9 posts tagged “pakistan”
In the first such strikes since the inauguration of President Barack Obama, suspected U.S. missile barrages today killed at least 18 people in the lawless tribal region near the Afghan border, Pakistani officials said.
The two raids suggested that the new U.S. administration intends to press ahead with attacks against Islamic militants in the rural areas, even though the campaign has been politically costly to Pakistan's Western-leaning civilian government. President Obama indicated during the campaign for the White House that he would continue to carry out strikes against "high-value" Al Qaeda and Taliban targets on Pakistani soil, particularly if the Pakistani military were unable or unwilling to act. That declaration ruffled some feathers in Pakistan, where the U.S. raids are extremely unpopular.
Although Pakistani leaders have repeatedly lodged formal diplomatic objections to the American airstrikes, the government is widely believed to have given tacit permission to U.S. forces to carry out such raids -- as long as they do not involve sending ground forces into Pakistani territory.
Pakistani news reports cited security officials as saying that at least five of those killed in today's strikes in the North and South Waziristan tribal agencies -- long known as a haven for Al Qaeda and the Taliban -- were militants. Dozens of such raids have been carried out in the last six months by the Bush administration, killing several important Al Qaeda-linked figures. But scores of Pakistani civilians, including women and children, also died, according to local officials.
The first of today's attacks took place in the North Waziristan village of Zharki, with missiles striking at least two structures, according to security officials. A short time later, a separate strike was reported in South Waziristan. The American military in Afghanistan refused any comment on the raids, but U.S. forces are known to operate unmanned Predator drones from bases on the Afghan side of the border, together with newer Reaper aircraft...
NATO joins war on Afghan opium trade
October 10, 2008
BUDAPEST (AFP) — NATO announced Friday its troops would from now on target Afghanistan's opium trade directly in an effort to cut off hundreds of millions of dollars of drug money financing the Taliban insurgency.
NATO has generally avoided tackling drugs, with many members fearful of compromising support from ordinary Afghans, including many poor farmers dependent on such crops for their livelihoods...
...NATO defense ministers agreed that "ISAF can act in concert with the Afghans against facilities and facilitators supporting the insurgency, subject to the authorization of respective nations," said spokesman James Appathurai...
...Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Romania and Spain had led opposition against officially diving into the drug war, believing that the Afghans themselves should drive such efforts...
...The agreement would allow governments to tackle the "high end" opium trade if they wanted to, but not tie the hands of those nations unwilling to take part, the official said.
"This means that the United States and Britain have free rein" to take action, a NATO diplomat said.
"Germany will continue to act in coordination with Afghan forces," he said.
Senior NATO officials say that Afghanistan's drug problem has been largely brought under control, except for seven provinces in the lawless south of the country, where many of the insurgents have been operating...
Not many details are available. The United States denies the story.
U.S. Denies Incursion into Pakistan
DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistani troops and tribesmen opened fire on two U.S. helicopters that crossed into the country from neighboring Afghanistan, intelligence officials said Monday. The U.S. denied the report.
The helicopters did not return fire and re-entered Afghan airspace without landing, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media.
"There was no such incursion, there was no such event," said Col. Gary L. Keck, Defense Department spokesman.
The reported incursion late Sunday will likely add to tensions between Islamabad and Washington...
Top US diplomat escapes gun attack in Pakistan
By MUNIR AHMAD – August 26, 2008
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — Gunmen opened fire on a vehicle carrying the top U.S. diplomat in the main city in Pakistan's volatile northwest Tuesday morning, but no one was killed or wounded, officials said.
Meanwhile, a bomb exploded at a political rally in southwestern Pakistan, wounding at least 20 people, police said.
The attack in Peshawar, the capital of the North West Frontier Province, came a day after the government announced a ban on the Pakistani Taliban, the umbrella militant group said to be behind a recent string of suicide bombings and other assaults.
It also came hours after the ruling coalition collapsed, a fracture that could strengthen a party considered more in line with U.S. goals in the war on terror.
Lynne Tracy, the principal officer for the U.S. consulate in Peshawar, the capital of the North West Frontier Province, was "100 percent safe," police official Riaz Khan said.
Mohammad Nabi, another police official, said an unknown number of gunmen in a Land Cruiser fired from an open window before fleeing the scene. He said the driver managed to reverse the vehicle and reach the residence of the U.S. official.
The U.S. Embassy provided few details, saying only that there was a "security incident" involving three consulate employees. It would not name or describe the employees...
Full Story Here
This could get really 'ugly'
Musharraf 'running out of time'
Page last updated at 14:26 GMT, Saturday, 16 August 2008 15:26 UK
Pakistan's foreign minister has said President Pervez Musharraf must stand down in the next two days or face impeachment proceedings.
"Musharraf is running out of time", said Shah Mahmood Qureshi, of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) - a major partner in the governing coalition.
Draft charges against the president include violation of the constitution and gross misconduct, officials said.
Mr Musharraf's office has said he will not resign and will defend himself.
The impeachment campaign was launched last week by leaders of the PPP and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), led by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.
A PML-N official said: "There is a long list of charges against him... we will file them, by the latest, by Tuesday."
If Mr Musharraf chooses not to quit, he would be the first president in Pakistan's history to be impeached...
Taliban flourishng, Pentagon reports
Attacks in Afghanistan grow in number, complexity, report says
By David Wood | Sun reporter
June 28, 2008
WASHINGTON - After nearly seven years of war in Afghanistan, the Taliban-led insurgency is flourishing, the Defense Department indicated in a gloomy new report yesterday, saying the insurgents are likely to accelerate their attacks and expand into new regions in northern and western regions of the country.
The Pentagon's assessment came as U.S. casualties in Afghanistan rose to 23 in June, the second-deadliest month for American forces since the U.S. invaded weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Attacks using improvised explosive devices, or roadside bombs, rose 35 percent last year, reaching 2,616 attacks, according to the report, which provided no other measures of violence or data from previous years.
The report echoed previous grim assessments by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and others, including retired four-star Marine Gen. James Jones, about the lack of progress in the U.S.-led war and Afghanistan's deep-rooted problems of violence, extremism, corruption and narcotics...
Full Story Here: Taliban flourishng, Pentagon reports
Keep in mind that right now it looks like the price of oil will be between $130.00 $133.00 and $135.00 per barrel today. Just 30 days ago, when this testimony was given, oil was $124.00 per barrel.
Real Time Price of Oil Click Here
Rising Oil Prices, Declining National Security
May 22, 2008
Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, about ten years ago, Osama bin Laden stated that his target price for oil is $144 a barrel and that the American people, who allegedly robbed the Muslim people of their oil, owe each Muslim man, woman, and child $30,000 in back payments. At the time, $144 a barrel seemed farfetched to most. Today, bin Laden is a mere $20 a barrel short of his target and there is little doubt it will be attained. I would like to impress upon this Committee that $144 a barrel oil will be perceived as a victory for the Jihadist movement and a reaffirmation that the economic warfare component of its campaign against the West is a resounding success. There is no need to elaborate on the implications of such a victory in terms of loss of U.S. prestige and our ability to prevail in the Long War of the 21st century. It is therefore imperative that the U.S. Congress do its utmost to forestall such a setback.
Deeply embroiled in a struggle against radical Islam, nuclear proliferation, and totalitarianism, the U.S. faces a crude reality: While its relations with the Muslim world are at an all-time low, more than 70 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves and over a third of production are concentrated in Muslim countries. The very same Shi‘a and Sunni theocratic and dictatorial regimes that most strongly resist America’s efforts to bring democracy to the Middle East are the ones that, because of the market’s tightness, currently drive the world oil economy. While the U.S. economy bleeds, oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran—sympathetic to, and directly supportive, of radical Islam—are on the receiving end of staggering windfalls. In 2006, the United States spent about $260 billion on foreign crude oil and refined petroleum products. This year, with oil hovering over $125 a barrel, the figure could surpass $500 billion, the equivalent of our defense budget. At today's prices, foreign oil producers are extracting a tax of more than $1,600 a year from every American man, woman and child.
While we in the U.S., which enjoys a per capita income of over $40,000 a year, are feeling the sharp pinch of high oil prices, we should all consider the impact of these prices on the world’s poor. People throughout the world who live on $2 a day are suffering far more than we can imagine as their economies hemorrhage. This has profound implications for global security, driving regional unrest, increasing poverty, and nipping in the bud progress towards democracy. Countries that are still carrying debts from the 1970’s oil shocks, are being now looted by OPEC price fixing. In fact, we are witnessing a tremendous transfer of wealth from the world’s poorest to the world’s producers of oil.
OPEC, spearheaded by Saudi Arabia, is deliberately keeping oil supply tight to prop up prices. Not only is Saudi production lower today than it was two years ago, despite the increase in demand, but the cartel has effectively deleted 2.4mbd from the global oil market in what amounts to an accounting scam. In 2007, OPEC expanded its member roster to include Ecuador and Angola – together the two had accounted for nearly 2.4mbd of non-OPEC oil. Yet, total OPEC production remained constant, allowing existing members to reduce production. This translates into a net reduction in non-OPEC supply with no equivalent increase in OPEC supply. This is equivalent to the production of Norway disappearing off the market . Further, while non-OPEC production has doubled over the last thirty years, as the graph below shows, OPEC production today is virtually identical to its production thirty years ago, even as the global economy has grown and with it demand for oil.
The flow of petrodollars from consuming economies to the coffers of producers not only casts a large shadow over America’s prospects of winning the war on terrorism but it also limits U.S. diplomatic maneuverability on central issues like human rights and nuclear proliferation. Perhaps the most powerful statement of the impact on America’s ability to accomplish its foreign policy goals came from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who in April 2006 told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “We do have to do something about the energy problem. I can tell you that nothing has really taken me aback more, as Secretary of State, than the way that the politics of energy is . . . “warping” diplomacy around the world. It has given extraordinary power to some states that are using that power in not very good ways for the international system, states that would otherwise have very little power.”
One of these states is Iran. With 10 percent of the world’s oil reserves and the world’s second largest natural gas reserve, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seems unfazed by the prospects of international sanctions against his country as a result of its efforts to develop nuclear weapons. At high oil prices, leaders of human-rights violating countries like Azerbaijan, Chad, Sudan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, too, can persecute their people with impunity. Another setback to democracy was delivered last May when Kazakhstan’s leader Nursultan Nazarbayev declared himself president for life. The control over a large part of the world’s oil and gas market allows Russia to bully its European neighbors, to play “hard to get” on Iran, and to undermine democracy in former Soviet republics like Ukraine and Georgia. Should Russia and other major gas producers like Iran go forth with plans to create an OPEC like natural gas cartel, we can expect further consolidation of power among the energy producers. Oil also lubricates the so-called Bolivarian revolution led by Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, who is using Venezuela’s oil wealth to buy political influence in the Western Hemisphere and to consolidate an anti-U.S. bloc in the region.
U.S. diplomacy is further complicated by the indefatigable thirst for energy of emerging countries like China and India, which are becoming increasingly dependent on the very same countries the United States is trying to rein in. The growing appetite of developing Asian powers not only plays into the hands of the aforementioned rogue producing nations, but also feeds what could become a global competition for control of energy resources. Rogue nations like Iran and Sudan can now buy themselves the support of a third of humanity – not to mention the protection of Chinese veto power on the U.N. Security Council – by signing energy deals with China and India. India now at stands at a crossroads. As its electricity demand grows it faces three options. It can tie itself to Iran, the holder of the world’s second largest natural gas reserve, via the proposed 1600 mile long Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline. Last month, Iran’s President Ahmadinejad visited India and Pakistan in an effort to seal the deal on this project. The implications of such a pipeline should be very clear: decades long dependence of one billion Indians on Iran. Alternatively, India can continue to develop its coal reserves and expand coal power generation. This is a sound approach from an energy security perspective; however, India has been coming under global pressure – including that of the U.S. government - to curb its greenhouse gas emissions. India’s third option is to expand nuclear power development, in collaboration with the U.S. At this point, foot dragging in Delhi is delaying ratification of a nuclear agreement with the U.S. It appears that the Iranian option may hold sway. As the largest democracy in the world, India is a vital ally to the United States. Congress should explore all options – including encouraging India and Pakistan to pursue an alternative pipeline route from Turkmenistan via Afghanistan – to ensure that India does not tie its economic future to Iran.
Stripping oil of its strategic value
The unique strategic importance of oil to the modern economy—beyond that of any other commodity today—stems from the fact that the global economy’s very enabler, the transportation sector, is utterly dependent on it, with 220 million cars and trucks in the United States alone (today, contrary to popular belief, only 2 percent of U.S. electricity is generated from oil, and conversely only about 2 percent of U.S. oil demand is due to electricity generation.) With 97 percent of U.S. transportation energy based on petroleum, oil is the lifeblood of America’s economy. America is poor in oil relative to its need. It consumes one of every four gallons in the world but has barely 3 percent of the world’s proven reserves of conventional oil. The United States now imports over 60 percent of its oil, more than twice the ratio of imports before the 1973–74 Arab oil embargo.
Neither efforts to expand petroleum supply nor those to crimp petroleum demand will be enough to reduce America’s strategic vulnerability anytime soon. When the British Navy made the shift from coal to oil, then Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill famously remarked, “safety and certainty in oil lies in variety and variety alone.” To diminish the strategic importance of oil to the international system it is now critical to expand the Churchillian doctrine beyond geographical variety to a variety of fuels and feedstocks.
Oil’s strategic value derives from its virtual monopoly on transportation fuel. This monopoly, which gives intolerable power to OPEC and the nations that dominate oil ownership and production, must be broken. Not long ago, technology broke the power of another strategic commodity. Until around the end of the nineteenth century salt had such a position because it was the only means of preserving meat. Odd as it seems today, salt mines conferred national power and wars were even fought over control of them. Today, no nation sways history because it has salt mines. Salt is still a useful commodity for a range of purposes. We import some salt, so if one defines independence as autarky we are not “salt independent”. But to most of us there is no “salt dependence” problem at all — because canning, electricity and refrigeration decisively ended salt’s monopoly of meat preservation, and thus its strategic importance. We can and must do the same thing to oil.
17 X 17
Today’s vehicles have an average lifespan of 17 years and, for the most part, can run only on petroleum. Every year 17 million new cars roll onto America’s roads. For a cost of less than $100 extra as compared to a gasoline-only vehicle, automakers can make virtually any car a flex fuel vehicle, capable of running on any combination of gasoline and a variety of alcohols such as ethanol and methanol, made from a variety of feedstocks, from agricultural material, to waste, to coal. (Alcohol does not just mean ethanol, and ethanol does not just mean corn.) Flex fuel vehicles provide a platform on which fuels can compete and let consumers and the market choose the winning fuels and feedstocks based on economics. In Brazil, where ethanol is widely used, the share of flex fuel vehicles in new car sales rose from 4 percent to 67 percent in just three years, and this year stands at about 90 percent. These cars are manufactured by the same automakers that sell to the U.S. market and entail no size, power, or safety compromise by consumers. The proliferation of flex fuel vehicles in Brazil has driven fuel competition at the pump to the point where the Brazilian oil industry has had to keep gasoline prices sufficiently low to compete with ethanol in order not to lose more market share, so low that it actually just received a government subsidy to do so. Competition in Brazil is working so well that a big Brazilian sugar and ethanol firm just bought out the distribution assets of Exxon in Brazil.
Expanding U.S. fuel choice to include biofuels imported from developing countries has significant geopolitical benefits at a time when U.S. global standing is eroding. Sugar, from which ethanol can be cheaply and efficiently produced, is now grown in one hundred countries, many of which are poor and on the receiving end of U.S. development aid. Encouraging these countries to increase their output and become fuel suppliers, opening our fuel market to them by removing the protectionist 54 cent a gallon ethanol tariff, could have far-reaching implications for their economic development. By creating economic interdependence with biomass-producing countries in Africa, Asia, and the Western Hemisphere, the United States can strengthen its position in the developing world and provide significant help in reducing poverty.
At this point, the fallacy that increased use of biofuels in general, and corn ethanol in particular, is driving world hunger must be addressed. The primary drivers of price increases for food commodities spanning the spectrum from fish to rice (neither of which are used to make fuel) and beyond are the massive increases in oil prices -- raising the cost of distribution, labor, packaging and so forth; commodity speculation driven by a weak dollar and increased calorie demand from hundreds of millions of people in China and India who have risen out of poverty and bare subsistence. Further, despite corn ethanol production, the U.S. corn food and feed product has increased 34 percent over the last five years, and U.S. food exports overall have increased 23 percent on the year. America is clearly doing its share to feed the world.
The International Energy Agency has reiterated that biofuels are key to keeping the lid on an overheated transportation fuel market. According to Merrill Lynch, without the increase in biofuels production, oil prices would have been 15 percent higher, which at current oil prices translates into a savings of over $80 billion a year to the U.S. economy. The much derided biofuels program which has facilitated this $80 billion saving, costs the taxpayer $4 billion a year. By any reasonable standard it is a far better deal to send money to America’s farmers than to various petro-dictators.
Since we hardly generate any electricity from oil, using electricity as a transportation fuel enables the full spectrum of electricity sources to compete with petroleum. Plug in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) can reach oil economy levels of 100 miles per gallon of gasoline without compromising the size, safety, or power of a vehicle. The key is changing our thinking from miles per gallon to miles per gallon of oil-based fuel – it is not the total energy consumption of the vehicle which is the problem, it is the portion of that energy that comes from petroleum. If a PHEV is also a flexible-fuel vehicle powered by 85 percent alcohol and 15 percent gasoline, oil economy could reach over 500 miles per gallon of gasoline. Ideally, plug-in hybrids would be charged at night in home or apartment garages, when electric utilities have significant reserve capacity. The Department of Energy estimates that over 70 percent of the U.S. vehicle market could shift to plug-in hybrids without needing to install additional baseload electricity-generating capacity.
Thinking Out of the Barrel
A nationwide deployment of flex-fuel cars, flex fuel plug-in hybrids, and alternative fuels could take place within two decades. But such a transformation will not occur by itself. In a perfect world government would not need to intervene in the energy market, but in a time of war, the United States is taking an unacceptable risk by leaving the problem to be solved by the invisible hand. This is especially true since the energy market is anything but free. It is manipulated by a cartel, heavily rigged in favor of the status quo, and, as the case of the ethanol tariff shows, riddled with protectionism.
Every year that passes without Congressional action to ensure that new cars sold in America are flex fuel vehicles is another year in which 17 million gasoline-only cars start their 17-year life on U.S. roads, further binding us to foreign oil. On the grounds of national security and in the interest of stemming the hemorrhaging of our economy, Congress should take swift action to require that new vehicles sold in the United States are flexible fuel vehicles. Such an Open Fuel Standard would level the playing field and promote free competition among diverse energy suppliers. Choosing not to embrace an Open Fuel Standard, is choosing to preserve oil’s monopoly in the transportation sector, and with it OPEC’s growing stranglehold over the global economy.
Anne Korin is co-director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS) and editor of Energy Security. She is also chair of the Set America Free Coalition, an alliance of national security, environmental, labor and religious groups promoting ways to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil. Korin focuses on energy supply vulnerabilities, OPEC, Africa, maritime terrorism, energy security, energy strategies and technological innovation. She appears in the media frequently and has written articles for Foreign Affairs, The American Interest, The National Review, Commentary Magazine, and the Journal of International Security Affairs. Ms. Korin has advised myriad high tech companies, and has worked on a wide variety of projects for corporations including Exxon International (Esso,) KPMG, and Goldman Sachs. She appears frequently on Capitol Hill and her advice is sought by members of Congress. Her education includes engineering degree in computer science from Johns Hopkins University and work towards a doctorate at Stanford University.
Things are getting worse in the forgotten war. Read this also: Afghanistan
Pakistani tribes reach for guns after U.S. attack
By Khalid Nisar
Fri Jun 13, 8:52 AM ET
GHALANAI, Pakistan (Reuters) - Fiercely independent tribesmen, angered by a U.S. air strike that killed 11 Pakistani soldiers this week, vowed to raise a militia to help Pakistan's army defend the border with Afghanistan.
Pakistan, a staunch ally in the U.S.-led war on terrorism, denounced Tuesday's attack on a border post in the Mohmand tribal region as "unprovoked and cowardly" and said it could undermine the cooperation in the battle against al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Elders from ethnic Pashtun tribes in Mohmand, one of seven semi-autonomous tribal regions, issued a statement late on Thursday condemning the attack as "naked aggression" and said they were ready to raise a "lashkar," or army.
"It's the duty of the government to protect and defend the frontiers and we are ready to raise a lashkar to help our army in their cause," the elders said.
"We are ready to fight for our homeland as we fought in Kashmir in 1948," they said, referring to the first war between Pakistan and India, a year after their partition.
Chanting slogans of "Down with America" and "Down with Bush," about 250 activists of an Islamic group paraded on the roads of Ghalanai, Mohmand's main town, to protest against the attack.
"We should wage jihad (Muslim holy war) to teach a lesson to America for this aggression," imam of the main mosque of Ghalanai, Abdul Khaliq, told the crowd...
Pakistan weighs ending house arrest of nuclear weapons peddler A.Q. Khan
By Saeed Shah | McClatchy Newspapers
Thursday, April 10, 2008
SLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan's new civilian government in Pakistan is reviewing whether to release A.Q. Khan, the renegade scientist who has been under house arrest since confessing to running an international black market in nuclear technology.
Freeing him would be enormously popular in Pakistan, where he is hailed as the "father of the Islamic bomb," but it would alarm the United States and other Western countries, which have accused him of selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Freeing him would be enormously popular in Pakistan, where he is hailed as the "father of the Islamic bomb," but it would alarm the United States and other Western countries, which have accused him of selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Pakistan's foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, gave the first hint earlier this week, when he said in a television interview: "I do not want to see his movements restricted as they've been in the past. He is a respected Pakistani."
Qureshi, who is known for weighing his words, said Khan "should be allowed to see friends, to go for a drive and to go have a meal at a restaurant. I see no reason why we should deprive him of that."
Khan has been under house arrest in Islamabad since January 2004, when he admitted his proliferation activities in an address on national television. He has been kept under tight security, allowed neither visitors nor communication with the outside world. Cars are not even permitted to slow down outside his villa in an upscale neighborhood of Islamabad.
But, in the last few days, he was allowed to give telephone interviews to several reporters, in which he said he hoped that the new government would lift his "unlawful" detention. Khan blamed his captivity on Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, whose allies lost in the elections in February.
He used the occasion to boast: "I saved the country for the first time when I made Pakistan a nuclear nation and saved it again when I confessed and took the whole blame on myself," he told a French news agency reporter. The implication that he covered up for others also involved in the illicit trade may not help his cause. The remark is understood to have alarmed officials.
Musharraf announced that he had forgiven Khan shortly after his confession, and the government has never charged him with any crime. Khan began a clandestine program to develop nuclear weapons for Pakistan in the 1970s, primarily to compete with bitter rival India. The project resulted in the testing of the country's nuclear bomb in 1998.
His incarceration is an emotional subject in Pakistan, with a wide swath of political opinion in favor of not only freeing him, but treating him as a national hero. At least one Islamist party has called for making him the next president.
"If he (Khan) has done anything wrong, there should be due process of law," said Khawaja Mohammad Asif, a Cabinet minister in the coalition government. "He has just been shut up, like the judges." He was referring to the judges whom Musharraf fired and put under house arrest late last year.
Khan realizes that he would never be allowed to go abroad, said an associate of the nuclear scientist, but he wants the freedom to travel within Pakistan, see family members in the southern city of Karachi, shop and eat out in Islamabad, and stay sometimes at his lakeside home, which is just outside the capital.
"He knows he's not going to be allowed to attend diplomatic parties but he wants to be able to keep a low-profile, more normal life," said the associate, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject. "He's just been detained on a presidential fiat."
If the government does not come to Khan's aid, now that democratic rule has been restored and an independent judiciary is promised, Khan is also ready to go to the courts, the associate said.
Freedom for Khan will not translate into more access by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear watchdog, or foreign governments.
Pakistani authorities have blocked the United States and international agencies from questioning Khan about his shadowy multimillion-dollar deals with rogue states, and that will remain the case. Many foreign officials suspect that he acted with knowledge, or complicity, of sections of the Pakistani state, including military personnel.
Pakistan's foreign office spokesman, Mohammad Sadiq, said Thursday: "Whatever we had to share with the international community, we have shared that. It is a closed case."
Analysts said that the international community would react negatively to news that Khan had been freed but it is unclear whether Pakistan would face any penalties because it is such an important U.S. ally in its anti-terror fight.
"I would find (Khan's release) very disturbing," said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington and a former nuclear weapons inspector.
"To me, it would be a signal that part of government is not willing to protect nuclear assets, that it starts to believe the crap about Khan that he perpetuates — that he a victim, that he's a national hero. In fact, he is a traitor."
