CNN reports an intriguing Intel leak:

U.S. military intelligence officials are urgently assessing how secure Pakistan’s nuclear weapons would be in the event President Gen. Pervez Musharraf were replaced as the nation’s leader, CNN has learned.

Analysts wonder how secure Pakistan’s nuclear weapons would be if President Pervez Musharraf were replaced.

Key questions in the assessment include who would control Pakistan’s nuclear weapons after a shift in power. The United States is pressuring Musharraf, who took control in a 1999 coup, not to declare a state of emergency as he faces growing political opposition.

Three U.S. sources have independently confirmed details of the intelligence review to CNN but would not allow their names to be used because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The sources include military officers and intelligence community analysts.

This story presumably represents a message to the Pakistani government indicating US desire for a mutual understanding on the custody, security, and disposition in case of regime change, of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.

The London Times reports that Pakistan has sent in 80,000 troops into the area it previously surrendered to Al Qaeda with orders to root out the Islamist extremists.

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Pakistan is still refusing to permit US military actions within its borders, and threatening to withdraw from its American alliance if the US were to act unilaterally, the Chinese Xinhua news agency reports.

Abdullah Mehsud aka Noor Alam

AFP details the unhappy end of one of the innocent lambs unjustly detained by the Bush Administration. Poor Abdulah Mehsud was captured at Kunduz in Northern Afghanistan in December of 2001 and detained for 25 months before being released in March of 2004.

A former Guantanamo Bay prisoner wanted for the 2004 kidnapping of two Chinese engineers in Pakistan blew himself up with a grenade during a clash with (Pakistani) security forces on Tuesday, officials said.

One-legged Taliban militant Abdullah Mehsud killed himself to avoid capture after troops raided his hideout, interior ministry spokesman Brigadier Javed Cheema told AFP. …

“Abdullah Mehsud blew himself up with a grenade and died when security forces raided his hideout. Three of his accomplices were arrested,” Cheema said.

Mehsud, 32, became the leader of Pakistani Taliban insurgents based in South Waziristan in 2004, after Pakistani forces launched military operations in the troubled tribal region.

In October 2004, Islamic militants led by Mehsud pressed their demand for an end to the army moves by kidnapping two Chinese engineers working on a multi-million-dollar hydroelectric dam project in South Waziristan.

One of the hostages died in a botched rescue bid in a major embarrassment for Pakistan, which counts China as its closest ally and biggest military supplier.

Mehsud, who spent 25 months in the US-run “war on terror” prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba until his release in March 2004, escaped after the incident.

He had been hunted by Pakistani forces ever since. Officials said he had recently been involved in lauching cross-border attacks on NATO and US-led forces in Afghanistan.

“Intelligence reports pointed out his presence at a house and security forces mounted the raid. He sneaked into Zhob from Waziristan,” Cheema said.

Zhob, in southwestern Baluchistan province, borders South Waziristan.

The militant leader and his companions exchanged heavy gunfire with security forces for hours after the house was surrounded late Monday, police said.

“When our forces finally entered before dawn this morning a man blew himself up to avoid being captured. He was identified later as Mehsud,” Zhob police chief Atta Mohammad said.

The just-released National Intelligence Estimate is leading both the administration and the punditocracy to conclude that going along with the Pakistani policy of permitting Al Qaeda to enjoy safe havens in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier tribal areas wasn’t really such a great idea.

AP:

Al-Qaida is using its growing strength in Pakistan and Iraq to plot attacks on U.S. soil, heightening the terror threat facing the United States over the next few years, intelligence agencies concluded in a report unveiled Tuesday.

At the same time, the intelligence analysts worry that international cooperation against terrorism will be hard to sustain as memories of Sept. 11 fade and nations’ views diverge on what the real threat is.

In the National Intelligence Estimate prepared for President Bush and other top policymakers, analysts laid out a range of dangers – from al-Qaida to Lebanese Hezbollah to non-Muslim radical groups – that pose a “persistent and evolving threat” to the country over the next three years.

The findings focused most heavily on Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network, which was judged to remain the most serious threat to the United States. The group’s affiliate in Iraq, which has not yet posed a direct threat to U.S. soil, could do just that, the report concluded. Al-Qaida in Iraq threatened to attack the United States in a Web statement last September.

National Intelligence Council Chairman Thomas Fingar warned that the group’s operatives in Iraq are getting portable, firsthand experience in covert communications, smuggling, improvised explosive devices, understanding U.S. military tactics and more.

The Iraqi affiliate also helps al-Qaida more broadly as it tries to energize Sunni Muslim extremists around the globe, raise resources and recruit and indoctrinate operatives – “including for homeland attacks,” according to a declassified summary of the report’s main findings.

In addition, analysts stressed the importance of al-Qaida’s increasingly comfortable hideout in Pakistan that has resulted from a hands-off accord between Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and tribal leaders along the Afghan border. That 10-month-old deal, which has unraveled in recent days, gave al-Qaida new opportunities to set up compounds for terror training, improve its international communications with associates and bolster its operations.

New York Times:

President Bush’s top counterterrorism advisers acknowledged today that the strategy for fighting Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan had failed, as the White House released a grim new intelligence assessment that has forced the administration to consider more aggressive measures inside Pakistan.

The intelligence report, the most formal assessment since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks about the terrorist threat facing the United States, concludes that the United States is losing ground on a number of fronts in the fight against Al Qaeda, and describes the terrorist organization as having significantly strengthened over the past two years.

In identifying the main reasons for Al Qaeda’s resurgence, intelligence officials and White House aides pointed the finger squarely at a hands-off approach toward the tribal areas by Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who last year brokered a cease-fire with tribal leaders in an attempt to drain support for Islamic extremism in the region.

“It hasn’t worked for Pakistan,” said Frances Fragos Townsend, who heads the Homeland Security Council at the White House. “It hasn’t worked for the United States.”

Washington Post:

Al-Qaeda has reestablished its central organization, training infrastructure and lines of global communication over the past two years, putting the United States in a “heightened threat environment” despite expanded worldwide counterterrorism efforts, according to a new intelligence estimate.

Intelligence officials attributed the al-Qaeda gains primarily to its establishment of a safe haven in ungoverned areas of northwestern Pakistan. Its affiliation with the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, the report said, has helped it to “energize” extremists elsewhere and has aided Osama bin Laden’s recruitment and funding.

The estimate concluded that “the U.S. Homeland will face a persistent and evolving terrorist threat over the next three years.” Al-Qaeda, it said, “is and will remain” the most serious element of that threat.

New York Sun:

One of two known Al Qaeda leadership councils meets regularly in eastern Iran, where the American intelligence community believes dozens of senior Al Qaeda leaders have reconstituted a good part of the terror conglomerate’s senior leadership structure.

That is a consensus judgment from a final working draft of a new National Intelligence Estimate, titled “The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland,” on the organization that attacked the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The estimate, which represents the opinion of America’s intelligence agencies, is now finished, and unclassified conclusions will be shared today with the public.

The classified document includes four main sections, examining how Al Qaeda in recent years has increased its capacity to stage another attack on American soil; how the organization has replenished the ranks of its top leaders; nations where Al Qaeda operates, and the status of its training camps and physical infrastructure. …

In the estimate’s chapter on Al Qaeda’s replenished senior leadership, three American intelligence sources said, there is a discussion of the eastern Iran-based Shura Majlis, a kind of consensus-building organization of top Al Qaeda figures that meets regularly to make policy and plan attacks. The New York Sun first reported in October that one of the Shura Majlis for Al Qaeda meets in the federally administered tribal areas of Pakistan, one of the areas the Pakistani army this week re-engaged after a yearlong cease-fire. Both Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, participate in those meetings.

he other Shura Majlis is believed to meet in eastern Iran in the network established after Al Qaeda was driven from Afghanistan in 2001.
Following that battle, a military planner trained in the Egyptian special forces, Saif al-Adel, fled to Iran. Mr. Zawahri then arranged with the then commander of Iran’s Quds Force, Ahmad Vahidi, for safe harbor for senior leaders.

The three main Al Qaeda leaders in Iran include Mr. Adel; the organization’s minister of propaganda, Suleiman Abu Ghaith, and the man who some analysts believe is the heir apparent to Mr. bin Laden — one of his sons, Saad bin Laden. The locations of the senior leaders include a military base near Tehran called Lavizan; a northern suburb of Tehran, Chalous; an important holy city, Mashod, and a border town near Afghanistan, Zabul, the draft intelligence estimate says.

In 2003, Iran offered a swap of the senior leaders in exchange for members of an Iranian opposition group on America’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, the People’s Mujahadin.

That deal was scuttled after signal intercepts proved, according to American intelligence officials, that Mr. Adel was in contact with an Al Qaeda cell in Saudi Arabia.

In the aftermath of the failed deal, Al Qaeda’s Iran branch has worked closely in helping to establish the group in Iraq. The late founder of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had multiple meetings with Mr. Adel after 2001. In the past year, the multinational Iraq command force has intercepted at least 10 couriers with instructions from the Iran-based Shura Majlis. In addition, two senior leaders of Al Qaeda captured in 2006 have shared details of the Shura Majlis in Iran.

“We know that there were two Al Qaeda centers of gravity. After the Taliban fell, one went to Pakistan, the other fled to Iran,” Roger Cressey, a former deputy to a counterterrorism tsar, Richard Clarke, said in an interview yesterday. “The question for several years has been: What type of operational capability did each of these centers have?”

WorldNetDaily reports:

Medical clinics across the country have been flooded with requests from foreign nationals from Pakistan and other Muslim countries to help them gain visa entry into the U.S. as patients.

The post-9/11 trend concerns authorities who fear al-Qaida could be using the medical industry to infiltrate terrorist cells into the country.

Some clinics have sponsored foreign patients only to have them fail to show up at their facilities.

The Caster Eye Center in Beverly Hills, Calif., for example, stopped granting such foreign requests after a couple of no-shows.

AP has leaked details of a US Intelligence assessment with alarming news of al Qaeda’s current strength and capabilities.

A new threat assessment from U.S. counterterrorism analysts says that al-Qaida has used its safe haven along the Afghan-Pakistan border to restore its operating capabilities to a level unseen since the months before Sept. 11, 2001.

A counterterrorism official familiar with a five-page summary of the document – titled “Al-Qaida better positioned to strike the West” – called it a stark appraisal. The analysis will be part of a broader meeting at the White House on Thursday about an upcoming National Intelligence Estimate.

The official and others spoke to The Associated Press on condition they not be identified because the report remains classified.

The findings suggests that the network that launched the most devastating terror attack on U.S. soil has been able to regroup despite nearly six years of bombings, war and other tactics aimed at dismantling it.

The threat assessment focuses on the terror group’s safe haven in Pakistan and makes a range of observations about the threat posed to the United States and its allies, officials said.

Counterterrorism officials have been increasingly concerned about al-Qaida’s recent operations. This week, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said he had a “gut feeling” that the United States faced a heightened risk of attack this summer.

Still, numerous government officials say they know of no specific, credible threat of a new attack on U.S. soil.

Al-Qaida is “considerably operationally stronger than a year ago” and has “regrouped to an extent not seen since 2001,” the counterterrorism official said, paraphrasing the report’s conclusions. “They are showing greater and greater ability to plan attacks in Europe and the United States.”

The group also has created “the most robust training program since 2001, with an interest in using European operatives,” the official quoted the report as saying.

At the same time, this official said, the report speaks of “significant gaps in intelligence” so U.S. authorities may be ignorant of potential or planned attacks.

John Kringen, who heads the CIA’s analysis directorate, echoed the concerns about al-Qaida’s resurgence during testimony and conversations with reporters at a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Wednesday.

“They seem to be fairly well settled into the safe haven and the ungoverned spaces of Pakistan,” Kringen testified. “We see more training. We see more money. We see more communications. We see that activity rising.”

The threat assessment comes as the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies prepare a National Intelligence Estimate focusing on threats to the United States. A senior intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity while the high-level analysis was being completed, said the document has been in the works for roughly two years.

Peter Zeihan, writing at Strategic Forcasting (www.stratfor.com), a subscription service provider of information and analysis relevant to geopolitics, security and public policy, thinks Pakistan’s recent increasing internal conflicts could make Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier the key theater of US military operations.

Access to articles at Stratfor’s web-site requires a subscription, but the 7/10 Zeihan article is quoted in full by NOTR and by center-right Indian blogger RS.

Excerpt:

Back in 2005, the United States believed it had credible intelligence about a planned meeting of the core al Qaeda leadership in northwestern Pakistan. A strike force of several hundred to several thousand was assembled in order to punch through the Pakistani tribes hiding and shielding bin Laden and his allies, but the strike was ultimately abandoned because then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld felt the operation could not be kept quiet. It is one thing when Pakistanis think there are a few Americans running over the border to do something tactical. It is quite another when Pakistanis know that several thousand Americans with heavy air support are surging across to do something strategic. The U.S. might have been able to take out its target, but probably not without losing a critical ally.

Details of this attack plan were leaked July 8 to The New York Times. For us at Stratfor, news of the plans was nothing new. It made perfect sense that this plan, and likely dozens of others like it, were at various times in the works stretching back as far as 2003 (and we have noted such on numerous occasions). What caught our attention was the timing of The New York Times article. The United States has been eyeing northwestern Pakistan for years. Why draw attention to that fact now?

The United States’ core fear in 2005 was that the Pakistani government would destabilize. Well, in 2007, the Pakistani government is horrendously unstable. On July 10, Islamabad launched a multi-hour raid replete with Branch Davidian overtones against the Red Mosque complex and a gathering of radical (some would say mentally unhinged) Islamists challenging the government’s writ. Be worried when the government of an Islamic republic feels it must take such action. Be doubly worried when the government taking the action already seems to be in its death throes.

Previous efforts by Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf to strengthen his political grip on the country by firing the chief justice rebounded on him so severely that he cannot even depend upon his oldest allies. Various political, military and cultural power centers are sniping at the president, making their own independent and often contradictory demands. There are also hints that Musharraf’s faculties are beginning to crack. The government — as well as the president — is now teetering on the edge of oblivion, facing an unsavory menu of crushing compromise with one force or another to stay in power in name, and risking the turbulent waters of emergency rule over an increasingly hostile population.

If the threat of a government fall was the only thing holding Washington back in 2005, and now that the fall is imminent through no action of the United States, what does Washington have to gain from restraining itself any further?

This is more than a rhetorical question. The relative inactivity of al Qaeda these past six years, as well as the political situation in Pakistan, has imposed a shaky equilibrium on the issue. Al Qaeda’s security protocols curtail al Qaeda’s threat level, and that has allowed the United States to shelve the issue for another day. Meanwhile, the instability of Musharraf’s government limits the United States’ ability to pressure Islamabad over the issue of al Qaeda. Consequently, al Qaeda has been more or less hiding in plain sight.

Alter any aspect of this scenario — in this case, drastically increase the tottering of the Musharraf government — and the “stability” of the other pieces immediately breaks and the United States is forced to surge assets into Pakistan.

Washington has to assume that an al Qaeda anywhere but Pakistan is an al Qaeda that will act with less conservatism. By the American logic, al Qaeda assets in Saudi Arabia, long drilled that security is paramount, would naturally doubt that a telegram from bin Laden ordering a new attack is genuine — but they would certainly believe bin Laden himself should he show up at their door. By al Qaeda’s logic, Musharraf’s fall would force al Qaeda to relocate from Pakistan because the group would have to assume that the Americans would be coming.

Which means the odd stasis in the war on terror these past six years could be about to loosen up, and a front that has proven oddly cold might be about to catch fire.

Fred Burton and Scott Stewart, writing for the subscription service Stratfor’s Terrorism Intelligence Report, use several metrics to assess the current condition of al Qaeda’s organizational leadership core. The article is quoted in its entirety by Watch n’ Wait.

Al Qaeda’s media branch, As-Sahab, released a statement by Ayman al-Zawahiri to jihadist Internet forums June 25. In it, al Qaeda’s deputy leader urges Muslims to support Palestinian militants by providing weapons and money, and by attacking U.S. and Israeli interests. Although al-Zawahiri’s message is interesting, especially the fact that he urges support for an organization he has criticized heavily in the past, perhaps most telling about the release is that it contains no new video footage of al-Zawahiri himself. …

The fact that al-Zawahiri chose this format rather than the more engaging and visually powerful video format suggests al Qaeda’s apex leaders are feeling the heat of the campaign to locate and eliminate them. Although many people believe the al Qaeda leadership operates as it pleases along the Pakistani-Afghan border, evidence suggests otherwise.

Last week’s Terrorism Intelligence Report discussed the campaign conducted by the United States and its allies against al Qaeda’s regional and local nodes. Though these efforts have been under way in many parts of the globe, the United States and its partners have been pursuing a concurrent campaign against al Qaeda’s apex leadership, al Qaeda prime. Like the campaign against the regional nodes, the effort against the prime node employs all of the five prongs of the U.S. counterterrorism arsenal: military power, intelligence, economic sanctions, law enforcement operations and diplomacy.

The overall success of this campaign against al Qaeda prime has been hard to measure because there are few barometers for taking al Qaeda’s pulse. By its nature it is a secretive and nebulous organization that, in order to survive, has taken great pains to obscure its operations — especially since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 that flushed its leaders from their comfortable and well-appointed refuge inside the Taliban’s Islamic republic.

While bin Laden and al-Zawahiri have escaped U.S.-led efforts to locate them, a large number of second-tier leaders and operatives have been captured or killed. This means the group’s organizational chart has been altered dramatically below the top rung, making it difficult to determine the quality of the individuals who have been tapped to fill in the gaps. … with so many unknown players filling critical positions, it is difficult to determine precisely how much the attrition has affected the prime node’s ability to plan and execute attacks.

Anecdotal evidence, however, suggests that their operational ability has been diminished. The group has not launched an attack using an al Qaeda “all-star team” since 9/11. Meanwhile, outside of Iraq and Afghanistan, the attacks conducted by its regional nodes, or by regional nodes working with operational commanders sent from al Qaeda prime, have decreased in frequency and impact over the past several months. The first six months of 2007 have been quieter than the first six months of 2006 and far more peaceful that the last six months of 2005. And, not to downplay the loss of life in London, Madrid, Bali and other places, but in terms of numbers, the death tolls and financial impacts of all those attacks do not hold a candle to the 9/11 attacks — even when many of them are combined.

Beyond the personnel losses al Qaeda has suffered, the loss of its dedicated training facilities in Afghanistan also has changed the way the prime node works. It is less autonomous and far more dependent on the largesse of Pakistani and Afghan feudal lords who control training camps along the border — and who are key to the security of al Qaeda prime. … Another way to gauge the health of the organization, or at least the comfort level of the group’s apex leadership, is by looking at its public relations efforts and the statements it releases to the public. Al Qaeda prime has produced a steady supply of messages in order to keep local nodes — and perhaps more important, grassroots jihadists around the world — motivated. These releases, however, reveal a change over the last several months in the way al Qaeda communicates to the world.

The number of messages from al Qaeda’s two top leaders has fallen, while the use of video has dropped dramatically. Before the October 2006 missile attack in Chingai, Pakistan, 14 out of 15 messages were released in video format; since then, only three of the nine have included video. The switch to an audio format indicates concern about operational security. It also is noteworthy that bin Laden has not been heard from in any format, audio or video, since July 1, 2006 — nearly a year now. All these factors considered, it is apparent that the apex leadership feels threatened.

Read the whole thing.

IntheNews:

Eight people have been killed and 25 wounded in Pakistan ahead of a protest over the recent sacking of the country’s top judge, according to reports.

Pakistani authorities have deployed 15,000 troops in the city of Karachi in a bid to stem violence between supporters of Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and pro-government groups ahead of a rally to be held there by the ousted chief justice.

Today’s planned protest will be the latest in a series of rallies held across Pakistan by supporters of Mr Chaudhry, who was sacked by the nation’s president Pervez Musharraf in March amid allegations that he had abused his position.

However those backing the suspended head of Pakistan’s supreme court claim that army general Mr Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup, is seeking to replace him with a less independent-minded judge ahead of potential legal challenges to his continued rule.

6:40 promotional video

My wife loves these “how it’s made” videos.

Bill Roggio reports that Pakistan has made another agreement conceding Bajaur, another portion of the Northwest Frontier territories, to Islamic extremists.

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Red agencies are currently Taliban-controlled. Yellow are threatened.

The much anticipated Bajaur Accord – a peace agreement purportedly with the local tribal leaders of the Mamoond tribe and the government – has been signed in Pakistan’s lawless tribal agency. The details of the agreement are not yet available, however the Daily Times has described it as “a step towards a North Waziristan-like peace accord. Bajaur Agency.” Pakistan conveniently finished negotiations as international attention is on the crisis over the removal of Pakistan’s chief justice.

It appears, like in the North and South Waziristan deals, that the government has openly negotiated with the Taliban and al Qaeda. “We hope that a North Waziristan-like deal is also reached between the government and tribal militants, led by Faqir Mohammad,” sources told Dawnon condition of anonymity. Faqir Muhammad is a senior leader within the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM, or Movement for the Implementation of Mohammad’s Sharia Law), the “Pakistani Taliban” who has sent over 10,000 foot soldiers to fight alongside the Taliban during the U.S. invasion in 2001.