Or should it be the other way around?
Wired looks at the similarities between the attack on the Kabul Ministries by attackers claiming to be associated with the Taliban and those who recently assaulted Mumbai. Bill Roggio notes that the most recent attacks really look like an earlier one mounted against the Hotel Serena within Afghanistan itself. At any rate, the resemblance, if any, can be understood if it is realized that rogue members of Pakistani intelligence may have advised both the attackers in Kabul and in Mumbai. Roggio writes:
This cell is believed to be behind the assault on the Serena Hotel in January 2008, the assassination attempt on President Karzai at a ceremony in April 2008, the deadly suicide attack on the Indian embassy in July 2008, and a number of other attacks. The suicide attack on the Indian embassy has been traced back to Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence agency, which has supported the Taliban and various Kashmiri terror groups such as the Harkat ul-Mujahideen.
Today’s assault in Kabul is similar to the assault on the Serena Hotel. In that attack gunmen wearing suicide vests breached the front gate with a suicide attack and then entered the hotel and began shooting civilians.
Although it is fashionable to dismiss the role of states in terrorism, it is nevertheless the case that the major terror outfits in the world have links to either state intelligence agencies or rogue elements within them. Ultimately, states still matter at least in the big leagues.
Our Pretend President:
Obama’s Outrageous Oversight
White House Counsel Greg Craig, often seen whispering in the president’s ear during question periods, admitted later to Ms. Burlingame that the chief executive was getting the facts of the law wrong during the discussion with the families.
Craig asked her if CIPA covers a case in which terrorists defend themselves, noting that “this is something we hadn’t contemplated.”
If nothing else, this admission of ignorance is more evidence that the decision to rush ahead with closing Guantanamo and shutting down the military tribunals was ill-conceived, poorly planned, and may ultimately be injurious to our national security. The president may talk a good game about “swift, certain justice,” but it is becoming clear that justice will not be swift, is highly uncertain, and in the end may not even be just.
Why do you say that an article from The Long War Journal is from Wired?
Doug, aren’t the comments supposed to be about the posted article?
That game only works Wretchard, when the State can play the double game of both being responsible and denying responsibility.
Or deter any response with nuclear weapons.
However, what this does really produce is a discontinuous response. I.E. a target state will not react in ways to provide feedback to stop attacks, until it simply uses nuclear weapons itself to wipe out the people of the hostile state.
Enough Bombay attacks, and any nation with nukes will eventually simply stage a preemptive attack on the people of the state responsible.
What this sort of tactic does is increase the likelihood of a catastrophic response. At some point India will simply decide to wipe out the Pakistani people. Or correspondingly, the Israelis to wipe out the Iranian people. Or Americans the Muslim people.
That is the true bitter fruit of Bombay.
I fear that an attack like this may be coming here in the US in the very near future. I also fear that our enemies have taken stock of the Big Zero and have surmised that within the superman costume there is only an arrogant chicken with delusions of grandeur, and the weasels are not impressed.
Obama simply can’t imagine that there are players in the world who can’t be bought off with a check and a stroke to their ego. And besides–they wouldn’t dare to make him look bad–that would be racist.
… rogue members of Pakistani intelligence may have advised both the attackers in Kabul and in Mumbai. … Although it is fashionable to dismiss the role of states in terrorism, it is nevertheless the case that the major terror outfits in the world have links to either state intelligence agencies or rogue elements within them. Ultimately, states still matter at least in the big leagues.
If I say that I doubt that Pakistan’s ISI as an institution was not involved in these terrorist attacks, then should I be dismissed as just being fashionable?
The suspicion that “rogue members may have advised the attackers” is not compelling. Advised them to do what? Attack three separate targets simultaneously?
Rogue elements of the CIA were involved in the Watergate break-in, but the Watergate break-in should not be characterized as a CIA operation.
More important than such suspicions about rogue elements in ISI is that the Pakistan Government, including ISI, is fighting a hot war against the the radicals in regions along Afghanistan. US forces in Afghanistan surely are receiving a lot of valuable intelligence from ISI.
Everybody head over to the main page of Pajamas Media and check out the piece by Raymond Ibrahim, a colleague of VDH, This is Part I. Part II will follow.
Keep in mind that what he is saying here will be his testimony in upcoming Congressional Hearings. So it may help shape future events.
@6….I’m not so sure about the US getting lots of intelligence from the ISI that’s valuable.I’m sure that they give us “chatter” reports but not much else…since they seem to be fomenting much of the misbehavior in the region, why would they give any real intel nuggets?
@6 and @8: People who live by the micromanagement Ibrahim describes and who are
indoctrinated in the levels of compulsory deception he also describes are very prone
to becoming suicidal. Especially if they can arrange lots and lots of company.
I would not be surprised to learn that they are planning a gotterdamerung. And they are not rogue in the sense of having once been
part of ISI, they are still part of it and there may well be enough of them in enough positions to effectively control that organization. Mass pathologies do arise from time to time and take compulsive courses of
action that we normal folk have a hard time understanding.
So having them both supporting Taliban and informing on same is not out of the question.
From Bill Roggio’s article:
The Taliban took credit for the attacks. “We have warned the Afghan government to stop torturing our prisoners,” Zabiullah Mujaheed, Taliban spokesman told The Associated Press. “Today we attacked Justice Ministry compounds.”
This is the talking point that they hope will carry the day. The use of suicide-homicide attackers is not germaine to the point. The American imperialists and their Afghan lackeys have been “torturing” Taliban prisoners! How awful! Without knowing, I would guess they hope this is part of the lead in some newspapers, especially in NATO countries.
“See, we should not be in Afghanistan with those awful Americans and the torturing Karzai government”. Euro groupthink, no doubt. Any rationalization to evade the need to stand up to this killers.
Again, the illustration that terrorism is at heart a form of Psyops warfare. Too big a terrorist attack and the veil drops and people can see that those behind it are pathological killers, and not to be bargained with. We knew that once upon a time in 2001, for a few minutes.
When you have a pre-existing organization with a life independent of the legal authority recognized by the international community it is not analogous to a subordinate military department in a constitutional democracy. In Morton Kaplan’s Systems and Process terms you have a subsystem dominant system. Foreigners mistake the ISI, or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, as the equivalent of the American CIA. Then they compound the error by fantasizing that the CIA is itself a shadow government. Individuals or cabals within the CIA can be obstructive. IN the ISI there are not rogue elements. There are representatives of the organization who got caught. There may be factions within the ISI, as in any organization. As a whole though the ISI can be considered more cohesive, more “system dominant” than the State of Pakistan that it is embedded in.
@Lifeofthemind: Yeah. think “cosa nostra”, “our thing”. Or (to risk being invidious): “Legion Patria Nostra”.
Probably, to the members thereof and to their
families, the ISI is the only country they’ve got. Now will they follow it right through the gates of Hell or will they save themselves. Good question.
I am currently working on a PSD team in Kabul – 2 internationals 10 Afghans and yesterday found the office empty. Our Afghan colleges were jammed into another room watching a news conference on local TV. The MoI spokesman was stating unequivocally that they have 2 dozen people in custody and all were linked to the ISI. That is typical, blaming the ISI for effective attacks inside Kabul is routine (and mostly true) – the reaction of teammates was not. They were very upset but most unusually (if I understood their Dari correctly) they were talking of leaving their jobs and going back into the Army. That would be a pay cut of around 300% and I have never heard such talk before.
I doubt that any of them will follow through and leave their very high paying jobs so their initial reaction could well be meaningless. But I have never seen or heard them so angry before. One gets the distinct feeling that the law of unintended consequences may be fixing to bite the Pakistan government even harder than they are being bitten now in the Northwest Frontier.
@Tim san,
Thank you. Could you comment on Old Blue’s theories from two threads back?
it is nevertheless the case that the major terror outfits in the world have links to either state intelligence agencies or rogue elements within them
Unfortunately that includes the chairwoman of the United States Senate Intelligence Committee.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said Thursday that unmanned CIA Predator aircraft operating in Pakistan are flown from an airbase inside that country, a revelation likely to embarrass the Pakistani government and complicate its counterterrorism collaboration with the United States. Chicago Tribune
What is a person to make of this?
Is the chair of the US Senate Intelligence Committee so stupid that she does not know that information she receives in closed intelligence briefings is a state secret that diectly affects the interests and security of the United States?
Not likely. Feinstein is smart enough to find a way to award her husband’s companies billions of dollars of Federal contracts in a “blind” bidding process.
Is Feinstein running her own foreign policy? Could be. Maybe she thinks Pakistan is a Northern California county and that it’s not a good idea to have thingies flying around shooting missiles in ecologically protected areas.
Maybe she’s fronting an international incident for Dear Leader who can now apologize to Pakistan and have the diplomatic cover to terminate all US operations within Pakistan. Killing Al Qaeda operatives may be too harsh for such a sensitive soul.
Is this a great country or what?
I fear that an attack like this may be coming here in the US in the very near future.
“I fear an attack like this may be coming here in the US in the very near future.”
You know if it does they roll amphibious style like they did in Mumbai, I hope they attack the “soft underbelly” of the US, the gulf coast. The US does not have the strict gun control laws like India and I bet it will end differently and more quickly than Mumbai, if they pull this stunt in the US.
If the attack is not amphibious, I hope they go after Lass Vegas on the weekend of the NBA all-star game. The town will be crawling with gang-bangers armed tot he teeth. Haji meet gang-banger, gang-banger meet haji. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of guys.
Boston,
Maybe she thinks GWB is still in office, and it was just done in good fun to watch his reaction.
Document Exposes Karzai Corrupted Government
@16. Buck Smith: I agree with you, look at the pattern of events leading up to 9-11. a small attack in an out of the way location, then a more visible one etc etc. Almost like a psychotic person getting worked up ( oh wait a minute, these guys are psychotics). Or, more likely, a cynical bully testing the water.
A poke here, another there…..still no response; Good! It is entirely possible that they are running a counter-intel op on us; use one cell to run an operation and then carefully watch who gets exposed and which leads get missed, then run another op in a different location and carefully observe the similarities and differences in the reaction/response.
Like a game of chess where you are willing to lose a few pawns to unsettle your opponents plans, or force him to commit to a response that he hadn’t planned. Sadly, Obama is still learning checkers. I find myself hoping the Indians have gotten sick of the silly game and are preparing a riposte that will cripple AQ/ISI/Taliban for the near term.
Just hope they don’t let the traitor Fienstein in on it.
Part Two of the Ibrahim piece now up. Be sure to read both parts.
Advise e-mailing it to yourself to keep a copy handy.
Doug,
i think so many leftists have developed an almost knee jerk compulsion to monkeywrench, that they do it without thinking of the consequences. It is an ingrained way of life. They just can’t help themselves. They never connect the dots to reality that this behavior is destructive.
That is why our historic first Kenyan Marxist Traitor President will always be inclined to mess things up and forget about our precious constitutional rights, the establish protocols of things or the long known destructive and evil way of our enemies. It is like they have taken a mind altering drug for life and entered into the parallel fantasy world where up is down, right is wrong, and good is evil.
It is also somewhat true of their enablers: Republicans like Arlen, or Snowe or Mc Cain who are perpetually looking to bend over backwards to be bi-partisan, and who seem willing to always forgive these little proclivities of the left to habitually screw people over.
If Israel is to survive she needs to begin economic warfare against Iran starting three years ago…
The correct counter-move for her is to take-out Kharg Island:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=3122
This would’ve been quite unpopular when crude traded beyond $100…
It would get applause in many quarters today: her competitors would love it.
A chop block to the wallet is a game-ender for Iran.
Regime Over
@blert,
Kharg Island is a bone in the throat of world trade but Israel is not the country to undertake large scale amphibious operations that far from home. It would make more sense for Israel to consider that Iran is singularly dependent on the importation of refined energy products. The intake, storage and distribution of these critical products depends on the operation of a small number of vulnerable choke points. This is after all a highly seismically unstable region and accidents happen. Divine Providence and all that, prayer is sure to help.
The Lord helps those who help themselves.
I’m thinking more along the lines of stealth sabotage….
Go after key infrastructure that is foreign sourced…
The mullahs know all about how it goes: they financed such activity against Iraq from 2003 onwards. That’s why oil exports never gained traction.
Oil smuggling across the Shat could flow the other way, BTW.
That is the true bitter fruit of Bombay.
Bombay Djin ?
More from Roggio:
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/02/pakistan_concedes_mu.php
It’s probably a bad idea to try to get inside the mind of someone from an alien culture, but imagine you’re a fundamentalist Wahhabi senior ISI officer. I’d guess you hate, roughly in this order:
The Pakistani secularists
India: polytheists; 60 years of bad blood, plus all that went on before partition.
The United States: the Great Satan, and they support India.
Israel: Jews,and they support India.
Britain: the Raj.
Russia: Godless atheists, Afghanistan, Chechnya.
China: Godless atheists, Kashmir
Somewhere down the line are Iran (Shia heretics, threatening Persian nationalists) and the Arabs. The Sauds are guardians of the holy places but they are rich and arrogant; the emirates are just rich and arrogant.
Dave #9 wonders about a gotterdamerung. So, if you’re a fundamentalist Wahhabi senior ISI officer, would you mind if Islamabad were vaporized if Mumbai and Delhi were nuked too? And if you managed to get control of a nuke, would you sell it to someone with delivery plans- or would you lob it at Tel Aviv, Riyadh, Teheran, or Dubai and see what happens?
“That is the true bitter fruit of Bombay.”
Slaughter now or slaughter later.
Slaughter later = slaughter more.
please see earlier author’s note.
I think that Feinstein, despite her position, does NOT take security seriously. The USA is secure, it has always been secure, it will always be secure, and what she has to protect is her political cred, which she does by regularly feeding good stuff to the media. Like most effective actions, its the result of long-trained habits.
But the real measure of our problems is that she hasn’t been kicked off that committee. If there were a GOP administration, someone might move levers. Now nobody cares.
When Rome fell, it was because nobody cared to defend it.
Send Feinstein, without ID, without translators, to some Pushtun village and see how long she survives.
“Send Feinstein, without ID, without translators, to some Pushtun village and see how long she survives.”
Stupid comment. How long would ANY of us survive? They are, after all, savages.
Sure she’d survive…
She can curse worse than a Marine DI…
Even so, the locals would hold her for ransom just on principle.
“India: polytheists; 60 years of bad blood, plus all that went on before partition.
Make that 1,000 years of bad blood. Explained to me by several Pakis I see in my daily walkabouts and confirmed by several Indian clients and friends.
Hey there Lifeofthemind and fellow commenter’s,
Sorry for the delay but I am working with really poor connectivity while in Kabul. I correspond with Old Blue regularly and hope to drop in on him sometime in the near future. As you can see by our blogs we tend to think a lot alike.
The points he and Vern made on the thread I have been asked to comment on were very interesting and I agree with them both although I think Vern is a little too pessimistic. There is no question that Big Army doesn’t do COIN. They are not even pretending to do COIN which is clearly evident by how they have deployed their forces. In the area Old Blue is working troops not confined to large FOB’s are spread out amongst small combat outpost’s (COP’s) strung throughout the Pech Valley in Kuanr, the southern triangle in Nangahar and the border areas of Nuristan. Those in the Pech valley fight almost daily in long range machinegun and mortar duels with the local tribesmen. I cannot recall seeing a report of any American KIA’s in Kunar in many many months, there have been none in Nangarhar (except for IED strikes unrelated to the infantry deployment) and the last casualties we took in Nuristan were the nine men we lost at Wanat.
When I was a junior infantryman in training we were taught fire without maneuver was a complete waste of time, money and assets and should be avoided at all costs. What we see now in Eastern Afghanistan is lots of fire without any attempt at maneuver. When Army infantry do work their way into the remote villages there are no fighting age males there and the local elders do not want nor welcome any assistance offered by our men. The linguistically and ethnically distinct people in Nuristan Province are even more adamant that they want nothing to do with ISAF or the Karzai government. Many are starting to ask “if these people don’t want us why are we there?” which is a good question.
My answer would be to leave those tribes alone and move into the districts where out help is both wanted and needed by the local population. All 32 districts (even those in the southern triangle) of Nangarhar Province will not only invite but would help protect civ/mil teams who move in to offer them assistance in reconstruction. Four out of five of the districts in neighboring Laghman Province are the same as are many of the districts in Kunar.
Remember the Lone Survivor story? The reason that SEAL lived was not due to Pashtun tribes following the ancient code of Pashtunwali – it was because Petty Officer Luttrell E&E’d to a village on the other side of the Korangal ridge which has been in a state of feud with the Korangal valley tribes for the past 1,752 years. Had he gone down the other side of the ridge his head would be stuck on a pole outside a Korangal village to this day. I don’t know if the SEAL’s pre mission intelligence was good enough to point Luttrell to that specific village but I doubt it was. If they had that much situational awareness they wouldn’t have had a four man team trying to sneak around Korangal Valley to began with. The point is even in the Pech valley there are tribes who want to cooperate with us and we need to support them while isolating those who do not want our assistance. Those isolated villages are best dealt with by the Afghan Army in due time and on their schedule.
We are lucky enough to remain popular with the various tribes and people in Afghanistan who would much rather see a platoon of Americans move into their area to not only bring security but to also supervise the representatives of the Afghan government who are more likely to prey on the people than help them.
Something I had not thought of but an idea which did not escape Old Blue was using the popularity of our new Commander in Chief in the third world to arm twist our Arabic allies getting them to cough up men to augment embedded training teams. American and ISAF military members bring security and modern medical relief, Arabic members bring mentoring to the Afghan police and judiciary. Civilian contractors (all armed and expected to be an active part of the overall security plan) provide the long term presence on the ground while approving, funding, and supervising the 100’s of unfunded infrastructure projects that are “shovel ready.”
The American mission to bring security and developmental aid to Afghanistan can be accomplished. But we have focused most of our reconstruction dollars on building facilities for entities of the State which are currently adding to the insecurity. If you believe in “effects based tactics” with the “effects” defined as what is happening on the ground vice what you want to think is happening on the ground then every penny of the 2.5 BILLION spent on the Afghan National Police has been wasted. Likewise every penny spent on facilities, trainers and equipment for the Afghan National Army looks to be a great investment. Our current approach will not allow us to recognize this obvious fact and correct for it because our Department of State continues to telecommute to the war from the safe, ultra posh confines of Embassy Kabul. And the cat fight about to break out between Hillary Clinton and Richard Holbrooke will only add to the internal focus of the Kabul Embassy staff making them even more incapable (as if that were possible) of dealing with the situation on the ground.
Old Blue can clearly see what needs to be done and if we turn him and a few thousand like him lose even those who see things like Vern (which is a majority of the Afghan population) will have to admit that we are doing (finally) what we said we were going to do when we came here seven years ago.