With tensions continuing to soar between the US and Pakistan, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency has announced that it is canceling high-level talks with the CIA’s leadership, scheduled for later this week.
The cancellation is being presented as a result of “pressing commitments” for Lt. Gen. Islam, but Pakistan officials concede that it is actually retaliation for last week’s Senate action cutting aid.
The cut was actually fairly small, just $33 million out of the $1 billion+ aid package, but was announced explicitly to spite Pakistan for jailing Dr. Shakil Afridi on treason charges. Dr. Afridi was running a phony vaccination campaign on behalf of the CIA to collect children’s DNA to scan for possible relatives of terrorists.
This is just one of a series of open issues between the US and Pakistan, however, with the US still refusing to apologize for attacking Pakistani military bases in November, and continuing to launch drone strikes on a regular basis despite formal requests by the Pakistani government to stop. The US has also accused Pakistan of “price gouging” by refusing to reopen the border to occupied Afghanistan without a pledge of higher payments for shipments.
“US still refusing to apologize for attacking Pakistani military bases in November”
The deliberate murder of 26 Pakistani troops, all to keep Pakistan in fearful submission. And now all trust is gone. And this is the problem with our Empire in its last days and as it prepares to expire in a convulsion, so greedy and deceitful have we become even to our comrades in arms, surely, all trust is gone.
I wonder if this is a case of "Let's see how far we can push the Paks before they get REALLY pissed and torch all those containers sitting in the port of Karachi – or maybe they get REALLY, REALLY pissed and break out a small nuke and make Kabul disappear."
This just strikes me as a major conflict waiting to break loose.
"…and torch all those containers sitting in the port of Karachi…" Uhm, not a bad idea. Then you can always blame it on the Taliban.
They should have hanged that doctor already. A Pakistani Doctor working with the spy agency of a foreign country is a traitor to Pakistan under any law.
CIA, Al Qaeda…is there a difference?