Public Intelligence

Despite the continuous counter-narcotics efforts of the international community and the Afghan government throughout the past decade, Agence France-Presse wrote in April 2012 that Afghanistan continues to be a major contributor to the global drug supply. Approximately 90% of the world’s opium, most of which is processed into heroin, originates in Afghan fields. While potential opium production in Afghanistan peaked in 2007, poppy cultivation has recently risen. For instance, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) marked a 61% increase in the potential opium production between 2010 and 2011. A separate UNODC report from 2010 states that drugs and bribes are equivalent to approximately a quarter of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product (GDP).

A Defense Intelligence Agency presentation concerning geopolitics in the region surrounding Afghanistan and Pakistan from February 2012.

Despite past denials by Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) leaders that the group intends to target Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, TTP Mohmand Agency leader Omar Khalid said in a 21 March video that the TTP aims to use Pakistan’s nuclear technology, among other assets, to ensure Islam’s survival. This is the first time that OSC has observed a TTP leader publicly list Pakistan’s nuclear weapons among its goals. Other elements of Khalid’s statement suggest that he may be seeking to boost his own stature within the group.

The National ICT R&D Fund invites proposals from academia/research institutions, companies, organizations for the development, deployment and operation of a national level URL Filtering and Blocking System. Institutions/organizations/companies desirous of developing, deploying and managing the proposed system are requested to submit their proposals to the ICT R&D Fund Islamabad by 1500 hrs on 2nd March, 2012 as per the prescribed format.

Two reports from the U.S. TRADOC Intelligence Support Activity (TRISA) regarding suicide attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan going back as far as 2007.

The following interactive map was compiled from information reported by the Bureau for Investigative Journalism. It displays the names and locations of airfields/bases inside of Pakistan that have been or are currently being used by U.S. forces.  Some of the bases are used for logistical support, while others such as Shamsi airfield, were previously used [...]

Restricted U.S. Army training presentation on “Taliban Insurgent Syndicate Intelligence Operations” from October 2009.

Federal Minister for Interior A Rehman Malik on Sunday said that CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) of the United States not Pakistan created the Haqqani network and trained its members.Talking to media-persons at a ceremony held to laud the Islamabad police over the recovery of a huge cache of weapons, the Interior Minister said that the Haqqani network was present in Afghanistan and those claimimg otherwise should give the evidence of its presence in Pakistan.“We will fight the terrorists as our forces are capable of handling them and countering any challenge,” the minister said and added that it was evident from combating militants in Swat and other troubled areas that the law enforcement agencies were making sincere efforts to root out the menace of terrorism.

As the Pakistani public grows increasingly outraged at the United States’ drone attacks in the northwest region of the country, a recent study by the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism is contradicting U.S. officials’ insistence that “not a single civilian life” has been claimed in the covert war. Led by British investigative journalist Chris Woods and Pakistani journalist Rahimullah Yusufzai, the study found that at least 45 civilians, including six children, have been killed in 10 drone strikes since August 2010 alone, while another 15 attacks between then and June 2011 likely killed many more. According to the study, civilians die in one out of every five Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-operated drone attacks in the tribal region, located on the border with Afghanistan, a statistic that the Bureau says can no longer be denied by the U.S. government.

The Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General issued a report in May 2011 titled “Supervision of Aliens Commensurate with Risk” that details Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) detention and supervision of aliens. The report includes a list of Specially Designated Countries (SDCs) that are said to “promote, produce, or protect terrorist organizations or their members”. The report states that ICE uses a Third Agency Check (TAC) to screen aliens from specially designated countries (SDCs) that have shown a tendency to promote, produce, or protect terrorist organizations or their members and that the purpose of the additional screening is to determine whether other agencies have an interest in the alien. ICE’s policy requires officers to conduct TAC screenings only for aliens from SDCs if the aliens are in ICE custody.

Congress has long been concerned about whether U.S. policy advances the national interest in reducing the role of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and missiles that could deliver them. Recipients of China’s technology reportedly include Pakistan and countries said by the State Department to have supported terrorism, such as Iran. This CRS Report, updated as warranted, discusses the security problem of China’s role in weapons proliferation and issues related to the U.S. policy response since the mid-1990s. China has taken some steps to mollify U.S. and other foreign concerns about its role in weapons proliferation. Nonetheless, supplies from China have aggravated trends that result in ambiguous technical aid, more indigenous capabilities, longer-range missiles, and secondary (retransferred) proliferation. According to unclassified intelligence reports submitted as required to Congress, China has been a “key supplier” of technology, particularly PRC entities providing nuclear and missile-related technology to Pakistan and missile-related technology to Iran.

Mysterious guesthouses have been established in Abottabad’s famous residential area. It has been revealed that Blackwater officials are living there. Important persons regularly visit these guesthouses, and there are fears that the peace and stability in Abottabad may be affected. According to the details received, there are many guesthouses in Abottabad where immoral activities take place at night and meetings in the name of NGOs are arranged during the day. As soon as the night falls, suspicious persons start coming to these guesthouses.

Secret Government of India – Indian National Investigation Agency report on the interrogation of David Headley.

ISI chief Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha is reported to have asked the US to stop its drone strikes in Pakistan in a meeting between CIA deputy director Michael Morrell and senior ISI officials held in Islamabad on Saturday. Pasha, who faced tremendous criticism after the May 2 Abbottabad raid that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, is reported to have taken a firm stance with the US on the drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas. “We will be forced to respond if you do not come up with a strategy that stops the drone strikes,” Pasha is reported to have told Morrell.

Direct Overt U.S. Aid and Military Reimbursements to Pakistan, FY2002-FY2012, prepared for the Congressional Research Service by K. Alan Kronstadt, Specialist in South Asian Affairs.

Documentation released by the Government of India’s Press Information Bureau with this description: “A report which appeared in the media today states that the Chicago trial of the 2008 Mumbai attacks will be held from the 16th of this month. The report also states that the federal prosecutors indicted some more suspects last week in this case. Information available with the Government of India on the five persons named as accused in the second charge-sheet filed by the United States Government in the case is given in the annexure.”

The relationships involving BCCI, the CIA, and members of the United States and foreign intelligence communities have been among the most perplexing aspects of understanding the rise and fall of BCCI. The CIA’s and BCCI’s mutual environments of secrecy have been one obvious obstacle. For many months, the CIA resisted providing information to the Subcommittee about its involvement with and knowledge of BCCI. Moreover, key players who might explain these relationships are unavailable. Some, including former CIA director William Casey, and BCCI customers and Iranian arms dealers Ben Banerjee and Cyrus Hashemi, are dead. Others, including most of BCCI’s key insiders, remain held incommunicado in Abu Dhabi.

Pakistani security officials reacted with skepticism on Sunday to a U.S. assertion that Osama bin Laden was actively engaged in directing his far-flung network from his compound in Abbottabad where he was killed on May 2. Washington said on Saturday that, based on a trove of documents and computer equipment seized in the raid, bin Laden’s hideout north of Islamabad was an “active command and control center” for al Qaeda where he was involved in plotting future attacks on the United States. “It sounds ridiculous,” said a senior intelligence official. “It doesn’t sound like he was running a terror network.”

Amid bitter, recriminatory exchanges between the United States and Pakistan over the Osama bin Laden extermination, planned bilateral visits of President Asif Ali Zardari to Washington DC and a return trip of President Barack Obama to Islamabad are both in jeopardy. Ties between the two sides are expected to slide further following Pakistan’s “outing” of the CIA station chief in Islamabad on Saturday. In a sign of how bad ties are between the two countries, Pakistani media on Saturday once again publicly named the CIA station chief in Islamabad, a breach of both protocol and trust, that is bound to enrage Washington. A Pakistani TV channel and a newspaper considered mouthpieces of the country’s military said the ISI chief Ahmed Shuja Pasha had met CIA station chief Mark Carlton to protest US incursion into Abbottabad to kill al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden. CIA station chiefs remain anonymous and unnamed in public although the host government is told.

Umar Patek, the last of the plotters at large, was seized in a raid on the home of a family which had found him and his wife starving and begging for food in the street. Indonesian officials said they believed he had traveled to Pakistan to meet bin Laden and was the last of the Bali bombers to remain in contact with al Qaeda’s leadership. “Umar Patek … was in Pakistan with his Filipino wife trying to meet Osama bin Laden,” said defence minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro. Another official said he and his wife had travelled to Pakistan under false names to seek bin Laden’s “support and protection.” According to Abdul Hamid Sohail, who had taken him and his wife in “on humanitarian grounds”, he had not made contact with his leader or anyone while he stayed in his guest room, and could barely walk. He said he looked like he was dead when he was carried out over the shoulder of a Pakistani commando on January 25th.

Photographs acquired by Reuters and taken about an hour after the U.S. assault on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad in Pakistan show three dead men lying in pools of blood, but no weapons. The photos, taken by a Pakistani security official who entered the compound after the early morning raid on Monday, show two men dressed in traditional Pakistani garb and one in a t-shirt, with blood streaming from their ears, noses and mouths. The official, who wished to remain anonymous, sold the pictures to Reuters.

Residents of affluent Islamabad suburb where arch-terrorist made his home finding it hard to believe that man who terrorized world for over a decade was living just down the street. “We heard two small blasts then one large blast. Then we heard helicopters for around 20 minutes and the operation was over” – that is what Osama bin Laden’s neighbors told Ynet’s special reporter and the first Israeli reporter to arrive near the house in Pakistan, where the leader of al-Qaeda has been living until, US navy SEALs assassinated him in a daring commando op. For years the Americans thought bin Laden, who was responsible for the 2001 September 11 attacks was hiding in the tribal region belt between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Photos of the reported location of Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Osama bin Laden, the long-time figurehead of the al Qaeda terrorist network, has been buried at sea after being killed in a U.S. raid in Pakistan. U.S. officials told CBS News that bin Laden’s body would be handled in accordance with Muslim traditions, which include strict rules on burial taking place within 24 hours after death. Bin Laden was a Saudi national, but officials tell CBS News that the Kingdom was unwilling to have his remains repatriated.

As many as 957 persons became victim of the US drone attacks while 12,580 were murdered, 581 were kidnapped for ransom and 16,977 cases of abduction were reported in Pakistan during the year 2010, says a report on ‘State of Human Rights in 2010’. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) launched the report on Thursday during a ceremony held in a local hotel. Dr Mehdi Hasan, Chairman HRCP, and I.A. Rehman, Secretary General of the Commission, were also present on the occasion besides many others. The report depicting the country’s bad law and order situation says that 957 people became victims of US drones strikes during 2010 and what the report called extra-legal killings.