Significant news out of Pakistan

This is one significant piece of news I managed to miss. It has also eluded the mainstream media. The situation for the US and NATO is deteriorating rapidly.


All this (with the situation in Syria and Iran) points to war.

Militants agree to truce with Pakistan, unite against NATO

Pakistani Islamist militants on Sunday pledged to cease their four-year insurgency against Pakistani security forces, and join the Taliban's war against NATO troops in Afghanistan.

McClatchy,

2 January, 2011

The agreement reunited four major Pakistan-based militant factions under the flag of Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban chief, an announcement by the militants said.

Security experts in Islamabad said the agreement to end the insurgency with Pakistan was a dual-purpose tactical move by the Taliban.

It has lost hundreds of fighters during a two-year surge of U.S. forces in its southern Afghanistan strongholds.

The Pakistani militants, too, have been pummelled by security forces since 2009, and by late 2011 had splintered into dozens of factions without a unified command. The agreement coincided with discrete negotiations between the Pakistani militants and the government in Islamabad, held since October.

The pact would enable Mullah Omar to reinforce the Taliban ranks, while the pledged cessation of attacks against the Pakistani security forces would allow the militants greater freedom to launch cross-border attacks into Afghanistan.

"It will take a lot of pressure off the militants, and deepen the tensions between the U.S. and Pakistan," said Mansur Mahsud, director of research at the Fata Research Center, an independent think tank. "There will be angry complaints by the Americans, and counter-accusations by Pakistan that NATO isn't stopping raids by Pakistani insurgents from Afghan territory."

Taliban sources said three heavyweight militants mediated the intra-militant pact, reached after a month-and-a-half of reportedly tense negotiations: Abu Yahya al Libbi of al Qaida, and Maulana Mansoor and Siraj-ud-Din Haqqani of the Taliban.

The agreement bound together the factions, which previously had occasionally fought each other over territory, into a consultative council based in the twin Pakistani tribal regions of North and South Waziristan.

The regions, notorious as Taliban safe havens, are under constant surveillance by U.S. intelligence and, since 2004, have been the focal point of CIA drone-launched attacks.

The drone warfare has increased tensions, largely over contentions that innocent civilians have died on those attacks.

Meanwhile, relations between Pakistan and the U.S. hit rock bottom following the killings of 25 Pakistani troops by American forces in November in a friendly fire incident on the border with Afghanistan.

Pakistan was infuriated further when a Pentagon investigation, which it had declined to join, found that Pakistani troops had fired first in the incident, which was blamed on poor coordination.

For some time now, Pakistan has resisted American pressure to launch military operations against Afghan militants and their allies in North Waziristan, saying the 147,000 troops it has deployed to the tribal areas are overstretched.

However, U.S. officials have repeatedly asserted the reluctance reflects a covert alliance between Pakistan's security forces and the Taliban — in particular, the Haqqani Network, which draws fighters from the Waziristans.

The network brokered a peace agreement between its allies and the Pakistani security forces in 2006, ending two years of fighting.

The Waziristan council's first order of business was to reassert the Taliban's writ over Pakistani splinter groups, according to a pamphlet distributed in North Waziristan over the weekend.

Militants were warned to stop kidnapping Pakistanis for ransom, and to cease summary executions of tribesmen suspected of collaborating with the security forces.

"If any holy warrior is found involved in an unjustified murder or crime, he will be answerable to the council and could face Islamic punishment," the pamphlet declared.

This comes amid deliberations between American and Pakistani officials on the proposed opening of a Taliban office in Qatar, to facilitate peace talks.

Ahmed Pasha, chief of the Pakistani military's premier spy agency, the Inter Services Intelligence directorate, visited Doha last week for talks about the provision of an "address" to the Taliban.

Yousaf Gilani, the Pakistani prime minister, is to follow.

NATO supplies pile up at Pakistan port

Tonnes of supplies bound for NATO forces in Afghanistan are piling up at the Pakistani port of Karachi following the blockade imposed after a deadly air strike in November, officials said Monday.

AFP,

3 January, 2011

Thousands of trucks and military vehicles are stuck at the port, as relations between Washington and Islamabad flounder following the border incident that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.

"At present, a total of 3,676 military vehicles and 1,732 containers belonging to NATO forces are at the port," a port official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The deadly incident heightened tensions in an already fragile relationship, with Islamabad cutting off key NATO supply routes to Afghanistan and Pakistani officials alleging deliberate US targeting of their troops at border posts.

A NATO investigation into the November 26 strike on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border concluded that both the international alliance and Pakistani forces made mistakes in the incident -- findings rejected by Pakistan.

The latest arrival of supplies was recorded on Saturday when the US vessel Freedom berthed in Karachi carrying 268 vehicles and 132 containers.

Despite Possible 'Reset,' Pakistan Keeps Afghan Border Closed To NATO

Pakistan has blocked NATO supply trucks from entering Afghanistan since November 26, when NATO attacks killed two dozen Pakistani border guards. 

Radio Liberty,

7 January, 2011

So far, the only public signs in Pakistan are that the border will continue to remain closed indefinitely.

On January 6, the chairman of Pakistan's Parliamentary Committee on National Security, Mian Raza Rabbani, said the embargo would remain so long as relations with NATO remain fraught.

That came as Rabbani announced his committee has finalized its recommendations for new terms of engagement between Pakistan and U.S.-led NATO forces and will hand its recommendations to Pakistan's prime minister early next week.

He gave no hint of what the recommendations contain.

Once the new rules of engagement are approved by parliament, they will be the trigger for discussions with Washington over the two countries' partnership. If the two sides agree, NATO supplies could again cross the Pakistani border into Afghanistan.

"We are discussing all this. Whatever our foreign policy lines are for the U.S. and NATO, the committee is working on this,"

said parliamentarian Khurshid Ahmad, a member of the National Security Committee. "This will be a complete package. If the U.S. agrees to work on our terms, well and good. But still we have not finalized this."

But if Islamabad wants to reset relations with Washington on its own terms, there are also signs it may now be feeling the pressure of Washington's July decision to withhold $800 million in aid.

Rabbani's committee is reported to have received briefings by top government financial officials on the impact of the U.S. aid cut as it finalized its recommendations.

That suggests that Islamabad could put more room for negotiations into its final "reset" with Washington and NATO than Rabbani's public statements imply.

Deteriorating Trust

Islamabad's ban on NATO supplies is the longest blockade by far since the start of the Afghan war in 2001.

Pakistan has partially closed the supply routes before, notably for 11 days after crossborder NATO air strikes in September 2010 killed three Pakistani soldiers.

But the November 26 attack, in which NATO helicopters mistakenly struck two border posts, killing 24 soldiers, particularly enraged Pakistan as a symbol of deteriorating trust between the allies.

Today, the Afghanistan-Pakistan border remains as firmly closed to NATO as it was immediately after the November 26 attack.

Muhammad Asghar, the deputy commissioner of Qala Abdullah District in Balochistan, confirmed this week that trucks carrying NATO containers continue to be sent back from the Chaman border crossing to Karachi.

"This [turning back] is a step taken in accordance with the policy of the government of Pakistan," Asghar said. "We have nothing to do with what kind of equipment is [in the containers]. That is a custom's matter."

NATO's second route through the Khyber Pass in northern Pakistan is equally blocked, with border guards subjecting even non-NATO contracted trucks to strict checks to verify they are not carrying any alliance supplies.

NATO has said publicly that it has sufficient alternate routes to supply its forces and that it expects the blockade to be lifted.

The two supply routes through Pakistan account for about one-third of all cargo that NATO brings into Afghanistan.

Another one-third of NATO's supplies are flown directly into Afghanistan, while the remaining cargo goes overland along the Northern Distribution Network, which passes through Central Asia from the Caucasus or Russia.