Van nieuwsblog.burojansen.nl

The channel says everybody knew where the office was, including the Americans
The Kabul offices of the Arab satellite al-Jazeera channel have been destroyed by a US missile.

This office has been known by everybody, the American airplanes know the location of the office, they know we are broadcasting from there

Al-Jazeera Managing Director Mohammed Jasim al-Ali
The Qatar-based satellite channel, which gained global fame for its exclusive access to Osama Bin Laden and the Taleban, announced that none of its staff had been wounded.

But al-Jazeera’s managing director Mohammed Jasim al-Ali, told BBC News Online that the channel’s 12 employees in Kabul were out of contact.

Mr Jasim would not speculate as to whether the offices were deliberately targeted, but said the location of the bureau was widely known by everyone, including the Americans.

He also expressed concern at reports that Northern Alliance fighters were singling out Arabs in the city since they took over early on Tuesday.

Critical situation

The station said in an earlier report the bureau had been hit by shells when the Afghan opposition forces entered the capital.

Al-Jazeera confirmed later that it was a US missile that destroyed the building and damaged the homes of some employees.

Al-Jazeera presenter
The station has been viewed with suspicion in the West for its access to the Taleban
“The situation is very critical,” Mr Jasim told the BBC from the channel’s offices in Doha.

“This office has been known by everybody, the American airplanes know the location of the office, they know we are broadcasting from there,” he said.

He said there had been no contact with Kabul correspondent Taysir Alluni because all their equipment had been destroyed.

The Northern Alliance has reportedly ordered most reporters in Kabul to gather at the Inter-Continental Hotel.

“Now that the Northern Alliance has taken over, it is too dangerous,” Mr Jasim said, adding that he had heard that some Arabs had been killed.

Taleban withdrawal

Earlier, al-Jazeera correspondent Yusuf al-Shuli quoted Taleban officials in their southern stronghold of Kandahar as saying they had withdrawn from the cities to spare the civilians air bombardment and acts of vengeance by the Northern Alliance.

Al-Jazeera footage of three boys reported to be Bin Laden’s sons
Al-Jazeera said these three boys are Bin Laden’s sons
“They told us that reoccupying these cities will not take long once the air cover that supports the Northern Alliance is over,” he said.

He said there was a “mixture of anger, despair, and disappointment among most people” in Kandahar at the fall of Kabul, but the situation there was calm.

Al-Jazeera has a reputation for outspoken, independent reporting – in stark contrast to the Taleban’s views of the media as a propaganda and religious tool.

But the channel has been viewed with suspicion by politicians in the West and envy by media organisations ever since the start of the US-led military action in Afghanistan.

Exclusive access

For a time it was the only media outlet with any access to Taleban-held territory and the Islamic militia itself.

It broadcast the only video pictures of Afghan demonstrators attacking and setting fire to the US embassy in Kabul on 26 September.

The banner of al-Jazeera
The channel says its guiding principles are “diversity of viewpoints and real-time news coverage”
Most controversially, it was the first channel to air video tapes of Osama Bin Laden urging Muslims to rise up against the West in a holy war.

Last week it showed footage of three young boys reported to be Bin Laden’s sons.

Western governments at one stage warned that the channel was being used by the al-Qaeda network to pass on coded messages to supporters around the world.

Tuesday, 13 November, 2001, 13:48 GMT

Find this story at 13 November 2001

Copyright BBC

Today the Government has published a report submitted to the Prime Minister by Sir Peter Gibson and Dame Janet Paraskeva, the Panel of the Detainee Inquiry, on the Inquiry’s work.
The Inquiry’s Report speaks for itself. It is a rigorous, thorough and independent piece of work. It reveals more information than ever before about the workings of Government and the Agencies, on the issues highlighted in the report.
Sir Peter said:
“There are matters which deserve further investigation. That is what the documents have disclosed and we explain why in our report.”
Dame Janet said:
“We have worked hard to put as much as possible into the public domain. I do hope the Government will decide to build on our work in a future Inquiry and give the detainees a chance to have their say.”
The library of documents, the analysis of information and preliminary identification of potential witnesses the Inquiry carried out, will save any subsequent Inquiry a huge amount of time and resource.
The report does not find facts or reach conclusions. It is based on the scrutiny of documents, no witness has yet had the opportunity to explain or add to this information. But the Inquiry has shone a bright light onto issues which might be investigated further by a future Inquiry or on which the Government can take action now.
The Inquiry covered four separate themes: interrogation and treatment issues, rendition, training and guidance as well as policy and communications. Its work revealed 27 separate issues the Inquiry would like to have investigated further and which might be followed up by a future Inquiry.
In summary the report says:
Interrogation and Treatment issues:
Documents indicate that in some instances UK intelligence officers were aware of inappropriate interrogation techniques and mistreatment or allegations of mistreatment of some detainees by liaison partners from other countries.
Rendition
Documents indicate that Government or its Agencies may have become inappropriately involved in some cases of rendition.
Training and Guidance
No reason to doubt that instruction to personnel was that detainees must be treated humanely and consistently with UK’s international legal obligations. But officers on the ground needed clear guidance on when and with whom to raise concerns.
Policy and Communications
Documents raise the question whether the Agencies could have identified possible patterns of detainee mistreatment more quickly and whether or not sufficient information was given to the ISC to enable it to perform its duties.
Notes for editors:
The Inquiry’s original task was set out by the Prime Minister when he announced its establishment on 6 July 2010, to: “….look at whether Britain was implicated in the improper treatment of detainees, held by other countries, that may have occurred in the aftermath of 9/11”
On 18 January 2012, the then Justice Secretary, told the House: “….. following consultations with Sir Peter Gibson, the chair of the Inquiry we have decided to bring the work of his Inquiry to a conclusion. We have agreed with Sir Peter that the Inquiry should provide Government with a report on its preparatory work to date, highlighting particular themes or issues which might be the subject of further examination. The Government are clear that as much of this report as possible will be made public.”
As the Justice Secretary made clear in his statement to the House, the CPS’ announcement of new criminal investigations to be carried out by the Metropolitan Police meant that the Inquiry start its mandate as originally envisaged.
The Inquiry examined some 20,000 documents and as a result has raised a number of robust questions for a future Inquiry to investigate further and a number of areas where the Government can act now. The vast majority of the documents the Inquiry examined were highly classified.
For more information including the Inquiry’s Terms of Reference, Protocol, biographies of Sir Peter Gibson and Dame Janet Paraskeva, and a link to the report please visit: www.detaineeinquiry.org.uk
Find this story at 19 December 2013
Find the report at
© UK Crown Copyright 2013

British intelligence officers were told to ignore evidence of breaches of the Geneva convention when detainees from Iraq and Afghanistan were being interrogated in 2002, a report by the aborted inquiry into alleged British complicity in torture has found.
The inquiry was axed earlier this year after fresh criminal investigations were launched into allegations involving Libyan victims Photo: EPA
British intelligence officers were told to ignore evidence of breaches of the Geneva convention when detainees from Iraq and Afghanistan were being interrogated in 2002, a report by the aborted inquiry into alleged British complicity in torture has found.
The orders from MI6’s head quarters to intelligence officers came as Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, was telling MPs that anyone who is captured “should be treated humanely in accordance with the Geneva Convention”.
The report published by Sir Peter Gibson disclosed that in 2002 spies working for MI6 overseas were told to turn a “blind eye” to any evidence they witnessed of breaches of the Convention, which sets out how prisoners should be treated.
Documents uncovered by the inquiry showed that “officers were advised that, faced with apparent breaches of Geneva Convention standards, there was no obligation to intervene”, the report said.
“Officers were also advised that such conduct should only be raised with the detaining authority ‘if circumstances allow’. Officers were not advised to cease any interview immediately if they felt that the detainee was not being treated in accordance with the appropriate standards.”
Related Articles
Government ‘risks accusations of burying bad news by publishing Gibson on day of Woolwich verdicts’ 19 Dec 2013
Britain pays out £2m to illegal rendition Libyan 13 Dec 2012
Gibson torture inquiry abandoned 18 Jan 2012
Ken Clarke abandons Gibson torture inquiry 18 Jan 2012
MI5 and MI6 in the clear over allegations of torture in Pakistan 12 Jan 2012
MI6 spies died in battle against al-Qaeda, Hague to say 16 Nov 2011
Mr Blair had told MPs on January 16, 2002 : “I totally agree that anybody who is captured by American troops, British troops or anyone else should be treated humanely in accordance with the Geneva Convention and proper international norms.”
Yet two days later, Mr Blair wrote on the bottom of a Number 10 note about detainees in Guantanamo: “The key is to find out how they are being treated.
“Though I was initially sceptical about claims of torture, we must make clear to the US that any such action wd be totally unacceptable & v. quickly establish that it isn’t happening” [sic].
The partly-redacted report recommended 27 areas which should be examined further, adding that it “would also want to put on its recognition of the extreme harshness of the conditions and the treatment experienced by the detainees”.
One area it wanted to examine was whether “UK officers may have turned a blind eye to the use of specific, inappropriate techniques or threats used by others and used this to their advantage when resuming an interview session with a now compliant detainee”.
The inquiry was axed earlier this year after fresh criminal investigations were launched into allegations involving Libyan victims. The report also found that Britain “may have become inappropriately” involved in some cases of rendition of suspected terrorists.
The heads of both MI5 and MI6 have been asked to give their responses to MPs on the Intelligence and Security Committee, which is investigating the claims, by February.
Ken Clarke, the Cabinet Office minister in charge of the inquiry, said the report “finds no evidence in the documents to support any allegation that UK intelligence officers were directly responsible for the mistreatment of detainees held by other countries overseas”.
He added that it was important when considering the report to bear in mind it was a period “when we and our international partners were suddenly adapting to a completely new scale and type of threat from fundamentalist religious extremists.
Mr Clarke said: “It is now clear that our agencies and their staff were in some respects not prepared for the extreme demands suddenly placed on them.”
He said: “There is some damage to our reputation which prides itself as a beacon of justice, human rights and the rule of law. If failures and mistakes were made in this period that is a matter of sincere regret.”
Jack Straw, who was Labour foreign secretary at the time, flatly denied that he knowingly facilitated the torture of British citizens by US authorities, even though he authorised their transfer to Guantanamo Bay.
By Christopher Hope, Senior Political Correspondent
4:34PM GMT 19 Dec 2013
Find this story at 19 December 2013
© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2013

MI6 agents in Afghanistan were told they were not obliged to intervene if they witnessed suspected terrorists being harmed by their American captors, an official inquiry into allegations Britain was complicit in torture has disclosed.
It also concluded that UK operatives “may have become inappropriately” involved in some cases of rendition of captives who were believed to be al-Qa’ida fighters.
Sir Peter Gibson’s investigation listed 27 areas he believed needed further inquiry, including whether the Government should have done more to obtain the release of UK nationals locked up at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
It suggested that the Labour minister Jack Straw should have asked more questions when he was Foreign Secretary about the UK’s possible involvement in activities in breach of the Geneva Convention.
Documents released by Sir Peter, a former High Court judge, showed an MI6 officer reported back to headquarters in London what he had seen as American officers interrogated captives at Bagram airbase, near Kabul, in January 2002.
A telegram he received in reply read: “It appears from your description that they may not be being treated in accordance with the appropriate standards. Given that they are not within our custody or control, the law does not require you to intervene to prevent this.”
He was reminded that the “Americans understand that we cannot be party to such ill treatment nor can we be seen to condone it”.
But the telegram made clear there was no automatic requirement to intervene if UK officers witnessed inhuman treatment of captives. It said: “If circumstances allow, you should consider drawing this to the attention of a suitably senior US official locally.”
No official complaint over the episode was passed to the American authorities and seven days later Tony Blair reassured MPs that detainees in the US detention camp of Guantanamo were being treated humanely.
Sir Peter said he wished he has been able to investigate further “whether in some cases, UK officers may have turned a blind eye to the use of specific, inappropriate techniques or threats used by others and used this to their advantage when resuming an interview session with a now compliant detainee”.
The inquiry was set up two and a half years ago by David Cameron but was heavily criticised by human rights lawyers who abandoned co-operation.
It was scrapped last year and responsibility for examining alleged complicity transferred to a parliamentary committee. Human rights groups denounced the decision as a “whitewash”.
Sir Peter on Thursday published an interim report setting out the reasons he believed his inquiry should be re-established.
In a damaging finding, he said: “A theme that runs through a number of the lead cases considered by the inquiry is whether treatment issues – such as sleep deprivation, hooding and media reports of waterboarding – were raised appropriately with the relevant liaison partner responsible for the detention and treatment in question”.
He said the inquiry had received papers suggesting that in “some instances there was a reluctance to raise treatment issues” for fear of harming relations with the United States.
The inquiry also found that while no formal request was put to the UK, records show the Government was aware that US officials were considering the use of Diego Garcia, an island in the British Indian Ocean Territory, for holding or transiting detainees between November 2001 and January 2002.”
The report said: “There is an issue as to whether the Government and the Agencies may have become inappropriately involved in some cases of rendition.”
Mr Straw told MPs on Thursday: “As Foreign Secretary I acted at all times in a manner which was fully consistent with my legal duties with national and international law. And I was never in any way complicit with the unlawful rendition or detention of individuals by the United States or any other state.”
Nigel Morris
Thursday, 19 December 2013
Find this story at 19 December 2013
© independent.co.uk

Die Daten können Experten zufolge Hinweise für gezielte Tötungen liefern: Nach SPIEGEL-Informationen stammt ein beträchtlicher Teil der an die NSA übertragenen Daten aus der Funkzellenauswertung in Afghanistan. Der BND wiegelt ab.

Hamburg – Der Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) übermittelt nach SPIEGEL-Informationen afghanische Funkzellendaten an den US-Geheimdienst NSA. Spionageprogramme wie XKeyscore erstellen daraus Bewegungsprofile. Sie zeigen mit nur wenigen Minuten Verzögerung an, wo sich Handy-Nutzer aufhalten – und spielten womöglich eine wichtige Rolle bei der gezielten Tötung von Qaida-Kämpfern durch US-Drohnen.

Der BND erklärte, Mobilfunkdaten seien für eine zielgenaue Lokalisierung eines Menschen nicht geeignet. Experten gehen aber davon aus, dass Funkzellendaten Hinweise für gezielte Tötungen liefern können. Auch die “Süddeutsche Zeitung” hatte am Samstag einen Experten zitiert, wonach die Daten des BND zur Ortung nützlich seien.

Der Bürgerrechtler Burkhard Hirsch (FDP) hält den Datentransfer, der offenbar jenseits der parlamentarischen Kontrolle stattfindet, für sehr problematisch. “Wenn der BND in solchem Umfang für einen anderen Geheimdienst tätig wird, dann ist das ein politischer Vorgang, der unter allen Umständen im zuständigen Bundestagsgremium hätte behandelt werden müssen”, sagte Hirsch dem SPIEGEL.

BND-Präsident Gerhard Schindler sagte der “Bild am Sonntag”, die Kooperation mit der NSA diene “auch dem unmittelbaren Schutz unserer in Afghanistan eingesetzten Soldatinnen und Soldaten”. Die durch die Fernmeldeaufklärung gewonnenen Erkenntnisse trügen dazu bei, Anschlagsplanungen von Terroristen rechtzeitig erkennen zu können. Dies gehöre zu den “prioritären Aufgaben” eines Auslandsnachrichtendiensts.

Gegenüber dem SPIEGEL erklärte der BND, er habe seit Januar 2011 “maßgebliche Hilfe” bei der Verhinderung von vier Anschlägen auf deutsche Soldaten in Afghanistan geleistet. Bei weiteren 15 verhinderten Anschlägen habe die Datenüberwachung “zu diesen Erfolgen beigetragen”.

11. August 2013, 14:12 Uhr

Find this story at 11 August 2013

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2013

A media report on Wednesday alleged that a NATO document proves the German military knew about the NSA’s Prism surveillance program in 2011. But both Berlin and the country’s foreign intelligence agency deny the account, saying there was a NATO program with the same name in Afghanistan.

The German government has so far claimed that it knew nothing of the United States’ Prism spying program, revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden last month. But parts of a confidential NATO document published by daily Bild on Wednesday show that the German military, the Bundeswehr, may have already been aware of the National Security Agency’s operations in 2011, the paper alleged.

The document, reportedly sent on Sept. 1, 2011 to all regional commands by the joint NATO headquarters in Afghanistan, gives specific instructions for working together on a program called Prism, which the paper said was the same as that run by the NSA. According to Bild, the document was also sent to the regional command in northern Afghanistan, for which Germany was responsible at the time under General Major Markus Kneip.

Should the media report be confirmed, Berlin’s claims of ignorance will prove to have been false. But on Wednesday afternoon, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert denied the Bild story, saying that the document referred to a separate program that had been run by NATO troops, and not the US. The programs were “not identical,” he said.

The BND, Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, also weighed in with a statement, saying that the program had not been confidential and was also not the same as the NSA’s Prism operation. “The program called Prism by the Bild report today is a NATO/ISAF program that is not identical to the NSA’s program,” it said. “The BND had no knowledge of the name, range or scope of the NSA program.”

A Separate Prism Program?

According to the document cited by Bild, as of Sept. 15 that year, regional commands were instructed to apply for monitoring telephone calls and e-mails, according to the document, in which Prism is named at least three times. “Existing COMINT (communications intelligence) nominations submitted outside of PRISM must be resubmitted into PRISM IOT,” it reads.

It also states that access to the Prism program is regulated by the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System (JWICS), which is used by various US intelligence services to transmit classified information.

“Coalition RCs (regional commands) will utilize the US military or civilian personnel assigned to their collection management shop ISRLO (Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Liaison Officer),” it goes on. In Bild’s assessment, “military or civilian personnel” stands for US intelligence service staff.

Keeping Track of Terrorists

The purpose of all this was to “submit the telephone numbers and email addresses of terrorists into the surveillance system,” the paper reports.

It also claims to have seen documents indicating that the BND, Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, provided such telephone numbers to NATO, where they were ultimately fed into the surveillance system as well.

The reason for the NATO order was that the NSA’s director had tasked the US military with coordinating surveillance in Afghanistan, Bild reported.

The German Defense Ministry told the paper that it had “no information and knowledge of such an order,” but would be looking into the matter.

In response to the report, Green party parliamentarian and defense spokesman Omid Nouripour told SPIEGEL ONLINE that Defense Minister Thomas de Maizière must clarify the situation. “These circumstances destroy the government’s line of defense” on the NSA scandal, he said. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right coalition can “no longer claim it didn’t know anything about Prism.”

As more details emerge about the scope of the NSA’s worldwide spying program and Germany’s alleged role in the surveillance, the scandal is becoming a central issue in the country’s campaign for the upcoming general election. Germans are particularly sensitive about data protection because of their history of state encroachment on civil liberties, first under the Nazis and then in communist East Germany. And if it turns out that Berlin knowingly tolerated and participated in the NSA activities, many would see it as a betrayal by the government.

07/17/2013 12:29 PM
Media Report

Find this story at 17 July 2013

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2013

As Germany’s interior minister faced a special select committee, another surveillance program – also called Prism – has come to light. Unlike its more famous global namesake, this Prism is said to be used in Afghanistan.

German mass-circulation daily Bild first found reference to the Afghanistan Prism program in an order sent out to regional command posts from the NATO headquarters in Kabul.

The communiqué told ISAF staff to use this Prism database for any data gleaned from monitoring telecommunications or emails, starting on September 15, 2011.

The German government said it knew nothing about the database, run by the US but accessible to ISAF troops across Afghanistan – including those with Germany’s Bundeswehr – until Wednesday’s report.

“I can only tell you that this was a NATO/ISAF program, one that was not classified as secret – according to the BND,” Chancellor Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said. Seibert was referring to a press release from Germany’s equivalent to Washington’s National Security Agency (NSA), the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND). The BND also said this Prism was “not identical” to the now renowned program revealed by NSA contractor turned whistleblower Edward Snowden in May.
DW.DE
Itching to ask: What does Merkel know about NSA surveillance?

A parliamentary oversight committee in Berlin would like to know how much the German government really knows about NSA spying activities in Germany. Their leverage, however, is limited. (17.07.2013)

Another ministerial spokesman, Stefan Paris with the defense ministry, said it was quite normal for information like this not to filter back to Berlin unless there was a specific need.

Friedrich faces closed-door grilling

Elsewhere in Berlin, Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich completed two days in front of the special committee for internal affairs on Wednesday, facing further questions after his impromptu visit to Washington at the weekend.

Opposition politicians, who see increasing mileage in the alleged NSA espionage activities, said after the session that Friedrich’s appearance shed little light on proceedings.

“Everywhere people seem to accept the way the US side is acting with a shrug of the shoulders, while there’s no clarity anywhere,” Social Democrat parliamentarian Michael Hartmann said, adding that he felt the chancellor’s office should be answering questions instead of the interior ministry.

“My personal impression: Before September 22, nothing is meant to be put on the table here,” Green party politician Wolfgang Wieland said, naming the date of federal elections in Germany.

Friedrich has so far stressed the NSA’s supposed contribution to stopping five terror plots in Germany, offering data on two of them to date, when discussing the issue. The minister controversially said on Monday that there was a “super-fundamental right” to protecting public safety that trumped even privacy laws.

British blow to EU data dreams?

Free Democrat politician Hartfried Wolff, a member of the Bundestag’s interior committee, said on Wednesday that Friedrich had outlined one blow to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s proposed response.

Merkel said in a key television interview on Sunday that she would be seeking unified EU rules on data protection to allow the bloc to handle the issue better.

According to Wolff, Friedrich said that the UK was unlikely to support such a move. Since Snowden went public, a UK espionage program called “Tempora” has also come to light.

Friedrich is a member of the Bavarian sister party of Merkel’s Christian Democrats, the CSU. Bavaria votes in state elections one week before the German ballot.

msh/rc (AFP, AP, Reuters)
Date 17.07.2013

Find this story at 717 July 2013

© 2013 Deutsche Welle

In Germany, the scandal surrounding NSA spying is getting odder by the day. A new Defense Ministry memo suggests a claim made by a mass-circulation newspaper that Germany’s army knew about Prism in 2011 is, in fact, true.

The scandal in Germany surrounding spying activities by the United States’ National Security Agency took a surprising twist on Thursday. A report by a German mass-circulation daily that described the use of a program called Prism in NATO-occupied Afghanistan has led to the German Defense Ministry contradicting the foreign intelligence agency BND.

It started on Wednesday when the broadsheet Bild reported that the American intelligence service NSA had deployed the controversial data-collection tool Prism in Afghanistan and that Germany’s armed forces, the Bundeswehr, knew of the program by the autumn of 2011 at the latest.

German government spokesman Steffen Seibert, speaking on behalf of the BND, was quick to deny the Bild report. He said on Wednesday that the software which had been used in Afghanistan was part of “a NATO/ISAF program and was not the same as the NSA’s Prism program.” Seibert said the programs were “not identical.” According to Seibert’s account, there are two different Prism programs — the much discussed NSA Prism program, which has been used in recent years to intensively monitor German communications, as well as an ISAF program for Afghanistan.

But the Defense Ministry is now contradicting that characterization. In a two-page memo obtained by several German media outlets, Rüdiger Wolf, a high-ranking ministry official, states that the Prism program used in Afghanistan is a “computer-aided US planning and information analysis tool” used for the coordination of “American intelligence systems,” that is “operated exclusively by US personnel” and is “used Afghanistan-wide by the US side.”

Prism Accessible Exclusively to Americans

Wolf describes in detail how the Bundeswehr and NATO have no access to the US program. He adds that while there may be computer terminals at the German base in Mazar-e-Sharif that are equipped to access the program, they can only be used by Americans.

If members of the Bundeswehr wanted access to information, they had to send a special form to the IJC command center in Kabul, almost entirely controlled by the US Army — that is, if they wanted US data that went beyond the information possessed by NATO intelligence. When they got the data back, “the origin of the information” was “fundamentally unrecognizable” to the Germans.

It is precisely such procedures that Bild reported on this week, citing a classified September NATO order. In the paper, NATO members, including the German-led Regional Command North in Afghanistan, are called upon to direct requests for the “Prism” system to American personnel — military or civilian (which in this case is a reference to intelligence workers) because NATO has no access to the system. Given that Bild printed a copy of the order in its newspaper, the BND’s portrayal already seemed odd on Wednesday.

According to Wolf’s own admissions, the Germans don’t know very much about the Prism program in Afghanistan. It is unclear, for example, how Prism is deployed at the US Army-dominated headquarters in Kabul and the ministry doesn’t know the “extent of use.” However, Wolf once more reiterated that all information obtained from intelligence sources served to protect German soldiers — including “insights provided by the US side that could have come from Prism.”

A Slap in the Face

The Defense Ministry is also very cautious compared to the BND when it comes to deferentiating the Prism program in Afghanistan from the Prism spying program that was exposed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and involves the systematic monitoring of German communications. The information supplied by the US would have pertained only to the situation in Afghanistan. It was “not a data fishing expedition” on German citizens, according to the memo, and in fact had “no proximity” to the NSA surveillance program in Germany and Europe.

With his cautious formulation, Wolf deliberately avoids saying whether or not the two programs are identical.

This representation of the facts, which was already made to some extent on Wednesday by Defense Ministry spokesman Stefan Paris, is like a slap in the face for the BND. Shortly after Seibert appeared at the press conference, insiders wondered why the intelligence agency would so unambiguously commit itself to the position that the Prism program in Afghanistan is part of the composite ISAF system. But the BND didn’t pull back on its position, although Paris clearly said that the Prism program in Afghanistan is operated exclusively by Americans.

Members of the opposition were quick to attack the BND for its assertions. “The Chancellery, acting on behalf of the BND, deliberately lied to the public on Wednesday,” Green Party defense expert Omid Nouripour told SPIEGEL ONLINE. According to Nouripour, Wolf’s description makes it clear that there is no NATO Prism program. The German government, he says, should stop making excuses and finally begin to seriously investigate the spying scandal.

07/18/2013 09:26 PM

By Matthias Gebauer

Find this story at 18 July 2013

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2013

Following reports the CIA gave millions of dollars to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, MI6 has said it sent “ghost money” to the country’s government. The donations have sparked claims the funds fuel corruption and are used to appease Afghan warlords.

UK Intelligence said the “bundles” of cash were channeled into special projects aimed at rebuilding the troubled nation, reported UK newspaper the Telegraph. However, Karzai previously stated the handouts from the CIA are an “easy source of petty cash.”

Karzai addressed claims of corruption over the weekend, categorically denying the handouts went to militant leaders and maintaining “the major part of this money was spent on government employees such as our guards.”

Money from the UK government was just a small portion of the multi-million dollar payouts sent by the CIA since 2001.

UK MPs have voiced their concern over the lack of regulation of funds that are channeled into the war-torn nation.

“Every effort towards a political fix in Afghanistan must be made and those efforts welcomed but whether or not the money is well spent is a matter that must also be considered,” Conservative MP and member of the Defense Select Committee told the Daily Telegraph. He added there “is plenty of evidence that Karzai and his clique do not have an interest in a peace settlement but instead have an interest in continuing the conflict.”

Furthermore, Karzai said some of the funds had gone towards bribing the country’s political elite, something that he described as “nothing unusual.”

The reports have given rise to accusations that funds have lined the pockets of Afghanistan’s warlords, given that many are believed to number among the country’s upper political classes.

AFP Photo / Aref Karimi

“It has been paid to individuals, not movements…we give receipts for all these expenditures to the US government,” Karzai said to press on Saturday. He has urged the CIA to continue the monetary aid that “has helped us a lot, it has solved lots of our problems.”

Both the CIA and US State Department have refrained from commenting on the reports.

The Afghan government has hitherto not specified the exact quantity of cash it receives from the CIA and MI6 every month because they are not permitted to disclose the figure. However, officials speaking to the New York Times said that the donations from the CIA amounted to tens of millions of dollars since they began following alliance force intervention in the country a decade ago.

Karzai received a barrage of criticism after reports of the foreign donations emerged, many fellow politicians regarding it as a betrayal to Afghanistan.

…

Published time: May 06, 2013 08:14
Edited time: May 06, 2013 20:21

Find this story at 6 May 2013

© Autonomous Nonprofit Organization “TV-Novosti”, 2005–2013

British intelligence is handing “bundles” of cash over to Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai for special peace projects despite warnings that handouts are promoting corruption at the heart of his regime.

MI6 officials have acknowledged that the organisation has made direct cash payments to their Afghan counterparts periodically over the 12 years Britain has been at war in Afghanistan.

Mr Karzai declared handouts from the CIA and MI6 are an “easy source of petty cash” for his government as it attempts to seal alliances with powerful regional warlords and secure defections from the Taliban.

The CIA support is believed to have amounted to tens of millions of dollars since 2001 while Britain has channelled a smaller fraction of that amount into “special projects” undertaken by Karzai’s officials.

MPs expressed concern that by simply handing over so-called “ghost money” to President Karzai and his lieutenants, British spies could not be sure that the money would not be lost to corruption.

Adam Holloway, a Conservative MP and member of the Defence Select Committee, warned that they could not be trusted even if the payments could be justified on the grounds that Taliban and other insurgents must be rewarded if they give up the fight against Nato troops.
Related Articles
US troops killed in Afghan bomb attack 04 May 2013
War moves in cycles, from air power to the ‘way of the knife’ 02 May 2013
David Cameron promises review of armoured vehicles after Afghanistan deaths 02 May 2013
Soldiers’ deaths ‘a hammer blow’ 02 May 2013

“Every effort towards a political fix in Afghanistan must be made and those efforts welcomed but whether or not the money is well spent is a matter that must also be considered,” he told the Daily Telegraph. “There is plenty of evidence that Karzai and his clique do not have an interest in a peace settlement but instead have an interest in continuing the conflict.”

As Britain draws down troop numbers before withdrawing at the end of next year, there are fears that the pressure to seek a deal with insurgents to stop or reduce attacks will see increasing amounts of secret cash spent in Afghanistan.

“We also need to know more about how and where any cash from the UK is being used – how it is being monitored, and what benefits it is actually bringing to the people of Afghanistan,” said Angus Robertson, the SNP MP and party defence spokesman. “It is enormously important to ensure that Afghanistan is as peaceful as it can be in the build up to withdrawal. The terrible roadside attack on Royal Regiment of Scotland personnel last week shows the terrorist threat is still a very real one.”

The revelation that Mr Karzai’s office is awash with cash from his allies has caused a furore in the Afghan parliament where Mr Karzai’s government has faced a barrage of corruption allegations.

“Accepting such money is a big insult to Afghanistan. All those who accepted the cash payments have betrayed the nation,” said Hidayatullah Rihaee, an MP from Bamyan province.

But Mr Karzai said the cash flow was vital to his grip on power and said he had begged the CIA station chief to continue making payments despite US political criticism.

“This is nothing unusual,” he said. “I told him because of all these rumours in the media, please do not cut all this money, because we really need it.”

He admitted that the money had been passed on to potential allies.

…

By Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent

5:39PM BST 05 May 2013

Find this story at 5 May 2013

© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2013

Failure of peace initiatives raises questions over whether British eagerness for political settlement may have been exploited

Hamid Karzai with the Finnish prime minister, Jyrki Katainen, in Helsinki. Photograph: Lehtikuva/Reuters

The CIA and MI6 have regularly given large cash payments to Hamid Karzai’s office with the aim of maintaining access to the Afghan leader and his top allies and officials, but the attempt to buy influence has largely failed and may have backfired, former diplomats and policy analysts say.

The Guardian understands that the payments by British intelligence were on a smaller scale than the CIA’s handouts, reported in the New York Times to have been in the tens of millions, and much of the British money has gone towards attempts to finance peace initiatives, which have so far proved abortive.

That failure has raised questions among some British officials over whether eagerness to promote a political settlement may have been exploited by Afghan officials and self-styled intermediaries for the Taliban.

Responding to the allegations while on a visit to Helsinki on Monday, Karzai said his national security council (NSC) had received support from the US government for the past 10 years, and the amounts involved were “not big” and were used for a variety of purposes including helping those wounded in the conflict. “It’s multi-purpose assistance,” he said, without commenting on the allegations that the money was fuelling corruption.

Yama Torabi, the director of Integrity Watch Afghanistan said that the presidency’s low-key response to the reports had “outraged people”.

“As a result, we don’t know what was the amount of money that was given, what it was used for and if there was any corruption involved. Money when it is unchecked can be abused and this looks like one. In addition, it can be potentially used to corrupt politicians and political circles, but there is no way to know this unless there is a serious investigation into it,” Torabi told The Guardian.

Kabul sources told the Guardian that the key official involved in distributing the payments within the NSC was Ibrahim Spinzada, a close confidant of the president known as Engineer Ibrahim. There is, however, no evidence that Spinzada personally gained from the cash payments or that in distributing them among the president’s allies and sometimes his foes he was breaking Afghan law.

Officials say the payments, referred to in a New York Times report as “ghost money”, helped prop up warlords and corrupt officials, deepening Afghan popular mistrust of the Kabul government and its foreign backers, and thereby helped drive the insurgency.

The CIA money has sometimes caused divisions between the various branches of US government represented in Kabul, according to diplomats stationed in Kabul, particularly when it helped give the CIA chief of station in Kabul direct access to Karzai without the US ambassador’s knowledge or approval.

One former Afghan budgetary official told the Guardian: “On paper there was very little money that went to the National Directorate of Security [NDS, the Afghan intelligence service], but we knew they were taken care of separately by the CIA.

“The thing about US money is a lot of it goes outside the budget, directly through individuals and companies, and that opens the way for corruption.”

Khalil Roman, who served as Karzai’s deputy chief of staff from 2002 until 2005, told the New York Times: “We called it ‘ghost money’. It came in secret, and it left in secret.”

One American official told the newspaper: “The biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan was the United States.”

Sources said the MI6 aid was on a smaller scale, and much of it was focused on trying to promote meetings between Karzai’s government and Taliban intermediaries, as was embarrassingly the case in 2010 when MI6 discovered a would-be Taliban leader in talks with Karzai was an impostor from the Pakistani city of Quetta.

The British payments have also been designed to bolster UK influence in Kabul, in what a source described as “an auction with each country trying to outbid the other” in the course of an often fraught relationship with the Karzai government.

Vali Nasr, a former US government adviser on Afghanistan, said: “Karzai has been lashing out against American officials and generals, so if indeed there has been funding by the CIA, you have to ask to what effect has that money been paid. It hasn’t clearly brought the sort of influence it was meant to.”

…

Karzai’s CIA cash has long precedent in Afghanistan – and a simple solution

30 Apr 2013

Nushin Arbabzadah: Afghans would have to back their own state in order to change foreign powers’ century-old system of buying leaders’ loyalty

29 Apr 2013

Afghanistan’s web of intrigue is a poor basis on which to rebuild a nation

27 Apr 2013

Small Wars, Far Away Places by Michael Burleigh – review

25 Apr 2013

Senator accuses US of ‘intelligence failings’ in tracking Tamerlan Tsarnaev

Hamid Karzai orders ban on ‘un-Islamic’ shows on Afghan TV

25 Apr 2013

President issues vague decree after clerics complain that many stations air programmes that are ‘counter to Islamic values’

Julian Borger, diplomatic editor
The Guardian, Tuesday 30 April 2013

Find this story at 30 April 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies.

KABUL, Afghanistan — For more than a decade, wads of American dollars packed into suitcases, backpacks and, on occasion, plastic shopping bags have been dropped off every month or so at the offices of Afghanistan’s president — courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency.

All told, tens of millions of dollars have flowed from the C.I.A. to the office of President Hamid Karzai, according to current and former advisers to the Afghan leader.

“We called it ‘ghost money,’ ” said Khalil Roman, who served as Mr. Karzai’s deputy chief of staff from 2002 until 2005. “It came in secret, and it left in secret.”

The C.I.A., which declined to comment for this article, has long been known to support some relatives and close aides of Mr. Karzai. But the new accounts of off-the-books cash delivered directly to his office show payments on a vaster scale, and with a far greater impact on everyday governing.

Moreover, there is little evidence that the payments bought the influence the C.I.A. sought. Instead, some American officials said, the cash has fueled corruption and empowered warlords, undermining Washington’s exit strategy from Afghanistan.

“The biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan,” one American official said, “was the United States.”

The United States was not alone in delivering cash to the president. Mr. Karzai acknowledged a few years ago that Iran regularly gave bags of cash to one of his top aides.

At the time, in 2010, American officials jumped on the payments as evidence of an aggressive Iranian campaign to buy influence and poison Afghanistan’s relations with the United States. What they did not say was that the C.I.A. was also plying the presidential palace with cash — and unlike the Iranians, it still is.

American and Afghan officials familiar with the payments said the agency’s main goal in providing the cash has been to maintain access to Mr. Karzai and his inner circle and to guarantee the agency’s influence at the presidential palace, which wields tremendous power in Afghanistan’s highly centralized government. The officials spoke about the money only on the condition of anonymity.

It is not clear that the United States is getting what it pays for. Mr. Karzai’s willingness to defy the United States — and the Iranians, for that matter — on an array of issues seems to have only grown as the cash has piled up. Instead of securing his good graces, the payments may well illustrate the opposite: Mr. Karzai is seemingly unable to be bought.

Over Iran’s objections, he signed a strategic partnership deal with the United States last year, directly leading the Iranians to halt their payments, two senior Afghan officials said. Now, Mr. Karzai is seeking control over the Afghan militias raised by the C.I.A. to target operatives of Al Qaeda and insurgent commanders, potentially upending a critical part of the Obama administration’s plans for fighting militants as conventional military forces pull back this year.

But the C.I.A. has continued to pay, believing it needs Mr. Karzai’s ear to run its clandestine war against Al Qaeda and its allies, according to American and Afghan officials.

Like the Iranian cash, much of the C.I.A.’s money goes to paying off warlords and politicians, many of whom have ties to the drug trade and, in some cases, the Taliban. The result, American and Afghan officials said, is that the agency has greased the wheels of the same patronage networks that American diplomats and law enforcement agents have struggled unsuccessfully to dismantle, leaving the government in the grips of what are basically organized crime syndicates.

The cash does not appear to be subject to the oversight and restrictions placed on official American aid to the country or even the C.I.A.’s formal assistance programs, like financing Afghan intelligence agencies. And while there is no evidence that Mr. Karzai has personally taken any of the money — Afghan officials say the cash is handled by his National Security Council — the payments do in some cases work directly at odds with the aims of other parts of the American government in Afghanistan, even if they do not appear to violate American law.

Handing out cash has been standard procedure for the C.I.A. in Afghanistan since the start of the war. During the 2001 invasion, agency cash bought the services of numerous warlords, including Muhammad Qasim Fahim, the current first vice president.

“We paid them to overthrow the Taliban,” the American official said.

The C.I.A. then kept paying the Afghans to keep fighting. For instance, Mr. Karzai’s half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, was paid by the C.I.A. to run the Kandahar Strike Force, a militia used by the agency to combat militants, until his assassination in 2011.

A number of senior officials on the Afghan National Security Council are also individually on the agency’s payroll, Afghan officials said.

While intelligence agencies often pay foreign officials to provide information, dropping off bags of cash at a foreign leader’s office to curry favor is a more unusual arrangement.

Afghan officials said the practice grew out of the unique circumstances in Afghanistan, where the United States built the government that Mr. Karzai runs. To accomplish that task, it had to bring to heel many of the warlords the C.I.A. had paid during and after the 2001 invasion.

By late 2002, Mr. Karzai and his aides were pressing for the payments to be routed through the president’s office, allowing him to buy the warlords’ loyalty, a former adviser to Mr. Karzai said.

Then, in December 2002, Iranians showed up at the palace in a sport utility vehicle packed with cash, the former adviser said.

The C.I.A. began dropping off cash at the palace the following month, and the sums grew from there, Afghan officials said.

Payments ordinarily range from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, the officials said, though none could provide exact figures. The money is used to cover a slew of off-the-books expenses, like paying off lawmakers or underwriting delicate diplomatic trips or informal negotiations.

Much of it also still goes to keeping old warlords in line. One is Abdul Rashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek whose militia served as a C.I.A. proxy force in 2001. He receives nearly $100,000 a month from the palace, two Afghan officials said. Other officials said the amount was significantly lower.

Mr. Dostum, who declined requests for comment, had previously said he was given $80,000 a month to serve as Mr. Karzai’s emissary in northern Afghanistan. “I asked for a year up front in cash so that I could build my dream house,” he was quoted as saying in a 2009 interview with Time magazine.

Some of the cash also probably ends up in the pockets of the Karzai aides who handle it, Afghan and Western officials said, though they would not identify any by name.

That is not a significant concern for the C.I.A., said American officials familiar with the agency’s operations. “They’ll work with criminals if they think they have to,” one American former official said.

…

Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting from Washington.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 29, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the job title that Khalil Roman held in Afghanistan from 2002 until 2005. He was President Hamid Karzai’s deputy chief of staff, not his chief of staff.

April 28, 2013
By MATTHEW ROSENBERG

Find this story at 29 April 2013

© 2013 The New York Times Company

President believes battle in which 10 children and a US agent died was fought by illegal militia working for spy agency

Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s campaign against CIA operations sets up a heated showdown with the US government. Photograph: S Sabawoon/EPA

President Hamid Karzai is determined to curb CIA operations in Afghanistan after the death of a US agent and 10 Afghan children in a battle he believes was fought by an illegal militia working for the US spy agency.

The campaign sets the Afghan leader up for another heated showdown with the US government, and will reignite questions about the CIA’s extensive but highly secretive operations in the country.

Karzai’s spokesman Aimal Faizi said the CIA controlled large commando-like units, some of whom operated under the nominal stamp of the Afghan government’s intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), but were not actually under its control.

“Some of them are said to be working with the NDS, but they are not armed by the NDS, not paid by the NDS, and not sent to operations by the NDS. Sometimes they only inform the NDS minutes before the operation,” Faizi said. “They are conducting operations without informing local authorities and when something goes wrong it is called a joint operation.”

One of these groups was involved in a battle with insurgents in a remote corner of eastern Kunar province in early April that left several Afghan children dead, Faizi said. Karzai has fired the provincial head of intelligence in connection with the incident.

The US citizen who died during the battle was advising the Afghan intelligence service, and the airstrike that killed the children is believed to have been called in after he was fatally injured.

The US embassy declined to comment on CIA issues, but sources with knowledge of the battle said he was an agent, and his name has not been released, usually an indication of intelligence work.

Bob Woodward in his 2010 book Obama’s Wars described a 3,000-strong Afghan militia working for the CIA, and Faizi said the Afghan government had little information about the teams. “There is a lack of clarity about their numbers and movement,” he said when asked how many men the CIA had on their payroll, or where these large teams might be based.

Woodward said the unofficial commando units were known as counter-terrorism pursuit teams, and described them as “a paid, trained and functioning tool of the CIA”, authorised by President George W Bush.

They were sent on operations to kill or capture insurgent leaders, but also went into lawless areas to try to pacify them and win support for the Afghan government and its foreign backers. Woodward said the units even conducted cross-border raids into Pakistan.

In the wake of the Kunar battle, Karzai has also ordered his security officials to step up implementation of a presidential decree issued in late February abolishing “parallel structures”. Faizi said this order was aimed primarily at dismantling CIA-controlled teams.

“The use of these parallel structures run by the CIA and US special forces is an issue of concern for the Afghan people and the Afghan government,” he said.

…

Emma Graham-Harrison in Kabul
The Guardian, Friday 19 April 2013 10.19 BST

Find this story at 19 April 2013
© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Vijfhonderdduizend euro zwijggeld heeft het ministerie van Defensie geboden aan ex-agent I.A. (42) van de militaire inlichtingendienst MIVD. Op geheime bandopnamen – in bezit van De Telegraaf – biedt mr. Marc Gazenbeek, directeur juridische zaken bij het ministerie van Defensie, duidelijk hoorbaar het ’ongelooflijk mooie’ geldbedrag aan, zoals hij zelf zegt.

In ruil moet de ex-agent alle juridische procedures staken tegen de ministeries van Defensie en van Buitenlandse Zaken. Bij de onderhandelingen tussen de ex-agent en Defensie waren ook landsadvocaat Eric Daalder aanwezig en I.A.’s advocaat Michael Ruperti.

…

door Bart Olmer en Charles Sanders

vr 18 jan 2013, 05:30

Find this story at 18 Januar 2013

© 1996-2013 TMG Online Media B.V., Amsterdam.

Forget Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and all the other secret little warzones. The real center of the U.S. drone campaign is in plain sight — on the hot and open battlefield of Afghanistan.

The American military has launched 333 drone strikes this year in Afghanistan. That’s not only the highest total ever, according to U.S. Air Force statistics. It’s essentially the same number of robotic attacks in Pakistan since the CIA-led campaign there began nearly eight years ago. In the last 30 days, there have been three reported strikes in Yemen. In Afghanistan, that’s just an average day’s worth of remotely piloted attacks. And the increased strikes come as the rest of the war in Afghanistan is slowing down.

The secret drone campaigns have drawn the most scrutiny because of the legal, geopolitical, and ethical questions they raise. But it’s worth remembering that the rise of the flying robots is largely occurring in the open, on an acknowledged battlefield where the targets are largely unquestioned and the attending issues aren’t nearly as fraught.

“The difference between the Afghan operation and the ones operations in Pakistan and elsewhere come down to the fundamental differences between open military campaigns and covert campaigns run by the intelligence community. It shapes everything from the level of transparency to the command and control to the rules of engagements to the process and consequences if an air strike goes wrong,” e-mails Peter W. Singer, who runs the Brookings Institution’s 21st Century Defense Initiative. (Full disclosure: I have a non-resident fellowship there.) “This is why the military side has been far less controversial, and thus why many have pushed for it to play a greater role as the strikes slowly morphed from isolated, covert events into a regularized air war.”

The military has 61 Predator and Reaper “combat air patrols,” each with three or four robotic planes. The CIA’s inventory is believed to be just a fraction of that: 30 to 35 drones total, although there is thought to be some overlap between the military and intelligence agency fleets. The Washington Post reported last month that the CIA is looking for another 10 drones as the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) become more and more central to the agency’s worldwide counterterror campaign.

In Pakistan, those drones are flown with a wink and a nod, to avoid the perception of violating national sovereignty. In Yemen, the robots go after men just because they fit a profile of what the U.S. believes a terrorist to be. In both countries, people are considered legitimate targets if they happen to be male and young and in the wrong place at the wrong time. The White House keeps a “matrix” on who merits robotic death. Congress (outside of the intelligence committees) largely learns about the programs through the papers.

None of these statements is true about the drone war in Afghanistan, where strikes are ordered by a local commander, overseen by military lawyers, conducted with the (sometimes reluctant) blessing of the Kabul government, and used almost entirely to help troops under fire. The UAVs aren’t flown to dodge issues of sovereignty or to avoid traditional military assets. They’re used because they work better — staying in the sky longer than traditional aircraft and employing more advanced sensors to make sure the targets they hit are legit.

Figures on the air war in Afghanistan, supplied by the U.S. military.

The U.S. military is now launching more drone strikes — an average of 33 per month — than at any moment in the 11 years of the Afghan conflict. It’s a major escalation from just last year, when the monthly average was 24.5. And it’s happening while the rest of the American war effort is winding down: There are 34,000 fewer American troops than there were in early 2011; U.S. casualties are down 40 percent from 2010′s toll; militant attacks are off by about a quarter; civilian deaths have declined a bit from their awful peak.

Even the air war is shrinking. Overall surveillance sorties are down, from an average of 3,183 per month last year to 2,954 in 2012. (Drones flew 860 of those sorties in 2011, and now fly 761 per month today.) Missions in which U.S. aircraft fire their weapons have declined, too. That used to happen 450 times per month on average in 2011. This year, the monthly total dropped to 360.

…

By Noah Shachtman11.09.124:00 AM

Find this story at 11 September 2012

Wired.com © 2013 Condé Nast. All rights reserved.