Pakistan's Mysterious New Spymaster | Newsweek Scope

THE TRIBAL AREAS
Predators on the Hunt in Pakistan
Sami Yousafzai 1/31/2009 12:00:00 AM
After one of the latest U.S. Predator attacks in North Waziristan, a Taliban subcommander visited the site. He's seen the results of many airstrikes over the past year or two, but this one really impressed him. The missile didn't just hit the right house; it scored a direct hit on the very room where Mustafa al-Misri ("Mustafa the Egyptian") and several other Qaeda operatives were holed up. The hit was so accurate, the subcommander says, it's as if someone had tossed a GPS device against the wall. Unfortunately for others at the scene, the mud-and-stone house collapsed, killing several Afghans along with the foreign fighters. Nevertheless, the subcommander told NEWSWEEK, "We are stunned" by such precision.
Mail Call: Get Ready, Get Set
1/17/2009 12:00:00 AM
INTERVIEW
Zardari: 'I Am a Victim Here'
Lally Weymouth 12/13/2008 12:00:00 AM
President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan is in the hot seat. Under pressure from the international community, he ordered police last week to crack down on Jamaat-ul-Dawa, a charity thought to be the public front for Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani terrorist group that India blames for the Thanksgiving attacks in Mumbai. President Zardari spoke with NEWSWEEK's Lally Weymouth just before the Jamaat arrests. Excerpts:
TERROR IN INDIA
Mutual Mistrust
Ron Moreau 12/1/2008 12:00:00 AM
If there is a lesson to be learned in the tragic Mumbai terrorist attacks, it is the urgent need for India and Pakistan finally to begin sharing intelligence information and start coordinating antiterrorist operations together. But such essential cooperation seems a long way off. Both countries' premier foreign intelligence agencies—India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)—are in fact engaged in promoting low-intensity conflicts between the two nuclear-armed neighbors that have fought three major wars. Each agency suspects the other of promoting very different and threatening agendas in the volatile region, not unlike the cold war rivalry between the CIA and the KGB. As a result, it's difficult too see how India and Pakistan, and their spy agencies, can learn to work together to identify and prevent threats to each other's national security.
INDIA
The Pakistan Connection
Ron Moreau 11/27/2008 12:00:00 AM
Around 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday, a band of 10 young armed militants zoomed up to a fishermen's colony in Colaba, on the Mumbai waterfront, in inflatable Zodiac speedboats. Locals confronted them: unlike the dark-skinned Mumbai fishermen, who speak only Marathi, the regional dialect, the intruders were young, tall and fair-skinned and spoke Urdu with a northern accent. According to local press, the gunmen reportedly told them to mind their business, then gave a raised-thumb gesture, and splitting into small groups, walked off into two different directions. The fishermen reported the suspicious men to a police post nearby, but the tip-off failed to rouse the cops to action.
POINT OF VIEW
India’s Terrorist Problem
Selig S. Harrison 10/18/2008 12:00:00 AM
The main focus of the Bush administration's war on terror has been countering the threat posed by Al Qaeda and the Taliban to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Now, the latest evidence indicates that Islamist extremists have broadened their offensive to include India—and Pakistan's own intelligence agencies are complicit. Unless Washington broadens its counterterrorism strategy and forces Islamabad to crack down, the Islamists could end up wreaking havoc not only in Pakistan but also in India—eight times larger, a rising global power with growing ties to the United States and a huge and restive Muslim minority.