ISLAMABAD – The heated debate regarding the misadventures of notorious Blackwater in Pakistan have rightly questioned the credibility and integrity of the covert organisation. Blackwater or Xe Worldwide, being an expansionist organisation, works on the agenda and directives of CIA, whether it is involved in the recent wave of bloodbath in Pakistan is yet to be determined, but the writing on the wall is too visible to be comprehended what lies underneath, and all this is happening with the active involvement of ‘local Americans.’
Jeremy Scahill, an investigative journalist whose recent article about Blackwater titled “Blackwater’s Secret War in Pakistan” had given light to some of the darkest aspects of Blackwater, disclosed in an interview that a Pakistani company Kestral owned by Liaquat Ali Baig, was working with Blackwater to assist it in Pakistan with the collusion of Interior Ministry and Frontier Constabulary (FC). “I talked to a former Blackwater executive that is familiar with Blackwater’s operations in the region. And when I asked them to confirm for me what the military intelligence sources said, namely that the Blackwater guys are not doing the actual killing in Pakistan, he told, “That is not entirely accurate,” then proceeded to tell me about an arrangement that Blackwater had made with a Pakistani company called Kestral, that is headed by a man named Ali Bagg. The Blackwater executive told me, that Erik Prince, the owner of Blackwater, is close with the owner of this Pakistan firm that is sort of like a Blackwater and logistical firm wrapped up into one. This is a company the works for Lockheed Martin and Raytheon and Pakistan the government and does a very robust business in war contracting and servicing the war in Afghanistan as well. And my understanding is that Blackwater is working for this company on a subcontract in a configuration that has Blackwater operatives going out technically as advisers with these paramilitary style forces from this company, and that they are doing as you said in the intro, border interdictions in the Northwest frontier province and elsewhere and the former Blackwater executive told me the line often gets blurred and that you do have Blackwater guys and other westerners that act the participate in operations that are the portrayed in the international media as Pakistan forces carrying them out. And the agency that Blackwater forces are supporting is a federal paramilitary force in Pakistan that’s under the Ministry of the Interior there, called the Frontier Corp. The military intelligence official confirmed the Blackwater executives account, or at least the specific allegation that Blackwater is working with the Frontier Corps. The benefit of this is it allows the Pakistani government to say, “We’re not using any Western forces to do these things,” because the technicality is that there subcontracted by a Pakistani firm that is working with the official Pakistan forces.”
Regarding the killings of Pakistanis in drone attacks, the journalist minced no words to state that CIA sponsored drones were taking precious innocent lives. “The CIA of course has been running a drone campaign in Pakistan going back years into the Bush administration. When President Obama took office on January 23, he ordered his first drone strike inside of Pakistan. There were two strikes in North and South Waziristan, and has bombed Pakistan regularly ever since. In fact, Vice-President Joe Biden, part of his strategy reportedly is calling for escalation of these drone strikes. This has caused some controversy because of a large numbers of civilian deaths as a result of these bombings - and technically, the operations of the CIA need to be reported to Senator Dianne Feinstein and others on the intelligence committee, and there was a controversy this summer because Leon Panetta ran up the hill and said he had cancelled the CIA assassination programme and that put the drones in an intense focus on the hill. What I am told now though, is that there is actually and has been for some time, a parallel drone strike programme that is being run by the Joint Special Operations Command and that these JSOC drone strikes are sometimes done with very little regard for how many civilians may die in the pursuit of one quote unquote “Bad guy” - In fact, my military intelligence source said to me if there’s one guy we’re trying to hit and there are 34 other people in the building, 35 people are going to die that day.”
When asked whether Blackwater employees were posing as US AID workers, Jeremy did not rule out the possibility that they might be posing as aid workers in Pakistan. “I said they may be posing as aid workers, I didn’t specify any organization. I think that we have a situation right now in Pakistan where it is very dangerous for people that actually are there to aid in humanitarian projects, and this has long been a history. When you have non-civilian forces that pose in any way as aid workers of any kind, I think you create a dangerous situation for the well-meaning individuals that go to very difficult and dangerous countries in an effort to help local populations that are suffering tremendously as a result of war and poverty. My understanding from the military intelligence source is Blackwater personnel have at times posed as aid workers.”
Jeremy Scahill in the same interview categorically implied that Pakistan was bleeding because of what was going on in Afghanistan, “Of great concern to everyone in that region is that Pakistan is increasingly, the war in Afghanistan is increasingly bleeding over into Pakistan. And, now with the revelation that the U.S. has actual covert operations there, these operations could be viewed in the words of my military intelligence source, as a, “Lilly pad,” a jump-off point. He called it the Jamestown of the new millennium, in Pakistan and predicted there’s going to be more intense involvement of U.S. military within the borders of a country that we have not declared war against.”
In his article, the investigative journalist quoted a source who said, “This is a parallel operation to the CIA - They are two separate beasts.” The programme puts Blackwater at the epicenter of a US military operation within the borders of a nation against which the United States has not declared war—knowledge that could further strain the already tense relations between the United States and Pakistan. In 2006, the United States and Pakistan struck a deal that authorized JSOC to enter Pakistan to hunt Osama bin Laden with the understanding that Pakistan would deny it had given permission. Officially, the United States is not supposed to have any active military operations in the country.”
He reveals the active involvement of US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and writes, “Blackwater’s work for JSOC in Karachi is coordinated out of a Task Force based at Bagram Air Base in neighboring Afghanistan, according to the military intelligence source. While JSOC technically runs the operations in Karachi, he said, it is largely staffed by former US special operations soldiers working for a division of Blackwater, once known as Blackwater SELECT, and intelligence analysts working for a Blackwater affiliate, Total Intelligence Solutions (TIS), which is owned by Erik Prince. The military source said that the name Blackwater SELECT may have been changed recently. Total Intelligence, which is run out of an office on the ninth floor of a building in the Ballston area of Arlington, Virginia, is staffed by former analysts and operatives from the CIA, DIA, FBI and other agencies. It is modeled after the CIA’s counterterrorism center. In Karachi, TIS runs a “media-scouring/open-source network,” according to the source. Until recently, Total Intelligence was run by two former top CIA officials, Cofer Black and Robert Richer, both of whom have left the company. In Pakistan, Blackwater is not using either its original name or its new moniker, Xe Services, according to the former Blackwater executive. “They are running most of their work through TIS because the other two [names] have such a stain on them,” he said. Corallo, the Blackwater spokesperson, denied that TIS or any other division or affiliate of Blackwater has any personnel in Pakistan.”
As many as thirteen American and five British websites are currently describing Blackwater as a preacher and propagator of Christian supremacy and crusade ideology. The data available on these websites mentions that Blackwater inducts retired army personnel from different countries across the world in addition to former US army officials while majority of senior office-bearers of this organisation are former CIA spies. “Blackwater has its own armored personnel carriers, its own naval vessels, its own airways and its own fighter aircrafts. Its own Presidential Airways had a contract from US Departmental Defense for air transportation in Afghanistan and Pakistan - Blackwater created such a terror and hatred in Iraq that on March 31, 2004 “On March 31, 2004, four Blackwater Security Consulting (BSC) employees were ambushed and killed in Fallujah, and their bodies were hung on bridges”. There were hundreds of incidents of Blackwater killing innocent citizens in Iraq as well as getting into fights with the Iraqi Police and Security Forces. Some victims of Blackwater killings have filed law suites in the United States against the Company,” says a website exposing the evil game of target killings Blackwater has played in Iraq over the years. Blackwater in Iraq allegedly killed around 1300 innocent masses in the last seven years.
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