A Year of Terror Plots

As terrorist plots against the United States have piled up in recent months, politicians and the news media have sounded the alarm with a riveting message for Americans: Be afraid. Al Qaeda is on the march again, targeting the country from within and without, and your hapless government cannot protect you.
It used to be the commies that we needed to fear, because they were getting closer to our shores every time a domino was predicted to fall.


But the politically charged clamor has lumped together disparate cases and obscured the fact that the enemies on American soil in 2009, rather than a single powerful and sophisticated juggernaut, were a scattered, uncoordinated group of amateurs who displayed more fervor than skill.

China and the Soviet Union and Viet Nam and all the other commies were lumped into the world-wide Communist conspiracy.

Analysts urge a calmer, more strategic assessment of the recent rash of violent schemes insist that the country is far safer than it was in 2001. They also argue that since the goal of terrorism is to spread terror, hyperbole about threats only does the extremists’ work for them.

 As did talk of the Red terror.


Charles E. Allen, a 40-year C.I.A. veteran served as the top intelligence official at the Department of Homeland Security from 2007 to early last year. Exaggerated news coverage and commentary, he said, “creates an atmosphere of tension and fear, and to me that’s exactly the wrong way to go.” Mr. Allen said the United States needed “resilience” in the face of the terrorist threat. He noted with admiration that public transportation barely paused in London in 2005 when 52 people were killed by four suicide bombers attacking the subway and a bus. “I believe in heightened attention to security; I just don’t believe hysteria is useful,” Mr. Allen said.

Unless used by a politician to score points.


The term “Al Qaeda,” used as a catchall in many of the plots, blurs important distinctions. By most accounts, apart from possibly the Zazi case, none of the 2009 cases appears to be directly tied to “Al Qaeda central,” as experts refer to the Pakistan-based group led by Mr. bin Laden. Others involved ersatz “Qaeda” agents who actually worked for the F.B.I. Still others, including the Christmas Day attempt, had links to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a loosely linked affiliate of Mr. bin Laden’s group in Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

Blurring  distinctions is important for the right wing crowd.


In 2008, in his book “Leaderless Jihad,” Marc Sageman, a psychiatrist and former C.I.A. officer who has long studied terrorism networks, wrote that Al Qaeda was in decline, to be replaced by dispersed terrorists for whom it provided mostly inspiration. The new generation of extremists, he believed, would be less skilled and would likely pose less of a threat than the network responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks.

Dr. Sageman said he saw no reason to revise that judgment today. The plots of the last year should be carefully analyzed and the findings used to improve counterterrorism, not turned into fuel for thoughtless anti-Muslim panic and discrimination, he said. “If we overreact and upset 1.5 billion Muslims,” Dr. Sageman said, referring to the global total, “then we’ll have a lot bigger problem on our hands.”



A memorial for the 13 people shot at Fort Hood in Texas in November. It was the deadliest domestic terrorism attack of the year

‘You Have Atomic Bombs, but We Have Suicide Bombers.’

Interactive
Part 1.
Part 2.
This is part 3 (of 5).
Part 4.


October 20, 2009
‘You Have Atomic Bombs, but We Have Suicide Bombers.’
By DAVID ROHDE

A NERVOUS-LOOKING Pakistani soldier pointed a rocket-propelled grenade at our pickup truck in late January. The Taliban guard beside me loaded his rifle and ordered me to put a scarf over my face. A group of Pakistani civilians standing nearby moved out of the way, anticipating a firefight.

In the driver’s seat of our vehicle was Badruddin Haqqani, a senior commander of the Haqqani network, one of the Taliban’s most hard-line factions and the group that was holding me and two Afghan colleagues hostage in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Obeying the guard, I covered my face. The soldier was in the lead vehicle of a Pakistani Army supply convoy in North Waziristan. After surveying the road, the soldier got back in his truck, and the convoy rumbled forward.

I hoped that the Pakistanis might somehow rescue us. Instead, I watched in dismay as Badruddin got out of the truck and calmly stood on the side of the road. As trucks full of heavily armed government soldiers rolled by, he smiled and waved at them.

After the convoy disappeared, Badruddin seemed amused.

“Do you know who that was?” he asked me.

“No,” I said, trying to play dumb.

“That was the Pakistani Army,” he said.

He explained that under a cease-fire agreement between the Taliban and the army, all civilians were required to get out of their cars when an army convoy approached. For Taliban vehicles, though, only the driver had to get out. The practice, I realized, allowed the Taliban to hide kidnapping victims and foreign militants from the Pakistani Army.

That morning, Badruddin arrived at the house in Miram Shah where I was being held with Tahir Luddin, an Afghan journalist, and Asad Mangal, our driver. We had been taken hostage on a reporting trip south of Kabul, Afghanistan, in November 2008 and moved to Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Badruddin announced that he was taking us out of town to a snow-covered hillside to shoot the final scene of a video that would be released to the news media. He was determined to make it look as though we were being held in the frigid mountains of Afghanistan, not in a bustling city in Pakistan.

As we continued our journey, we passed a half-dozen checkpoints that had been abandoned by the Frontier Corps, a militia that had been the Pakistani government’s primary security force in the tribal areas until 2001. Badruddin said that under the cease-fire agreement, only unarmed militia members could stand at the checkpoints.

As we drove, I occasionally saw members of the militia standing on the side of the road without guns. Some casually chatted with local tribesmen.

The trip confirmed suspicions I had harbored for years as a reporter. The Haqqanis oversaw a sprawling Taliban mini-state in the tribal areas with the de facto acquiescence of the Pakistani military. The Haqqanis were so confident of their control of the area that they took me — a person they considered to be an extraordinarily valuable hostage — on a three-hour drive in broad daylight to shoot a scene for a video outdoors.

Throughout North Waziristan, Taliban policemen patrolled the streets, and Taliban road crews carried out construction projects. The Haqqani network’s commanders and foreign militants freely strolled the bazaars of Miram Shah and other towns. Young Afghan and Pakistani Taliban members revered the foreign fighters, who taught them how to make bombs.

Over the winter, I would come to know the reality the Haqqanis had created. Some nights, commanders and their fighters visited the houses where we were being held. Conversations were dominated by their unwavering belief that the United States was waging a war against Islam.

It was a universe filled with contradictions. My captors assailed the West for killing civilians, but they celebrated suicide attacks orchestrated by the Taliban that killed scores of Muslim bystanders. They bitterly denounced missionaries, but they pressed me to convert to their faith. They complained about innocent Muslims being imprisoned by the United States, even as they continued to hold us captive.

Yet in our day to day existence, when commanders were absent, some of our guards showed glimpses of humanity. Those moments gave us hope that we might somehow be able to talk or reason our way out of captivity.

IN early February, our guards told us that Badruddin had sent the video to Afghan and foreign media outlets but that only Al Jazeera had broadcast it. The news frustrated Tahir and Asad, who had hoped that the video would be widely broadcast and stimulate negotiations.

I was not surprised. I had heard before our abduction that the Afghan and foreign news media had struck an informal agreement not to publicize the kidnappings of journalists in Afghanistan if their organization requested it.

The October 2008 kidnapping of a Canadian journalist in Kabul, Melissa Fung, had been kept quiet. Keeping the kidnappings out of the news, it was hoped, would decrease the expectations of hostage-takers that they could garner vast amounts of publicity or ransom for journalists.

After news outlets declined to show the video, we asked our guards to call Abu Tayyeb, the Taliban commander who had abducted us outside Kabul and concealed his identity. He agreed to return to Miram Shah and said he would try to negotiate a ransom with my family.

Tahir, Asad and I had received comforting letters from our families through the International Committee of the Red Cross. But I hadn’t spoken to my wife, Kristen, in three months.

Finally, on Feb. 16, Abu Tayyeb drove me to a remote location and allowed me to call her. The Taliban told me to give her the number of their cellphone and have her call us back. They were demanding $7 million at that point but were too cheap to pay for the phone call.

“This is my last call,” I said to her, repeating what they had told me to say. “This is our last chance.”

Abu Tayyeb promised that he would reach a settlement with my family. Then, as he had many times before, he left without doing so. My conversations with him during his brief visit left me doubtful that he would ever compromise in a case involving an American.

One morning, he wept at news that a NATO airstrike had killed women and children in southern Afghanistan. A guard explained to me that Abu Tayyeb reviled the United States because of the civilian deaths.

One evening, Abu Tayyeb declared that the Taliban treated women better than Americans did. He said women in the United States were forced to wear revealing clothes and define themselves solely as sex objects. The Taliban protected women’s honor by not allowing them to appear in public with their faces unveiled.

My captors saw me — and seemingly all Westerners — as morally corrupt and fixated on pursuing the pleasures of this world. Americans invaded Afghanistan to enrich themselves, they argued, not to help Afghans.

They ignored the fact that the United States helped build hundreds of miles of paved roads in Afghanistan and more than a thousand schools and health clinics. My captors denied widespread news reports that the Taliban burned down scores of newly built schools to prevent girls from getting an education.

I argued that the United States was not the menacing, predatory caricature that they believed. I also tried to counter their belief that all Americans were astonishingly rich. Nothing I said, though, seemed to change their minds.

One day, I received a copy of Dawn, an English-language Pakistani newspaper, that featured an article on the perilous financial state of The New York Times. I saved the newspaper until commanders stopped by for visits.

Showing them the headline “New York Times Struggles to Stay Afloat,” I explained that the American newspaper industry — as well as the American economy — was in a free fall. They listened to what I said and nodded. Then, they ignored me.

WE were held for much of the winter in a building the Pakistani government had constructed to serve as a health clinic. It was part of an American-backed effort to win the hearts and minds of the local population.

Our guards spent their days there listening to radio broadcasts and shouting “God is great!” at reports of the deaths of Afghan and American soldiers.

Most of the guards were Afghan men in their late 20s and early 30s. Some had grown up as refugees in Pakistan. All had limited educations from government schools or religious institutions, known as madrasas. Some did not make it past junior high school. None had seen the world beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan.

They all had relatives or friends who had been killed by Soviet or American troops. They grew up in a culture where teenage boys reached manhood and made a name for themselves by showing their bravery.

I tried to get to know one of the guards, who was preparing to be a suicide bomber. A young man in his 20s with a slim build and brown eyes, he said he had studied engineering in high school. He never attended college but was relatively well educated compared with the other fighters.

When I asked him why he wanted to die, he replied that living in this world was a burden for any true Muslim. Heaven was his goal, he said. Earthly relationships with his parents and siblings did not matter.

He spoke a smattering of English, and my own beliefs seemed to interest and amaze him. During our six weeks together, he asked me a series of questions. Was it true, he asked, that a necktie was a secret symbol of Christianity? Was it true that Christians wanted to live 1,000 years?

As the weeks passed, our captivity became increasingly surreal.

My Taliban guards slept beneath bedspreads manufactured by a Pakistani textile company and emblazoned with characters from the American television show “Hannah Montana” and the movie “Spider-Man.” My blanket was a pink Barbie comforter.

My captors railed against the evils of a secular society. In March, they celebrated a suicide attack in a mosque in the Pakistani town of Jamrud that killed as many as 50 worshipers as they prayed to God. Those living under Pakistan’s apostate government, they said, deserved it.

One commander declared that no true Muslim could live in a state where Islam was not the official religion. He flatly rejected my compromise suggestion that strict Islamic law be enacted in Afghanistan’s conservative rural south, while milder forms of Islam be followed in the comparatively liberal north.

Citing the Taliban’s interpretation of Islam, he said it was every Muslim’s duty to try to stop others from sinning. If one person in a village commits a sin, those who witness it and do not stop him will also be punished by God.

After we had been held for months in captivity, my kidnappers demanded that I stop washing the group’s dishes because they did not want to catch my diseases. They believed that problems I was having with my stomach stemmed from my being an inherently unclean non-Muslim, not from unhygienic water.

Their rigidity was the opposite of the tolerant attitudes I had found among the vast majority of Muslims I had met in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Pressing me to convert, one commander ordered me to read a passage of the Koran each day and discuss it with him at night. He dismissed my arguments that a forced conversion was not legitimate. He and the guards politely said they felt sorry for me. If I failed to convert, they said, I would suffer excruciating pain in the fires of hell.

At one point, a visiting fighter demanded to know why I would not obey. He said that if it were up to him, he would take me outside and offer me a final chance to convert. If I refused, he would shoot me.

I realized that he and other fighters might be exaggerating their views to frighten me. The virulence I saw among the Haqqani foot soldiers was not as monolithic as it sometimes seemed.

One young fighter showed a different side. He refused to carry out a commander’s order to kidnap a foreigner working in Afghanistan. During one visit, he suggested that I read a passage in an English-language Koran to comfort myself.

“Allah tasketh not a soul beyond its scope,” it said. “For it is only that which it hath earned, and against it only that which it hath deserved. Our Lord! Impose not on us that which we have not the strength to bear! Pardon us, absolve us and have mercy on us, Thou, our Protector, and give us victory over the disbelieving folk.”

DURING our months in Miram Shah, patterns emerged. When certain commanders visited, the atmosphere was tense, and discussions centered on what they saw as Western injustices against Muslims. When we were alone with the guards who lived with us, moments of levity emerged.

They searched for ways to break the monotony. After dinner on many winter nights, my guards sang Pashto songs for hours. My voice and Pashto pronunciation were terrible, but our guards urged me to sing along. The ballads varied. On some evenings, I found myself reluctantly singing Taliban songs that declared that “you have atomic bombs, but we have suicide bombers.”

On other nights, at my guards’ urging, I switched to American tunes. In a halting, off-key voice, I sang Frank Sinatra’s version of “New York, New York” and described it as the story of a villager who tries to succeed in the city and support his family. I sang Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” and described it as a portrayal of the struggles of average Americans.

I realized that my guards, too, might have needed a break from our grim existence. But I felt like a performing monkey when they told me to sing for visiting commanders. I knew they were simply laughing at me.

I intentionally avoided American love songs, trying to dispel their belief that all Americans were hedonists. Despite my efforts, romantic songs — whatever their language — were the guards’ favorites.

The Beatles song “She Loves You,” which popped into my head soon after I received my wife’s letter from the Red Cross, was the most popular.

For reasons that baffled me, the guards relished singing it with me. I began by singing its first verse. My three Taliban guards, along with Tahir and Asad, then joined me in the chorus.

“She loves you — yeah, yeah, yeah,” we sang, with Kalashnikovs lying on the floor around us.

Tomorrow: A Drone Strike and Dwindling Hope

Pakistan today

An armed Pakistani Taliban stands beside the body of one of two policemen killed in the Buner district on April 7.












Events do not inspire confidence.

Pakistan Sends Special Police to Taliban-Held Area27 minutes ago The special constabulary forces were deployed to a district only 70 miles from the capital, Islamabad, that has come under Taliban control in recent days.

• The Lede: The Roots of Pakistan’s Taliban Problem
• Pakistan Troops Confront Taliban

U.S., Pakistan and Afghanistan to Hold Regular Talks

Richard C. Holbrooke, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton during talks on Thursday with officials of those nations.

Quite a picture.

February 27, 2009
U.S., Pakistan and Afghanistan to Hold Regular Talks
By MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON — Intensifying its focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan, the United States said Thursday that it would hold regular three-way meetings with top officials from the neighboring countries, which the Obama administration sees as the main front of the battle against Islamic extremism.

The plan was announced by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton after three days of meetings with high-level delegations from Afghanistan and Pakistan, which touched on sensitive issues like American airstrikes in Pakistan, and the scope of the American commitment in Afghanistan.

Officials from both Pakistan and Afghanistan expressed concern about civilian casualties from American military operations, according to people who took part in the talks. Pakistan’s foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, objected to airstrikes by Predator drones in tribal areas, part of a covert campaign against militants by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The Afghan foreign minister, Rangeen Dadfar Spanta, voiced worries that the Obama administration, frustrated by escalating violence and corruption in Afghanistan, would scale back its efforts in development aid and nurturing democracy to focus on security.

Mrs. Clinton sought to reassure him that “we’re committed to the Afghan government and people,” said a spokesman, Robert A. Wood. “The Afghans wanted to get across that they’re serious about democracy.”

American officials said the exchanges, which included civilian, military and intelligence officials from the three countries, had been unusually frank and substantive, if somewhat general. The next meeting, scheduled for late April or early May, will delve into more specific issues.

Three-way meetings involving these countries are not new: former President George W. Bush held a tense dinner in 2006 for President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and Gen. Pervez Musharraf, then the president of Pakistan, during which the two guests said little and Mr. Bush did most of the talking.

But this week’s meetings involved a much larger cross-section of military and government leaders — among them foreign ministers and the heads of the Afghan and Pakistani intelligence services.

“These were not just photo ops,” said Richard C. Holbrooke, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. “Meetings in this configuration have not taken place.”

The chief of the Pakistani Army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, met with leaders in Congress this week and faced questions about whether the military would step in if the political situation in Pakistan deteriorated. General Kayani — who unlike his predecessor, Mr. Musharraf, has pledged to keep the military out of politics — said the army would not intervene, according to a Pakistani official.

On a hectic day at the State Department, the Syrian ambassador to the United States, Imad Mustafa, also met with a senior American diplomat — a tentative step toward what analysts said could be an opening between the United States and Syria on the Middle East peace process.

Mrs. Clinton leaves late on Saturday for her first visit to the region, against a difficult backdrop of complaints about humanitarian aid in Gaza and continued negotiations in Israel to form a government.

On another thorny issue, Mrs. Clinton dispatched a new special envoy for North Korea, Stephen W. Bosworth, to try to restart talks over the North’s nuclear program. Mr. Bosworth is to leave early next week for meetings in Russia, China, South Korea and Japan. He is not scheduled to talk with North Korean officials, but he left open the possibility of such a meeting.

A former ambassador to South Korea, Mr. Bosworth recently returned from a private visit to Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital, during which he said he found willingness on the part of the North Koreans to talk to Washington.

“I found the North Koreans, I thought, quite inclined toward continued dialogue with the United States,” Mr. Bosworth said to reporters. “They see the benefits to them of continued engagement.”

On her first trip last week, Mrs. Clinton jolted diplomatic circles when she spoke about a succession struggle under way in North Korea. The jockeying to succeed Kim Jong-il, she said, could undermine the six-party talks intended to persuade the North to give up its nuclear weapons.

Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting.

Pakistan Frees Nuclear Scientist

This is the man who sold nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya.

46 Die in Taliban Attack on Pakistani Troops

This is a really worrying situation.

The New York Times About 600 Taliban assaulted a base in the Mohmand Agency.

Hundreds of Taliban militants poured into northwestern Pakistan in a large frontal attack on a paramilitary base late Saturday and Sunday that left at least 40 militants and 6 Pakistani soldiers dead, according to Pakistani security officials.

Hundreds in a frontal attack. Last night I saw an interview with Admiral Mullen, in which he mentioned that the US had been surprised by the sophistication of the tactics of Qaeda militants. This is such.

The Afghan Quagmire

Even before getting into office, Obama is getting flak, advice, admonishment and grief from every quarter. I respect Bob Herbert a great deal, so this column of his makes me think. A lot. AMong the first things I think are: well, if the US leaves Afghanistan in order not to destabilize Pakistan, then what becomes of Afghanistan?

Andrew Bacevich, a retired Army colonel who is now a professor of history and international relations at Boston University, wrote an important piece for Newsweek warning against the proposed buildup. “Afghanistan will be a sinkhole,” he said, “consuming resources neither the U.S. military nor the U.S. government can afford to waste.”

Yet, if the US leaves Afghanistan, who takes over, who fills the vacuum? Both the US and USSR abandoned the country, and in the 1990s the Taliban moved in, and no tonly made the country a laboratory for extreme Islamism, but also made it a haven for AL Qaeda and its ilk.

The time to go all out in Afghanistan was in the immediate aftermath of the 2001 terror attacks. That time has passed.

So, what now? Who handles it?

What’s the upside to the U.S., a nation in dire economic distress, of an escalation in Afghanistan? If we send 20,000, or 30,000, or however many thousand more troops in there, what will their mission be?

Well, to stabilize a key nation in a strategically important region, for one. To not allow Taliban and other forces to take over the nation, unchecked. Seem a couple of good reasons.

In his article for Newsweek, Mr. Bacevich said: “The chief effect of military operations in Afghanistan so far has been to push radical Islamists across the Pakistani border. As a result, efforts to stabilize Afghanistan are contributing to the destabilization of Pakistan, with potentially devastating implications.

“No country poses a greater potential threat to U.S. national security — today and for the foreseeable future — than Pakistan. To risk the stability of that nuclear-armed state in the vain hope of salvaging Afghanistan would be a terrible mistake.”

Agreed. But what is the alternative? To forsake Afghanistan is not to de facto stabilize Pakistan. Can not the two aims be satisfied concurrently, to both stabilize Afghanistan and not destabilize, nay, to even stabilize, Pakistan?

Our interest in Afghanistan is to prevent it from becoming a haven for terrorists bent on attacking us. That does not require the scale of military operations that the incoming administration is contemplating. It does not require a wholesale occupation. It does not require the endless funneling of human treasure and countless billions of taxpayer dollars to the Afghan government at the expense of rebuilding the United States, which is falling apart before our very eyes.

The forces now in Afghanistan are insufficient to make the US mission work. Thus, the US either has to double up, or get out. The numbers being discussed are not what would be a wholesale occupation.

If Mr. Obama does send more troops to Afghanistan, he should go on television and tell the American people, in the clearest possible language, what he is trying to achieve. He should spell out the mission’s goals, and lay out an exit strategy.

He will owe that to the public because he will own the conflict at that point. It will be Barack Obama’s war.

So, there.

Bhutto’s Daughter Raps Her Grief

Bakhtawar Bhutto, at her mother’s grave in Pakistan on the first anniversary of her death, December 28, 2008. (Photo: Nadeem Soomro/Reuters)

As Reuters reported yesterday, Bakhtawar Bhutto, the 18-year-old daughter of the assassinated former prime minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto, “has written a rap song expressing her anguish” over the murder of her mother just over a year ago.

The song, entitled “I Would Take the Pain Away,” and a five-minute video of clips and photographs of Benazir Bhutto has been broadcast on the state-run Pakistani television and posted on the video-sharing website YouTube.

Information Minister Sherry Rehman, for years an aide to Bhutto, said Bakhtawar, a student at Britain’s Edinburgh University, wrote the lyrics and music.

“It’s a tribute of a grieving daughter to her iconic and loving mother,” Rehman told Reuters on Monday.

The lyrics for the rap song, delivered by Ms. Bhutto in an overlapping, multi-layered style, and scrolling across the video, describe the song as dedicated to “my mother, shot in the back of your ear — legendary leader — murdered — legendary mother — She got crazy courage — Dear Mom — crazy intelligence — if you can hear me, I’ve got a few things — no one can replace you — I never got the chance to say, but if I could have — Yo, yo….”




The Guardian’s Saeed Shah in Islamabad notes that

The Pakistan People’s party, which was led by Benazir Bhutto, made clear that Bakhtawar did not plan a career in music.

She has not, however, ruled out following her mother into the country’s politics.

(Thanks to VF Daily for the link to YouTube.)

Switzerland Frees Suspected Smuggling Nuclear Technology

Swiss authorities have released from jail a man suspected of smuggling atomic technology to Libya and Iran as part of the nuclear black market of Abdul Qadeer Khan, officials and family members said Monday.

Khan is the one who sold atomic secrets to Iran, and was, in turn, pardoned by Musharraf. I never have understood why that story disappeared from the public radar.

The suspect, Urs Tinner, was freed Dec. 22 after more than four years in investigative detention, Swiss officials said. They added that his brother Marco remained in jail because of worries that he still had access to nuclear-weapons secrets.

Spying seems to be a family business: The developments were a new phase in Switzerland’s long efforts to prosecute the family of Swiss engineers, including the Tinner patriarch, Friedrich. All three are suspected of criminal export violations. The father was released from jail in 2006 pending legal action.

In May, the president of Switzerland confirmed that the government had destroyed a trove of computer files and other material documenting the family’s business dealings. He said that the action was taken to keep plans for nuclear arms and technologies from ever falling into terrorist hands. But in interviews last summer with The New York Times, American officials said they had urged the destruction less to thwart terrorists than to hide evidence of a secret relationship between the Tinners and the C.I.A. They said that the family provided a unique lens on the secret activities of Libya, Iran and Dr. Khan.

Now that's interesting: a secret relationship between the Tinners, who sold atomic secrets to North Korea, Iran and Libya, and the CIA. A way to monitor illicit activity, it is said, yet a facilitation of behavior that the US government denounced publicly.

Military Finds an Unlikely Adviser

Mr. Mortenson believes providing a moderate education to young Muslims is the most effective way to curb the growth of Islamic extremism.

Greg Mortenson, a humanitarian and co-author of the best-selling book "Three Cups of Tea," has a surprising new job: advising the U.S. military on how to fight Islamic extremism.

Mr. Mortenson is a former mountain climber who has built 78 schools in remote, poverty-stricken parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan. His foundation, the Central Asia Institute, also runs 48 other schools in refugee camps in the region. More than 28,000 children in the two countries attend Mr. Mortenson's schools.

In recent months, Mr. Mortenson has begun a second career as a guru of sorts for the military. In November, he was invited to the Pentagon for a private meeting with Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In December, he flew to Florida to talk to senior officers from the secretive Special Operations Command, which directs elite units like the Army's Delta Force.

"Education is the long-term solution to fanaticism," says Col. Christopher Kolenda, who commanded an Army brigade in a part of eastern Afghanistan where Mr. Mortenson founded two schools. "As Greg points out so well, ignorance breeds hatred and violence."

"I get some criticism from the NGO community, who tell me I shouldn't talk to the military at all," he said. "But the military has a willingness to change and adapt that you don't see in other parts of the government."

North Korean Plane Was Grounded at U.S. Request

India blocked a North Korean plane from delivering cargo to Iran in August, responding to a U.S. request based on fears about the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

I still want to know where North Korea got its nuclear material; I believe it was from Pakistan and its rogue nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan.

An NY Times profile: Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan is a Pakistani metallurgist and the father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. In Pakistan, Dr. Khan is considered a national hero despite his admission in 2004 that he said he sold nuclear technology to several countries. To the United States and nuclear investigators around the world, he is a rogue scientist who has failed to reveal the true extent of the dangers posed by the shadowy network he created.

I do not believe he could have carried out his smuggling without the knowledge of the Pakistani government. And Musharraf pardoned him.

In the U.S. presidential race, Democrat Barack Obama has publicly supported the Bush administration's diplomatic process with North Korea, while his Republican opponent, John McCain, has voiced skepticism.

Pakistani and American Troops Exchange Fire

More of W's legacy.

Bush Said to Give Orders Allowing Raids in Pakistan

Part of his legacy: do whatever he wants, and damn the details.

President Bush secretly approved orders in July that for the first time allow American Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government, according to senior American officials.

That is a direct violation of the sovereignty of a purported ally. Amazing.

Pakistan Looks Ahead Without Musharraf

An interesting development, to say the least. Events have moved rapidly since Bhutto's assassination, and now Musharraf is gone from office. In the story in the New York Times there are these curious comments:

“His resignation will bring stability hopefully,” said Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi. He noted that the stock market, which had suffered in recent sessions, had reacted positively. Aitzaz Ahsan, the leader of a lawyers’ movement that has been pushing for Mr. Musharraf’s ouster and the reinstatement of 57 dismissed judges, said the resignation was a cause “to rejoice.”

The stock market is given quite a prominent role by the FM.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The immediate reaction in Pakistan’s corridors of power and streets to the resignation of President Pervez Musharraf was one of optimism and opportunity.

Slide Show Opponents Celebrate Musharraf's Resignation

Video

President Musharraf Resigns

Cellphone Data Track Our Migration Patterns

Fascinating story highlighting the efficacy and ease of using available data, as well as its dangers and potential abuses. I particularly enjoy that the focal point is Flushing.

The one stat that jumps out at me is how significant the percentage of calls to Porto, Portugal is: 9% of calls from Flushing.

Cellphone users are spiders of the electromagnetic spectrum, spinning intricate, invisible threads of data about themselves as they walk and talk throughout the day.

Physicists, urban planners and social scientists are eagerly weaving millions of these electronic threads into patterns of people on the move, through studies that until now were all but impossible.

What makes things possible is that all calls are in the phone companies records: number dialing, number called, minutes spoken. The phone company also knows who owns the calling number, and might known the called number, too.

More than 3.3 billion wireless-phone subscribers world-wide have, in effect, voluntarily adopted devices that record their daily movements in the same way satellite sensors monitor migrating birds, whales, bears and other wildlife. Such precise positioning data, automatically collected by cellphone companies, makes privacy advocates queasy but has social scientists dazzled by the research possibilities.


3.3 billion people voluntarily, perhaps unknowingly or oblivious or indifferent to the consequences of their calling habits being known, allow their privacy to be available. It does, surely, also provide intriguing possibilities.

Mission accomplished?

Really? That well?

Less than a year after his agency warned of new threats from a resurgent al-Qaeda, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden now portrays the terrorist movement as essentially defeated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and on the defensive throughout much of the rest of the world, including in its presumed haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Less than a year ago it looked dire; now it looks great. Quick turnaround, indeed.

While cautioning that al-Qaeda remains a serious threat, Hayden said Osama bin Laden is losing the battle for hearts and minds in the Islamic world and has largely forfeited his ability to exploit the Iraq war to recruit adherents. Two years ago, a CIA study concluded that the U.S.-led war had become a propaganda and marketing bonanza for al-Qaeda, generating cash donations and legions of volunteers.

Rather nuanced assessment.

The sense of shifting tides in the terrorism fight is shared by a number of terrorism experts, though some caution that it is too early to tell whether the gains are permanent. Some credit Hayden and other U.S. intelligence leaders for going on the offensive against al-Qaeda in the area along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where the tempo of Predator strikes has dramatically increased from previous years. But analysts say the United States has caught some breaks in the past year, benefiting from improved conditions in Iraq, as well as strategic blunders by al-Qaeda that have cut into its support base.

How are shifting tides measured?

Others warned that al-Qaeda remains capable of catastrophic attacks and may be even more determined to stage a major strike to prove its relevance. "Al-Qaeda's obituary has been written far too often in the past few years for anyone to declare victory," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University. "I agree that there has been progress. But we're indisputably up against a very resilient and implacable enemy."

Caution is prudent.

... terrorism experts note the lack of success in the U.S. effort to capture bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Intelligence officials say they think both are living in the Pakistan-Afghanistan tribal area in locations known only to a few top aides. Hayden said capturing or killing the pair remains a top priority, though he noted the difficulties in finding them in a rugged, remote region where the U.S. military is officially forbidden to operate.

Quite nuanced.

North Korea Helped Syria's Nuclear Program

And wherefrom did North Korea get its nuclear capacity? From the Pakistani scientist that Musharraf pardoned after the fact. Nice going, W.

Associated Press

This two picture combo shows two satellite images made available by DigitalGlobe show a suspected nuclear facility site, on Aug. 5, 2007 (left) and Oct. 24, 2007, before and after an Israeli airstrike.