(WMR) -- The recent arson attack against a Pakistani supply depot used to supply U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan has, according to WMR�s Asian intelligence sources, the hallmarks of additional paybacks from exiled Indian mob chieftain Dawood Ibrahim.

The attack on the depot in Peshawar destroyed over 150 vehicles. The Pakistan truck route to Afghanistan supplies some 75 percent of the fuel, food, and other supplies used by American and NATO forces in landlocked Afghanistan.

Pakistan has been under pressure from India and some quarters in the United States to extradite Ibrahim from Pakistan to India for his alleged role in the most recent, as well as past terrorist attacks on Mumbai. Pakistan claims that Ibrahim, an Indian national, is not in Pakistan. WMR previously reported that Ibrahim, who has provided assistance to the U.S. military and CIA in the past, is being protected by Pakistan�s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) in Quetta, Pakistan.

One of the �services� Ibrahim, dubbed the �King of Karachi� for his extensive legitimate and illegal business interests in the city, has provided to the United States and Pakistan is ensuring the security of the truck convoys that travel from Pakistan, including through the rugged Khyber Pass, to Afghanistan and back. WMR has also learned that the truck fleet that was torched by elements, termed �militants� by the corporate media, is owned by Pakistan President Asif Zardari, who has, like Ibrahim, been accused of running illegal business enterprises in Pakistan.

For years, Zardari relied on the Taliban to ensure the safety of his truck fleet that plied the roads from Pakistan to Afghanistan and onward into Central Asia. During their tenuous truce, Ibrahim has helped to ensure the safety of Zardari�s truck fleet. Security for Zardari�s truck convoys has been all the more important due to the cargo the vehicles often transport: gold. In 1998, Pakistani investigators discovered that Pakistani-owned ARY Gold of Dubai, the city that also serves as Ibrahim�s financial base of operations, paid $10 million to Zardari, whose wife Benazir Bhutto was then Pakistan�s Prime Minister, for a two-year monopoly on the import of gold into Pakistan from Dubai. Some of the gold moved from Pakistan on Zardari�s trucks to Central Asia to support the maintenance of Islamic hawala banking operations in countries like Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan.

Ibrahim has not only sent a warning to his friends in the CIA, as well as his criminal rivals in Mumbai and Tel Aviv, with his attack on Mumbai, but the attack on te Peshawar depot also sent a stark warning to Zardari and the American military in Afghanistan that he will not be double-crossed in any secret deals between the Pakistani government, Washington, and Delhi.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

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