Pakistan and Iran had vital interests in stability and peace of the region.
Mr Zardari called for developing coordination between governments to curb narcotics and human trafficking in the region. He said Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan faced a common menace of drug trafficking and expressed the hope that a trilateral initiative would help counter the curse.
The President said Pakistan and Iran had the potential to undertake joint economic projects in Afghanistan to enhance connectivity, build infrastructure, rail and road links.
Mr Zardari said there was a need to raise bilateral trade to four billion dollars from one billion dollars. He called for working together to identify impediments to implementation of the Pakistan-Iran Preferential Trade Agreement, signed in 2006.
The Iranian president agreed to take full advantage of geo-strategic locations for “ushering in a new era of progress”.
About the Afghanistan issue, President Zardari said Pakistan supported the process initiated by President Hamid Karzai for reconciliation and peace. He said Pakistan supported a reconciliation process which must be Afghan-led and Afghan-owned, adding that Islamabad was ready to provide all possible assistance to Kabul in reconstruction efforts.
It was Mr Zardari’s second visit to Iran in less than a month. He visited Tehran last month to attend the counter-terrorism summit, on the sidelines of which the two countries and Afghanistan reached an agreement to augment cooperation in the fight against militancy.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik, Water and Power Minister Syed Naveed Qamar, Petroleum Minister Dr Asim Hussain and presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar accompanied Mr Zardari.
KHAMENEI LAMBASTS US: Later Mr Zardari called on Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei.
Fars news agency quoted Ayatollah Khamenei as telling the President: “The principal enemy of the Pakistani people and the unity of the country is the West, headed by the United States.”
Iranian officials have been vocal in their criticism of the prolonged US troop deployment in Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which are now set to be drawn down.—Agencies