To make deer admit that he is the elephant who was thief, now many people will call it conspiracy theory.
once again, why? supposing they are telling Americans that the deer is Elephant, one of two things is happening. Either America is accepting their idea, in which case do you think the Americans are stupid enough to take at face value claims of Elephant-ness and giving whatever money they were offering for Elephants to ISI. Or they are not, in which case you have merely shifted the question one level up. I.e. Why are Americans keeping random deers indefinitely? What do they gain from this, given that it is politically inexpedient for them to do so, and costs them quite a bit in terms of their reputation.
At some point, there needs to be a 'benefit' for whoever is keeping these 'deers'. Depending on your worldview, please specify what exactly the benefit is, to whoever is keeping these people.
It is more plausible for me that both ISI and those they hand these people over to believe that these are Elephants, but cannot prove it.
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My question to you: Why would "intelligence agency" pickup people to locate likes of Mullah Omar/OBL? I mean are they so dumb that they can't follow the trails? Why pickup people who can actually lead them to the destination and sound alarms for the actual guys?
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I dont understand your question. You're asking me why pickup people to get to Mullah Umar? Why wouldnt they? I dont really have an understanding of how these things work, but picking up foot soldiers is a common approach in law enforcement. This is ofcourse assuming these people are foot soldiers.
I am not committed to a particular view on this issue, and am somewhat sympathetic to the missing persons as a humanitarian issue. One of my classfellows is a missing person. But the motivation attributed to the agencies by people on this side of the aisle is not convincing.
once again, why? supposing they are telling Americans that the deer is Elephant, one of two things is happening. Either America is accepting their idea, in which case do you think the Americans are stupid. Or they are not, in which case you have merely shifted the question one level up. I.e. Why are Americans keeping random deers indefinitely? What do they gain from this, given that it is politically inexpedient for them to do so, and costs them quite a bit in terms of their reputation.
At some point, there needs to be a 'benefit' for whoever is keeping these 'deers'. Depending on your worldview, please specify what exactly the benefit is, to whoever is keeping these people.
Americans do not know the foot-soldiers/helpers of Taliban/OBL in Pakistan so they need Pakistani intelligence to do that work. Pakistani intelligence/army under Musharraf - as we all know - wasn't really sincere in eliminating the terror squads because of manifold reasons hence the innocents were captured and made them admit that they were the elephants.
I dont understand your question. You're asking me why pickup people to get to Mullah Umar? Why wouldnt they? I dont really have an understanding of how these things work, but picking up foot soldiers is a common approach in law enforcement. This is ofcourse assuming these people are foot soldiers.
That can work if they are busting a small gang, but for larger networks NO. But getting paid per head will definitely make them pickup any 'foot' whether soldier or not.
There are 3,000 suicide bombers ready to strike at the heart of Pakistan. How many of them are in the list of "missing persons".
Obviously they are being held "hostage" by Islamists
and not the military.
Why doesn't the military come out and say so? Why not bother reply to court summons? Is a colonel above Supreme Court of Pakistan? Just tell Amina that her husband is/was a terrorist held/killed by us or not.
Americans do not know the foot-soldiers/helpers of Taliban/OBL in Pakistan so they need Pakistani intelligence to do that work. Pakistani intelligence/army under Musharraf - as we all know - wasn't really sincere in eliminating the terror squads because of manifold reasons hence the innocents were captured and made them admit that they were the elephants.
That can work if they are busting a small gang, but for larger networks NO. But getting paid per head will definitely make them pickup any 'foot' whether soldier or not.
And the Americans never questioned whether the Elephants sold to them were were really Elephants? Not that I am attributing a conscience to them, but they have a clear financial incentive to do so dont they? Conversely what keeps the ISI from picking many more people if convincing Americans that these are Elephants is so easy? The numbers I have read of (wrt WOT not Balochistan, where americans have no interest in buying BLA Elephants) are fairly low, something between fifty and the low hundreds. Surely the ISI is being conservative in exploiting the financial opportunity they have? Why is that?
Re: Robert Fisk: Into the terrifying world of Pakistan's 'disappeared'
The problem has been made worse - especially when the ISI, PA, GOP is paid to abduct & present them to the Americans. I would say greed of the establishment, to demand more from the Americans, would be one of the causes of abducting more people..
Billions of dollars have been paid - for this 'war on terror'.
The problem has been made worse - especially when the ISI, PA, GOP is paid to abduct & present them to the Americans. I would say greed of the establishment, to demand more from the Americans, would be one of the causes of abducting more people..
Billions of dollars have been paid - for this 'war on terror'.
People who are on USA wanted list are known to everyone. They are typically not the "missing persons".
Missing persons in Pakistan are typically Islamists who have ended up in FATA and Afganistan on their own will.
Just like the 5 Pakistani-origin men from USA, who got caught in Pak while planning to disappear in Afghanistan.
Had they not been arrested, these men and their Jihadi supporters would be maligning Pak army by their fake disappearance.
And the Americans never questioned whether the Elephants sold to them were were really Elephants? Not that I am attributing a conscience to them, but they have a clear financial incentive to do so dont they? Conversely what keeps the ISI from picking many more people if convincing Americans that these are Elephants is so easy? The numbers I have read of (wrt WOT not Balochistan, where americans have no interest in buying BLA Elephants) are fairly low, something between fifty and the low hundreds. Surely the ISI is being conservative in exploiting the financial opportunity they have? Why is that?
If you read reports of people who got released from Guantanamo there were many many innocents who were handed over by Pakistani intelligence agency, how did they end up in Gitmo? Why are they not catching more people, I don't know whether US is still actively looking for such 'foot-soldiers' of if US has realized that the plan was exploited and unwanted people were thrown in. May be some foot soldiers were thrown in the mix to make them think that all the people caught are deemed foot-soldiers.
If you read reports of people who got released from Guantanamo there were many many innocents who were handed over by Pakistani intelligence agency, how did they end up in Gitmo?
But I acknowledged much earlier that even when due process is followed innocents get canned. Its much faster and looser when due process is not followed.
It could be similar to the number of people that get arrested vs the number that get convicted. The latter is much higher usually, doesnt mean that all, or even most, of those arrested are innocent.
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Why are they not catching more people, I don't know whether US is still actively looking for such 'foot-soldiers' of if US has realized that the plan was exploited and unwanted people were thrown in.
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If they realised that then they would have no reason to keep the innocents they do have.
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May be some foot soldiers were thrown in the mix to make them think that all the people caught are deemed foot-soldiers.
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Again you seem to think there is some imperative to collect X number of people, and throw in some foot soldiers to the mix to make people think everyones a foot soldier. To what end is this X number of people collected in the first place?
May be they are using statistical science to convince themselves that the sample size they captured is enough? or they lost confidence in our intelligence agency
May be they are using statistical science to convince themselves that the sample size they captured is enough? D or they lost confidence in our intelligence agency :hmmm
Most of the people sent to Gitmo were captured from Awghanistan or FATA.
With few Qaidas picked up from Jahalite Islamists party member homes.
Re: Robert Fisk: Into the terrifying world of Pakistan's 'disappeared'
^ I rely on news papers/articles. Even if some Pakistanis were caught from FATA doesn't make them terrorists or sympathizer/helper. People were pickedup from other cities too like Islamabad and they were not necessarily JI members.
Re: Robert Fisk: Into the terrifying world of Pakistan's 'disappeared'
^^ After 2001, anyone who was not local to Awghanistan and FATA was not there for picnic and halla gullah. They were all there to do the serious business of Jihad.
Well Im looking for a better rationale than that. if you watch documentaries such as ‘the power of nightmares’ by Adam Curtis you see that the US arrested many innocent people, who were later shown in their trial (or at times after conviction) to be innocent. That doesnt mean though that the motivation of the intelligence agencies is something other than preventing attacks based on their estimation of the threat.
What is absolutely wrong is that these people have no recourse to a court, a trial, somewhere they can defend themselves. It is shameful especially when we know how often innocent people get arrested even by half decent law enforcers, how inefficient, lazy and corrupt our own intelligence services can be, and how hand-wavey descriptions of potential terrorists are. What I dont like is
a) automatic attribution of innocence to those picked up. They should be viewed as suspects.
b) unsubstantiated attribution of a desire to keep random people indefinitely, when clearly these people are surely a commodity that would give whoever ends up with them a net economic loss. I do not envision that there is even much of a gain to possess these people as slave labour for example.
c) suggestions that the people collecting the ‘deer’ are masochists motivated by things such as a desire to hurt innocent people/Muslims. this sort of good/evil type dichotomy of the world discredits your argument, erases complexity, and opens you upto to simple rebuttals.
What I consider better arguments are things like
a) the govts have no legal framework under which to prosecute suspected terrorists, who are often arrested pre-emptively or under conditions of fighting, and therefore the evidence against them is more tenuous than that which might be collected during a crime investigation. prosecuting them would mean risking a large number of terrorists to go free, and therefore the government makes the utilitarian calculation that X number of innocents is a price worth paying to detain Y number of terrorists.
b) the govts/agencies abused their powers in detaining and ‘interrogating’ people they thought were suspects, and revealing that would be politically damaging.
c) the govts created a political atmosphere where arresting terrorists was good for your career (or bank account), and therefore intelligence agencies were incentivized to inflate cases against people who wouldnt otherwise have been arrested.
d) all of the above
Re: Robert Fisk: Into the terrifying world of Pakistan's 'disappeared'
I'd like to add something to this debate ( i think i was the first person to mention the missing persons issue on PA back a few years ago when I heard about the first cases)
There is an unfortunate byproduct of the military's alliances with the US, much of the extra equipment and training Pakistan's agencies get is invariably used against domestic opponents rather than actual threats. This is one of the reasons for the survival of regimes like Zia, Ayub and Musharraf. It's an old story but the one about Ayub Khan, he was complaining about intelligence failings during the 1965 war when a senior intelligence official says it's not their fault as most of their resources was focussed on domestic surveilence.
can someone explain the motivation they attribute to the ISI/Army for picking up random people and keeping them in jail?
i understand that a section of anyone imprisoned, even in those through the legal process, is always innocent. but I dont understand why ISI would pick up just random people. What could their motivation be?
mm..i dont know..perhaps beacuse americans were willing to shell out $$$ for any alqaeeda "suspects"...??
I dont know who but someone said that pakistanis will even sell their mothers for money. Makes me sick.
or they lost confidence in our intelligence agency 