Docudharma Times Thursday January 7

Suicide attack on CIA agents ‘was planned by bin Laden inner circle’

From The Times

January 7, 2010



Tim Reid in Washington and Zahid Hussain in Islamabad

US intelligence officials believe that the suicide bomb attack that killed seven CIA officers in Afghanistan last month was planned with the help of Osama bin Laden’s close allies, raising fears that the al-Qaeda leader is enjoying a lethal resurgence.

They think that the attack could not have taken place without the prior knowledge and assistance of the Haqqanis, the powerful Taleban group thought to be shielding bin Laden.

The attack was carried out by a Jordanian doctor whom the CIA believed was about to divulge the whereabouts of bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al- Zawahiri. It is one of the deadliest blows against the CIA and has increased tensions between the US and Pakistan because of Islamabad’s repeated failure to target the Haqqanis.

Life after Guantanamo? More detainees go back to jihad

In the past year, the percentage of former Guantanamo detainees who had joined militant groups has risen from 11 percent to 20 percent, according to a classified Pentagon report. Of the 198 detainees left in Guantanamo, 91 are Yemeni.

By Adam Entous and Phil Stewart Reuters / January 6, 2010

Washington

A classified Pentagon assessment shows one in five detainees released from the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay has joined or is suspected of joining militant groups like al Qaeda, US officials said Wednesday.The disclosure comes amid revelations that former detainees were playing a leadership role in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula – a Yemen-based group believed to be behind a failed plot to blow up a US airliner on Christmas Day.

Under pressure to increase safeguards, President Barack Obama announced Tuesday he had suspended the transfer of additional Guantanamo detainees to Yemen, citing the deteriorating security situation in the country.

USA

Despite Risks, Internet Creeps Onto Car Dashboards

DRIVEN TO DISTRACTION

By ASHLEE VANCE and MATT RICHTEL

Published: January 6, 2010

LAS VEGAS – To the dismay of safety advocates already worried about driver distraction, automakers and high-tech companies have found a new place to put sophisticated Internet-connected computers: the front seat.

Technology giants like Intel and Google are turning their attention from the desktop to the dashboard, hoping to bring the power of the PC to the car. They see vast opportunity for profit in working with automakers to create the next generation of irresistible devices.

This week at the Consumer Electronics Show, the neon-drenched annual trade show here, these companies are demonstrating the breadth of their ambitions, like 10-inch screens above the gearshift showing high-definition videos, 3-D maps and Web pages.

After attempted airline bombing, effectiveness of intelligence reforms questioned

 

 By Karen DeYoung

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, January 7, 2010

The failure of U.S. authorities to detect a plot to bomb a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day has reignited long-simmering concerns that intelligence reforms implemented five years ago remain inadequate to prevent terrorist attacks.

With disaster aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 averted by the bomb’s malfunction, rather than by astute analysis of available information, some intelligence officials have suggested that the reforms were the cause of such lapses and not the solution to them.

President Obama has not singled out anyone for blame and has said that everyone involved has “taken responsibility” for their shortfalls.

Asia

Nepal frees former child soldiers from camp

Mixed opinions among first of 3,000 ex-communist rebel fighters to be released following 2006 peace agreement

Associated Press in Dudhauli

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 7 January 2010 08.02 GMT

Hundreds of former child soldiers bid their comrades farewell today at a camp in southern Nepal where they have lived since communist rebels joined a peace process.

They are the first of nearly 3,000 former child soldiers to be freed from seven camps where the ex-fighters have been confined since a peace agreement in 2006.

At the camp in Dudhauli, about 125 miles (200km) south-west of Katmandu, more than 200 of the former child soldiers had their last lunch in the facility with friends and talked about revolution and their future in the outside world.

Tamils throw weight behind general who crushed them

Tigers’ political wing trying to oust incumbent president at January poll

By Andrew Buncombe, Asia Correspondent  Thursday, 7 January 2010

Seven months after Sri Lanka’s long and bitter civil war was brought to an end by a withering government assault, the political coalition that supported the Tamil Tigers has thrown its support behind the former army chief who crushed them.

In an ironic twist to the presidential election campaign being fought on the island, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) announced yesterday that it was supporting General Sarath Fonseka in his bid to defeat President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

Middle East

US forges alliance with Saddam Hussein officers to fight al-Qaeda

American counter-terrorism specialists and Saddam Hussein’s former intelligence officers have forged an unlikely alliance in Yemen to tackle al-Qaeda.

By Adrian Blomfield in Sana’a

Published: 7:00PM GMT 06 Jan 2010

The two sides were enemies on the battlefield just seven years ago but have been brought together by the failings of Yemen’s security and intelligence apparatus, according to diplomatic and military sources in the country.

Although mutual suspicions linger, the collaboration is said to have achieved some intelligence breakthroughs and helped instil greater efficiency and professionalism within the most elite Yemeni counterterrorism outfit.

Co-operation with the former Baathist officers, who fled Iraq in the wake of the US-led invasion and the fall of Saddam, is expected to grow further in the wake of the failed terror attack in the skies above Detroit.

Jordanian double agent: Wife says he saw US as adversary

Defne Bayrak, the Turkish wife of suspected Jordanian double agent Balawi, says she was shocked at the news of his suicide attack. She also said that while in Jordan, he wrote articles for jihad websites.

By Selcan Hacaoglu Associated Press / January 6, 2010

Ankara, Turkey

The wife of the suspected Jordanian double agent who killed seven CIA workers in Afghanistan said Wednesday her husband regarded the United States as an adversary.

Defne Bayrak, the Turkish wife of Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, told Turkish media by telephone she was shocked at the news that her husband blew himself up at a base in Afghanistan on Dec. 30, killing himself and the officers.

Ms. Bayrak, who lives in Istanbul, said her husband had plans to become a specialist in surgery in Turkey and doubts he was working for the CIA.

“I don’t believe that he was an agent for CIA or for Jordan,” she told private NTV television. “He was someone who even did not like to leave home.”

Europe

Iceland on thin ice after compensation veto

The Icelandic president’s refusal to sign a controversial compensation bill could complicate Iceland’s bid to join the European Union.

BUSINESS

The European Union will take into account Iceland’s handling of the Icesave bank failure in Reykjavik’s bid for EU membership, the European Commission has said.

“The commission hopes that an acceptable solution for all the parties concerned will be found,” a spokesman in Brussels said. But he added that it is mainly an issue between Iceland, the UK and the Netherlands as it concerns compensation for UK and Dutch depositors in Icesave accounts.

On Tuesday, Iceland’s president Olafur Ragnar Grimsson blocked an unpopular but previously approved bank compensation plan for foreign investors in his country’s failed banks.

Iceland was to pay $5.4 billion (3.8 billion euros) in compensation to Britain and the Netherlands, the nations that had stepped in to compensate their own citizens who lost money when the Icesave bank collapsed. Icesave was operated by Landesbanki, which collapsed in the fall of 2008.

Britain’s Labor Party shaken by challenge to Gordon Brown

 

By Anthony Faiola

Washington Post Foreign Service

Thursday, January 7, 2010

LONDON — British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Wednesday sought to fend off a surprise challenge to his leadership from within his own ranks, a blow to him and his ruling Labor Party just months before general elections.

The revolt marked Brown’s toughest challenge since the summer, when a flurry of senior cabinet officials abandoned him and rumors swirled that he would be forced to step aside. The man viewed as Washington’s closest ally in Europe survived that confrontation, and Brown supporters took heart in signs that the call for a vote on his leadership by two senior Labor lawmakers appeared to be gaining only limited traction.

Africa

Spectre of war threatens human disaster in Sudan, aid groups warn

Oxfam and others demands urgent diplomatic effort to prop up fragile five-year-old deal that ended decades of civil strife

Mark Tran

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 7 January 2010 00.05 GMT

International diplomacy to support a fragile peace deal in Sudan must intensify or the south of the country will suffer a humanitarian disaster, aid groups have warned.

The appeal from Oxfam and other NGOs for urgent preventive diplomacy comes as Africa’s largest country marks the fifth anniversary of the January 2005 comprehensive peace agreement (CPA), signed by Sudan’s central government and the southern-based Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM).

The deal, brokered by outside powers, ended one of Africa’s longest conflicts: a civil war between north and south that began in 1983 and has claimed an estimated 2 million lives, driving 4 million people from their homes and destabilising much of east Africa.

Rescuing Zimbabwe’s lost generation

They are trained to be the stormtroopers of political violence – but now a veteran of Zimbabwe’s freedom struggle is working to redeem them, writes Basildon Peta

Thursday, 7 January 2010

They are popularly known as Border Gezi camps. They are named after the man who, as Zimbabwe’s Minister of Youth, was put in charge of recruiting young supporters of Robert Mugabe into the militia which is implicated in violent attacks on the political opponents of the Zimbabwean President.

Border Gezi was a firebrand who unashamedly agitated for the use of violence against the opposition. He has since died in a car crash, but the training camps he set up live on – and have become a breeding ground for Zimbabwe’s now-entrenched culture that prescribes violence as the only way of settling political differences.

But one extraordinarily brave woman has set up a project to offer an alternative vision to the impoverished youths who have passed through the Border Gezi camps, and who are set to visit the camps’ poisonous message of intolerance and intimidation on Robert Mugabe’s enemies.

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