Resolution of the Kashmir issue would go a long way towards reducing Pakistan's preoccupation with India, says CIA veteran Bruce Riedel.
Pakistan's powerful army and the its espionage agency Inter Services Intelligence are using "terrorist brinkmanship" to threaten India and undermine their own Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to secure domestic gains against their civilian leaders, a former CIA analyst has said.
'Indians need to think clearly about what kind of future they are going to have with a Pakistan that has the fastest growing nuclear arsenal in the world, and more terrorists per square mile than any other place in the world.' Erstwhile Central Intelligence Agency veteran Bruce Riedel speaks to Rediff.com's Aziz Haniffa in an exclusive interview.
"We should tell the Pakistani army leadership that if we learn one of their officers is involved in harboring terrorists, planning terror operations, or tipping terrorist bomb factories off to drone raids, we will make it personal," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official and now a senior fellow in the Saban Center at the Brookings Institute
Former CIA operative Bruce Riedel on the Uri attack and its aftermath. Exclusive to Rediff.com
Former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru had sought American assistance and wrote to the then US president John F Kennedy to provide India jet fighters to stem the Chinese tide of aggression during the 1962 Sino-India war, according to a new book.
The 2008 Mumbai terror attack by the Lashkar-e-Tayiba was aimed at "dramatically" changing the future of South Asia and provoking a war between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, a top United States counter-terrorism expert has said.
Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst who was one of the key architects of US President Barack Obama's Af-Pak policy during his first term, has called for an offensive strategy against terrorist networks and this includes hitting out at terrorist groups inside Pakistan.
'Who in Pakistan was intending to carry out one of the most grievous acts of international terrorism just a few months ago?' Former CIA official Bruce Riedel reveals how the Lashkar-e-Tayiba and the ISI planned the attack on the Indian consulate in the Afghan city of Herat in May to take Indian diplomats hostage and disrupt Narendra Modi's swearing-in.
Bruce Riedel, who spearheaded President Barack Obama's strategic review on Afghanistan and Pakistan, believes that aggressive US diplomacy to resolve the differences between India and Pakistan is 'absolutely critical' for the 'long-term chances of stabilising Afghanistan, and even more importantly, Pakistan'.He pointed out that "it got a whole lot more difficult," on 26/11 in Mumbai.
'Can India forever respond with restraint to attacks like Mumbai, the attack on the Indian Parliament? Maybe. But I wouldn't bet the future of the world on that,' former CIA veteran Bruce Riedel tells Rediff.com's Aziz Haniffa.
America has cracked the code to penetrating how the Al Qaeda communicates, and they will soon track down Ayman al-Zawahiri, who is operating relatively close to Rawalpindi, says erstwhile Central Intelligence Agency analyst Bruce Riedel.
Security expert Bruce Riedel says that from the evidence at hand so far it is clear that the jihadist infrastructure in Pakistan is closely tied to the country's spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence. Aziz Haniffa reports
Former president Pervez Musharraf knew that Osama bin Laden was hiding in the garrison town of Abbottabad and the Pakistani intelligence itself had made the safe house that sheltered him, a former Inter-Services Intelligence chief has alleged, according to a media report.
Since its release last month, Central Intelligence Agency veteran and senior adviser to four Presidents on Middle East and South Asian issues Bruce Riedel's new book, Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America and the Future of Global Jihad, has been creating waves in administration, Congressional, think tank and diplomatic circles.
Erstwhile Central Intelligence Agency veteran Bruce Riedel, who was the co-chair of the first Af-Pak (Afghanistan-Pakistan Strategic Review) of the Obama administration, had said that the US Af-Pak policy has got in only half right, because while you can't deal with Afghanistan without dealing with Pakistan, by the same token you can't deal with Pakistan without dealing with India -- meaning you've got to address Islamabad's paranoia over New Delhi.
Pakistani-American terrorist David Headley's plea bargain, under which he confessed to plotting the Mumbai terror attacks, throws light on close links between the Al Qaeda and the Lashkar-e-Tayiba, according to former Central Intelligence Agency expert Bruce Riedel.Headley's story showed in clear contours the close relationship between Al Qaeda and the Pakistani militant group LeT, Riedel, who led the review of the Obama administration's Af-Pak strategy,said.
Bruce Riedel, who spearheaded President Obama's strategic review of Afghanistan and Pakistan, spoke to rediff.com on Tuesday and said the Afghanistan elections played a huge role in maintaining credibility for the US, and that leaving the fight against Taliban abruptly would only mean victory for jihadism and a renewed nightmare for India.
Headley's trial thus promises to be fascinating and important. If it is established that Headley was working for Headley all along, it will establish the Mumbai terror attacks as being a joint Lashkay-Al Qaeda operation, says Riedel. This, if true, is bad news for American counter-terrorism ops given the Lashkar's global network of supporters the Pakistani diaspora
The Al Qaeda terrorist havens in Pakistan will be dismantled through "the combination of military operations -- aggressive military operations on the Afghan side -- and working energetically with the Pakistani government to shut down these safe havens."
United States President Barack Obama has appointed Bruce Riedel, a veteran Central Investigative Agency analyst for nearly three decades, to chair an inter-agency policy review of US policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan.Obama's press spokesman Robert Gibbs said that this policy review chaired by Riedel would have to be completed before the summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation in April.
Riedel, who was also the erstwhile director for South Asia in the National Security Council during the Clinton Administration and most recently an adviser on foreign policy to the Obama campaign, said it's difficult to believe the Pakistani government's assertions that its intelligence service has no links to LeT. If there's anything that is a 64 million dollar question today," it is finding out the "extent of its ties to the Pakistani intelligence service."
Bruce Riedel, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who is being talked about as likely to be tapped for a senior position in an Obama Administration that deals with South Asia, said while the LeT's continuing relationship with the Pakistani intelligence services, the ISI, is much debated and the Pakistani authorities deny any such relationship, "The fact is that the organisation has been tolerated in Pakistan despite the 2002 ban."
Given the rapid increase of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst suspects the country has a commitment to provide a nuclear bomb to Saudi Arabia.
Security Expert Bruce Riedel, who in an interview with rediff.com shortly after the Pathankot terror attacks began said that the attack underscored the determination of jihadist groups in Pakistan to sabotage any attempt at detente with India, writes in the Daily Beast that despite the US putting the Jaish-e-Mohammad on the terrorist sanctions list years ago, the outfit continues to coddle the Pakistani army.
The same wine tastes different in different glasses, with the aromas and flavours really coming into their own in the right glass, says wine connoisseur Alok Chandra.
This is for the first time in several years a news report has surfaced about the hiding location of the Al-Qaeda chief, who is Osama bin Laden's mentor and successor.
The CIA found that 15 Saudi agents flew on government planes to Istanbul and carried out the killing at the Saudi consulate, the report said, adding that it could complicate President Donald Trump's efforts to preserve US ties with one of the closest American allies in the region.
Al Qaeda, which has announced the creation of a separate wing for India, wants to portray Prime Minister Narendra Modi as an enemy of Islam and as such India should take its threat "very seriously", a well-known American counter-terror expert said on Friday even as the United States tried to downplay the terrorist outfit's capabilities.
In his latest book Avoiding Armageddon: America, India, and Pakistan to the Brink and Back, Bruce Riedel said that by eliminating Pakistan's desire to wage asymmetric warfare against India, it would also discourage Pakistan from making alliances with the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Tayiba and Al Qaeda.
Ex-CIA official Bruce Reidel had said in Washington, DC that amid speculations over Zardari's future, he believes that the 'creeping establishment' of Pakistan's fifth military dictatorship is underway right now, reports Aziz Haniffa.
With the Al Qaeda on the back foot, Hafeez Saeed-founded Lashkar-e-Tayiba has emerged as the world's most dangerous terror group and has connections with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence and army, a former senior Central Investigation Agency officer has said.
In an op-ed in Daily Beast, former CIA officer Bruce Riedel issued a strong warning to the two candidates that Pakistan is more important foreign policy issue than Libya, the Middle East or the attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi.
Bruce Riedel, erstwhile Central Intelligence Agency veteran and senior National Security Council official in the Clinton Administration, who spearheaded President Obama's strategic review on Afghanistan and Pakistan, has said the US-India strategic partnership, "a core relationship for the United States," today faces "its most difficult problem ever that is a ticking bomb next door in Pakistan -- a time bomb which could explode at any moment."
The experts said the terror strike shows the United States has failed to persuade Pakistan to act against Jaish-e-Mohammad and other terrorist groups.
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence was behind the 26/11 attacks as well as the July 2008 bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul, the BBC said in a damning report on the military-run spy agency that does not function "without the authority" of the Pakistan army chief.
'The combination of the LeT and the ISI is the most dangerous terrorist challenge in the world because it carries a real and present danger of provoking nuclear war.'
Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has accused the army, which covertly supports the 2008 Mumbai attacks perpetrator Lashkar-e-Tayiba, of playing a double game in the ongoing war on terror, and an "abundance of evidence backs him up," Bruce Riedel, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer, has said.
A jihadist takeover in Pakistan -- which is a 'real possibility today'-- would have devastating consequences not only for the country but the entire world, and particularly for India, says Bruce Riedel in his new book.
As the Obama administration pulled out all the stops to welcome Chinese President Hu Jintao, literally rolling out the red carpet and United States Vice President Joe Biden for the first time going on to the tarmac to receive a foreign leader, a top foreign policy analyst hoped that the American President will push China to facilitate a rapprochement between India and Pakistan.
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