US quiet on Pakistan peace deal with Taliban

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Posted by Snehsan

WASHINGTON (AP) — While human rights groups and European officials criticize Pakistan's truce with Taliban fighters, the United States has had little to say. The muted response Tuesday was a sign — the second in two weeks — of an Obama administration wary about weakening an already fragile government in Islamabad. The U.S. needs that government in the fight against Islamic militants, including the Taliban, that are using Pakistan to stage attacks on U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.
Pakistan has sent a hard-line cleric to the violent Swat Valley to negotiate with the Taliban. The cleric is pressing militants to give up their arms to honor a pact that imposes Islamic law and suspends a military offensive in Swat and nearby areas. Swat is not far from the semiautonomous tribal regions where al-Qaida and Taliban long have had strongholds.
British and NATO officials have expressed misgivings about a move they said could give extremists a haven in Pakistan.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, however, was cautious when speaking to reporters in Japan. She said Pakistan's efforts still needed to be "thoroughly understood" before she could comment. "Obviously, we believe that the activity by the extremists in Pakistan poses a direct threat to the government of Pakistan as well as to the security of the United States, Afghanistan and a number of other nations," Clinton said.
The United States relies on nuclear-armed Pakistan to fight resurgent extremists operating along the Afghan-Pakistan border, and is eager to strengthen a Washington-backed government facing high inflation, a sinking currency, widespread poverty and a violent insurgency by Islamic militants.
Earlier this month, Clinton also was reticent when asked about Pakistan's release from house arrest of Abdul Qadeer Khan, a scientist whose smuggling operation shipped nuclear technology to North Korea, Iran and Libya.
The Obama administration is conducting South Asia policy reviews and has appointed Richard Holbrooke, who settled ethnic wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, as a special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Christine Fair, a South Asia specialist with the RAND Corporation, said, "The real reason for being silent is there's really no good answer" yet in Washington for what is happening in Pakistan.
"Everyone is skeptical that this is going to work," Fair said.
At the State Department, spokesman Gordon Duguid, pressed by reporters for the administration's view of the truce, would say only that U.S. diplomats in Islamabad are "fully engaged" with the Pakistani government "to find out exactly what their strategy is."
"We'll wait and see what their fuller explanation is for us," he said.
Others have been more critical.
Ali Dayan Hasan, senior South Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch, said peace deals between Pakistan and the Taliban "tend to fail and, in the interim, they tend to strengthen highly regressive, human rights-abusing forces."
The Pakistani Embassy in Washington said troops would remain "until the militant threat was completely over" and the deal is "conditioned on peace and laying down of arms by militants."

Laden Located?

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Posted by Snehsan

OSAMA BIN LADEN MAY WELL BE IN PARACHINAR: REPORT

Fugitive terrorist Osama bin Laden is most likely hiding out in a walled compound in a Pakistani border town, according to a satellite-aided geographic analysis released today. A research team led by geographer Thomas Gillespie of the University of California-Los Angeles used geographic analytical tools that have been successful in locating urban criminals and endangered species. Basing their conclusion on nighttime satellite images and other techniques, the scientists suggest bin Laden may well be in one of three compounds in Parachinar, a town 12 miles from the Pakistan border, USA Today reported. The research incorporates public reports of bin Laden's habits and whereabouts since his flight from the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan in 2001.

The results, reported in the MIT International Review, are being greeted with polite but skeptical interest among people involved in the hunt for bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader behind 9/11. Bin Laden's whereabouts are considered "one of the most important political questions of our time," the study notes.
"I've never really believed the sitting-in-a-cave theory. That's the last place you would want to be bottled up," Gillespie says. The study's real value, he says, is in combining satellite records of geographic locations, patterns of nighttime electricity use and population-detection methods to produce a technique for locating fugitives.

Essentially, the study generates hiding-place location probabilities. It starts with "distance decay theory," which holds that the odds are greater that the person will be found close to where he or she was last seen.
Then the researchers add the "island biographic theory," which maintains that locales with more resources — palm trees for tropical birds and electricity for wealthy fugitives — are likelier to draw creatures of interest.

"Island biographic theory suggests bin Laden would end up in the biggest and least isolated city of the region," Gillespie says, one among about 26 towns within a 20-mile distance of Tora Bora.
"To really improve the model, you would need to include intelligence data from 2001 to 2006," Gillespie says. "It has been eight years. Honestly, I think it is time to be more open. This is a very important issue for the public."

The study also makes assumptions that bin Laden might need:
• Medical treatment, requiring electricity in an urban setting.
• Security combining few bodyguards and isolation that requires a walled compound.
• Tree cover to shield outdoor activities from aircraft.
"Of course, it all depends on the accuracy of the information on most recent whereabouts," Gillespie says. "I assume that the military has more recent information that would change the hiding place probabilities."

Says geographic-profiling expert Kim Rossmo of Texas State University in San Marcos, who has worked with the military on adapting police procedures for finding criminals to counterterrorism: "It's important to think outside the box, and this is an innovative idea worth more pursuit. However, the authors are much too certain of their conclusions.
"The idea of identifying three buildings in a city of half a million — especially one in a country the authors have likely never visited — is somewhat overconfident."

The researchers contacted the FBI with their findings, and USA TODAY asked Defense Department officials for reaction, before publication of the study.
"The combination of physical terrain, socio-cultural gravitational factors and the physical characteristic of structures are all important factors in developing an area limitation for terror suspects," say John Goolgasian of the federal National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in Bethesda, Md. His spy satellite agency "looks forward to reviewing the article once it is published."

Gillespie is an expert on finding endangered species on remote islands, typically birds. A co-author, UCLA's John Agnew, is an expert on satellite-based population estimates. The study grew out of an undergraduate seminar on applying geographic profiling to real-world problems.
"We are all wondering where bin Laden is hiding," Gillespie says. "We just wanted to offer the techniques we have to help."