Wampum

Pakistan Army Pays Al Qaeda Half a Million Dollars

Jonah and I were up again this morning conducting some quality research time -- he's pretty amused by the out-takes for Elektra, a US attempt at the "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" genre -- people who run up trees and fly through the air are neat. We used to watch bull riding, which for some reason is in our local cable mix in the pre-dawn hours, for the same ballistic effects.

The research outcome of this morning's jaunt though OPD (other people's data) was the surprising discovery that the Mehsud tribe was paid $540,000 dollars (32m rupees) on Monday by Lt Gen Safdar Hussain for a debt incurrred to Al Qaeda for operating expenses in Afganistan and the Wazaristan provinces. Restated, a la the South Asian TImes, "Pakistan Army Pays Al Qaeda Half a Million Dollars". The "surrender cerimony" of senior Talibs to the Pakistani Army (an armistice is more accurate) was concluded with "Death to America" chants. It is left to the imagination whether the Punjabi military and civil authorities present joined in the chorus, sat on their hands, or counter-chanted "Death to everybody present not holding a commission from Islamabad".

Getting the truth cost the lives of two journalists, Mir Nawab and Allah Noor were killed, and two others, Anwar Shakir and Zardad Khan were wounded when the press pool bus came under attack by assassins.

Also, NATO has submitted a request to Islamabad for a logistical hub in Karachi, and a major NATO base in Herat, on the Afgan-Iran border is in the works. The US is also re-opening logistics facilities it abandoned at the Karachi and a nearby military airfields after the fall of Kabul, indicating a planned logistical load beyond the capacities of its Kabul hub, and/or logistical requirements more proximal to Karachi than Kabul.

The US has asked for the use of a base near Khuzdar in Balochistan province (about 400 kilometers from Karachi), which will soon be operational for US troops. More on FOB Khuzdar (or Kamp Kudzu or whatever) as the information develops.

Update: Owais Ahmed Ghani, the "provincial governor" (Islamabad appointee) of Baluchistan is asking for US military assistance in controlling "drugs and arms smuggling", and that prior to this new spate of "drugs and arms smuggling", Baluchistan had no insurgency, historic, latent, or actual, just some small criminal gangs.

Today's quiz has two parts: 1. What, other than fishery, was the historic economy of Gwadar? 2. What did the Baluch cricket teams use for bats in the 1970-1973 test match against Pakistan? For extra credit, how uninformed does Owais Ahmed Ghani think the CENTCOM Intel wallahs are, and would he be correct if the same question were posed about Secretary Rice?

Posted by EBW at February 9, 2005 01:44 PM | TrackBack