How did US citizen Gary Faulkner manage to get entry visas for Pakistan six times, bring along weapons, roam the military-prohibited tribal region, and not once catch the eye of Ambassador Husain Haqqani and his staff at the Pakistan embassy in Washington DC?
This question is important because only a few months ago Ambassador Haqqani faced accusations he issued visas to tens and possibly hundreds of US citizens without verifying who these visa applicants represented. Most of them, however, claimed to be traveling on US government business. Pakistani security officials suspected Mr. Haqqani was basically facilitating US intelligence agents and private security contractors for Pentagon and CIA. By directly issuing visas, Mr. Haqqani avoided the long route through the Pakistan Foreign Office, which also meant verification by law enforcement agencies.
This issue is so close to Ambassador Haqqani's heart that at one point late last year he fired a letter to Pakistan's Foreign Secretary and ISI chief warning them that blocking visas to US citizens would endanger the supply of military hardware.
Mr. Faulkner traveled to Pakistan six times and was caught in the last one carrying a gun, a knife and hashish while 'hunting' for bin Laden in the Pakistan border region. He lied to Pakistani investigators that he planned to cross into Afghanistan. He never tried to cross into Afghanistan in the previous five trips.
Despite violations of Pakistani visa and laws, he was released without a single charge, not even a police report for the record. This was done most probably on the orders of Interior Minister Rehman Malik.
While it's nice to be nice to others, the problem is that such generosity is never reciprocated by the US government, which continues to prosecute innocent Pakistani college students on terror-related charges in cases where FBI agents planted flimsy evidence to promote their careers.
Compare Faulkner to Adnan Mirza, a twenty-something Pakistani and his cousin Shiraz.
Adnan remains in jail for the past 4 years because FBI is forcing him to accept guilt while he won't accept something he didn't do. The so-called evidence against him consists of [believe it or not] a tape recording where an undercover FBI agent pretending to be Muslim lead him into a conversation on Iraq and Afghanistan. Adnan's cousin Shiraz, whose wife and child are US citizens and whose aging parents live with him in the US, was released by a US judge for lack of evidence. But last week, FBI descended on him as he celebrated his child's birthday after Amb. Husain Haqqani colluded with US authorities to issue his deportation papers.
This is the worst part, where the Pakistani ambassador has actually been forcing these kids to accept the false charges against them. What Mr. Haqqani should have done was to tell US authorities that fake terror cases against Pakistani citizens for war propaganda purposes would hurt US-Pakistan relations. But of course Mr. Haqqani can't do that.
Moral of the story is that Pakistanis can rot in US jails but a US citizen who is in clear violation of Pakistani laws will always be promptly released by a pro-US government in Islamabad. These Pakistani officials, whose lives and careers exist outside Pakistan, don't even have the imagination to drive a fair bargain by exchanging Mr. Faulkner for Mr. Mirza, or even for Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, who might be partially guilty in some ways but whose method of punishment would forever remain a stain on the faces of those American and Pakistani political and intelligence officials who handled her case.
It is important to add a nore here about how ordinary Americans have dealth with Adnan Mirza's case in Houston. Ordinary Americans are good people who are confused and scared because of these fake terror cases. Many of them are coming out now to defend Adnan Mirza. These are college students and charity acitivists who knew him. But Amb. Haqqani won't defend this Pakistani because, well, Mr. Haqqani can't upset FBI since he has to live in the US long after the incumbent US-installed Pakistani govt. is gone.
P.S.: Mr. Faulkner plans to return to Pakistan in August. Let's see if Amb. Haqqani will grant him a visa for the seventh time.
For more information on Adnan Mirza, please see www.FakeTerror.com
wow wow...why blame interior ministry when the real culprit is ISI!!! and thats the reason why taliban bomb the ISI and FIA....ahmed qureshi is a mummy daddy journalist installed once by musharraf....yes ahmed... i mean it and you know it.
ReplyDeletewhen some thing good happens, then its because of the ISI,
ReplyDeleteand when some thing fucks up, its the interior ministry!!
interior ministry is a zero entity in front of ISI and MI ....
blackwaters were here , because ISI let them in...interior ministry is too impotent to handly or even try covert operations like these....
ReplyDeleteARMY IS EQUALLY CORRUPT AND SO AS THE DG ISI from 2004 - 2007 who is now the coas....!!
WAKE UP EVERY ONE.
There should be a minimum level of scrutiny into the matter before granting visas and entries into a country, both from the visa issuing authorities and the immigration staff.
ReplyDeleteThe important question here is was he a potential threat to Pakistan…. No, did he endanger our national security …. Again no! So he maybe a bounty hunter, lunatic but he did not pose serious threat. We need to focus on more vital issues that endanger Pakistan such as the strong presence of militants in North Waziristan or the growing nexus of Punjabi Taliban here is some food for thought Ahmed Qureshi!
ReplyDeleteImagine a Pakistani citizen entering the United States six times, with guns, bullets and God knows what else and accessing regions of the US declared sensitive by the US military. And when arrested, he is promptly put on a plane home with no regard to the country's laws and no questions asked about such a breach?
ReplyDeleteMr. Faulkner may not have been a threat to Pakistan's security, but the manner of his repeated entry into and actions inside Pakistan demonstrate how Amb. Haqqani and Mr. Malik have been facilitating the entry of CIA agents into Pakistan who are here for covert US intelligence ops that have nothing to do with Pakistan's interests.
To the PPP and Haqqani's lackeys here, let me just say that ISI has nothing to do with how these CIA agents were let in by Mr. Haqqani & Co. ISI is hands-off these days and is simply watching. When the time comes, the people of Pakistan will take Zardari, Gilani, Haqqani & Co. to task in an appropriate way.
To another Haqqani lackey here, there are no terrorists in North Waziristan except those belonging to the so-called Pakistani Taliban who escaped from South Waziristan. These terrorists are armed and financed by rogue CIA elements inside Afghanistan with the help of Indians and the poodles of Amrullah Saleh. Other than these terrorists and terrorist-abetters, there are no terrorists in North Waziristan.
Ahmed is out of his mind and is obsessed with His Excellency Haqqani. Hence he keeps publishing all false reports about everybody. There is as usual no evidence to prove those allegations. He has lost his credibility.
ReplyDeleteFor once I think the author is justified but then again such relationships are based on personal motives not necessarily identical motives. Bas examples or rogue elements exist on both sides and this is what complicates the whole scenario.
ReplyDeleteWell said Farzana. I agree with you completely. Unscrupulous rascals like AQ deserve to be locked up for infinity. AQ f*** o**
ReplyDeleteok so i assume all of you are ok with our citizens languishing in jails,you dont give a rats ass aboutit when other countries,even the most impoverished 3rd world countries fight for the rights of thier citizens regardless of whose right and whose wrong because the honour and respect of a nation is at stake in a foreign country.what beghairat pakistanis we are.bravo.
ReplyDeleteamericans/foriegners brandishing weapons in your capital,expanding thier embassy to occupy a major chunk of our capital and you think that is not relevant at all to the security of this country,NATO tankers parking themselves and building depots wherever they feel like is NOT endangering the lives of pakistanis,you think rehman malik,a known human trafficker and whitewasher of all of zardari's haram and half The Lahore Museum is doing a fabulous job,you are totally ok with a pak citizen bieng run off the road by an armed gora with no papers simply because his wife had the guts to tell a superpower to butt out and stop threatening her newspaper.so much for freedom of expression ,right miss anne patterson?
my my your priorities are certainly in the right place.
so i guess you wont mind when they strip you all naked on thier airports either.have fun.the beghairati of our pakistani "liberals" amazes one.
yes only we deserve zardari,especially when i read BS like the comments above.you wanna know what Mr Haqqanis problem is?he is in the most crucial/important government post but he is anti pakistan and anti islam to the core.when your morals,values go to hell and your qibla,kaaba is dollars then this is how you represent pakistan and present your case to the world:
"citing editorial of Newsweek International that, while quoting Hussain Haqqani, had written about the problem of militancy and terrorism in Pakistan. According to Haqqani, “The problem began with the very existence of Pakistan as the country came into being in the name of Islam and the evil of Jihad could not be controlled for this reason.”
http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Politics/13-May-2010/Uproar-in-Senate-over-Haqqanis-comments
all of you are pondscum.no self respecting pakistanis.this statement sums up how much importance religion or ethics have in Haqqani's life.The statement is tantamount to treason.it puts a huge cross over every ordinary pakistanis basic beliefs and you have no problems with that.
you want to stop terrorism?do what iran did.convince your holier than thou paragon of virtue Mr Rehman Malik,Rana Sanaullah and whatnot to hang all terrorists IMMEDIATELY.DEATH PENALTY for all of them just as Iran did it with Rigi.now thats a stance.an eye for an eye.
they will never do it though.
why anger amreeka bahadur?there are piles of documents,articles that AQ has published that are evidence of rehman maliks consent to let in blackwater etc but obviously who needs india for an enemy when we have pakistanis like you?