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Pakistan Arrests C.I.A. Informants in Bin Laden Raid
WASHINGTON D.C. (New York Times) — Pakistan’s top military spy agency has arrested some of its citizens who fed information to the Central Intelligence Agency in the months leading up to the raid that led to the death of Osama bin Laden, according to American officials.
Pakistan’s detention of five C.I.A. informants, including a Pakistani Army major who officials said copied the license plates of cars visiting Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in the weeks before the raid, is the latest evidence of the fractured relationship between the United States and Pakistan.
The fate of the C.I.A. informants arrested in Pakistan is unclear, but American officials said that the C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, raised the issue when he travelled to Islamabad last week to meet with Pakistani military and intelligence officers.
The Bin Laden raid and more recent attacks by militants in Pakistan have been blows to the country’s military, a revered institution in the country. Some officials and outside experts said the military is mired in its worst crisis of confidence in decades.
CIA chief leaves Pakistan dejected, without deal on resetting ties with ISI
(Jafria News) — Panetta, who arrived on an unscheduled visit, did not meet anyone other than army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and ISI head Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha, a media report said here Sunday.
He met the two leaders at Army House in Rawalpindi over dinner and discussed what was described by the Inter-Services Public Relations as a “framework for future intelligence sharing.”
Mr Panetta’s departure without routine calls on President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani was seen by observers here as a sign of stalemate in his discussions with the military leadership.
U.S. media reports said Panetta had confronted Pakistan’s military leadership with evidence of collusion between militants and Pakistani security officials, causing fresh strains in the troubled relations between the two countries.
The CIA had passed intelligence in the past few weeks to its Pakistani counterparts on two facilities where militants made improvised explosive devices but when Pakistani forces raided the facilities, the militants had disappeared. Panetta showed Pasha “satellite and other intelligence that the CIA believes is evidence of Pakistani security’s efforts to help Islamic militants based in Pakistan.”
Pakistan’s Chief of Army Fights to Keep His Job
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (New York Times) — Pakistan’s army chief, the most powerful man in the country, is fighting to save his position in the face of seething anger from top generals and junior officers since the American raid that killed Osama bin Laden, according to Pakistani officials and people who have met the chief in recent weeks.
The Pakistani Army is essentially run by consensus among 11 top commanders, known as the Corps Commanders, and almost all of them, if not all, were demanding that General Kayani get much tougher with the Americans, even edging toward a break, Pakistanis who follow the army closely said.
Tortured ties: Is Pakistan a US ally or not?
(Newsweek) – In a report sent to Congress on Oct. 4, 2010, the Obama administration admitted that “the Pakistan military [has] continued to avoid military engagements that would put it in direct conflict with Afghan Taliban or Al Qaeda forces in North Waziristan.” There is a reason for this–a “political choice,” as the report says. The Pakistani military has long tolerated Afghan insurgents like the Haqqanis, who direct their attacks into Afghanistan only.
Those groups–which include the Quetta Shura, led by the one-eyed Mullah Mohammed Omar–are Islamabad’s insurance policy, agents who are meant to look after Pakistani interests when the United States eventually withdraws the bulk of its forces from the region.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."