Saturday, September 26, 2009

G20 protesters blasted by sonic cannon




Only a few hundreds protesters took to the streets of Pittsburgh to mark the opening day of the G20 summit of world leaders, but the police were taking no chances.

Sonic weapons or long-range acoustic devices have been used by the US military overseas, notably against Somali pirates and Iraqi insurgents.

But US security forces turned the piercing sound on their own citizens yesterday to widespread outrage. Pittsburgh officials told the New York Times that it was the first time "sound cannon" had been used publicly.

The sonic weapon appear to be more effective than the Metropolitan police's highly contentious kettling tactics used against G20 protesters in London. But it is equally controversial.

It is feared the sounds emitted are loud enough to damage eardrums and even cause fatal aneurysms.

US threatens airstrikes in Pakistan

www.timesonline.co.uk
The United States is threatening to launch airstrikes on Mullah Omar and the Taliban leadership in the Pakistani city of Quetta as frustration mounts about the ease with which they find sanctuary across the border from Afghanistan.

The threat comes amid growing divisions in Washington about whether to deal with the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan by sending more troops or by reducing them and targeting the terrorists.

This weekend the US military was expected to send a request to Robert Gates, the defence secretary, for more troops, as urged by General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander there.

In a leaked strategic assessment of the war, McChrystal warned that he needed extra reinforcements within a year to avert the risk of failure. Although no figure was given, he is believed to be seeking up to 40,000 troops to add to the 68,000 who will be in Afghanistan by the end of this year.

However, with President Barack Obama under pressure from fellow Democrats not to intensify the war, the administration has let it be known that it is rethinking strategy. Vice-President Joe Biden has suggested reducing the number of troops in Afghanistan and focusing on the Taliban and AlQaeda in Pakistan.

Last week McChrystal denied any rift with the administration, saying “a policy debate is warranted”.

According to The New York Times, he flew from Kabul to Ramstein airbase in Germany on Friday for a secret meeting with Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to discuss the request for more troops.

So sensitive is the subject that when Obama addressed the United Nations summit in New York, he barely mentioned Afghanistan. The unspoken problem is that if the priority is to destroy Al-Qaeda and reduce the global terrorist threat, western troops might be fighting on the wrong side of the border.

The Biden camp argues that attacks by unmanned drones on Pakistan’s tribal areas, where Al-Qaeda’s leaders are hiding, have been successful. Sending more troops to Afghanistan has only inflamed tensions. “Pakistan is the nuclear elephant in the room,” said a western diplomat.

It is a view echoed by Richard Barrett, head of the UN Commission on Monitoring Taliban and Al-Qaeda, who believes the presence of foreign troops has increased militant activity and made it easier for the Taliban to recruit.

“If Obama sends more troops it had better be clear what they are to do,” he said.

“A few thousand more boots on the ground may not make much difference except push the fight into areas which are currently quiet because no one is there to challenge the Taliban. I cannot see any number of troops eliminating the Taliban. Obama has a really difficult decision to make.”

The debate has been intensified by the debacle of the Afghan election, which has left many European leaders struggling to justify sending soldiers to support a government that has been fraudulently elected.

According to preliminary results, President Hamid Karzai won 54.6% of the vote, compared with 27.8% for Abdullah Abdullah, his main challenger. But there have been complaints that fraudulent ballots may account for up to 20% of the 5.5m votes cast.

The Electoral Complaints Commission, overseen by a UN watchdog, has begun to recount about 10% of the disputed votes. Final results are not expected for two weeks. If Karzai is left without the 50% needed for outright victory, there must be a second round unless he agrees to form a unity government.

In the meantime, the country is in limbo and the Taliban is taking advantage, opening up new fronts in the north and west.

Al-Qaeda is also trying to capitalise on the uncertainty. Osama Bin Laden issued a call to European nations to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, and threatened reprisals with an allusion to the bombings in Madrid and London. The recording, released on Friday, seemed to be directed at Germany in the run-up to parliamentary elections today.

The Afghan election has strengthened the position of those in Washington who advocate eliminating Taliban leaders in Pakistan.

Senior Pakistani officials in New York revealed that the US had asked to extend the drone attacks into Quetta and the province of Baluchistan.

“It wasn’t so much a threat as an understanding that if you don’t do anything, we’ll take matters into our own hands,” said one.

The problem is that while the government of President Asif Zardari is committed to wiping out terrorism, Pakistan’s powerful military does not entirely share this view.

Earlier this year there was optimism that Pakistan had turned a corner after it confronted a Taliban group that had taken over the Swat valley and moved to within 70 miles of Islamabad.

There has been tacit co-operation over the use of drones. Some are even stationed inside Pakistan, although publicly the government denounces their use.

Suspicions remain among US officials that parts of Pakistan’s military intelligence agency, the ISI, are supporting the Taliban and protecting Mullah Omar and other leaders in Quetta.

It was to shore up Zardari’s domestic standing that Obama attended a Friends of Pakistan summit in New York on Thursday. On the same day, the US Senate tripled non-military aid to Pakistan to $1.5 billion a year.

The Obama administration hopes such moves will reduce anti-American feeling in Pakistan. A survey last month by the Pew Research Centre found that almost two-thirds regarded the US as an enemy.

Drone attacks on Quetta would intensify this sentiment, causing some British officials to argue that such missions would be “unthinkable”.

The Pakistani government is reluctant to take its own action, however. “We need real-time intelligence,” said Rehman Malik, the interior minister. “The Americans have never told us any location.”

Western intelligence officers say Pakistan has been moving Taliban leaders to the volatile city of Karachi, where it would be impossible to strike. US officials have even discussed sending commandos to Quetta to capture or kill the Taliban chiefs before they are moved.

Deadly Explosions Rock Pakistan

washingtonpost.com
PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- Two suicide attacks killed 16 people and wounded more than 150 in northwest Pakistan on Saturday, showing Taliban militants are still able to strike despite heightened military operations and the slaying of their leader last month.

A Taliban spokesman called The Associated Press after the first bombing outside a police station to claim responsibility and warn of more blasts. He claimed the militants had been holding back on attacks but that any such "pause" was now over.

Nuclear-armed Pakistan is battling al-Qaida and Taliban militants close to the Afghan border blamed for scores of attacks over the last two years. The insurgents are linked to those in Afghanistan, where violence against NATO and U.S. troops is running at record levels.

The suicide car bomb outside a police station in Bannu district destroyed the building, killing six people and wounding 70, said police chief Mohammed Farid.

Hours later, a second car bomber struck outside a bank run by an army welfare foundation in Peshawar, the largest city in the northwest, police said. Ten people were killed and 79 wounded, said Sahibzada Mohammed Anis, a senior government official.

The blast overturned vehicles, gutted buildings and scattered glass everywhere, said an AP reporter at the scene. Most of the casualties were customers in the bank or people loitering outside.

Malik Shafqat, a police officer, said the attacker also threw a hand grenade but it didn't explode.

A third bomb exploded in the northern town of Gilgit, wounding four people, Pakistan's SAMA news channel quoted local police Chief Ali Sher as saying. He described it as a "low-intensity bomb" but provided no further details.

Taliban spokesman Qari Hussain Mehsud urged civilians to stay away from police and security force installations.

"We have broken the silence as the government did not understand the pause in attacks, and from now there will be an increase in the number of suicide bombings," he warned in a telephone call from an undisclosed location.

Mehsud - known for training Taliban suicide bombers - had warned of more attacks in an AP interview on Thursday, saying, "we will send suicide bombers only if the government acts against us."

The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad condemned the bombings, saying in a statement that the attacks "highlight the vicious and inhuman nature of this enemy whose true target is the democratically elected government of Pakistan and the security of all Pakistanis."

North West Frontier Province's information minister, Mian Iftikhar Hussain, said the attacks would not deter the government from fighting militants. He said security forces had arrested 40 would-be suicide bombers in recent months in the northwest, thwarting efforts by the Taliban to create chaos.

"It is not only our duty ... to fight this menace of terrorism, it is a responsibility of the whole world," Hussain told reporters in Peshawar. "We are on the front line today, that's why our blood is being shed."

Last month, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban Baitullah Mehsud was killed in a CIA missile strike in the northwest. While the militants have named a new leader, some have speculated the group may have lost some of its ability to stage attacks.

The strike followed a largely successful army offensive in the Swat Valley region against the Taliban there that to some extent has reassured Western governments of Pakistan's ability and intent to fight the insurgency.

Earlier this month, the government claimed to have killed more than 150 militants in an operation in the Khyber agency, which lies close to Peshawar.

But the Taliban or affiliated Islamist militants have continued to carry out attacks in recent weeks.

Militants ambushed a convoy of prominent anti-Taliban tribal elders in Bannu district on Thursday, spraying their cars with gunfire and killing nine people. Pakistani authorities have urged tribal elders to speak out against the Taliban, and in turn the militants have killed scores of local leaders.

Afghanistan Troop Request Splits Advisers to Obama

NewYorkTimes
WASHINGTON — As President Obama weighs sending more troops to Afghanistan, one of the most consequential decisions of his presidency, he has discovered that the military is not monolithic in support of the plan and that some of the civilian advisers he respects most have deep reservations.

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s troop request, which was submitted to the Pentagon on Friday, has reignited a longstanding debate within the military about the virtues of the counterinsurgency strategy popularized by Gen. David H. Petraeus in Iraq and now embraced by General McChrystal, the top American and NATO commander in Afghanistan.

General McChrystal is expected to ask for as many as 40,000 additional troops for the eight-year-old war, a number that has generated concern among top officers like Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army chief of staff, who worry about the capacity to provide more soldiers at a time of stress on the force, officials said.

The competing advice and concerns fuel a pivotal struggle to shape the president’s thinking about a war that he inherited but may come to define his tenure. Among the most important outside voices has been that of former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, a retired four-star Army general, who visited Mr. Obama in the Oval Office this month and expressed skepticism that more troops would guarantee success. According to people briefed on the discussion, Mr. Powell reminded the president of his longstanding view that military missions should be clearly defined.

Mr. Powell is one of the three people outside the administration, along with Senator John F. Kerry and Senator Jack Reed, considered by White House aides to be most influential in this current debate. All have expressed varying degrees of doubt about the wisdom of sending more forces to Afghanistan.

Mr. Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, has warned of repeating the mistakes of Vietnam, where he served, and has floated the idea of a more limited counterterrorist mission. Mr. Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island and an Army veteran, has not ruled out supporting more troops but said “the burden of proof” was on commanders to justify it.

In the West Wing, beyond Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has advocated an alternative strategy to the troop buildup, other presidential advisers sound dubious about more troops, including Rahm Emanuel, the chief of staff, and Gen. James L. Jones, the national security adviser, according to people who have spoken with them. At the same time, Mr. Obama is also hearing from more hawkish figures, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Richard Holbrooke, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

General McChrystal’s troop request, which has not been made public, was given to Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, by the general in a meeting in Germany on Friday. Admiral Mullen arrived back in Washington on Friday night with one paper copy for himself and one for Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.

Mr. Gates has not endorsed General McChrystal’s request yet, viewing the situation as “complicated,” said one person who has spoken with him. But Mr. Gates, who will be an influential voice in Mr. Obama’s decision, has also left open the door for more troops and warned of the consequences of failure in Afghanistan.

Although Mr. Obama has called Afghanistan a war of necessity, he has left members of both parties uncertain about the degree of his commitment to a large and sustained military presence. Even some advisers said they thought Mr. Obama’s support for the war as a senator and presidential candidate was at least partly a way of contrasting it with what he saw as a reckless war in Iraq.

His decision to send 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan early this year, which will bring the number of American troops there to 68,000 this fall, was made hurriedly within weeks of coming into office to stanch the tactical erosion on the ground and provide security during Afghan elections.

But with those elections now marred by fraud allegations, the latest troop request is forcing Mr. Obama to decide whether he wants to fully engage in Afghanistan for the rest of his term or make a drastic change of course. Some advisers said the varying views reflected the complicated nature of a debate. The troop request follows the strategy unveiled by Mr. Obama in March to focus more on protecting the Afghan population, building infrastructure and improving governance, rather than just hunting the Taliban. On Friday, a United Nations report said that from January to August, 1,500 civilians were killed, about two-thirds of them by militants.

Admiral Mullen has endorsed the idea of more troops and will be at the table representing the military. General McChrystal and ambassadors from the region will get a chance to participate in meetings with the president through a secure video hookup.

Other officers, who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan and say they admire General McChrystal nonetheless, have privately expressed doubt that additional troops will make a difference. Others question the broader impact of such a buildup on the overall armed forces.

“If a request for more forces comes to the Army, we’ll have to assess what that will do in terms of stress on the force,” said an Army official, who asked not to be identified because General McChrystal’s troop request had not been made public.

General Casey, whose institutional role as Army chief is to protect his force, has a goal to increase by 2012 a soldier’s time at home, to two years at home for every year served, from the current one year for every year of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Advisers who have Mr. Obama’s ear have raised other questions. Mr. Powell spoke with Mr. Obama about a variety of topics, but his remarks on Afghanistan resonated in the White House. “The question the president has to answer is, ‘What will more troops do?’ ” Mr. Powell told reporters before a speech in California last week. “You have to not just add troops. You need a clear definition of your mission and then you can determine whether you need more troops or other resources.”

In an interview, Senator Kerry, who met with Admiral Mullen last week, said that he had not made up his mind about the troop buildup, but that in Vietnam, “the underlying assumptions were flawed, and the number of troops weren’t going to make a difference.”

Senator Reed, who met with Mr. Biden, was more measured, but said the president needed to look at the capacity of Afghan forces and the prospects of reconciliation with moderate Taliban members. “You want to make sure you have the best operational plan to carry out the strategy,” he said.

Peshawar bombing death toll rises to 12

The death toll in the suicide attack in Saddar area of Peshawar has reached to 12, while 100 others have been injured. The investigators have found two legs from the spot of the bombing , which have been sent for DNA test. According to the sources 80 kilogramme explosive material was used in the attack at Mall Road in Saddar area of Peshawar. DSP Tanveer Ahmed of the bomb disposal squat informed media that the accused in the car thrown two hand grenades in front of the State Bank building before the suicide attack, which didn’t explode.