After mounting pressure from the United States and India, Pakistani authorities raided a camp run by the militant group suspected of carrying out the Mumbai attacks, Pakistani and American officials said Monday. The operation on Sunday appeared to be Pakistan’s first concrete response to the demands from India and the United States to take action against the militants suspected in the attacks, which have raised tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbors to their highest point in years.
A senior Pakistani security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said about a dozen people had been arrested in the raid, which took place in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani-administered Kashmir. The raid on Sunday appeared to be the first step by the Pakistanis that at least tacitly recognized the American and Indian claims. Counterterrorism experts familiar with the behavior of the Pakistani security services said there was a need by Pakistan to be seen to be doing something to alleviate the American and Indian pressure, as well as to avert the possibility of an Indian military strike.

However, the reality is that Pakistan is facing tremendous pressure, which is limiting the ability to do much:
- For the first time, US and other western tourists were targeted, and given the soft nature of these targets, a successful attack such as this will make these tourists seem more susceptible to such dangers
- Pakistani politicians, because of their past projection of India as the enemy, cannot afford to be seen as acting against so-called Kashmiri freedom fighters under US pressure
- The Pakistani military as well as the Government are financially strapped and need desperate financial support (especially when China and Saudi Arabia have refused to provide support)
- The military has just shown how powerful it is in the running of the country, and it would seem that the civilian leadership is buckling under the pressure, especially with the ISI being seen as a rogue party
- These militants, at the same time attack many Pakistani interests (including a much higher rate of suicide and other bombings)
- The incoming US administration comes in with the understanding that Pakistani was deceiving them in terms of previous efforts against the militants, and a lot of the aid was not used as the way that the Americans intended
- The US remains dependent on the Pakistani authority for the war against the Taleban, given that the last few days have seen the support convoys for the Americans in Afghanistan getting attacked in Peshawar

With all these factors, many of them at cross-purposes, it is hard to really guess what the Pakistanis will do. For their own survival, and under tremendous US pressure, they need to show action, while carrying the military along, and yet the public projection should be as low key as possible to avoid being seen to be acting under foreign pressure.

Five missiles fired from an American pilotless aircraft on Monday hit a large compound in North Waziristan belonging to one of Pakistan’s most prominent Taliban leaders, two Pakistani intelligence officials and a local resident said. The strike hit the compound run by Sirajuddin Haqqani, the son of Jalaluddin Haqqani, whom the United States has accused of organizing some of the most serious recent attacks in Afghanistan against American and NATO forces and of masterminding a failed assassination attempt against the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai. According to American officials, the two Haqqanis protect forces from Al Qaeda in their enclaves in North and South Waziristan, provide logistics and intelligence for Qaeda operatives, and act as a bridge between the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, who share the common mission of driving American and NATO troops from Afghanistan.
The attack was carried out less than a week after the first publicly acknowledged ground operation by American Special Operations forces against Taliban operating inside Pakistan. The commandos struck at militants in a village in South Waziristan on Wednesday at the start of what American commanders said was likely to be a more sustained campaign against the Taliban operating in Pakistan’s tribal region. The attack on Monday was the third American missile strike on Taliban targets in North and South Waziristan since the ground attack on Wednesday.

Pakistani spokespersons have expectedly condemned the strike and vowed of retaliation for some of the attacks (most noticeably for the ground attacks). However, it seems that a large section of the press believes that this protest is for public consumption and that Pakistan has accepted that there will be more such strikes. For a country that has received a large amount of aid from the US, US influence can be very hard and difficult to oppose. At the same time, such strikes will have the effect of making more Pakistanis react negatively and more in favor of the terrorists, making the task of the Pakistani Government all the more difficult.

A top Central Intelligence Agency official traveled secretly to Islamabad this month to confront Pakistan’s most senior officials with new information about ties between the country’s powerful spy service and militants operating in Pakistan’s tribal areas, according to American military and intelligence officials. The C.I.A. emissary presented evidence showing that members of the spy service had deepened their ties with some militant groups that were responsible for a surge of violence in Afghanistan, possibly including the suicide bombing this month of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, the officials said.
The decision to confront Pakistan with what the officials described as a new C.I.A. assessment of the spy service’s activities seemed to be the bluntest American warning to Pakistan since shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks about the ties between the spy service and Islamic militants. That ISI officers have maintained important ties to anti-American militants has been the subject of previous reports in The New York Times. But the C.I.A. and the Bush administration have generally sought to avoid criticism of Pakistan, which they regard as a crucial ally in the fight against terrorism.

For this news to become public could also mean that the Bush Administration is trying to apply public pressure on Pakistan; private pressure does not seem to have worked too much. And the US is now losing more soldiers in Afghanistan than in Iraq, greatly increasing the chance that the next battle-ground for public opinion in the US would be the war in Afghanistan, and how there’s been so little progress despite the US being in control of the country.
For Pakistan, this was a public relations whammy that the country could have done without. Along with the effect of being told that elements of their administration were supporting terrorism, there was the disturbing news that the civilian Government in Pakistan had failed to bring the ISI under their control. The civilian Government passed an order putting the ISI under the control of the elected Government, but within a few hours, had to retract the order. No doubt it had been told by the military to stay within its limits (putting Pakistan as one of the few countries where the chief intelligence agency is not under the control of the political class).

Deadly suicide bombings are becoming an accepted part of daily life in Pakistan, with each new attack appearing to chip away at President Pervez Musharraf’s waning popularity. Close to 60 attacks across the country in 2007, up tenfold from the previous year, increasing security fears in urban areas. Violent attacks are moving from rural parts of Pakistan into major urban centers and some analysts say Musharraf’s legacy is tied to the instability in the country.
While Musharraf’s popularity is plunging at home and abroad, a dearth of good leaders has many Pakistanis reluctant to see him go, nervous about what will follow. “I keep saying that I have introduced the essence of democracy,” Musharraf said.

While it is true that Pakistan’s democratic leaders have been no paragon of virtue, it is the policies of the army run dictatorship that have led to more problems. They have suppressed the democratic leaders and their party, causing dissent to not get properly channeled into the democratic process; instead the dissent has moved into extremism. In addition, the extremists supported by the military in the past to enable weakening of Afghanistan and India have now turned on Pakistan itself, causing a tremendous increase of worry all around the world about the stability of Pakistan and its nuclear weapons.

Though Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced his resignation Monday, he is still is in the crosshairs of investigations by Congress and his own department. A letter sent to Senate Judiciary Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., from Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine Thursday indicates that Gonzales is the subject of at least three separate ongoing internal investigations.
“The OIG is conducting a joint investigation with the Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility into allegations regarding the removal of certain United States attorneys and improper hiring practices. We believe that through those investigations and other OIG reviews we will be able to assess most of the issues that you raise in your letter,” Fine wrote.
Gonzales’ past testimony differed from accounts of former Deputy Attorney General James Comey and FBI director Robert Mueller, who both stated that in March 2004, Gonzales, then serving as White House counsel, visited Attorney General John Ashcroft while he was hospitalized, seeking reauthorization of a controversial National Security Agency surveillance program.

Given that the Bush Administration is not likely to change course and admit that its actions are wrong, or that the firing of the attorneys was not politically motivated; and that Congress has now tasted blood in terms of getting Gonzales to resign, it is likely that they will continue the investigation. Since he is now no longer Attorney-General, the investigation will be easier. Further, this probe by the Inspector General will also help the case of Congress in their dispute with the Bush Administration.

The Americans declined to speak for the record about the release of the man, Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, apparently out of reluctance to criticize Pakistan, which has generally worked closely with the United States in counterterrorism efforts. “He most definitely had terrorist links,” an American intelligence official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the American case against Mr. Khan was classified.

Mr. Khan was arrested in Lahore in July 2004 during a joint Pakistani-British raid. Soon after his arrest, Pakistani and American authorities said they had found files on his computer that led to the raising of the terrorism alert level in the United States. The authorities said the files included surveillance information on the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington, the Citigroup Tower and New York Stock Exchange in Manhattan and the Prudential Building in Newark.

It seems very strange that Pakistan can release a skilled terrorist to go out and wreak havoc again. Al-Qaeda uses the internet and other means of communications to coordinate many of its activities, and it is of the utmost importance that measures are taken to prevent such terrorists from going out into the community. It would be really horrific if this gentleman is later found to have been included in any kind of terrorist planning or activity.

In recent weeks, the administration and congressional Republicans pressed for the change in response to what it called a dangerous gap in surveillance capabilities. This was triggered by what news reports say was a ruling by a judge that the government had exceeded its authority in surveillance of communications overseas passing through electronic centers in the United States.

The legislation authorizes for six months the National Security Agency to intercept, without a court order, communications between people in the United States and foreign targets overseas. The Bush administration would have to demonstrate to a special court that a surveillance request only targeted individuals outside the United States. Under existing law called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the government must obtain court approval to conduct surveillance of suspected terrorists within the United States.

The biggest concern raised about this law is about whether this is an acceptable intrusion into the privacy of citizens in the US communicating with people abroad. How many people would appreciate that their liasions, their business deals, their intimate contact, etc, can all be easily listened to now without the need for a court approval, just depending on the concerned spy agency to ensure that their privacy is not being invaded.

The Senate approved the Bush administration’s plan to remove a legal obstacle to eavesdropping on overseas terror suspects, putting pressure on the U.S. House to accept it before leaving for an August recess. President George W. Bush demanded that Congress close an intelligence gap that he said was hobbling the capability of U.S. spy agencies to eavesdrop on terrorists.

A proposal by House Democrats to fix the problem failed today to obtain the two-thirds margin required after McConnell said it “would not allow me to carry out my responsibility to provide warning and to protect the nation.” The measure, like the Democratic alternative in the Senate, would have required a court order to authorize interceptions of e-mails and phone calls of foreign-based terrorists routed through U.S. telephone switching points. In the Senate-passed measure, the secret court that oversees surveillance would have a more limited role. The court would review the program to ensure it was adhering to guidelines drafted by the attorney general and the national intelligence director to ensure Americans’ privacy is protected.

In essence, the Republican version loosens a fair amount of the controls. Now, one knows that the threat is real, but it is never very clear whether the administration is going overboard in its attempts. This measure now goes to the House, but if it cleared the Senate, it is much more likely to pass the House. After all, it has been the Senate in the past that has done a lot of cross-questioning in the past, not the House. With this measure, one can only hope that the administration still respects the right to privacy.

The White House offered a vigorous defense of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales yesterday, insisting that he had not given misleading testimony to Congress, but that national security factors prevented further clarification for now. “He has testified truthfully and tried to be very accurate,” the chief White House spokesman, Tony Snow, said of Gonzales’ testimony this week before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Mueller’s account appeared to conflict starkly with Gonzales’ version of events, in which he told the Senate Judiciary Committee that there was no disagreement about the program. In insisting that there was no real contradiction, Snow said Gonzales was just not able to explain further “because to do so would compromise American security.”

In essence, what the White House is saying that the attorney general was speaking the truth, that you folks should not read too much about the difference in testimony between his testimony and that of Mueller, and anyway, it is all your fault since you knew that he would not be able to say much due to the need for secrecy, and you folks should have understood that.
When it has been clearly shown that he was speaking a lie and perjuring himself, the concept that a defense based on ‘trust us, we are speaking the truth’ will work shows how far the White House is from reality. This is likely to make members of Congress more likely to try and appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the attorney general.

The director, Robert Mueller III, told the House Judiciary Committee that the confrontation was about the National Security Agency’s counterterrorist eavesdropping program, describing it as “an NSA program that has been much discussed.” His testimony was a serious blow to Gonzales, who insisted at a Senate hearing on Tuesday that there were no disagreements inside the Bush administration about the program at the time of those discussions or at any other time.
In a separate development, Senate Democrats, who were unaware of Mueller’s comments, demanded the appointment of a special counsel to investigate whether Gonzales committed perjury in his testimony on Tuesday about the intelligence dispute. The Senate Judiciary Committee, meanwhile, issued a subpoena to Karl Rove, the White House senior political adviser, and another presidential aide, J. Scott Jennings, for testimony about the dismissal of U.S. prosecutors, another issue that has dogged Gonzales.

It is almost universally acknowledged that after the repeated battering that Gonzales has had at the hands of Congress and the image of a Justice Department not totally in control of things, he would be on the way out. However, it would appear that President Bush is keeping him out of loyalty, otherwise for a man causing such serious image issues to the White House, his days would seem to be numbered.