Coincidences With Drones Over Khyber

December 18, 2010

Last month a law suit was filed in New York against several U.S. and Pakistani officials for killing two persons through a drone strike in Waziristan. The CIA station chief in Pakistan was named in that law suit as one "Jonathan Banks". The picture in the link is the actor Jonathan Banks, not the CIA station chief. Jonathan Banks is likely not his real name anyway. Allegedly a Pakistani website asked people to track down a real picture of the CIA station chief.

On Thursday Michael J. Morell, the C.I.A.’s deputy director, met with Pakistani officials in Islamabad. The same day the CIA station chief Mr. Banks left the country. The CIA claims that this was unrelated and that Banks left because of public threats against him. That claim seems dubious.

The CIA then claimed through several U.S. media that the Pakistani military secret service ISI was responsible for the threats. The ISI denies that.

Six days earlier, on Friday the 11th, the U.S. Consulate General in Peshawar Elizabeth Rood’s suddenly left her position and returned to Washington:

There were rumours circulating in the town on Friday that she had been frequently receiving life threats from militants, which prompted her to rush back to the States.

However, the US Embassy spokesperson contradicted the reports and pronounced “personal matters” to be the actual reason behind her departure.

Note that I find no U.S. media entity even mentionig that.

Six days after Mrs. Root and one day after Mr. Banks were gone: Scores die as drones renew attack on Pakistan's Khyber:

Nearly 60 people have been killed in a series of attacks by US drones in the past 24 hours in Pakistan's Khyber tribal district, officials say.

At least 50 died in three unmanned air strikes in the Tirah Valley, a day after seven others were killed nearby.
…
The BBC's Syed Shoaib Hasan in Karachi says Khyber is an unusual target for drone attacks, as it is not usually seen as a major militant sanctuary.

Those killed are said by an "Pakistani official" to be part of a Taliban group, Lashkar-e-Islam, that is active in Pakistan, not in Afghanistan.

I do not believe that the sudden leaving of a Consulate General in Peshawar, which is only a few miles east to Khyber agency, the visit of the CIA second in command in Islamabad, the sudden leaving of the CIA station chief in Pakistan, a smear campaign against the ISI and several heavy drone strikes in an area that is usually off limits for CIA drone strikes – all within very few days – are unrelated. The claim that the target was an anti-Pakistan-state group makes this even more curious.

This stinks. Though I have no idea yet why and how these items really connect.

Mrs. Rood's bio says:

Previously, Mrs. Rood was the Department of State representative on the U.S. Provincial Reconstruction Team in Paktika Province in southeastern Afghanistan from 2008 to 2009.

Mrs. Rood speaks several languages including Pashto.

Paktika has seen quite some fighting allegedly against the Haqqani network. The BBC remarked:

The Paktika region has been the target of many US drone attacks on insurgents.

Several drones crashed in Paktika, likely shot down.

Mrs. Rood thereby seems to have some affinity with areas that are hit hard by drones. She also one of only few Pashto speakers in U.S. government service. This suggests that she is not only working for Foggy Bottom but also for Langley.

But again, so far I have no real connection for these bits.

Some conflict between ISI and the CIA about widening drone strike areas? Some ISI faction that revolted against this? An ISI requested drone hit, denied by the Peshawar consulate and the CIA station chief, then agreed to by the CIA's number two?

Please let me know your theories about this issue.

Posted by b on December 18, 2010 at 14:28 UTC | Permalink

Comments

How to Survive a Nuclear Attack

Touching on a subject most people prefer to avoid, the Obama administration is planning to educate the public about dealing with the effects of a nuclear bomb.
“We have to get past the mental block that says it’s too terrible to think about,” W. Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told the New York Times. “We have to be ready to deal with it.”
Martin Hellman, professor emeritus of electrical engineering at Stanford and co-inventor of public key cryptography, who has been focusing on nuclear deterrence for the past 25 years, said that a baby born today, with an expected lifetime of 80 years, faces a greater than 50-50 chance that a nuclear weapon attack will occur unless the number of weapons and available weapons-grade material is radically reduced.
A nuclear attack would most likely come from a terrorist group. “Al Qaeda is especially notable for its longstanding interest in weapons of useable nuclear material and the requisite expertise that would allow it to develop a yield-producing improvised nuclear device,” John Brennan, White House chief counterterrorism adviser, said in April.

Are these fucks telling us whats coming?

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 18 2010 17:21 utc | 1

well I still remember the nuclear fallout shelter that was also our grade school cafeteria. we practiced hiding under our desks for drills back in the 60s. we NoDaks knew that if the balloon went up we would rapidly become pink mist since so many ICBMs were stationed there.
why not? if we are not sufficiently afraid of bearded men who wear turbans we can sure enough get our fear on with a good ole thermonuclear device. it wears off after a while so we will just have to find something else to be afraid of later.

Posted by: dan of steele | Dec 18 2010 17:54 utc | 2

I practiced those drills in the 60s too, and once you’re grown up, you realize what a valuable protection sitting under a little wooden desk would have been to the children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
What little is left of democratic republics will be entirely gone before I die. This just sounds like more excuses for repression.
And I have no theories about your questions, b. I just learned these things reading your post. I’m an American; our news is only about tax cuts for rich people. There’s barely a mention of Pakistan. They never even mention that polls show a significant majority of Americans want the US to leave Afghanistan. You have to go to the correct blogs to even find out that.

Posted by: Sagacity | Dec 18 2010 19:45 utc | 3

Michael Moore says State department lied about Sicko being banned in Cuba. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-moore/viva-wikileaks-sicko-was_b_798586.html
Well what do you know. Not every leak is the cold hard truth!

Posted by: Anthony | Dec 18 2010 22:31 utc | 4

o yowza it’s hard to make hide nor hair of what’s going’ down over there. i’m a tad partial to The Grocer and Alice’s Cat

The ISI had succeeded beyond its wildest dreams. It had managed to have its Quetta grocer conduct talks for months with the Afghans and the Americans as a senior Taliban emissary. It had learnt a great deal of their negotiating positions. This was sweet revenge for the Afghans and the West trying to cut them out of the peace moves. They had now effectively proved that such talks could not be held without using them as the intermediary. Having achieved what they wanted they pulled the plug on the caper; the doughty ‘Mullah Mansur’ and the humble Quetta grocer both suddenly disappeared. Word was quietly leaked as to what had really happened.
payback maybe?

Posted by: annie | Dec 18 2010 23:25 utc | 5

UPI

Officially, U.S. ground forces cannot operate inside Pakistan, but U.S. officials said the Pakistani military has failed to clear militants from the school.
Pakistan insists it has raided the madrassa several times and found no evidence of militant activity, but American officials say they’re not convinced Pakistan is doing all it can about militants living there.
U.S. intelligence has called Pakistan’s reluctance to uproot militant groups a major obstacle to progress in the war.
The network was founded by Jalaludin Haqqani, a mujahedin leader supported by the CIA against the Soviets in the 1980s. It is suspected of harboring al-Qaida in the border region, and U.S. officials say they believe it is being protected by Pakistani intelligence.

Posted by: annie | Dec 19 2010 1:34 utc | 6

b, you never cease to amaze me with your skill of finding and putting pieces of a puzzle together. (You could make good money writing scripts for mystery drama!) We are lucky to have your skills applied to non-fiction, current geopolitical drama.
As Sagacity said, most Americans, myself included, know so little of what’s really happening here, there or anywhere that posing answers would be pure guessing. Judging from the few comments on this thread so far, I guess many of us who post here are in the situation I describe. Debs is well read/experienced and I appreciate his input – maybe he has some ideas here.
You also noted the error of the wrong Jonathan Banks picture, but why not leave a comment on that site, pakistancyberforce? Is this mentioned or did you know of this Banks actor – what did I miss? Maybe a link to this thread would be informative. No comments were posted on that blog. Anyways, glad to see any media, no matter how small, bringing light to these U.S. drone attacks/killings as the lawsuit and blog does.
It is easy for me to believe that Pakistan ISI had a hand in this, including credible threats. The optimist in me hopes that Elizabeth Roods leaving, at least in part, was not because of threats but of disgust. The Nation article states she left but did not resign. But of course, that is what one would expect to hear no matter what. Maybe even Banks had ethical anxiety. I know little of the history of fighting in these border areas between Pakistan groups and/or with Afghanistan groups (Taliban?). Is this mostly or all caused by America’s muddling? I only have questions, but your articles definitely illustrate conflict between the CIA and ISI. I believe the conflict always existed but maybe now has increased to being unmanageable.

Posted by: Rick Happ | Dec 19 2010 5:23 utc | 7

You also noted the error of the wrong Jonathan Banks picture,
I did a Google image search for “Jonathan Banks” and all the pictures that come up, including the one linked on that Pakistani blog are the same person, i.e. the actor.
There are three major Taliban groups fighting in Afghanistan (Quetta sura, Haqqani, Heqmatyar)and there are several “Taliban” groups like Lashkar-e-Islam fighting in Pakistan. These groups have all contact with each other but have different enemies and fight for different purposes in different areas.

Posted by: b | Dec 19 2010 5:49 utc | 8

Interesting in this case is also the censorship in the U.S. media about the name of the CIA station chief. A Pakistan journalist points this out: CIA names: US media’s self-censorship

Posted by: b | Dec 19 2010 12:28 utc | 9

Drones from the skies to blow up random ppl called terrorists, insurgents… The US has gone postal, not that it wasn’t mad before. I’m surprised it took this long for someone to lodge an official accusation.
The shielding, the blindness, that assumed or imaged great power brings is obvious. Or the boondoggle of systems gone out of whack with bureaucracy, rules, laws, internal pecking orders, somewhat sadistic hierarchical relations, and the coercion, rewards and punishments, that go with it.
The US has been a cultural power house from after WW2 – from comic strips to artists to writers to Hollywood movies to internet games, music, magazines, fashion, sex-lib, porno, tv, tv again, and life-style: hyper-consumption, the glory of BBQs, cars, drive-ins, beauty contests, Mc Castles and on and on. Multiple motives: for profit, for expanding the economy, for political control, part a power dominating play, for glam image, for treating everyone else as backward rubes (our free speech, democracy, women’s lib, prime sirloin, see? get it?), for touting the American dream and keeping lower-down ppl ashamed, despairing and silent.
Now, the illusion of the fictional gloss, so admired, so useful, is imploding. Reality is colliding with the constructed representation, or rather the confusion has simply become too great. For ex. Soaps featuring fictional characters and tv reports of false flag attacks with purported real characters are the same genre. Who can keep track of it all?
I read that the drone pilots are based in Las Vegas – no idea if it’s true but it seems so fitting – they are playing computer games. Yet, killing thousands of people. Real humans…
So when the distorting mirror starts to crack all kinds of shit hits the fan, and real fast.
That Rood creature may have seen trouble coming up.
add.: it’s not a theory, only general musings – this must have been what i read re drones, LA times.
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/21/world/la-fg-drone-crews21-2010feb21

Posted by: Noirette | Dec 19 2010 15:13 utc | 10

Yes, Noirette, very significant, these drones as they relate to our culture(s). Killing of innocents by these drones is the ultimate disgrace in this crazy “war on terror”. As noted in another thread, the majority of Americans are now against this war. You used words and phrases such as: ‘imploding’, ‘out of whack’, ‘fictional gloss’ regarding culture, perception, reality and that is a good way to describe what is happening – but what the future holds is unknown.
What type of culture(s) will emerge? Perhaps people will return to more rooted cultural norms and the “U.S.[/Corp.] powerhouse” in cultural influence will no longer be. On the other hand, the Internet will most likely play a large role in unifying culture and I am as skeptical as Uncle $cam as to what “the elites” may do.
This all reminds me of Adrian Salbuchi’s (Argentina) YouTube videos. Positive change, as debs has pointed out in another MoA thread and Salbuchi in his videos, may not happen in our generation, but we must be thinking and working for success beyond our lifetimes.

Posted by: Rick Happ | Dec 20 2010 3:59 utc | 11

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