Pakistan has been playing us for decades, demanding money to fight the "terrorists" while their own security agency, the ISI has, with the support of the government been supporting kihadist groups against US and Western interests. It has been a dangerous game, but it looks like it may be up.
Lashkar-e-Taiba or "Army of the Pure" is a brutal jihadist group which is a "global threat" said Adm. Mike Mullen during a visit to Islamabad last July. Their ability to operate within Pakistan and carry out jihad attacks is only possible with the help of the administration there and the ISI. We pay the jizya in the hopes we will not be harmed. That is turning out to be wishful thinking.
From The New York Times March 12 by Mark Mazzetti
A Shooting in Pakistan Reveals Fraying Alliance
WASHINGTON — Inside a dark jail cell on the outskirts of Lahore, Pakistan, a brawny 36-year-old American from the mountains of southwest Virginia has sat for weeks as Pakistan began proceedings against him on murder charges and his own government made frantic attempts to secure his release.
Late in January, Raymond A. Davis — a covert security officer for the Central Intelligence Agency and onetime Green Beret — unloaded a Glock pistol into two armed Pakistanis on a crowded street in Lahore, according to a Pakistani police report. His case was to move forward in court as early as this week.The shooting complicated American attempts to portray Mr. Davis as a paper-shuffling diplomat who stamped visas as a day job; generated an extraordinary swirl of recriminations and for many Pakistanis confirmed suspicions that America has deployed a secret army of spies and contractors inside the country.
It has also called unwelcome attention to a bigger, more dangerous game in which Mr. Davis appears to have played just a supporting role.
The C.I.A. team Mr. Davis worked with, according to American officials, had among its assignments the task of secretly gathering intelligence about Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant “Army of the Pure.” Pakistan’s security establishment has nurtured Lashkar for years as a proxy force to attack targets and enemies in India and in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir. These and other American officials, all of whom spoke only on condition of anonymity, are now convinced that Lashkar is no longer satisfied being the shadowy foot soldiers in Pakistan’s simmering border conflict with India. It goals have broadened, these officials say, and Lashkar is committed to a campaign of jihad against the United States and Europe, and against American troops in Afghanistan.
During a visit to Islamabad last July, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declared Lashkar a “global threat,” a statement that no doubt rankled his Pakistani hosts.
And so a group that Pakistan has seen for years as an essential component of its own national security, and that American counterterrorism officials could once dismiss as a regional problem, has emerged as a threat that Washington feels it can no longer ignore.
Given such a fundamental collision of interests, it was perhaps inevitable that Lashkar would one day provoke tensions between Pakistani and American security officials, and the collision itself would come into full public view. Rather than being a cause of the problem, Mr. Davis was merely an all-too-visible symptom.
Read it all
Lashkar-e-Taiba or "Army of the Pure" is a brutal jihadist group which is a "global threat" said Adm. Mike Mullen during a visit to Islamabad last July. Their ability to operate within Pakistan and carry out jihad attacks is only possible with the help of the administration there and the ISI. We pay the jizya in the hopes we will not be harmed. That is turning out to be wishful thinking.
From The New York Times March 12 by Mark Mazzetti
A Shooting in Pakistan Reveals Fraying Alliance
WASHINGTON — Inside a dark jail cell on the outskirts of Lahore, Pakistan, a brawny 36-year-old American from the mountains of southwest Virginia has sat for weeks as Pakistan began proceedings against him on murder charges and his own government made frantic attempts to secure his release.
Late in January, Raymond A. Davis — a covert security officer for the Central Intelligence Agency and onetime Green Beret — unloaded a Glock pistol into two armed Pakistanis on a crowded street in Lahore, according to a Pakistani police report. His case was to move forward in court as early as this week.The shooting complicated American attempts to portray Mr. Davis as a paper-shuffling diplomat who stamped visas as a day job; generated an extraordinary swirl of recriminations and for many Pakistanis confirmed suspicions that America has deployed a secret army of spies and contractors inside the country.
It has also called unwelcome attention to a bigger, more dangerous game in which Mr. Davis appears to have played just a supporting role.
The C.I.A. team Mr. Davis worked with, according to American officials, had among its assignments the task of secretly gathering intelligence about Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant “Army of the Pure.” Pakistan’s security establishment has nurtured Lashkar for years as a proxy force to attack targets and enemies in India and in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir. These and other American officials, all of whom spoke only on condition of anonymity, are now convinced that Lashkar is no longer satisfied being the shadowy foot soldiers in Pakistan’s simmering border conflict with India. It goals have broadened, these officials say, and Lashkar is committed to a campaign of jihad against the United States and Europe, and against American troops in Afghanistan.
During a visit to Islamabad last July, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declared Lashkar a “global threat,” a statement that no doubt rankled his Pakistani hosts.
And so a group that Pakistan has seen for years as an essential component of its own national security, and that American counterterrorism officials could once dismiss as a regional problem, has emerged as a threat that Washington feels it can no longer ignore.
Given such a fundamental collision of interests, it was perhaps inevitable that Lashkar would one day provoke tensions between Pakistani and American security officials, and the collision itself would come into full public view. Rather than being a cause of the problem, Mr. Davis was merely an all-too-visible symptom.
Read it all
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