India – Discrepancy Over Alert, Warning of Sea Based Attack

Union Home Ministry on Monday refused to confirm any intelligence alert suggesting a possible 26/11 like attack in the country, a Times Now report said.

Earlier, it was reported that the intelligence agencies had issued an alert warning of possible sea-based terrorist strike.

The alert was reportedly issued for Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Kolkata following information that 30 to 40 terrorists of Lashkar-e-Taiba are planning a sea based strike.

It had also stated that local police and Coast Guard have been put on a specific alert in view of the intelligence inputs.

The warning comes only a few weeks prior to the date exactly one year ago that terrorists struck Mumbai India in a similar style attack.

Source

Terror Attack Warnings Issued in Pakistan

Pakistan continues to face terrorist threats and intelligence agencies have issued increased security warnings in face of possible terror strikes across the country.

According to local media reports, the county’s major government building, offices and officials from law enforcement agencies have been placed on militant hit lists.

Awami National Party (ANP) leaders including North Western Frontier Province information minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain and other leaders are among the target list of pro-Taliban militants, a Press TV correspondent reported on Sunday.

Meanwhile, the military said at least five militants were killed and eight others injured during an offensive in the South Waziristan Agency in northwest Pakistan.

Security forces have also claimed to have seized several landmines and rocket launchers in Quetta city in southwest Pakistan late on Saturday.

via Source.

Militants Pose A Serious Threat To Pakistans Future

An analysis in Sunday’s UK telegraph describes Pakistan’s government and army as being in a state of denial about the extent of the Taliban’s threat, despite nearly a dozen suicide attacks in as many days.

Pakistan’s militants are intent on nothing less than toppling the government, assassinating the ruling establishment, imposing an Islamic state and getting hold of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.

The attacks in advance of the army’s ground offensive in South Waziristan were widespread, taking place in three of the country’s four provinces and involving not just Taliban tribesmen from the Pashtun ethnic group, but extremist Punjabi factions who were until recently trained by the Interservices Intelligence (ISI) to fight India in Kashmir.

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al-Qaeda Video Vows To Avenge Baitullah Mehsud’s Death

Pretty much as expected, al-Qaeda has released a new video vowing to avenge the death of  Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, who was killed in an airstrike in northwest Pakistan on August 6th. The eight-minute video features al-Qaeda’s leader in Afghanistan, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, and bears the logo of the terror network’s media arm As-Sahab.

It was posted to jihadist websites on Thursday.

“Brothers, we inform you that we will avenge the death of Mehsud,” Egyptian-born al-Yazid states in the video.

He appears beside a photo of Mehsud. Cicadas can be heard chirruping in the background, suggesting the video was recorded outdoors.

“I say to the Islamic nation that even if we have lost Baitullah Mehsud there are thousands of tribesmen who are like him and who will take revenge on the Americans and their allies,” al-Yazid added.

Source

Warning: Terror Group Planning Attacks On Israelis In India

Israel’s Counter Terrorism Bureau issued a severe travel warning on Thursday over fears that terrorist groups may try to attack Israelis across India. The warning comes just as the Chabad houses across India plan numerous events for the celebration of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year. Last year, a large scale terror attack in Mumbai targeted a Chabad house, among other targets.

According to the Counter Terrorist Bureau, the same organization that orchestrated last year’s Mumbai attacks was planning to carry out several attacks across India, including areas frequented by Western and particularly Israeli tourists.

The travel warning is based on a concrete and very serious threat to Israelis. The Counter Terrorism Bureau has recommended to Israelis currently in India to avoid crowded areas, especially tourist areas, which have no apparent armed security.

In addition, due to reports of potential terror attacks across the entire country, Israeli travelers are advised to take precautions and remain alert.

Source

Implications of Taliban Leader Baitullah Mehsud’s Death

U.S. and Pakistani officials say they are heartened by signs of a rift between Pakistani Taliban factions following the apparent death of militant leader Baitullah Mehsud.
Mehsud was the overall head of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Taliban Movement of Pakistan, a loose alliance of 13 factions. He is believed to have been killed in a U.S. missile strike on August 5.

Following are some possible outcomes of Mehsud’s death and the impact on Pakistan, Afghanistan and Western countries that have troops there.

CHAOS IN TALIBAN RANKS

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi told a joint news conference with U.S. special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke on Sunday that there was confusion, disarray and many reports of infighting within the TTP following the report of Mehsud’s death. Holbrooke told reporters traveling with him to Pakistan that Mehsud was “gone” and it looked as if there was a struggle for succession among his commanders.

A splintering of the Taliban would be a major coup for Pakistan, hindering the militants’ ability to conduct coordinated attacks, as the estimated 20,000 to 30,000 fighters under Mehsud’s command are subsumed by various rival commanders.

Mehsud’s fighters are already facing tremendous pressure after security forces cordoned off their strongholds in South Waziristan as part of a government order to the military in June to pursue Mehsud and his group. They are also facing regular strikes by pilot less U.S. drone aircraft, such as the one that apparently killed Mehsud.

Analysts say Mehsud’s death could demoralize his loyalists and could enable the government to exploit divisions by winning over moderate militants to isolate more hard-core elements.

via SCENARIOS: Implications of Pakistani Taliban leader’s death | Reuters.

India PM Warns of Credible Terror Threat From Pakistan

Alarmed by evidence that Pakistan-based terror groups were plotting fresh attacks, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday sounded an alert about the continuing threat. “There is credible information about ongoing plans of terrorists in Pakistan to carry out fresh attacks. The area of operation of these terrorists today extends far beyond the confines of Jammu and Kashmir and covers all parts of our country,” Singh said while addressing a meeting of chief ministers on internal security in the capital.

The PM did not name any specific group.

Sources, however, said the warning was based on intercepts of chatter among terrorist leaders, including 26/11 accused Lashkar operatives Zaki-ur Rahman Lakhvi, Zarar Shah and Abu al Qama.

The intercepts pointed to a plot for another massive terror attack via sea route, but this time involving local Lashkar modules, not Pakistani jihadis. The conspiracy has not ripened yet because of the disarray among Lashkar’s local collaborators due to the crackdown on Indian Mujahideen.

via PM sounds terror alert: Credible threat from Pak – India – NEWS – The Times of India.

Baitullah Mehsud – Killed In U.S. Missile Strike

UPDATE: As is often the case in stories of this nature coming out of the tribal areas, the storyline has again changed. Several sources are now reporting that Baiullah Mehsud is dead. Pakistan believes Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, who has a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head, was probably killed with his wife and bodyguards in a missile attack, Interior Minister Rehman Malik said on Friday.

An intelligence officer in South Waziristan told Reuters that Mehsud’s funeral had already taken place, while Pakistani media cited their own security sources saying Mehsud was dead.

“He was killed with his wife and he was buried in Nargosey,” the officer said, referring to a tiny settlement about 1 km (half a mile), from the site of the missile attack, believed carried out by a pilotless U.S. drone aircraft.

Malik said: “We suspect he was killed in the missile strike. We have some information, but we don’t have material evidence.”

Source

UPDATE: Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud was not killed in yesterday’s airstrike in South Waziristan, US intelligence officials told The Long War Journal.

“Baitullah is alive,” one official old The Long War Journal. “We’re aware of the reports that he might have been killed and we are looking into it, but we don’t believe he was killed.”

The late night airstrike on a compound operated by Ikramuddin Mehsud, Baitullah’s father-in-law, in the village of Zanghra in the mountains near Baitullah’s home town of Makeen, killed Baitullah’s second wife and two other Taliban fighters. One of Baitullah’s two brothers was also reported to have been killed.

Witnesses on the scene immediately said that Baitullah was not among those killed. He reportedly visited his wife but left an hour prior to the attack.

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Original Post

US and Pakistani officials have said they are checking reports that the leader of the Taliban in Pakistan, Baitullah Mehsud, has been killed.

He is said to have died in a missile attack on the home of a relative.

A US official said there was “reason to believe reports of his death may be true, but it cannot be confirmed”.

Family members have already confirmed that one of Mehsud’s wives was killed when a US drone attacked her father’s home in South Waziristan on Wednesday.

The area is a stronghold of Mehsud, who has been blamed by Pakistan for a series of suicide bomb attacks in the country.

About 2,000 people have died in such attacks across the country since July 2007, when government forces besieged and captured a radical mosque in Islamabad from Mehsud’s loyalists.

Since then the Taliban in Pakistan have claimed responsibility for some of the worst attacks, but have always denied any role in the murder of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in Rawalpindi in December 2007.

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Read previous article – Meet Baitullah Mesud Enemy Number One

Meet Baitullah Mehsud, Enemy Number One

Meet Baitullah Mehsud Pakistan’s biggest problem, and the man who has taken his country of 176 million to the center of the West’s war on terror. Once described by a Pakistani general as a “soldier of peace,” he now carries a 50 million rupee (about $615,300) bounty on his head from Pakistan and a $5 million one from the United States.

Mehsud is earning the ire of the Pakistani military and Western policymakers alike as his movement destabilizes Pakistan, and the United States has destroyed several of his hide-outs with drone strikes in recent months.

His now-famous 2008 press conference — which came almost exactly a decade after Osama bin Laden called for the killing of Americans in a similar announcement just across the border in Khost, Afghanistan — was an extraordinary piece of stagecraft even for a commander with a certain penchant for public flare.

By incautiously exposing his location to a big group of journalists, Mehsud should have facilitated his own capture; that he didn’t serves as ongoing testament to the incompetence (and perhaps lack of will) of those who purport to pursue him.

Mehsud’s growing influence is of particular concern to Western policymakers because Pakistan represents the gravest general security threat to the international community — the prospect of a nuclear-armed al Qaeda. Keeping Pakistan’s nuclear weapons out of the hands of Islamist extremists is contingent on a stable Pakistani state, and Mehsud is the one man perhaps most capable of destabilizing it.

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India Thinks Pakistan Nuclear Sites Already In Radical Hands

India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has told President Obama that nuclear sites in Pakistan’s restive frontier province are

“already partly” in the hands of Islamic extremists, an Israeli journal has said, amid considerable anxiety among US pundits here over Washington’s confidence in the security of the troubled nation’s nuclear arsenal.

Claims about the high-level exchange between New Delhi and Washington were made in the Debka, a journal said to have close ties with Israeli intelligence, under the headline “Singh warns Obama: Pakistan is lost.” The brief story said the Indian prime minister had named Pakistani nuclear sites in the areas which were Taliban-Qaida strongholds and said the sites are already partly in the hands of “Muslim extremists.” A sub-head to the story said “India gets ready for a Taliban-ruled nuclear neighbor.”

There was no official word from either Washington or New Delhi about the exchanges, with India in the throes of an election and US winding down for the weekend. But US experts have been greatly perturbed in recent days about what they say is Washington’s misplaced confidence in, and lackadaisical approach towards, Pakistan’s nuclear assets. The disquiet comes amid reports that Pakistan is ramping up its nuclear arsenal even as the rest of the world is scaling it down.

“It is quite disturbing that the administration is allowing Pakistan to quantitatively and qualitatively step up production of fissile material without as much as a public reproach,” Robert Windrem, a visiting scholar with the Center for Law and Security in New York University and an expert on South Asia nuclear issues told ToI in an interview on Thursday. “Iraq and Iran did not get a similar concessions… and Pakistan has a much worse record of proliferation and security breaches than any other country in the world.”

Windrem, a former producer with NBC whose book “Critical Mass” was among the first to red flag Islamabad’s proliferation record going back to the 1980s, referred to recent reports and satellite images showing Pakistan building two large new plutonium production reactors in Khushab, which experts say could lead to improvements in the quantity and quality of the country’s nuclear arsenal. The reactors had nothing to do with power-production’ they are weapons-specific, and are being built with resources who diversion is enabled by the billions of dollars the US is giving to Pakistan as aid, he said.

Source.

Terror Threat At Indias 3Cs Mall Worries Officials

There is an unusual calm, amid hectic police activity, in the Lajpat Nagar market these days. The popular 3Cs Mall and the entire area around it has been turned into a fortress after the Delhi Police received specific security inputs that the building would be blown up in the next 15 days.

According to sources in the Southeast district police, they got inputs from intelligence agencies about a possible threat to the mall a few days ago. After the message was forwarded to the local police, they cordoned off the entire market.

Intelligence agencies reportedly told the police that the Army had recovered a sketch of the mall from a few terrorists arrested by it recently and that their interrogation revealed a threat to the mall.

The police sources said the present security arrangements were under the direct supervision of an assistant commissioner of police. A senior officer is present at the site round the clock.

via Terror threat: 3Cs Mall sealed.

Mumbai Terror Detective Tells Of World Plot

As terrorist gunmen ran amok in Mumbai on the night of November 26, Rakesh Maria, a detective whose exploits regularly inspire Bollywood’s thriller makers, found himself facing the most valuable captive he is ever likely to interrogate.

The prisoner was Azam Amir Kasab, 21, allegedly the sole Mumbai gunman to be taken alive, who made his first public appearance in a special bomb-proof courtroom inside Mumbai’s high-security Arthur Road jail today.

During the opening moments of what would become a 60-hour ordeal, Mr Kasab and an accomplice allegedly shot dead 58 people at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the city’s main railway station – an assault on working-class commuters that would account for a third of the Mumbai attack’s total death toll. Nine other gunmen were killed.

Mr Kasab, who is accused of being a footsoldier for the Islamist Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist faction, allegedly failed in his bid for martyrdom when the car he and Ismail Khan had stolen ran into a police roadblock. While Khan was shot dead, Mr Kasab was captured.

via The Pakistan link: Mumbai terror detective tells of world plot – Times Online.

GhostNet – Canadians Find Vast Computer Spy Network

Canadian researchers have uncovered a vast electronic spying operation that infiltrated computers and stole documents from government and private offices around the world, including those of the Dalai Lama, The New York Times reported on Saturday.

In a report provided to the newspaper, a team from the Munk Center for International Studies in Toronto said at least 1,295 computers in 103 countries had been breached in less than two years by the spy system, which it dubbed GhostNet.

Embassies, foreign ministries, government offices and the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan exile centers in India, Brussels, London and New York were among those infiltrated, said the researchers, who have detected computer espionage in the past.

They found no evidence U.S. government offices were breached.

The researchers concluded that computers based almost exclusively in China were responsible for the intrusions, although they stopped short of saying the Chinese government was involved in the system, which they described as still active.

“We’re a bit more careful about it, knowing the nuance of what happens in the subterranean realms,” said Ronald Deibert, a member of the Munk research group, based at the University of Toronto.

“This could well be the CIA or the Russians. It’s a murky realm that we’re lifting the lid on.”

A spokesman for the Chinese Consulate in New York dismissed the idea China was involved. “These are old stories and they are nonsense,” the spokesman, Wenqi Gao, told the Times. “The Chinese government is opposed to and strictly forbids any cybercrime.”

Source

Sri Lankan Cricketers: Pakistan Ignored Terror Warning

Eight Pakistanis, mostly policemen, were killed when commando-style gunmen attacked the convoy with rocket-propelled grenades and AK47 machine guns.

The poor security for the visitors and the ease with which the terrorists were able to target the team, has further isolated both Pakistan as a global hub of terrorism and a venue for international cricket.

President Asif Zardari was forced to apologise to his Sri Lankan counterpart yesterday for the lack of protection, while the International Cricket Council officials said it was unlikely that international cricket matches could be played in Pakistan again until the security situation has dramatically improved.

The revelation that security warnings for such a sensitive match will fuel further criticism. Sri Lanka had stepped in to play Pakistan after India withdraw following last november’s attack on Mumbai by Pakistani terrorists. The Sri Lankans came under intense pressure to pull out from India amid concerns about the country’s poor security situation.

A leaked report from Punjab’s Crime Investigation Department CID, passed to Pakistani papers reveals that authorities were warned almost six weeks ago, of a plot and urged the all security agencies in the state and federal governments to take special precautions to protect the visitors.

The report identifies the Indian intelligence service, the Research and Analysis Wing RAW, as the force behind the plot – an accusation regularly traded between India and Pakistan – but specifically identified the drive between their hotel and the stadium as the scene of the attack.

Pakistani newspapers quoted the report, dated January 22nd 2009, warning:”It has reliably been learnt that RAW Indian intelligence agency has assigned its agents the task to target Sri Lankan cricket team during its current visit to Lahore, especially while travelling between the hotel and stadium or at hotel during their stay.

via Sri Lankan cricketers: Pakistan ‘ignored’ warnings about attack on team bus – Telegraph.

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