Up to 20 millions tons of tsunami debris headed for U.S. shores ...

Prepare for a garbage deluge.

An estimated 5 tons to 20 tons of debris sucked into the ocean during Japan's massive tsunami is due to hit U.S. shores, University of Hawaii scientists say. The wall of water struck in March, so that means the garbage should be here -- sometime in 2014.

Hey, it takes a long time to cross the Pacific Ocean if you’re a couch. Or a fridge. Or a piece of a house. Or a Coke can.

Earlier this year, Nikolai Maximenko, a senior researcher at the International Pacific Research Center in Hawaii, developed a model of how the tsunami debris is likely to move across the ocean. He based his model on the movements of thousands of buoys placed in the ocean over 30 years for purposes of studying the current.

According to Maximenko's calculations, the debris from the tsunami will wash up at Midway Attol (an island midway between Japan and Hawaii) this winter. It will start washing up on Hawaiian shores in the winter or spring of 2013. And in the beginning of 2014, it will hit the West Coast, mostly Oregon and Washington. (California will most likely be spared.)

Earlier this fall, Maximenko and Jan Hofman, a computer researcher who also worked on the model, got hard evidence that the garbage appears to be moving as they expected: A Russian ship, the STS Pallada, found an array of tsunami debris on its homeward voyage from Honolulu to Vladivostok.

Most of the debris likely didn’t start out as garbage, but rather as pieces of people’s lives. Such a fact lends poignancy to the bits of plastic and wood, both large and small, we can expect in this country. 

To be clear, the debris is not moving across the ocean en masse.

In an interview with The Times, Hofman said the moving debris field would be patchy, like "confetti soup." Some items will sink as they move across the Pacific, he said, but not as many as you might think.

What is likely to sink has already sunk. And the plastics, he said, are virtually indestructible.

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Blame the Fed for the Financial Crisis ...

To know what is wrong with the Federal Reserve, one must first understand the nature of money. Money is like any other good in our economy that emerges from the market to satisfy the needs and wants of consumers. Its particular usefulness is that it helps facilitate indirect exchange, making it easier for us to buy and sell goods because there is a common way of measuring their value. Money is not a government phenomenon, and it need not and should not be managed by government. When central banks like the Fed manage money they are engaging in price fixing, which leads not to prosperity but to disaster.

WSJ's Danny Yadron discusses Ron Paul's proposal for $1 trillion in budget cuts with "Mean Street" host Evan Newmark. Paul's cuts would come in large part as a result of cutting several cabinet positions. AP Photo.

The Federal Reserve has caused every single boom and bust that has occurred in this country since the bank's creation in 1913. It pumps new money into the financial system to lower interest rates and spur the economy. Adding new money increases the supply of money, making the price of money over time—the interest rate—lower than the market would make it. These lower interest rates affect the allocation of resources, causing capital to be malinvested throughout the economy. So certain projects and ventures that appear profitable when funded at artificially low interest rates are not in fact the best use of those resources.

Eventually, the economic boom created by the Fed's actions is found to be unsustainable, and the bust ensues as this malinvested capital manifests itself in a surplus of capital goods, inventory overhangs, etc. Until these misdirected resources are put to a more productive use—the uses the free market actually desires—the economy stagnates.

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Bloomberg

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke

The great contribution of the Austrian school of economics to economic theory was in its description of this business cycle: the process of booms and busts, and their origins in monetary intervention by the government in cooperation with the banking system. Yet policy makers at the Federal Reserve still fail to understand the causes of our most recent financial crisis. So they find themselves unable to come up with an adequate solution.

In many respects the governors of the Federal Reserve System and the members of the Federal Open Market Committee are like all other high-ranking powerful officials. Because they make decisions that profoundly affect the workings of the economy and because they have hundreds of bright economists working for them doing research and collecting data, they buy into the pretense of knowledge—the illusion that because they have all these resources at their fingertips they therefore have the ability to guide the economy as they see fit.

Nothing could be further from the truth. No attitude could be more destructive. What the Austrian economists Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek victoriously asserted in the socialist calculation debate of the 1920s and 1930s—the notion that the marketplace, where people freely decide what they need and want to pay for, is the only effective way to allocate resources—may be obvious to many ordinary Americans. But it has not influenced government leaders today, who do not seem to see the importance of prices to the functioning of a market economy.

The manner of thinking of the Federal Reserve now is no different than that of the former Soviet Union, which employed hundreds of thousands of people to perform research and provide calculations in an attempt to mimic the price system of the West's (relatively) free markets. Despite the obvious lesson to be drawn from the Soviet collapse, the U.S. still has not fully absorbed it.

The Fed fails to grasp that an interest rate is a price—the price of time—and that attempting to manipulate that price is as destructive as any other government price control. It fails to see that the price of housing was artificially inflated through the Fed's monetary pumping during the early 2000s, and that the only way to restore soundness to the housing sector is to allow prices to return to sustainable market levels. Instead, the Fed's actions have had one aim—to keep prices elevated at bubble levels—thus ensuring that bad debt remains on the books and failing firms remain in business, albatrosses around the market's neck.

The Fed's quantitative easing programs increased the national debt by trillions of dollars. The debt is now so large that if the central bank begins to move away from its zero interest-rate policy, the rise in interest rates will result in the U.S. government having to pay hundreds of billions of dollars in additional interest on the national debt each year. Thus there is significant political pressure being placed on the Fed to keep interest rates low. The Fed has painted itself so far into a corner now that even if it wanted to raise interest rates, as a practical matter it might not be able to do so. But it will do something, we know, because the pressure to "just do something" often outweighs all other considerations.

What exactly the Fed will do is anyone's guess, and it is no surprise that markets continue to founder as anticipation mounts. If the Fed would stop intervening and distorting the market, and would allow the functioning of a truly free market that deals with profit and loss, our economy could recover. The continued existence of an organization that can create trillions of dollars out of thin air to purchase financial assets and prop up a fundamentally insolvent banking system is a black mark on an economy that professes to be free.

Mr. Paul, a congressman from Texas, is seeking the Republican presidential nomination.

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Targeted for assassination by NATO? Will Seif Gaddafi Survive to Have His Day in Court?

Seif Gaddafi

During the late evening of 10/20/11 the White House, the Office of the Secretary of State, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Libyan Embassy in Washington, DC received a faxed communication from an American organized international legal team currently preparing their departure to Libya.

The international lawyers, whose assistance has been arranged through Gadhafi family members and friends, has accepted the obligation to represent Seif al Islam against charges filed by the International Criminal Court on June 26, 2011 and to represent him in any and all legal proceedings that the NTC government may bring against him in Libya. They have been advised by Gadafi supporters in Libya and neighboring countries that the NTC at the direction of NATO, fully intends to see Seif al Islam killed before he can address the international media and his supporters, following the transfer of his father’s leadership authority to Seif on August 29, 2011. Seif has been planning to announce his candidacy in the planned coming election. Informal polls throughout Libya have shown him garnering close to 70% of the vote if he is allowed to stand for office under the now NATO controlled country.

This observer is a member of the group of international lawyers who seek justice for their client, Seif al Islam.

An excerpt of the communication served in Washington reads:

“We demand that our client, Seif al Islam al Gadhafi be immediately protected should he be arrested and that if injured that he be kept under the continual watch and care by the International Committee of the Red Cross until we are granted personal contact with him and have the opportunity to complete current efforts at arranging interim measures of protection to guarantee his safety.

We insist that our client not be questioned or interrogated by anyone including representatives of the current government of Libyan or by investigators from the ICC until he has had the opportunity for legal consultation and until he recovers from any wounds.

The rights of Seif al Islam must be protected in full compliance with international norms and we call on the United Nations Security Council and International Human Rights Organizations to act immediately to protect our client.

We respectfully request that the International Criminal Court take custody of the remains of Moammar and Mutassim Gadhafi, and conduct forensic examinations preparatory to filing criminal charges against those responsible for these extra-judicial killings.

Information arriving from family members and friends of our client Seif al Islam leaves no doubt that NATO has ordered his killing.  His planned and we believe approved assassination is meant to spare NATO the international accountably that awaits them as the World learns from eyewitness accounts and reliable, competent and probative physical and demonstrative evidence compiled over the past six months, exactly what NATO has wrought on Libya and its civilian population.

Shortly we will file with the ICC our formal demand for our clients protection and his transfer to a sanctuary outside of Libya lest he be assassinated as was the fate today of his father, Colonel Moammar al Gadhafi.

We intend to hold the current governments of Libya and the United States as well as NATO fully responsible for the brutal assassination of our client’s father and brother Mutassim and for any abuse or harm that is directed at our client, Seif al Islam.

We intend to prove in Court that following the passage of UN Security Resolution by the United Nations Security Council on March 17, 2011, NATO has repeatedly targeted civilian targets with more than 9,000 bombing sorties in Libya as part of its campaign to assassinate the Libyan leader Colonel Gadhafi and his close aides and advisers.

We intend to prove in Court that NATO did repeatedly sanction others to carry out Moammar Gadhafi’s assassination and that his killers on October 20, 2011 knew that a large cash award awaited them if they killed Colonel Gadhafi thus silencing him from testifying against NATO officials and current Western leaders who led the eight month destruction of Libya.”

The next few days will be a major test for the international community and whether the application of international law will be applied to Libya, NATO and its member states.  The outcome will also likely signal whether Libya descends more deeply into civil war involving as many as six African countries who are reportedly organizing troop units to be sent into Libya to help protect civilians from NATO forces who are today assembling  to help re-build the country that NATO  needlessly and criminally destroyed.

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US Begins Huge Military Maneuvers Aimed at Iran ...

The United States will this week commence huge military maneuvers aimed at Iran, with a massive air fleet patrolling middle eastern skies ready to land at any time, in response to Iran’s involvement in an alleged assassination plot that experts have labeled dubious, amidst fears that US and Israeli targets could be hit by attacks.

As we reported last week, during US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s October 3 Tel Aviv visit, Israeli hawks attempted to persuade Panetta to give the green light for a military strike on Iran. Within ten days, details of an alleged assassination plot against a Saudi ambassador emerged and the foiled attack was blamed on Iran. Innumerable experts immediately voiced their doubts about the authenticity of the plot, with 21-year CIA veteran Robert Baer labeling the story “a truly awful Hollywood script”.

The US military will respond this week with a series of significant military maneuvers designed to threaten Iran, including, “an American air fleet in Middle East skies ready to land at any moment for any contingency,” reports DebkaFile.

“The United States launches a large-scale exercise over the Middle East deploying 41 giant transports of the 22nds Airlift Squadron Monday Oct. 17,” states the report, adding that the aircraft will be packed with fully equipped, battle ready troops.

A further seven warships from the Stennis Battle Group will also “provide ground troops with combat support and strike land and sea targets.”

The Israeli, Egyptian and Saudi armies have also been placed on maximum preparedness, echoing reports that U.S. troops being sent to the region have also been put on full alert.

The maneuvers are also linked to the scheduled release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit by Hamas on Tuesday, an event that US intelligence officials fear could set off a chain of attacks in the region against US and Israeli targets. Should embassies be targeted, US troops will be in place to react swiftly.

Geopolitical experts have been consistent in their warnings that Israel was preparing to strike Iran this fall.

Back in July, CIA veteran Baer told KPFK Los Angeles that Israeli Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu was planning an attack on Iran in September to coincide with the Palestine bid for UN membership.

Whether the maneuvers are merely designed to be an act of belligerence against Iran or represent preparations for an actual military strike in support of Israel remains to be seen, but as Gulf News reporter Patrick Seale pointed out Friday, the window of opportunity for an attack on Iran is closing.

“Some western military experts have been quoted as saying that the window of opportunity for an Israeli air attack on Iran will close within two months, since the onset of winter would make such an assault more difficult,” writes Seale, adding that the Israelis’ eagerness to launch the attack has “caused considerable alarm in Washington and in a number of European capitals.”

Both Republican and Democratic US lawmakers have issued strong statements against Iran in recent days, with several all but calling for war. Last week, New York RepublicanPeter King called on the Obama administration to put troops on standby, labeling the alleged Iranian assassination plot “an act of war”. On Sunday, Democrat Dianne Feinstein, the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, warned that the US and Iran were on a “collision course”.

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US drops plans to keep troops in Iraq ...

The U.S. is abandoning plans to keep U.S. troops in Iraq past a year-end withdrawal deadline, The Associated Press has learned. The decision to pull out fully by January will effectively end more than eight years of U.S. involvement in the Iraq war, despite ongoing concerns about its security forces and the potential for instability.

The decision ends months of hand-wringing by U.S. officials over whether to stick to a Dec. 31 withdrawal deadline that was set in 2008 or negotiate a new security agreement to ensure that gains made and more than 4,400 American military lives lost since March 2003 do not go to waste.

In recent months, Washington has been discussing with Iraqi leaders the possibility of several thousand American troops remaining to continue training Iraqi security forces.

But a senior Obama administration official in Washington confirmed Saturday that all American troops will leave Iraq except for about 160 active-duty soldiers attached to the U.S. Embassy.

A senior U.S. military official confirmed the departure and said the withdrawal could allow future but limited U.S. military training missions in Iraq if requested.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Throughout the discussions, Iraqi leaders have adamantly refused to give U.S. troops immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts, and the Americans have refused to stay without it. Iraq’s leadership has been split on whether it wanted American forces to stay. Some argued the further training and U.S. help was vital, particularly to protect Iraq’s airspace and gather security intelligence. But others have deeply opposed any American troop presence, including Shiite militiamen who have threatened attacks on any American forces who remain.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has told U.S. military officials that he does not have the votes in parliament to provide immunity to the American trainers, the U.S. military official said.

A western diplomatic official in Iraq said al-Maliki told international diplomats he will not bring the immunity issue to parliament because lawmakers will not approve it.

Iraqi lawmakers excel at last-minute agreements. But with little wiggle room on the immunity issue and the U.S. military needing to move equipment out as soon as possible, a last-minute change between now and December 31 seems almost out of the question.

Regardless of whether U.S. troops are here or not, there will be a massive American diplomatic presence.

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is the largest in the world, and the State Department will have offices in Basra, Irbil and Kirkuk as well as other locations around the country where contractors will train Iraqi forces on U.S. military equipment they’re purchasing.

About 5,000 security contractors and personnel will be tasked with helping protect American diplomats and facilities around the country, the State Department has said.

The U.S. Embassy will still have a handful of U.S. Marines for protection and 157 U.S. military personnel in charge of facilitating weapons sales to Iraq. Those are standard functions at most American embassies around the world and would be considered part of the regular embassy staff.

When the 2008 agreement requiring all U.S. forces leave Iraq was passed, many U.S. officials assumed it would inevitably be renegotiated so that American forces could stay longer.

The U.S. said repeatedly this year it would entertain an offer from the Iraqis to have a small force stay behind, and the Iraqis said they would like American military help. But as the year wore on and the number of American troops that Washington was suggesting could stay behind dropped, it became increasingly clear that a U.S. troop presence was not a sure thing.

The issue of legal protection for the Americans was the deal-breaker.

Iraqis are still angry over incidents such as the Abu Ghraib prison scandal or Haditha, when U.S. troops killed Iraqi civilians in Anbar province, and want American troops subject to Iraqi law.

American commanders don’t want to risk having their forces end up in an Iraqi courtroom if they’re forced to defend themselves in a still-hostile environment.

It is highly unlikely that Iraqi lawmakers would have the time to approve a U.S. troop deal even if they wanted to. The parliament is in recess on its Hajj break until Nov. 20, leaving just a few weeks for legislative action before the end of year deadline.

Going down to zero by the end of this year would allow both al-Maliki and President Barack Obama to claim victory. Obama will have fulfilled a key campaign promise to end the war and al-Maliki will have ended the American presence in Iraq and restored Iraqi sovereignty.

The Iraqi prime minister was also under intense pressure from his anti-American allies, the Sadrists, to reject any American military presence.

An advisor close to al-Maliki said the Americans suggested during negotiations that if no deal is reached in time, U.S. troops could be stationed in Kuwait.

With the U.S. military presence in Iraq currently at about 41,000 and heading down to zero, almost all of those forces will be flowing out of Iraq into Kuwait and then home or other locations.

A western expert in Iraq said it is conceivable that if the Iraqi government asks early next year for U.S. troops to return, there will be forces still in Kuwait able to come back and do the job.

But he stressed that the core problems still remain on the Iraqi side about what types of legal immunity to give the American troops and whether parliament can pass it.

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Haqqanis sidestep US terror list ...

A signal from the United States that it remains open to inclusion of the Haqqani network in a peace deal for Afghanistan has made it abundantly clear why the Barack Obama administration is reluctant to declare the group a “foreign terrorist organization” despite blaming the Haqqanis for the audacious September 13 attack on the US Embassy in Kabul.

Washington knows very well that the Haqqani network is a key player in Afghan politics and will play a part in determining the kind of Afghanistan the Americans will leave behind more than a decade after the invasion. Even so, US drone attacks targeting key members of the group continue, with reports that a senior commander of the network was killed in a US drone strike in northwestern Pakistan on Thursday.

“Where we are right now is that we view the Haqqanis and other of their ilk as, you know, being adversaries and being very dangerous to Americans, Afghans and coalition members inside Afghanistan, but we are not shutting the door on trying to determine whether there is some path forward,” United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Reuters on October 11 when asked if she believed members of the Haqqani network might reconcile with the Afghan government.

Clinton is extending the informal offer of peace talks at a crucial time when the US State Department is under pressure refraining from officially designating the Haqqani group as a terrorist organization. The Obama administrations’s changing stance shows that the Americans don’t want to close the door on negotiations since a terrorist tag would make it impossible to hold talks with Haqqanis, as that would violate American criminal law.

Admiral Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declared last month the lethal network was “a veritable arm of the [Pakistani] Inter-Services Intelligence which exports violent extremism to Afghanistan”. However, the White House has already backed away from the assertions of Mullen, who was the top US military officer until his retirement last month.

Sirajuddin Haqqani, the elusive chief of the network, a key component of the Taliban-led Afghan insurgency, claimed in an October 3, 2011, interview with the BBC that he had been approached by the United States to join the Afghan government.

“Right from the first day of [the] American arrival till this day, not only Pakistani but other Islamic and other non-Islamic countries including America, contacted us and they are still doing so. They are asking us to leave the ranks of Islamic emirates,” he said, referring to the Taliban leadership. He said the outsiders promised an “important role in the government of Afghanistan” as well as negotiations.

While confirming Sirajuddin Haqqani’s claim, the Wall Street Journal reported on October 5 that senior US officials secretly met with leaders of the Haqqani network this summer in an effort to draw them into talks on winding down the war. The report quoted some senior US officials as saying there had been at least one meeting over the summer between Haqqani representatives and US officials, which was set up by the ISI.

The US military leadership has repeatedly blamed the Haqqani network for most of the terrorist attacks on international forces stationed in Afghanistan, and on September 29 the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Sirajuddin Haqqani and several other group leaders on in the wake of the September 13 attack in Kabul. “These financiers and facilitators provide the fuel for Afghan Taliban, Haqqani Network and al-Qaeda to realize their violent aspirations”, David Cohen, the Under Secretary of the US Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, said in a statement.

Yet the move has failed to dissipate mounting pressure on the White House to place the Haqqani group, whose attacks threaten to become a major obstacle to US hopes for a smooth withdrawal from Afghanistan, on the State Department’s list of designated terrorist organizations. Responding to growing demands from American lawmakers to tag the Haqqani network as a terrorist group, Clinton on September 28 said the United States was close to a decision on whether it make such a declaration.

“We are in the final, formal review that has to be undertaken to make a government-wide decision to designate the network as a foreign terrorist organization,” Clinton told reporters in Washington. Veteran US lawmakers such as Democrat Dianne Feinstein, the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Carl Levin, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, had urged Clinton to put the Haqqani network on the terrorism blacklist, saying there was no question it merited inclusion.

However, in making the October 11 statement suggesting the US wants to keep its options open for a deal with the militant groups as it seeks peace in a region known for historic merry-go-round of political and military alliances, Clinton has indicated the Haqqanis will stay off the terrorist list in near future, mainly because Washington considers it as being in the strongest position among militant groups to unravel the American plan plan of stabilizing Afghanistan before the scheduled withdrawal next year.

In contrast to the American perception of the Haqqanis, the Pakistani military and intelligence establishment considers the group a strategic asset. Their relationship is several decades old and is also mutually beneficial. Unlike the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (Pakistan Taliban – TTP), the Haqqanis have no grouse against Islamabad; their goal, instead, is to have a stake in the dispensation of Kabul once the Americans leave. Considering that 15,000 fighters are said to be under the control of the Haqqani network, a necessary factor for forging a peace settlement in Afghanistan is either their weakening or cooperation.

A weakened Haqqani network would also mean less leverage for Pakistan to influence events in Kabul. With India on the east, Pakistan does not want a hostile regime in the west. This is why Pakistani army commanders, at a September meeting led by Army Chief General Ashfaq Kiani, categorically ruled out a military offensive against the Haqqani network. In addition, the generals say that yet another operation in Pakistan – that too under the American pressure – would alienate the Pakistanis.

The story of the Haqqani network is entwined with the history of wars and coups and armed foreign interventions in Afghanistan. The network’s founder, Maulvi Jalaluddin Haqqani, was initially a member of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hizb-e-Islami, which in the 1970s was waging a battle against Afghan president Sardar Daud over his crackdown on nascent Islamists influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Daud’s implacable opposition to the Hizb prompted its leaders to shift to Pakistan, where subsequently a faction under Maulvi Yunis Khalis split away from Hekmatyar. Haqqani emerged as one of the more important commanders of the Khalis faction.

In 1979, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Jalaluddin shifted his family and fighters from his home province of Khost to North Waziristan, from where he launched deadly sallies against the Russians in Afghanistan. Through the 1980s Jalaluddin worked in tandem with the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which treated him as a commander of formidable power and repute, worthy of an invitation to meet then-president Ronald Reagan at the White House. Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar was correct in describing the Haqqani network as the “blue-eyed boy” of the CIA for many years.

As the CIA feted and fawned over Jalaluddin, he didn’t disappoint, becoming the first resistance leader to capture a city – Khost – from the Soviet-backed Najibullah government in 1991. He was appointed justice minister in the first Mujahideen government in 1992, but switched his allegiance to the Taliban as they threatened Kabul. The Afghan Taliban and Maulvi Jalaluddin Haqqani shared a common friend in the ISI. As Taliban commander in 1996-97, he was accused of killing members of Afghanistan’s Tajik minority. The shift in allegiance won him a post in the Taliban council of ministers, and he was the governor of Paktia province at the time the Americans invaded Afghanistan in 2001.

As the American juggernaut swept through Afghanistan, and Khost came under increasing pressure, Jalaluddin was back in North Waziristan, from where he directed his network of Islamic fighters to destabilize the eastern part of Afghanistan – Paktia, Paktika, Khost, Ghazni, and Wardak – through attacks on the Americans. The Haqqani network’s rising curve in the badlands of Afghanistan can be gleaned from the attacks it has been accused of masterminding even in Kabul.

In his late 60s, Jalaluddin is now more a patriarch than a commander. The network’s fighting strategy is now the responsibility of his son, Sirajuddin Haqqani, who doesn’t carry a gun, refuses to move in a motorcade, and refrains from wearing a turban lest he is identified and targeted through drone attacks. The 33-year old, known as Khaleefa among his fighters, is the second son of Jalaluddin Haqqani and is currently leading the network. Sirajuddin was nominated as the operational commander of the network when Jalaluddin Haqqani sidelined himself from the ground offensive.

An active member of the Mullah Omar-led Taliban Shura, or council, Sirajuddin is considered a fearless commander who used the influence of his ailing father not only to reactivate the anti-US Taliban fight (which was reeling after the American invasion) but also to make his network a force to be reckoned with. From safe houses and mountain hideouts, he has orchestrated some of the more brazen attacks on US troops in recent months, eclipsing even his father in influence and power. He is on the FBI’s “kill or capture” list and carries a US$50 million bounty.

Sirajuddin’s political deputy Jan Baz Zadran was reported killed in a US drone strike near Miran Shah, the main city in the North Waziristan on Thursday. At least four people were killed in the strike, while at least another three were killed in a separate drone strike on the Birmil area of South Waziristan, according to the al-Jezeera web site. Zadran was in charge of the network’s finances and weapons and ammunition acquisitions.

The success of the Haqqanis prompted the Taliban to claim the network as their own. In a September 27 statement, a Taliban spokesman said, “Jalaluddin Haqqani is part of the Taliban movement, being one of its dignified and honorable personalities. Haqqani isn’t leading a separate militant group and still take his orders from the Taliban Shura.” Many analysts believe that claim is debatable, and the Haqqani network can be best regarded an independent outfit owing nominal allegiance to the Taliban.

The lethal network broadly consists of four groups: those who served under Jalaluddin Haqqani during the Russian occupation of Afghanistan; those from Loya Paktiya who joined the Haqqani movement in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan in 2001; fighters from North Waziristan in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan, who have been associated with Haqqanis over the years; and non-Pashtun foreign militants, including Arabs, Chechens, and Uzbeks.

While the fighters of Haqqani network in Afghanistan belong to a number of tribes, the vast majority of its leaders in North Waziristan are from the Zadran tribe, and in particular from Haqqani’s Mezi clan and its allies. This does not mean, however, that the Haqqanis run a tribal movement. Under the secretive conditions in which the network operates, only those bound closely by Haqqani family or clan ties can win the leadership’s trust.

Jalaluddin Haqqani had two wives, one of them an Arab from the United Arab Emirates, from whom he had two sons. It is this Arab connection that is said to have enabled Jalaluddin to develop contacts with rich Arab sheikhs who finance his armed struggle in Afghanistan.

The Haqqani’s opposition to the Americans hasn’t been without a price. Jalaluddin has lost more family members than other Afghan Mujahideen leaders, first against the Soviets and later against the US-led NATO forces. Two of his sons – 17-year old Omar and 22-year-old Mohammad – have already been killed. Omar was killed in a firefight with US-led forces at Satto Kandao in Khost in 2008, while Mohammad was killed in a drone attack at Miramshah, North Waziristan, in 2009. A year before, another American drone strike killed his two wives, his sister, sister-in-law and eight of his grandchildren.

The Haqqani network’s central leadership rests with the family: Sirajuddin masterminds terror attacks, his first cousin Mullah Sangeen Zadran coordinates them alongside Badruddin, another Haqqani scion. In 2009, Washington announced a $5 million bounty on Sirajuddin and later announced reward for his two other brothers – Badruddin and Naseeruddin.

Naseeruddin, a son of Jalaluddin through his Arab wife, is the group’s principal fundraiser, who as an Arabic speaker has acted as a liaison with several important al-Qaeda figures. His Arab link is said to be a crucial factor in the group’s ability to raise finances in the Gulf, enabling it to maintain a large contingent of fighters. Other funding sources include cross-border smuggling, kidnapping for ransom, the collection of donations through mosques, taxation of trade in areas under their control, and extortion from trucking companies.

Asked in an interview with Reuters on September 23 whether he had 10,000 militants under his command, Sirajuddin laughed and said, “That figure is actually less than the actual number.” Most analysts believe Sirajuddin consented to the rare interview to ease the pressure on the ISI for harboring the Haqqani network. He warned the US against attacking North Waziristan, threatening to inflict greater losses on Americans than they have been encountering in Afghanistan.

About the recent attacks in Kabul, he said, “For some reasons, I would not like to claim that fighters of our group had carried out the attack on the US embassy and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters. Our central leadership, particularly senior members of the Shura, suggested I should keep quiet in future if the US and its allies suffer in future.”

Sirajuddin also said he had turned down several requests for talks with the Karzai government and the US, though he expressed his willingness to come to the negotiating table should the Taliban too participate in peace parleys. He said, “They offered us very, very important positions, but we rejected [them] and told them they would not succeed in their nefarious designs. They wanted to divide us, and any further efforts to do so will also fail.”

Sirajuddin insisted, “The Haqqani group no longer has sanctuaries in Pakistan … Gone are the days when we were hiding in the mountains along the Pak-Afghan border. Now we consider ourselves more secure in Afghanistan besides the Afghan people.”

Contrary to Sirajuddin’s assertions, Western intelligence agencies have provided credible information to their Pakistani counterparts that the Haqqani network still operates from Pakistan. The North Waziristan-based Pakistan chapter of the Haqqani network, which is called the Miram Shah Shura, reportedly operates from three compounds. The first one is in the Miram Shah bazaar in a religious seminary; the second camp is in the neighborhood of Sarai Darpa Khel, while the third is in the suburb of Danday Darpa Khel, where most of the Haqqani network leaders live and take important decisions, especially pertaining to the military strategy of the network. The drone attack reported to have killed Jan Baz Zadran on Thursday took place at Danday Darpa Khel, just west of Miran Shah, the Washington Post reported.

Sirajuddin oversees the political and military activities of the Miram Shah Shura besides serving as the main liaison to the infamous Quetta Shura Taliban, the leadership body of the Taliban, led by Mullah Muhammad Omar, as well as to the leadership of the Pakistani Taliban. Western intelligence agencies believe Sirajuddin travels regularly into Afghanistan to coordinate with field commanders and occasionally to Peshawar and South Waziristan to connect with al-Qaeda and Taliban-linked militants.

Sirajuddin’s deputy commander in the Miram Shah Shura is Bakht Jan, a major figure in North Waziristan who plays an important role liaising with the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan, led by Commander Hakeemullah Mehsud, and other Taliban groups based in North Waziristan. Many brothers and uncles of Bakht Jan are Haqqani network commanders, who are active in Loya Paktiya. Two other key members of Miram Shah Shura network are Haji Khalil and Haji Ibrahim, the brothers of Jalaluddin.

After being branded by the Americans as a “veritable arm” of the ISI, Sirajuddin claimed in his October 3 interview with the BBC that his group did not kill the former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani and denied any links with the Pakistani spy agency. He claimed that the “Islamic Emirate”, the name given to the Taliban government when they assumed power in Afghanistan in 1996, was behind “the attack on the US embassy, NATO headquarters and other attacks in Kabul,” which he said were actually ordered by a military council of Taliban. Asserting that the “game being played by the West … is close to an end”, Sirajuddin said, “in every operation we get the order, planning and financial resources from the Taliban Emirate’s leadership and we act accordingly.”

The chief of the Haqqani network pledged loyalty to the amir of the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Mohammad Omar, saying, “he is our leader and we totally obey him.” But despite Sirajuddin’s allegiance to the Afghan Taliban, most analysts believe that it is his network which will eventually determine the kind of Afghanistan the Americans leave behind. And probably that’s why, they say, the US has not yet declared the Haqqani network a foreign terrorist organization, as was the case with the Afghan Taliban.

The Islamic Movement of Taliban or “Tahrik-e-Islami’a Taliban” (the Quetta Shura or Afghan Taliban) was designated as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization” under the US Treasury Department’s Executive Order No. 13224, which was issued on September 23, 2001. The current status of the Haqqani network as an insurgent group allows the White House to hold talks without breaking American criminal law – unless, like the Afghan Taliban, it is declared a terrorist outfit.

Amir Mir is a senior Pakistani journalist and the author of several books on the subject of militant Islam and terrorism, the latest being The Bhutto murder trail: From Waziristan to GHQ.

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