Christian Science Monitor, 28 July 2010: An attempt was made to poison a key American adviser involved in the bidding for a multibillion dollar mining contract in Afghanistan by replacing beer in a bottle with sulfuric acid. The little-reported incident occurred in June 2007 but takes on new interest with the publication by the Wikileaks website of an intelligence warning in February 2007 that Pakistan’s ISI spy agency was planning to poison soldiers’ alcoholic drinks. . . . .
AP, 27 July 2010: A former Pakistani spy kidnapped by militants four months ago in northwestern Pakistan threatened in a video to expose the government’s “weaknesses” unless it frees prisoners to secure his release as demanded by his captors.
Sultan Amir Tarar, also known as Col. Imam, did not provide further details in the video obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday. But he likely possesses significant knowledge about his former employer, the country’s most powerful spy agency, and its overseer, the military. Both organizations have been battling local Taliban militants and their allies who have declared war on the state because they deem it unIslamic and resent its close alliance with the United States.
“You people are fully aware of the role I played for the nation and my country during my service,” said Imam, reading from a written statement with two masked gunmen behind him. “But if the government of Pakistan does not care for me, I will also not care for it and will expose all its weaknesses.”
Imam said he was being held by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al-Alami, believed to be an offshoot of an anti-Shiite Muslim militant group that has increasingly set its sights on the government. A different group calling itself the Asian Tigers claimed to be holding the men soon after they were abducted in late March. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al-Alami has demanded that Pakistan release nearly 160 militants held in prison, including several suspected suicide bombers and men facing trial for the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, said intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
Imam said that he has sent statements to the government asking for help, but it has not responded. He did not reveal his location but said he has been living in a basement during his captivity.”You know what kind of mentality these people have and what they can do,” said Imam in the video.
Imam disappeared in late March along with another ex-intelligence official, Khalid Khawaja, and a filmmaker. Khawaja was found shot dead near a road in late April in North Waziristan, part of Pakistan’s semiautonomous tribal area near the Afghan border that is teeming with militants. . . .
Wall Street Journal, 26 July 2010: To some, Hamid Gul, a former Pakistani spy chief now in the spotlight because of his appearance in leaked U.S. military documents, is a puppet master controlling militant attacks against U.S. and Indian forces in Afghanistan.
To others, he is little more than a conspiracy theorist who rants almost nightly on Pakistan TV talk-shows against the U.S., India and Israel. U.S. intelligence reports published Sunday by WikiLeaks, an Internet document-publishing site, paint a picture of Mr. Gul and the Inter-Services Intelligence military spy agency that he headed in the late 1980s as working in recent years to attack American interests in Afghanistan. . . .
. . . . One thing is clear: Mr. Gul has turned against his former U.S. patrons. He is involved with radical Islamist groups in Pakistan and, as a TV pundit, is a vocal supporter of al Qaeda and the Taliban, which grew out of the anti-Soviet jihad. In the interview Monday he said the U.S. wouldn’t be able to win the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan and should pull out.
Mr. Gul says Pakistani authorities play a lap-dog role to the U.S. in its war against militants in the tribal regions. U.S. drone strikes targeting militants, he says, have led to a wave of suicide attacks by militants in Pakistan that would stop if Pakistan were to cut its ties to the U.S.
Mr. Gul regularly shouts down opponents on TV talk shows. His anti-American views—including an often-repeated claim the Sept. 11 attacks weren’t carried out by al Qaeda—are popular in Pakistan. In April, he alleged the U.S. was behind the assassination of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in 2007, prompting a rebuke from the White House for his “anti-American agenda.”
The classified documents leaked Sunday suggest the view that Mr. Gul has a much more dangerous role than mere talk is alive and well. One document from 2009 describes Mr. Gul taking part in a meeting with militants in Pakistan’s tribal regions to plan a truck bomb attack in Afghanistan. In another, dated 2006, Mr. Gul is said to instruct three people to “make the snow warm in Kabul, basically telling them to set Kabul aflame” with attacks.
A number of reports cite the ISI’s involvement in plans to attack Indian assets in Afghanistan. One report from 2007 says the ISI was planning to target NATO troops by spiking alcoholic drinks with poison. It is unclear that plot was ever attempted.
Mr. Gul’s name also arose in late 2008 following the terrorist attacks on Mumbai, India, which were alleged to have been carried out by Pakistani’s Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group. Mr. Gul was alleged by India to have helped facilitate, if not oversee, the attack. The U.S. pushed the United Nations to have Mr. Gul blacklisted as an international terrorist. . . . .
Pakistan Aids Insurgency in Afghanistan, Reports Assert (New York Times, 25 July 2010)
. . . . the reports indicate that American soldiers on the ground are inundated with accounts of a network of Pakistani assets and collaborators that runs from the Pakistani tribal belt along the Afghan border, through southern Afghanistan, and all the way to the capital, Kabul. . . .
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The Quranic Concept of War, by Gen. S.K. Mailk
The foreword of the book was written by General Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq. He was then the Pakistan Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) but not yet the president of Pakistan. In his Foreword, Zia wrote:
“I write these few lines to commend Brigadier Malik’s book on ‘The Koranic Concept of War’ to both soldier and civilian alike. JEHAD FI- SABILILLAH is not the exclusive domain of the professional soldier, nor is it restricted to the application of military force alone.”
“This book brings out with simplicity, clarity and precision the Koranic philosophy on the application of military force, within the context of the totality that is JEHAD. The professional soldier in a Muslim army, pursuing the goals of a Muslim state, CANNOT become ‘professional’ if in all his activities he does not take on ‘the color of Allah’. The non-military citizen of a Muslim state must, likewise, be aware of the kind of soldier that his country must produce and the ONLY pattern of war that his country’s armed forces may wage.”
“I have read this book with great interest and believe that it has a useful contribution to make toward this understanding that we jointly seek as citizens of an Islamic State, soldier or civilian. I pray and trust that this book will be read by many. For a task so sincerely undertaken and so devotedly executed, the author’s reward is with his Lord.”
GENERAL M. ZIA-UL-HAQ
Chief of the Army Staff
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S K Malik’s Quranic Concept of War described jihad in terms of “grand strategy” and “total war” because it applies every element of force and suasion, every stratagem, every inducement and every coercion to submit the world to Islam. The “philosophy of war … is an integral part of the total Quranic ideology” Malik stated. Note too, Malik was no Wahhabi or Salafist, he was a Pakistani general in 1979.
AFP, 20 July 2010: A junior Indian diplomat arrested three months ago on allegations of spying for Pakistan was charged Tuesday under the official secrets act, police said. Madhuri Gupta, who had been working in the Indian embassy in Islamabad prior to her arrest, was booked under three sections of the act, Deputy Police Commissioner Shibesh Singh told AFP. Gupta, 53, was employed in the embassy’s information service. She was called back to New Delhi in April on the pretext of consultations only to be arrested at home by police. . . .
. . . . According to Indian police, Gupta had been under surveillance for six months before she was taken into custody. Suspicion had been aroused by the “extraordinary interest” she started taking in subjects unrelated to her assignment.
Gupta had worked in the Indian mission for nearly three years and news reports said she was alleged to have passed on information from the Islamabad head of India’s external intelligence service. Her handlers were reportedly members of the Pakistan intelligence agency, the ISI. . . . .
CP, 6 July 2010: A Pakistani man approached CIA officers in Islamabad last year, offering to give up secrets of his country’s closely guarded nuclear program. To prove he was a trustworthy source, he claimed he had spent nuclear fuel rods. But the CIA had its doubts. Before long, the suspicious officers had concluded that Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, was trying to run a double agent against them. CIA officers alerted their Pakistani counterparts. Pakistan promised to look into the matter and, with neither side acknowledging the man was a double agent, the affair came to a polite, quiet end.
The incident, recounted by former U.S. officials, underscores the schizophrenic relationship with one of America’s most crucial counterterrorism allies. Publicly, officials credit Pakistani collaboration with helping kill and capture numerous al-Qaida and Taliban leaders. Privately, that relationship is often marked by mistrust as the two countries wage an aggressive spy battle against each other. . . .
. . . . But the CIA became so concerned by a rash of cases involving suspected double agents in 2009, it re-examined the spies it had on the payroll in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. The internal investigation revealed about a dozen double agents, stretching back several years. Most of them were being run by Pakistan. Other cases were deemed suspicious. The CIA determined the efforts were part of an official offensive counterintelligence program being run by Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the ISI’s spy chief.
Pakistan’s willingness to run double agents against the U.S. is particularly troubling to some in the CIA because of the country’s ties to longtime Osama bin Laden ally Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and to the Haqqani network, a Pakistan-based Taliban faction also linked to al-Qaida. . . . .
. . . . The spate of Pakistani double agents has raised alarm bells in some corners of the agency, while others merely say it’s the cost of doing business in Pakistan. They say double agents are as old as humanity and point to the old spy adage: “There are friendly nations but no friendly intelligence services.”
“The use of double agents is something skilled intelligence services and the better terrorists groups like al-Qaida, Hezbollah, provisional Irish Republican Army and the Tamil Tigers have regularly done. It’s not something that should be a surprise,” said Daniel Byman, a foreign policy expert at the Saban Center at Brookings Institution.. . . .
♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 562–Counterterrorism Asset Validation Course
♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 502–Double Agentry: Offensive Counterintelligence Operations
