Pakistan opposition 'tipped off' Mumbai terror group

Pakistan's president alleged that the brother of Pakistan's opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, "tipped off" the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) about impending UN sanctions following the 2008 Mumbai attacks, allowing the outfit to empty its bank accounts before they could be raided.
Six weeks after LeT gunmen killed more than 170 people in Mumbai, President Asif Ali Zardari told the US of his "frustration" that Sharif's government in Punjab province helped the group evade new UN sanctions.
A month earlier, Shahbaz Sharif, who is chief minister of Punjab, "tipped off" the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), LeT's charity wing, "resulting in almost empty bank accounts", Zardari claimed in a conversation with the US ambassador to Islamabad, Anne Patterson.
US diplomats were unable to confirm the allegation and noted that they came at a time of rising political tension between Zardari and Sharif. But they conceded that JuD did appear to have received a warning from somewhere. "Information from the ministry of the interior does indicate that bank accounts contained surprisingly small amounts," said the cable in January 2009. A Punjab government spokesman vigorously denied the charge. "There's nothing true in it," said senator Pervaiz Rashid, an adviser to Sharif. "Zardari is our political opponent and he wants to topple our government." Sharif couldn't have known about the UN sanctions, he said, because the UN co-ordinated its action with the federal government and not the provincial one.
The accusation, which has never been publicly aired, is one of several dramas that unfolded behind the scenes after the November 2008 attacks, now revealed by the embassy cables.
US diplomats and CIA spies found themselves playing the role of harried intermediaries to prevent Pakistan and India from going to war. One week after the bloodbath an Indian official said his government was distinguishing between Pakistan's civilian government, "which India believed was not involved in the attacks", and the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI). We are not yet ready to give ISI a clean chit," he said.
Four weeks later the US embassy grew alarmed by Indian plans to release a "sanitised" intelligence dossier that, they feared, could scupper intelligence sharing or thwart efforts to prevent a second attack.
"There are still Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) sleeper and other cells in India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan, as well as many law enforcement leads which need to be pursued," the note said.
Pakistan's generals, usually antagonistic towards India, appeared unusually conciliatory. Six weeks after the attack Pakistan's army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, said he was "determined to exercise restraint in his actions with India". "If there is any clue about another attack," he told General David Petraeus at his Rawalpindi headquarters, "please share it with us."
His intelligence chief, General Shuja Pasha, went even further, acting as a regional fixer for some of his most bitter enemies. In late 2009 Pasha travelled to Oman and Iran to "follow up on reports he received in Washington about a terrorist attack on India".
He sent warnings to Israel – a country that Pakistan does not officially recognise – "about information about attacks against Israeli targets in India". Earlier in the year, he reminded Patterson, information about a second attack on India had "come his way", which he conveyed to Delhi via the CIA.
The cables suggest Pakistan's ardour for bringing the alleged Mumbai masterminds to justice appears to have wilted as time went on. The secretive trial of Lashkar leader Zakhi ur Rehman Lakhvi and six other suspects "is proceeding, though at a slow pace", US diplomats noted in February.
The secretive trial of Lashkar leader Zakhi ur Rehman Lakhvi, and six other suspects "is proceeding, though at a slow pace" last in February 2010.
ThePakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence agency (ISI) refused access to Abdur Rehman Syed, a retired army major and alleged LeT accomplice. Instead the FBI was told it could "submit questions for Syed through the ISI".
American officials say there is "no smoking gun tying the Mumbai LeT operation to ISI" but are less sure if the spy agency has, as promised, cut all its ties.
"Despite arrests of key LeT/JuD leaders and closure of some of their camps, it is unclear if the ISI has finally abandoned its policy of using these proxy forces as a foreign policy tool," notes a briefing to the US special envoy Richard Holbrooke in February 2009. Dealing with LeT has long been a vexed issue for American diplomats in Pakistan. In March 2006 the US ambassador Ryan Crocker requested the US government to delay by two weeks the designation of JuD.
American helicopters were still delivering aid to earthquake victims in Kashmir, he explained, and they risked attack if still in the area when the designation was approved.
That same month, embassy officials met with Pakistan foreign office director Tasneem Aslam, who told her that Pakistan had "no evidence" linking JuD to terrorism – a conclusion US officials judged "dubious".
Later, in November 2007, the US ambassador presented the foreign secretary, Riaz Khan, with evidence that senior government ministers were publicly helping militant groups, including a declaration from the ministry of defence parliamentary secretary "that he was proud to be a member of LeT and that he seeks to extend support to jihadi organisations when they seek his 'co-operation.'"
"Each of these reports is disturbing in itself, the ambassador said, as they seriously damage Pakistan's image in the international community."
JuD denies that it is a front for LeT

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Pakistani army chief considered plan to oust president

Pakistan's army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, considered pushing President Asif Ali Zardari from office and forcing him into exile to resolve a political dispute, the US embassy cables reveal.
Kayani aired the idea during a frantic round of meetings with the US ambassador Anne Patterson in March 2009 as opposition leader Nawaz Sharif rallied thousands of supporters in a street movement that threatened to topple the government.
Kayani said that while he disliked Zardari, he distrusted Sharif even more, and appeared to be angling for a solution that would prevent the opposition leader from coming to power.
The cable illustrates the strong behind-the-scenes hand of Pakistan's military in civilian politics only six months after the last military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, resigned.
It also highlights the central role of western diplomats in Pakistani power games – as the Americans spoke with Kayani, British diplomats forged their own plan to broker a political deal between warring factions.
The crisis was sparked by Zardari's attempt to bar Sharif from running for parliament and his refusal to reinstate the deposed chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry.
As a powerful protest movement of opposition supporters and lawyers grew in Sharif's stronghold of Lahore, western diplomats scrambled to defuse the situation with Kayani's help.
During his fourth meeting with Patterson in less than a week, the taciturn army chief "hinted that he might, however reluctantly, have to persuade President Zardari to resign if the situation sharply deteriorates".
He said Zardari could be replaced by Asfandyar Wali Khan, leader of the Pashtun nationalist Awami National party, but the prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, would remain in place.
As such, this "would not be a formal coup", Patterson noted, but would leave in place a government led by Zardari's PPP party.
But Kayani made it clear he hoped the US could resolve the crisis through negotiation because he did not want Sharif in power. "Regardless of how much he disliked Zardari he distrusted Sharif even more," it said.
Kayani told Patterson that his top generals, known as the Corps Commanders, had expressed disquiet about Zardari because he was thought to be corrupt and had neglected Pakistan's "economic and security challenges", he said.
The military's spymaster, ISI chief General Shuja Pasha, made similar complaints about Zardari during a flight to America for a review of the strategic relationship between the two allies, the ambassador reported. "We have multiple sources demonstrating army complaints about Zardari," she said.
The preference for Gilani fuels long-standing speculation that the army leadership views the prime minister as a more palatable, or pliable, figure.
Patterson speculated that the army chief did not air his grievances directly with Zardari because he wanted to avoid any confrontation that might prompt Zardari to try to oust him – a "disastrous" possibility.
The British ambassador, Robert Brinkley, was working his own lines. He told the Americans he had received permission from London to "approach the various sides [and] discern their bottom lines". But the UK had not decided whether it would take on the role of mediator.
In the end Zardari was forced into a humiliating climbdown on 16 March when, under massive pressure, he dropped the ban on Sharif and reinstated Chaudhry. Reports at the time speculated that Kayani had played a central role in forcing Zardari to change course.
The drama prompted an American re-evaluation of the critical relationship between the president and army chief. Only a month earlier, the embassy reported that they had developed a "respectful if not entirely trusting working relationship".
"Kayani has gone out of his way to publicly defer to Zardari because he needs political support to wage successful military operations. After eight years of military rule under Musharraf, Zardari is re-shaping civilian-military relations in the shadow of Pakistan's history of repeated military coups."Sharif has much in common with the army leadership – his Punjabi roots, conservative politics and a history of supporting military rule. But he earned the army's wrath in 1999 with his bungled attempt to fire the then army chief Pervez Musharraf – a mistake that ultimately forced Sharif into exile.

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David Cameron on radicalised Muslims

The US was promised before the British general election last May that a Conservative government could be tougher on Pakistan, as the Tories claimed to be less dependent than Labour on domestic votes from people with Pakistani connections.
In a leaked 10 December 2009 cable the US ambassador to the UK, Louis Susman, recorded meeting the Tory frontbencher Liam Fox, now the defence secretary.
"Fox criticised the Labour government for policies which reinforce the Indian government's long-held view that HMG's [Her Majesty's government's] foreign relations on the subcontinent are 'skewed to Pakistan'."
He is quoted as assuring Susman that "the Conservatives are 'less dependent' than the Labour party on votes from the British-Pakistani community".
As soon as he became prime minister, David Cameron made a significant point of trying to build a special relationship with India, travelling to Delhi in June on a trade mission.
While in India, the Conservative leader urged Pakistanis not to face both ways on the issue of terrorism. His remarks caused a diplomatic furore: they were directed at Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, long regarded by the US to be playing a double game in Afghanistan by covertly supporting the Taliban.
Cameron's approach can now be seen prefigured in Washington's previously secret dispatches. The London embassy reported that he and "an eager group from his frontbench" met a congressional delegation led by the Republican senator John McCain in 2008.
"Cameron … raised Pakistan, noting that 60,000 individuals travel to Pakistan from the UK each year and that this has implications for the UK's own significant domestic 'terror threat'."
McCain stressed to him how worried he too was about Pakistan: "If they don't co-operate and help us, I don't know what we are going to do."
On 9 April 2009, Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, met Cameron and George Osborne in London "to urge HMG [under possible future Conservative leadership] to engage more on Pakistan".
Holbrooke pressed Cameron to help combat terrorism by capitalising on the "striking connections" between the large Pakistani community in the UK and "its home country".
"Cameron noted that most of the approximately 1 million UK citizens of Pakistani origin (mostly Punjabis and Kashmiris) living in the UK were not pro-Taliban but had been radicalised by the Iraq war and were militant over Kashmir. The Conservative party leader agreed that HMG 'must get UK-Pakistan relations right' and stressed the Conservatives' commitment to this goal should they assume power."
Cameron went on to criticise Labour's dealing with groups such as Hizb-ut-Tahrir and the Muslim Council of Britain. "On the radicalisation of British Pakistanis, Cameron said the UK had 'gotten it wrong domestically' … He argued that PM [Gordon] Brown's policy had been too willing to engage with radicalised but non-violent Muslim groups … 'We let in some crazies,' Cameron said, 'and didn't wake up soon enough.'"

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Saudi Arabia wants military rule in Pakistan

America is often portrayed as the big dog in Pakistan's yard: a swaggering power that makes rules, barks orders and throws its weight around. But the WikiLeaks cables highlight the understated yet insistent influence of another country with ideas about Pakistan's future: Saudi Arabia.
In recent years Saudi rulers have played favourites with Pakistani politicians, wielded their massive financial clout to political effect and even advocated a return to military rule.
"We in Saudi Arabia are not observers in Pakistan, we are participants," the Saudi ambassador to the US, Adel al-Jubeir, boasted in 2007. A senior US official later bemoaned as "negative" the Saudi influence.
As home to Islam's holiest sites, Saudi Arabia has longstanding ties with Pakistan. In the 1980s Saudi intelligence, along with the CIA, funded the anti-Soviet "jihad" in Afghanistan; since then the Saudis have given billions in financial aid and cut-price oil.
But the close relationship has grown "increasingly strained" in the past two years, with King Abdullah and the ruling princes displaying a clear preference for the opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, over the president, Asif Ali Zardari, who is viewed with thinly veiled contempt.
In January 2009 Abdullah told James Jones, then the US national security adviser, that Zardari was incapable of countering terrorism, describing him as the "'rotten head' that was infecting the whole body". Abdullah added that Pakistan's army was "staying out of Pakistani politics in deference to US wishes, rather than doing what it 'should'".
Abdullah's preference for military rule was recorded by the Saudis' American guests: "They appear to be looking for 'another Musharraf': a strong, forceful leader they know they can trust." His views were echoed by the interior minister, who said Saudi Arabia viewed the army as its "winning horse" in Pakistan.
The anti-Zardari bias appears to have a sectarian tinge. Pakistan's ambassador to Riyadh, Umar Khan Alisherzai, says the Saudis, who are Sunni, distrust Zardari, a Shia. Last year the United Arab Emirates' foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, told Hillary Clinton that Saudi suspicions of Zardari's Shia background were "creating Saudi concern of a Shia triangle in the region between Iran, the Maliki government in Iraq, and Pakistan under Zardari".
The Saudis betray a strong preference for Sharif, who fled into exile in Jeddah in 2000 to avoid prosecution under General Pervez Musharraf. The cables contain details of Sharif's secret exile deal – he was to remain out of politics for 10 years – as well as hints of Saudi anger when he returned to Pakistan in 2007.
Since then, however, Saudi displeasure has abated, and the Saudis clearly view him as "their man" in the Pakistani power game. In early 2008 the Saudi foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal, described Sharif as a "force for stability" and "a man who can speak across party lines even to religious extremists". American officials noted that Sharif had obtained preferential business deals during his time in Saudi Arabia.
Meanwhile the Saudis have pressured Zardari with oil and money. In late 2008 Pakistani officials complained that "not a drop" of Saudi oil promised at concessionary rates had been delivered, while the annual aid cheque of $300m was well below the regular rate. "Muslim brotherhood is not what it used to be," fretted an economic counsellor at the Pakistani embassy.Pakistani officials echo the American fears about the radicalizing influence of Saudi money, some of it from the government. In April 2008 Pakistani interior advisor Rehman Malik said he was "particularly concerned about the role of the Saudi ambassador in funding religious schools and mosques" in Pakistan.
"Malik said that [President] Musharraf had come close to "throwing him (the Saudi ambassador) out of the country" but Malik said he knew the Saudi royal family well and would work with them."
Zardari has asserted his independence from the Saudis. The king was unhappy that he made his first official visit to China and skipped the opening of a new university in favour of meetings in Europe and the US.
US officials noted that the go-slow was part of a broader Saudi policy of "withholding assistance" – slowing the flow of cash and oil – when it suited policy in Lebanon, Palestine and Pakistan. Such economic tactics may be familiar to US officials, who used them against Pakistan for much of the 1990s.
US diplomats see the Saudis as allies but also competitors for influence in Pakistan. In 2009 special envoy Richard Holbrooke warned Prince Mohammed bin Nayef of "unimaginable" consequences for Saudi Arabia if Pakistan fell apart, especially if its nuclear weapons fell into unfriendly hands.
"God forbid!" responded the prince.
But in Islamabad, American diplomats have sought to diminish Saudi influence by allying with another Muslim country, Turkey. After a meeting with the Turkish ambassador in May 2009, ambassador Anne Patterson noted that moderate, progressive Turkey presented a "positive role model" for Pakistan.
It was well positioned, she said, to "neutralise somewhat the more negative influence on Pakistan politics and society exercised by Saudi Arabia".

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