Cui bono?
"Pakistan Should Accuse Pentagon And CIA Of Murdering Rabbani" by Ahmed Quraishi, Sep 26th, 2011
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan— .... The assassination neatly fits in with the interests of three parties: US military, CIA and their Afghan warlord allies....
Rabbani wanted to see Afghan Taliban sharing power and entering government. He was suspected by of being a closet Taliban sympathizer who was hatching conspiracies with Karzai and Pakistan behind the back of the United States and its Afghan warlord allies. The assassination took care of this emerging threat. Blaming Pakistan for his murder – and for other major attacks – built pressure on Karzai to sever ties with Islamabad....
Afghanistan today is CIA’s largest base of operations anywhere in the world. The agency is loath to abandon an outpost that gives it direct access to the backyards of several strategic nations at once: Iran, Pakistan, China and Russia. No sane strategist would let go of such an opportunity. Mr. Rabbani’s peace mission may not have shown initial signs of success but it had already upset the policy direction favored by US military, intelligence and their Afghan warlord allies. India was also skeptical about the Rabbani-Karzai plans....
In fact, whoever assassinated Mr. Rabbani was also aiming at ensuring that Afghanistan remains an anti-Pakistan outpost....
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"Rabbani Was Killed By US, Afghan Proxies" by Web Editor Oct 1st, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan—Intelligence assessments by Pakistani experts conclude that former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani was not killed by Afghan Taliban but by Afghan warlords working in concert with US intelligence.
Mr. Rabbani had become too close to Pashtuns and critical of the US mess in his country in the months and days preceding his murder.
He was advocating a new Kabul government including the Afghan Taliban and was working on this goal with President Hamid Karzai. He had improved ties with Pakistan and addressed Pakistanis for the first time in a decade in January through a TV interview. He spoke in Urdu as a special gesture to Pakistanis.
Several ruthless Afghan warlords backed by CIA and Pentagon were upset by Mr. Rabbani’s Higher Peace Council. India is closely connected to the warlords and shared their suspicion about Mr. Rabbani’s activities.
The warlords, US military and CIA are natural allies since they quietly oppose Obama’s withdrawal plans from Afghanistan. They also agree on isolating the Pashtuns and disrupting Islamabad’s natural ties with its northeastern neighbor and are keen to invite India as a permanent US military proxy in the country after a US pullout. The US military and intelligence communities are not happy with President Obama’s plan to withdraw from Afghanistan. This is especially true for CIA, which has its largest base of operations in the world in Afghanistan, close to Iran, Pakistan, China and Russia.
Removing Mr. Rabbani from the scene has helped Afghan warlords end prospects of peace with Afghan Taliban. The murder has also enabled Pentagon and CIA to put pressure on White House to scrap plans to withdraw. Moreover, Pentagon and CIA almost succeeded in pushing US into a war with Pakistan as way of escaping accountability on Afghan failures. A conflict with Islamabad would have helped Pentagon and CIA dodge tough defense budget cuts back home, and delay US pullback plans.
Ironically, Pakistani government and military are reluctant to publicly accuse Washington and its Afghan allies of murdering Mr. Rabbani, though Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar came close when she accused CIA and US military of maintaining links to terrorists in Afghanistan.
One reason why Pakistan is unable to highlight its case on Mr. Rabbani internationally is the weakness of Pakistan’s state-run and private media. The state-run media is a bureaucratic behemoth wedded to old journalism ways. And the private media is largely ineffective outside the country.
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Your CIA-created cover story:
"Bomber kills key Afghan leader; Victim headed panel seeking peace deal" September 21, 2011|By Ernesto Londono, Washington Post
KABUL, Afghanistan - Former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was appointed last year to head a commission trying to broker a peace deal with the Taliban, was killed inside his Kabul home yesterday afternoon in a suicide bombing, Afghan officials said.
The man who killed Rabbani was brought to his house under the pretext of peace talks, General Abdul Zahir, director of investigations for the Kabul police, said in a phone interview. The suicide bomber had hidden explosives in his turban, Zahir said....
Zahir said Rabbani’s killer was not searched because he was brought to the residence by senior members of the peace council. He said the council members thought the men, who arrived at the heavily fortified residence at approximately 6 p.m., were representatives of the Taliban....
The assassination of the influential political leader is a blow to the Afghan government’s embattled effort to bring insurgents into the political fold. The United States and other Western leaders have backed the so-far fruitless effort, seeing it as the best opportunity to bring the war to an end after a decade of fighting.
Rabbani, who served as president from 1992 to 1996, fled Kabul when the Taliban seized control of most of the country. He was one of the key leaders of the Northern Alliance, a coalition of warlords and political factions that fought the Taliban during the nation’s fierce civil war.
The bombing comes as Karzai and the US-led military coalition in Kabul are struggling to argue that Afghanistan is ready to start assuming greater responsibility for security as NATO troops begin pulling out.
Last week, a 20-hour grenade and rocket attack targeted the US Embassy and the NATO headquarters in Kabul. US officials said the assault, which included suicide bombings across the city, was probably carried out by the Pakistan-based Haqqani network, a group closely allied with the Taliban that has been linked to several high-profile attacks. Rabbani’s house is near the embassy.
In a statement condemning the assassination yesterday, the US Embassy said: “Those responsible for this attack show their disregard for the efforts that Dr. Rabbani has led in the cause of peace for Afghanistan. This kind of cowardly attack will only harden our resolve to work together with the Afghan government and people to end the insurgency and realize a peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan.’’
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The commander of US NATO troops in Afghanistan, General John Allen, said the US-led coalition would continue fighting for peace.
The goal of the attack, Allen added, “is to turn the clock back to the darkness synonymous with the Taliban movement.’’
Pakistani leaders were among the first yesterday to condemn the attack. “The Pakistani leadership has conveyed to the brotherly people and government of Afghanistan extreme anger and shock on the terrorist attack,’’ said a statement issued by President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani.
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"Afghanistan grieves for slain ex-president; Warnings that his death marks end of peace process" September 22, 2011|By Alissa J. Rubin and Jack Healy, New York Times
KABUL - Rabbani’s death threatened to exacerbate tensions among Afghanistan’s ethnic groups and to further weaken support for the peace process, especially among the Tajik and Hazara ethnic groups from the heavily Pashtun south, who have long been leery of any deal with the Taliban.
The ethnic makeup of those who gathered yesterday to quietly pay respects for Rabbani - a Tajik from northern Afghanistan’s Badakhshan Province - underlined those divides. Only a handful of mourners were Pashtuns, Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group....
The Taliban, which often claim responsibility almost immediately for political assassinations and attacks against NATO and Afghan security forces, remained quiet yesterday about the attack. In a Twitter posting, a Taliban spokesman denied taking responsibility for the assassination.
Suspicions fell on Pakistan-based militant groups such as the Haqqani network, a fierce adversary of Western forces in Afghanistan that has ties to Pakistan’s intelligence services....
The peace process achieved little under Rabbani, a mujahedeen fighter in the 1980s who fled to the north during the Taliban’s rule and returned to Kabul after the Americans swept the Taliban from power in 2001.
A small but growing number of low-level Taliban fighters have agreed to join the government’s side in exchange for small stipends and opportunities to work, but few high-level Taliban commanders have accepted invitations to negotiate, and some of those who did were unmasked as impostors.
To many of the mourners gathered outside Rabbani’s home, his assassination rang the death knell for a peace process that they had long mistrusted.
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"Former Afghan president buried amid angry chants, criticism of US" September 24, 2011|By Amir Shah and Christopher Torchia, Associated Press
KABUL - A surging crowd of mourners yesterday touched and kissed the coffin of former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, slain by a suicide bomber claiming to carry a Taliban peace message, and vented at their own government and its efforts to reconcile with the insurgency.
In angry chants at a hilltop cemetery, grieving followers of Rabbani’s political faction vilified President Hamid Karzai, blamed Taliban insurgents for Afghanistan’s woes, and denounced Pakistan for allegedly stirring up the conflict. Shouts against the United States, which backs the Afghan government, reflected frustration that a decade of Western support has failed to unite their divided land.
“Death to Karzai… . Death to the foreign puppets,’’ chanted the throng, some young men, others veterans of the guerrilla war against Soviet occupying forces in the 1980s. “Pakistan is our enemy… . Long live the resistance… . The Muslim people are united.’’
At one point, presidential security guards tried to stop a Rabbani ally, former intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh, from joining the swelling crowd in an area around the walled-off grave.
Oh, the CIA's MAN in Afghanistan??!?!
He forced his way in anyway, and guards briefly fired into the air to block thousands of other mourners, some of whom threw stones at security forces.
“A terrorist was allowed to enter and kill our leader; we are not allowed to attend his burial,’’ a furious Saleh declared.
The chaotic outpouring of frustration and statements that the time for peacemaking has passed pointed to Afghanistan’s ethnic divisions and the fragility of its government. It also contrasted with an earlier, stately ceremony at the presidential palace, where Karzai hailed Rabbani as a tireless advocate for reconciliation.
“It is our responsibility to act against those who are enemies of peace,’’ said Karzai, urging Afghans to shun despair over the death of Rabbani in an attack at his home on Tuesday and instead escalate efforts to end the fighting. The US-led coalition plans to withdraw combat troops by the end of 2014, shifting responsibility for security to Afghan forces that are still being coached by foreign mentors.
The 70-year-old Rabbani was the leader of Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance, which helped overthrow Taliban rule during the US-led invasion in 2001.
His death threatens to deepen rifts between the country’s ethnic minorities, especially between those who made up the Northern Alliance - including Tajiks like Rabbani - and the majority Pashtun, who make up the backbone of the Taliban.
Karzai, who is Pashtun, had appointed Rabbani to Afghanistan’s High Peace Council, which was seeking to reconcile the nation’s warring factions. It has made little headway since it was formed a year ago, but its efforts are backed by many in the international community....
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