Pakistan to U.S.: Tone It Down With the Whole CIA Thing

It’s not like we couldn’t have seen this coming: Due in part to a special request made by the head of the Pakistani army, the U.S. has been asked to scale back significantly on the number of CIA operatives in Pakistan and to stop drone attacks on northern militants.  —KA

The New York Times:

In all, about 335 American personnel — C.I.A. officers and contractors and Special Operations forces — were being asked to leave the country, said a Pakistani official closely involved in the decision. The cuts threatened to badly hamper American efforts — either through drone strikes or Pakistani military training — to combat militants who use Pakistan as a base to fight American forces in Afghanistan and plot terrorist attacks abroad.

... The scale of the Pakistani demands emerged as Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, the head of Pakistan’s chief spy agency, the Inter Services Intelligence, or ISI, met in Washington on Monday with the director of the C.I.A., Leon Panetta.

Afterward, a C.I.A. spokesman, George Little, said that the two spy chiefs had held “productive” meetings and that the relationship between the two services “remains on solid footing.”

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AP / K.M. Chaudary

Supporters of the Pakistani religious party Jamat-e-Islami attend a Feb. 15 rally against Raymond Davis, a U.S. consulate employee suspected in a fatal shooting in Lahore. Davis’ later release was reportedly secured by the U.S. government.