US pulls staff from consulate in Pakistan

Non-essential personnel ordered to leave Lahore diplomatic mission on basis of "credible threat information".

Last Modified: 09 Aug 2013 11:44

The shift of some consulate personnel from Lahore is a precautionary measure, US officials say [AFP]

The US government has ordered all non-essential staff to leave its consulate in Pakistan's Lahore after receiving threats of attack, with the State Department also warning US citizens not to travel to the South Asian country.
Friday's announcement came as Pakistani police said assailants killed at least 10 people after opening fire outside a Sunni Muslim mosque on the outskirts of the southwestern city of Quetta.
"Staff have been moved to Islamabad where the US maintains a large embassy," Al Jazeera's Imtiaz Tyab, reporting from the capital, said.
"That's a sign that the US doesn't plan to shut down this [Lahore] consulate permanently."
The personnel reduction at the Lahore consulate was precautionary and unrelated to the recent closures ofnumerous US diplomatic missions in the Muslim world, two US officials told Associated Press news agency, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the order.
The decision comes as Pakistan celebrates the festival of Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, and a day after a suicide bomber killed 37 people at a police funeral, also in Quetta.
'Credible threat'
A senior State Department official said in a statement: "We are undertaking this drawdown due to concerns about credible threat information specific to the US consulate in Lahore."
US embassy officials said there was a "specific threat" to the consulate in Lahore and they did not know when the embassy would reopen.

"Threat reporting indicates terrorist groups continue to seek opportunities to attack locations where US citizens and Westerners are known to congregate or visit," the State Department wrote on its website.
Friday's measure comes two days after the evacuation of staff from the US embassy in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, and a recommendation to US citizens there to leave.

The US shut nearly two dozen missions across the Middle East after a worldwide alert to its citizens last week.
It gave warning that al-Qaeda could be planning attacks, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa.

The Lahore warning noted that "several foreign and indigenous terrorist groups pose a potential danger to US citizens throughout Pakistan".
There have been at least 11 attacks that have killed more than 90 people during Ramadan in Pakistan.

US evacuates consulate staff in Pakistan's second city over terror alert

Published time: August 09, 2013 02:43
Edited time: August 09, 2013 03:58

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US consulate in Lahore (AFP Photo)

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The US State Department has mandated the evacuation of most diplomats from the American consulate in Lahore, Pakistan in response to a terrorist threat on the office which is located in the heart of the Punjab province.

State Department officials said they have issued an “ordered departure” for all diplomats in Lahore Thursday, leaving behind only a small number of emergency personnel. The rest of the consulate staff was evacuated to Islamabad.

“We have picked up what we regard as a threat worthy of taking this action,” said a senior US official.

A State Department warning advised US citizens against traveling to Pakistan, saying the department has “ordered this drawdown due to specific threats concerning the US Consulate in Lahore.” The exact specifics of the threat are currently unknown.

“The presence of several foreign and indigenous terrorist groups poses a potential danger to US citizens throughout Pakistan,” the travel warning continued.

Officials refused to speculate on whether the cause for evacuation was connected with earlier threats elsewhere throughout the Middle East, although no US diplomatic posts were closed in Pakistan as a result of the prior warnings. Pakistan is thought to be the home of top Al-Qaeda leadership and Lahore, specifically, is a known stronghold for Kashkar-e-Tayyiba, which the US has deemed a terrorist group.

“We are still digging and trying to trace whether it is related,” the anonymous official told CNN. “I’m not willing to say it’s related, but can’t say it is unrelated. We just don’t have that level of granularity yet.”

At least 44 people were killed earlier Thursday when suicide bombers targeted funerals on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Approximately 30 were killed in the Pakistani city of Quetta - located in the western region of the Baluchistan Province - when an explosion detonated at the funeral of a police officer.

The US closed nearly two dozen embassies and consulates across the Middle East earlier this week after intercepting a message between senior Al-Qaeda militants who were reportedly planning an attack as the Muslim festival of Ramadan entered its final days. Diplomatic posts were closed Sunday in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Libya, and elsewhere due to US intelligence reports indicating a terror threat.

“I think we know a lot more about the when than the where. And you can tell that from the breadth of closures across North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula,” Representative Adam Schiff, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN earlier in the week. “But the when was very specific in terms of a Sunday. Obviously, that may continue and the closures may continue. The travel warning is more extensive. But this is not the usual kind of chatter, not the more generalized ‘Death to the Americans’ or ‘Death to great Satan.’”

Other experts noted that if an attack was indeed targeting a diplomatic office it would buy US officials time to identify the militants responsible or for other potential targets to prepare for a threat, which may have been the case in Lahore, Pakistan on Thursday.

“It all leads us to believe something could happen in the near future,” one US intelligence official said.
Yemen, in particular, has been of special interest to security officials.

Along with Pakistan, Al-Qaeda higher-ups are thought to be congregating in a remote mountainous region of the Arab nation.

Twelve suspected Al-Qaeda operatives were killed on Thursday alone by three US drone strikes, each of which targeted moving vehicles.

Also on Thursday, Yemeni authorities said they discovered Al-Qaeda plots focusing on foreign embassies in the capital city of Sanaa and international shipping ports in the Red Sea. An Associated Press reporter said that drones were audibly buzzing over Sanaa, leaving citizens anxious over the potential threat.

Video: US closes consulate in Lahore after threat received

POSTED AT 8:01 AM ON AUGUST 9, 2013 BY ED MORRISSEY

Last night, the US State Department closed its consulate in Lahore, Pakistan, and evacuated all but a skeleton crew of personnel to the capital of Islamabad. The embassy there remains open for business, but nineteen others will remain closed at least until tomorrow due to intelligence about a major threat.

The State Department has evacuated most of its diplomats from Lahore, Pakistan in response to a terrorist threat against the U.S. consulate, senior State Department and other senior U.S. officials told CNN.

“We have picked up what we regard as a threat worthy of taking this action,” one senior U.S. official told CNN.

The State Department issued an “ordered departure” for all of its diplomats in Lahore Thursday, except for a handful of emergency personnel. The diplomats were moved to Islamabad, the nation’s capital, officials said.

A travel warning issued by the State Department said the department “ordered this drawdown due to specific threats concerning the U.S. Consulate in Lahore” and warned U.S. citizens against travel to Pakistan.

Is this related to the earlier threat? State doesn’t have enough “granularity” to say:

While one U.S. official said it was not related, a second U.S. official said the connection wasn’t clear.

“We are still digging and trying to trace whether it is related,” the senior U.S. official said about the possible link between the heightened threat against the U.S. in the region and the threat against the consulate in Lahore. “I’m not willing to say it’s related, but can’t say it is unrelated. We just don’t have that level of granularity yet.”

It might be a reaction in part to other activity in Pakistan. The Taliban took credit for assassinating almost half of the top police commanders in Quetta, on the other side of the country from Lahore, in an attack on a funeral. Analysts believe that the attack was more likely carried out by so-called “core” al-Qaeda:

Nearly half the top police commanders in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province were killed Thursday when insurgents shot and killed a police inspector, then bombed his funeral hours later, where most of the province’s police commanders had gathered. At least 30 people were reported dead and 40 wounded.

The attack in Quetta, Baluchistan’s capital, was claimed by Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, the formal name for the Pakistani Taliban. The claim of responsibility called it revenge for a recent crackdown on Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an al Qaida-linked ally. But militants told McClatchy they thought Lashkar-e-Jhangvi was the more likely suspect because the Pakistani Taliban lacked the local resources to launch any such an operation in Quetta.

Needless to say, this hardly paints a picture of a terrorist group “on the run,” as the Obama administration has insisted for the last two years. The White House tried to spin that by claiming that the resurgent elements of al-Qaeda are “affiliates” — as if that makes any difference in terms of national security anyway — but McClatchy calls that nonsense in its analysis today:

The rise in prominence of Nasir al Wuhayshi, the Yemeni head of al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, underscores the transformation of al Qaida from a relatively small group led by one charismatic man into a diffuse global organization with many branches that pursue local objectives but follow a single ideology, according to counterterrorism analysts and officials.

The change has undermined the Obama administration’s boast that U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan have “decimated” what’s been called core al Qaida, according to veteran al Qaida watchers. Instead, the organization, no longer dependent on the leadership of a single personality, is growing, with authority now spread among leaders not just in Yemen but also in Iraq, Somalia, Syria and Egypt’s Sinai. The branches that operate in those regions aren’t affiliates, the experts say, they’re al Qaida.

The experts are still uncertain how the various leaders of al Qaida interact with one another, and there are signs that Ayman al Zawahiri, the Egyptian doctor who was named to lead al Qaida after U.S. special forces shot and killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011, still holds special influence.

But experts say it’s no longer accurate to talk about a core al Qaida that’s in charge of groups operating in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, Iraq and Syria.

Besides, if there is such a thing as “core” al-Qaeda, Lahore is where you’d be most likely to find it, outside of Waziristan. If we’re on the run from Lahore, it’s not an al-Qaeda “affiliate” that’s the issue.

Over 50 Killed in Major Bombings in Afghanistan, Pakistan

Suicide Bomber Targets Police Funeral in Quetta

by Jason Ditz, August 08, 2013

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The first day of Eid al-Fitr, one of the major holidays on the Muslim calendar, was a rough day for people in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where major bombings tore through pro-government targets killing scores of people.

The largest bombing hit Quetta, in Pakistan’s eastern Balochistan Province. A suicide bomber detonated at the funeral of a policeman who was shot the previous day, killing at least 30 people, many of them also police.

Another bomb targeted a graveyard in eastern Afghanistan’s Nangarhar, where family were gathering to mourn the death of the wife of a prominent pro-government tribal leader. At least 14 people were killed in this strike.

Eid al-Fitr is often a time when militant factions carry out high-profile attacks, meaning that the holiday, which marks the end of Ramadan, has many nations on high alert for such attacks.

172 People Killed in Ramadan, Including 13 Cops

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