DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan -- A U.S. missile strike killed three suspected militants in a Pakistani tribal region near the Afghan border on Friday, a reminder of the weapons at American disposal at a time of intense strain with Islamabad, two Pakistan officials said.
Stepping up the tempo of the missile strikes is seen as one possible American option if Pakistan does not act on Washington's stepped up demands to attack Afghan militants sheltering on the Pakistani side of the border.
Last week, U.S. officials accused Pakistan's spy agency of assisting the Haqqani militant faction in attacks on Western targets in Afghanistan, the most serious allegation yet of Pakistani duplicity in the 10-year war.
The drone-fired missiles hit a vehicle near the Angore Adda border town of South Waziristan, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. The victims were associates of Maulvi Nazir, a prominent militant commander in the region, according to the officials.
South Waziristan was the main sanctuary for the Pakistani and foreign militants until the military launched an offensive there in 2009. The region has also witnessed scores of American drone attacks.
The missile attacks are seen at the most effective weapon Washington has at hitting al-Qaida and Afghan militants like the Haqqanis in the northwest. There were more than 100 such attacks last year; this year there have been around 50.
Friday, September 30, 2011
U.S.-Pakistan rift widens over Haqqani clan
Jalaluddin Haqqani, the warlord brigand who with his extended family and an army of 10,000 tribal fighters rules a mountain kingdom in both Afghanistan's eastern provinces and neighbouring Pakistan's North Waziristan, is a throwback to the story of this region a hundred years ago and more.
He is a perfect fit for a part in Rudyard Kipling's stories of "the Great Game" between Britain and Russia for influence on the Northwest Frontier of India, or soldier-turned-novelist John Masters' memoirs of his days as a young Gurkha officer stationed at the limits of empire in the 1930s, or even the records of Field Marshal Frederick Earl Roberts of Kandahar and his punitive war against the Afghans in 1879.
But Jalaluddin Haqqani, his son Sirajuddin, who now manages the day-to-day running of the family business of murder, extortion and deadly intrigue, and their clan followers are a very modern problem.
The always tenuous alliance between the Pakistan army, the country's Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI) and the American-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan could well collapse because of the Haqqani network.
The implications of that for the efforts by ISAF to bring the war against Taliban insurgents down to an acceptable level of insecurity before handing over to the neophyte forces of President Karzai, as well as a violent parting of the ways between the United States and Pakistan, are too gloomy to contemplate.
The crux of the friction is that the U.S. military and the Central Intelligence Agency have believed for years that the Haqqani network is closely linked to and sometimes acts as an agent for Pakistan's ISI.
This persistent rumble of American mistrust of the dedication of their Pakistani allies came to a head last week.
Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff who for years has led the efforts to cooperate with the Pakistani military and intelligence services, publicly accused the ISI of colluding with the Haqqani network in the Sept. 13 attack on the American Embassy in Kabul.
"The Haqqani network acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency," Mullen told the U.S. Senate armed services committee.
And as Washington edges toward naming the Haqqani network as a foreign terrorist organization, Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani on Thursday sought national unity against the Americans.
He convened a highly unusual meeting with all political and religious parties to counter the American allegations and the implied threat that U.S. forces will enter Pakistan to clean out the Haqqani vipers' nest if Islamabad is unwilling to do so.
Coming soon after the May action when, without consulting Islamabad, U.S. special forces flew in and killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden at his hideout in the Pakistani military cantonment of Abbottabad, Gilani's anxieties about further encroachments on his country's sovereignty are understandable.
Gilani and his ministers insist their government has no functional relationship with the Haqqani network. Indeed, Interior Minister Rehman Malik has said it is the CIA that "trained and produced" the Haqqani organization during the mujahedeen war against the Soviet Union invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
It is true that like most mujahedeen groups, Jalaluddin Haqqani and his fighters received aid in the 1980s from the CIA in the proxy war against Moscow. Haqqani was even welcomed to the White House by then president Ronald Reagan.
But in the chaotic scramble for power in Afghanistan following the Soviets' withdrawal, Haqqani sided with the fundamentalist Islamic Taliban and became minister of tribal affairs when they took power in Kabul.
But with the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan 10 years ago to root out al-Qaida, Jalaluddin Haqqani and his men returned to managing the family business of brigandage.
The Americans blame Haqqani for the January 2008 attack on Kabul's Serena Hotel in which six people were killed, the July 2008 bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul on behalf of ISI, the December 2009 suicide bombing of U.S. base Camp Chapman in which seven key CIA officers were killed, the attack on Kabul's Inter-Continental Hotel this June and the Sept. 10 truck bomb attack on Combat Outpost Sayed in Wardak province as well as the Kabul U.S. Embassy attack days later.
For several years the Americans have been trying to kill the Haqqanis. In July 2008 one of Jalaluddin's sons, Omar, was killed by ISAF forces in Afghanistan.
The following September six missiles were fired by American drone aircraft at a Haqqani compound.
Jalaluddin and son Sirajuddin were not there. But among the 23 people killed were one of Jalaluddin's two wives, a sister, a sister-in-law and eight of his grandchildren.
That is not the kind of loss Northwest Frontier warlords are inclined to forgive or forget.
Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/canada-in-afghanistan/Pakistan+rift+widens+over+Haqqani+clan/5482153/story.html#ixzz1ZRBYUfCq
He is a perfect fit for a part in Rudyard Kipling's stories of "the Great Game" between Britain and Russia for influence on the Northwest Frontier of India, or soldier-turned-novelist John Masters' memoirs of his days as a young Gurkha officer stationed at the limits of empire in the 1930s, or even the records of Field Marshal Frederick Earl Roberts of Kandahar and his punitive war against the Afghans in 1879.
But Jalaluddin Haqqani, his son Sirajuddin, who now manages the day-to-day running of the family business of murder, extortion and deadly intrigue, and their clan followers are a very modern problem.
The always tenuous alliance between the Pakistan army, the country's Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI) and the American-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan could well collapse because of the Haqqani network.
The implications of that for the efforts by ISAF to bring the war against Taliban insurgents down to an acceptable level of insecurity before handing over to the neophyte forces of President Karzai, as well as a violent parting of the ways between the United States and Pakistan, are too gloomy to contemplate.
The crux of the friction is that the U.S. military and the Central Intelligence Agency have believed for years that the Haqqani network is closely linked to and sometimes acts as an agent for Pakistan's ISI.
This persistent rumble of American mistrust of the dedication of their Pakistani allies came to a head last week.
Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff who for years has led the efforts to cooperate with the Pakistani military and intelligence services, publicly accused the ISI of colluding with the Haqqani network in the Sept. 13 attack on the American Embassy in Kabul.
"The Haqqani network acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency," Mullen told the U.S. Senate armed services committee.
And as Washington edges toward naming the Haqqani network as a foreign terrorist organization, Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani on Thursday sought national unity against the Americans.
He convened a highly unusual meeting with all political and religious parties to counter the American allegations and the implied threat that U.S. forces will enter Pakistan to clean out the Haqqani vipers' nest if Islamabad is unwilling to do so.
Coming soon after the May action when, without consulting Islamabad, U.S. special forces flew in and killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden at his hideout in the Pakistani military cantonment of Abbottabad, Gilani's anxieties about further encroachments on his country's sovereignty are understandable.
Gilani and his ministers insist their government has no functional relationship with the Haqqani network. Indeed, Interior Minister Rehman Malik has said it is the CIA that "trained and produced" the Haqqani organization during the mujahedeen war against the Soviet Union invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
It is true that like most mujahedeen groups, Jalaluddin Haqqani and his fighters received aid in the 1980s from the CIA in the proxy war against Moscow. Haqqani was even welcomed to the White House by then president Ronald Reagan.
But in the chaotic scramble for power in Afghanistan following the Soviets' withdrawal, Haqqani sided with the fundamentalist Islamic Taliban and became minister of tribal affairs when they took power in Kabul.
But with the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan 10 years ago to root out al-Qaida, Jalaluddin Haqqani and his men returned to managing the family business of brigandage.
The Americans blame Haqqani for the January 2008 attack on Kabul's Serena Hotel in which six people were killed, the July 2008 bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul on behalf of ISI, the December 2009 suicide bombing of U.S. base Camp Chapman in which seven key CIA officers were killed, the attack on Kabul's Inter-Continental Hotel this June and the Sept. 10 truck bomb attack on Combat Outpost Sayed in Wardak province as well as the Kabul U.S. Embassy attack days later.
For several years the Americans have been trying to kill the Haqqanis. In July 2008 one of Jalaluddin's sons, Omar, was killed by ISAF forces in Afghanistan.
The following September six missiles were fired by American drone aircraft at a Haqqani compound.
Jalaluddin and son Sirajuddin were not there. But among the 23 people killed were one of Jalaluddin's two wives, a sister, a sister-in-law and eight of his grandchildren.
That is not the kind of loss Northwest Frontier warlords are inclined to forgive or forget.
Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/canada-in-afghanistan/Pakistan+rift+widens+over+Haqqani+clan/5482153/story.html#ixzz1ZRBYUfCq
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Gilani hits back at US, says Pak cannot be asked to 'do more'
Islamabad: Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani today countered US accusations linking ISI to terror groups in Afghanistan, calling them "surprising", while stating that his country cannot be pressured to "do more" in the war against terror.
"Pressure cannot be put on Pakistan to do more (in the war on terrorism). Our national interests must be respected under all circumstances," Mr Gilani said while opening a meeting of the country's political leadership that he convened to forge a consensus response to tensions with the US.
The premier rejected allegations by senior US officials, including military chief Admiral Mike Mullen, linking Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to the Haqqani network and recent terror attacks in Afghanistan, saying these accusations were a
cause of concern for Pakistan.
Referring to steps taken by Pakistan to back the peace and reconciliation process in Afghanistan and a sudden spurt in terror attacks in the neighboring country, Mr Gilani said, "In the light of these events in Afghanistan, the US leadership's statements were surprising for us as they were contrary to Pakistan's sacrifices and successes against terrorism and extremism". He added, "While rejecting all these accusations, we have focused on positive and responsible ways to resolve these problems".
Enhancing positive and deeper contacts at all levels alone can pave the way for solving these problems, Mr Gilani said, adding,"all doors for dialogue are open" to resolve differences with the US.
"Pressure cannot be put on Pakistan to do more (in the war on terrorism). Our national interests must be respected under all circumstances," Mr Gilani said while opening a meeting of the country's political leadership that he convened to forge a consensus response to tensions with the US.
The premier rejected allegations by senior US officials, including military chief Admiral Mike Mullen, linking Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to the Haqqani network and recent terror attacks in Afghanistan, saying these accusations were a
cause of concern for Pakistan.
Referring to steps taken by Pakistan to back the peace and reconciliation process in Afghanistan and a sudden spurt in terror attacks in the neighboring country, Mr Gilani said, "In the light of these events in Afghanistan, the US leadership's statements were surprising for us as they were contrary to Pakistan's sacrifices and successes against terrorism and extremism". He added, "While rejecting all these accusations, we have focused on positive and responsible ways to resolve these problems".
Enhancing positive and deeper contacts at all levels alone can pave the way for solving these problems, Mr Gilani said, adding,"all doors for dialogue are open" to resolve differences with the US.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Despite bail, Afaq Ahmed detained for one month
KARACHI: Mohajir Qaumi Movement- Haqiqi (MQM-H) chief Afaq Ahmed has been detained for one month under the Maintenance of Public Order (MPO) ordinance despite being released on bail by the Sindh High Court (SHC).
Section 144 was imposed before the release orders of Ahmed were submitted.
Around 500-1,000 MQM-H supporters, who had gathered outside the Malir District Jail, expecting Ahmed’s release started protesting and blocked the National Highway.
On Monday, Ahmed was granted bail on condition of submitting Rs1 million as a surety bond by the SHC in his last pending case – the murder of an activist of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) in 2009.
He was expected to be released from the jail on Wednesday after seven years of his detention, from where he was supposed to visit his father’s grave before going to his house in Landhi.
Who is Afaq Ahmed?
Ahmed, once close to the MQM chief Altaf Hussain, developed differences with him in the 1990s. Following an operation against the party in June 1992, Ahmed and Aaamir Khan led the breakaway faction later called Mohajir Qaumi Movement-Haqiqi.
The MQM-H established its hold in Liaquatabad, Landhi, Korangi, and New Karachi with the Lines Area sector being their stronghold. These areas were later dubbed ‘no-go areas’ for members, associates or supporters of Altaf Hussain.
The rival factions have long accused each other of killing workers and supporters.
Ahmed emerged as a strong opponent in the late 1990s but in early 2000 was forced to go underground as government agencies launched a search operation against him.
In 2004, when the MQM came into power and Arbab Ghulam Rahim was the then Sindh chief minister, Ahmed was arrested and has been in prison ever since. His headquarters known as the ‘White House’ was razed to the ground, sending a strong signal to the MQM-Haqiqi.
Ahmed still wields influence amongst a section of the Urdu- speaking community. His release may be the beginning of a new friction in Sindh’s politics.
Despite bail, Afaq Ahmed detained for one month
KARACHI: Mohajir Qaumi Movement- Haqiqi (MQM-H) chief Afaq Ahmed has been detained for one month under the Maintenance of Public Order (MPO) ordinance despite being released on bail by the Sindh High Court (SHC).
Section 144 was imposed before the release orders of Ahmed were submitted.
Around 500-1,000 MQM-H supporters, who had gathered outside the Malir District Jail, expecting Ahmed’s release started protesting and blocked the National Highway.
On Monday, Ahmed was granted bail on condition of submitting Rs1 million as a surety bond by the SHC in his last pending case – the murder of an activist of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) in 2009.
He was expected to be released from the jail on Wednesday after seven years of his detention, from where he was supposed to visit his father’s grave before going to his house in Landhi.
Who is Afaq Ahmed?
Ahmed, once close to the MQM chief Altaf Hussain, developed differences with him in the 1990s. Following an operation against the party in June 1992, Ahmed and Aaamir Khan led the breakaway faction later called Mohajir Qaumi Movement-Haqiqi.
The MQM-H established its hold in Liaquatabad, Landhi, Korangi, and New Karachi with the Lines Area sector being their stronghold. These areas were later dubbed ‘no-go areas’ for members, associates or supporters of Altaf Hussain.
The rival factions have long accused each other of killing workers and supporters.
Ahmed emerged as a strong opponent in the late 1990s but in early 2000 was forced to go underground as government agencies launched a search operation against him.
In 2004, when the MQM came into power and Arbab Ghulam Rahim was the then Sindh chief minister, Ahmed was arrested and has been in prison ever since. His headquarters known as the ‘White House’ was razed to the ground, sending a strong signal to the MQM-Haqiqi.
Ahmed still wields influence amongst a section of the Urdu- speaking community. His release may be the beginning of a new friction in Sindh’s politics.
Section 144 was imposed before the release orders of Ahmed were submitted.
Around 500-1,000 MQM-H supporters, who had gathered outside the Malir District Jail, expecting Ahmed’s release started protesting and blocked the National Highway.
On Monday, Ahmed was granted bail on condition of submitting Rs1 million as a surety bond by the SHC in his last pending case – the murder of an activist of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) in 2009.
He was expected to be released from the jail on Wednesday after seven years of his detention, from where he was supposed to visit his father’s grave before going to his house in Landhi.
Who is Afaq Ahmed?
Ahmed, once close to the MQM chief Altaf Hussain, developed differences with him in the 1990s. Following an operation against the party in June 1992, Ahmed and Aaamir Khan led the breakaway faction later called Mohajir Qaumi Movement-Haqiqi.
The MQM-H established its hold in Liaquatabad, Landhi, Korangi, and New Karachi with the Lines Area sector being their stronghold. These areas were later dubbed ‘no-go areas’ for members, associates or supporters of Altaf Hussain.
The rival factions have long accused each other of killing workers and supporters.
Ahmed emerged as a strong opponent in the late 1990s but in early 2000 was forced to go underground as government agencies launched a search operation against him.
In 2004, when the MQM came into power and Arbab Ghulam Rahim was the then Sindh chief minister, Ahmed was arrested and has been in prison ever since. His headquarters known as the ‘White House’ was razed to the ground, sending a strong signal to the MQM-Haqiqi.
Ahmed still wields influence amongst a section of the Urdu- speaking community. His release may be the beginning of a new friction in Sindh’s politics.
Pakistan's double-game: treachery or strategy?
(Reuters) - Washington has just about had it with Pakistan.
"Turns out they are disloyal, deceptive and a danger to the United States," fumed Republican Representative Ted Poe last week. "We pay them to hate us. Now we pay them to bomb us. Let's not pay them at all."
For many in America, Islamabad has been nothing short of perfidious since joining a strategic alliance with Washington 10 years ago: selectively cooperating in the war on extremist violence and taking billions of dollars in aid to do the job, while all the time sheltering and supporting Islamist militant groups that fight NATO troops in Afghanistan.
Pakistan has angrily denied the charges, but if its critics are right, what could the explanation be for such duplicity? What strategic agendas might be hidden behind this puzzling statecraft?
The answer is that Pakistan wants to guarantee for itself a stake in Afghanistan's political future.
It knows that, as U.S. forces gradually withdraw from Afghanistan, ethnic groups will be competing for ascendancy there and other regional powers - from India to China and Iran - will be jostling for a foot in the door.
Islamabad's support for the Taliban movement in the 1990s gives it an outsized influence among Afghanistan's Pashtuns, who make up about 42 percent of the total population and who maintain close ties with their Pakistani fellow tribesmen.
In particular, Pakistan's powerful military is determined there should be no vacuum in Afghanistan that could be filled by its arch-foe, India.
INDIA FOCUS
Pakistan has fought three wars with its neighbour since the bloody partition of the subcontinent that led to the creation of the country in 1947, and mutual suspicion still hobbles relations between the two nuclear-armed powers today.
"They still think India is their primary policy," said Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani general and prominent political analyst. "India is always in the back of their minds."
In an interview with Reuters on Tuesday, Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani - unprompted - complained that Washington's failure to deal even-handedly with New Delhi and Islamabad was a source of regional instability.
Aqil Shah, a South Asia security expert at the Harvard Society of Fellows, said Islamabad's worst-case scenario would be an Afghanistan controlled or dominated by groups with ties to India, such as the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance, which it fears would pursue activities hostile to Pakistan.
"Ideally, the military would like Afghanistan to become a relatively stable satellite dominated by Islamist Pashtuns," Shah wrote in a Foreign Affairs article this week.
Although Pakistan, an Islamic state, officially abandoned support for the predominantly Pashtun Taliban after the 9/11 attacks on the United States in 2001, elements of the military never made the doctrinal shift.
Few doubt that the shadowy intelligence directorate, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), has maintained links to the Taliban that emerged from its support for the Afghan mujahideen during the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Until recently, there appeared to be a grudging acceptance from Washington that this was the inevitable status quo.
That was until it emerged in May that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden - who was killed in a U.S. Navy SEALs raid - had been hiding out in a Pakistani garrison town just two hours up the road from Islamabad, by some accounts for up to five years.
Relations between Pakistan and the United States have been stormy ever since, culminating in a tirade by the outgoing U.S. joint chiefs of staff, Mike Mullen, last week.
Mullen described the Haqqani network, the most feared faction among Taliban militants in Afghanistan, as a "veritable arm" of the ISI and accused Islamabad of providing support for the group's Sept. 13 attack on the U.S. embassy in Kabul.
The reaction in Islamabad has been one of stunned outrage.
Washington has not gone public with evidence to back its accusation, and Pakistani officials say that contacts with the Haqqani group do not amount to actual support.
However, Imran Khan, a Pakistani cricketer-turned-populist-politician, said this week that it was too much to expect that old friends could have become enemies overnight.
He told Reuters that, instead of demanding that Pakistan attack the Haqqanis in the mountainous border region of North Waziristan, the United States should use Islamabad's leverage with the group to bring the Afghan Taliban into negotiations.
"Haqqani could be your ticket to getting them on the negotiating table, which at the moment they are refusing," Khan said. "So I think that is a much saner policy than to ask Pakistan to try to take them on."
REGIONAL GAME
The big risk for the United States in berating Islamabad is that it will exacerbate anti-American sentiment, which already runs deep in Pakistan, and perhaps embolden it further.
C. Raja Mohan, senior fellow at New Delhi's Centre for Policy Research, said Pakistan was probably gambling that the United States' economic crisis and upcoming presidential elections would distract Washington.
"The real game is unfolding on the ground with the Americans. The Pakistan army is betting that the United States does not have too many choices and more broadly that the U.S. is on the decline, he said.
It is also becoming clear that as Pakistan's relations with Washington deteriorate, it can fall back into the arms of its "all-weather friend", China, the energy-hungry giant that is the biggest investor in Afghanistan's nascent resources sector.
Pakistani officials heaped praise on Beijing this week as a Chinese minister visited Islamabad. Among them was army chief General Ashfaq Kayani, arguably the country's most powerful man, who spoke of China's "unwavering support".
In addition, Pakistan has extended a cordial hand to Iran, which also shares a border with Afghanistan.
Teheran has been mostly opposed to the Taliban, which is dominated by Sunni Muslims while Iran is predominantly Shi'ite. But Iran's anti-Americanism is more deep-seated.
"My reading is the Iranians want to see the Americans go," said Raja Mohan, the Indian analyst. "They have a problem with the Taliban, but any American retreat will suit them. Iran in the short term is looking at the Americans being humiliated."
ARMY CALLS THE SHOTS
The supremacy of the military in Pakistan means that Washington has little to gain little from wagging its finger about ties with the Taliban at the civilian government, which is regularly lashed for its incompetence and corruption.
"The state has become so soft and powerless it can't make any difference," said Masood, the Pakistani retired general. "Any change will have to come from the military."
Daniel Markey, a senior fellow for South Asia at the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, said the problem lies with a security establishment that continues to believe that arming and working - actively and passively - with militant groups serves its purposes.
"Until ... soul-searching takes place within the Pakistani military and the ISI, you're not likely to see an end to these U.S. demands, and a real shift in terms of the relationship," Markey said in an online discussion this week. "This is the most significant shift that has to take place."
(Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
"Turns out they are disloyal, deceptive and a danger to the United States," fumed Republican Representative Ted Poe last week. "We pay them to hate us. Now we pay them to bomb us. Let's not pay them at all."
For many in America, Islamabad has been nothing short of perfidious since joining a strategic alliance with Washington 10 years ago: selectively cooperating in the war on extremist violence and taking billions of dollars in aid to do the job, while all the time sheltering and supporting Islamist militant groups that fight NATO troops in Afghanistan.
Pakistan has angrily denied the charges, but if its critics are right, what could the explanation be for such duplicity? What strategic agendas might be hidden behind this puzzling statecraft?
The answer is that Pakistan wants to guarantee for itself a stake in Afghanistan's political future.
It knows that, as U.S. forces gradually withdraw from Afghanistan, ethnic groups will be competing for ascendancy there and other regional powers - from India to China and Iran - will be jostling for a foot in the door.
Islamabad's support for the Taliban movement in the 1990s gives it an outsized influence among Afghanistan's Pashtuns, who make up about 42 percent of the total population and who maintain close ties with their Pakistani fellow tribesmen.
In particular, Pakistan's powerful military is determined there should be no vacuum in Afghanistan that could be filled by its arch-foe, India.
INDIA FOCUS
Pakistan has fought three wars with its neighbour since the bloody partition of the subcontinent that led to the creation of the country in 1947, and mutual suspicion still hobbles relations between the two nuclear-armed powers today.
"They still think India is their primary policy," said Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani general and prominent political analyst. "India is always in the back of their minds."
In an interview with Reuters on Tuesday, Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani - unprompted - complained that Washington's failure to deal even-handedly with New Delhi and Islamabad was a source of regional instability.
Aqil Shah, a South Asia security expert at the Harvard Society of Fellows, said Islamabad's worst-case scenario would be an Afghanistan controlled or dominated by groups with ties to India, such as the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance, which it fears would pursue activities hostile to Pakistan.
"Ideally, the military would like Afghanistan to become a relatively stable satellite dominated by Islamist Pashtuns," Shah wrote in a Foreign Affairs article this week.
Although Pakistan, an Islamic state, officially abandoned support for the predominantly Pashtun Taliban after the 9/11 attacks on the United States in 2001, elements of the military never made the doctrinal shift.
Few doubt that the shadowy intelligence directorate, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), has maintained links to the Taliban that emerged from its support for the Afghan mujahideen during the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Until recently, there appeared to be a grudging acceptance from Washington that this was the inevitable status quo.
That was until it emerged in May that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden - who was killed in a U.S. Navy SEALs raid - had been hiding out in a Pakistani garrison town just two hours up the road from Islamabad, by some accounts for up to five years.
Relations between Pakistan and the United States have been stormy ever since, culminating in a tirade by the outgoing U.S. joint chiefs of staff, Mike Mullen, last week.
Mullen described the Haqqani network, the most feared faction among Taliban militants in Afghanistan, as a "veritable arm" of the ISI and accused Islamabad of providing support for the group's Sept. 13 attack on the U.S. embassy in Kabul.
The reaction in Islamabad has been one of stunned outrage.
Washington has not gone public with evidence to back its accusation, and Pakistani officials say that contacts with the Haqqani group do not amount to actual support.
However, Imran Khan, a Pakistani cricketer-turned-populist-politician, said this week that it was too much to expect that old friends could have become enemies overnight.
He told Reuters that, instead of demanding that Pakistan attack the Haqqanis in the mountainous border region of North Waziristan, the United States should use Islamabad's leverage with the group to bring the Afghan Taliban into negotiations.
"Haqqani could be your ticket to getting them on the negotiating table, which at the moment they are refusing," Khan said. "So I think that is a much saner policy than to ask Pakistan to try to take them on."
REGIONAL GAME
The big risk for the United States in berating Islamabad is that it will exacerbate anti-American sentiment, which already runs deep in Pakistan, and perhaps embolden it further.
C. Raja Mohan, senior fellow at New Delhi's Centre for Policy Research, said Pakistan was probably gambling that the United States' economic crisis and upcoming presidential elections would distract Washington.
"The real game is unfolding on the ground with the Americans. The Pakistan army is betting that the United States does not have too many choices and more broadly that the U.S. is on the decline, he said.
It is also becoming clear that as Pakistan's relations with Washington deteriorate, it can fall back into the arms of its "all-weather friend", China, the energy-hungry giant that is the biggest investor in Afghanistan's nascent resources sector.
Pakistani officials heaped praise on Beijing this week as a Chinese minister visited Islamabad. Among them was army chief General Ashfaq Kayani, arguably the country's most powerful man, who spoke of China's "unwavering support".
In addition, Pakistan has extended a cordial hand to Iran, which also shares a border with Afghanistan.
Teheran has been mostly opposed to the Taliban, which is dominated by Sunni Muslims while Iran is predominantly Shi'ite. But Iran's anti-Americanism is more deep-seated.
"My reading is the Iranians want to see the Americans go," said Raja Mohan, the Indian analyst. "They have a problem with the Taliban, but any American retreat will suit them. Iran in the short term is looking at the Americans being humiliated."
ARMY CALLS THE SHOTS
The supremacy of the military in Pakistan means that Washington has little to gain little from wagging its finger about ties with the Taliban at the civilian government, which is regularly lashed for its incompetence and corruption.
"The state has become so soft and powerless it can't make any difference," said Masood, the Pakistani retired general. "Any change will have to come from the military."
Daniel Markey, a senior fellow for South Asia at the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, said the problem lies with a security establishment that continues to believe that arming and working - actively and passively - with militant groups serves its purposes.
"Until ... soul-searching takes place within the Pakistani military and the ISI, you're not likely to see an end to these U.S. demands, and a real shift in terms of the relationship," Markey said in an online discussion this week. "This is the most significant shift that has to take place."
(Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
US missile strike kills 3 in northwest Pakistan
DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan — Pakistani intelligence officials say an American missile strike has killed at least three people in a militant stronghold near the Afghan border.
he two officials say a pair of missiles struck a house near the town of Wana in South Waziristan on Tuesday.
They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk with reporters.
Washington has fired scores of missiles into northwest Pakistan since 2008 to target Taliban and al-Qaida operatives.
The latest strike comes at a time when tension are already high between Washington and Islamabad following a recent claim by a top U.S. military officer, Adm. Mike Mullen, that Pakistan's main spy agency backed those militants who carried out attacks against American targets in Afghanistan.
Pakistan has denied the allegation.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan's interior minister vowed Tuesday to attack Chinese militants hiding out in his country's tribal region, an apparent attempt to curry favor with China at a time when its alliance with the U.S. is severely strained.
Rehman Malik relayed the strong show of support for Beijing after a meeting in Islamabad with Chinese Public Security Minister Meng Jianzhu.
Meng's visit comes as Pakistan's ties with the U.S. have soured over allegations that Islamabad supports Afghan insurgents that are based in Pakistan's tribal regions.
Some Pakistani officials hope that China can fill the diplomatic and economic void if Washington decides to sever or downgrade ties with Islamabad.
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani heaped praise on China, saying the friendship between the two countries was "higher than mountains, deeper than oceans, stronger than steel and sweeter than honey."
However, many analysts doubt that China is interested in replacing the billions of dollars in aid the Americans give Pakistan every year.
Security and political ties between Pakistan and the United States hit a near crisis-point after a top U.S. military officer, Adm. Mike Mullen, claimed last week that Pakistan's main spy agency backed militants that carried out attacks against American targets in Afghanistan. Pakistani officials have denied the allegations and said Washington is trying to use Pakistan as a scapegoat for its troubled war in Afghanistan.
But China also has concerns about the spread of Islamist militancy in Pakistan.
Muslim militants from China's western Xinjiang are known to be training and fighting on the Pakistan side of the Afghan border, along with al-Qaida and other international extremist networks. They have claimed attacks in China and issued statements threatening Beijing.
"We will strike very hard against them," Malik said. "Anybody who is the enemy of China is the enemy of Pakistan."
It remains unclear how Pakistan will do this. Most of the militants are believed to be in the North Waziristan tribal area. Pakistan's army has a presence there, and the U.S. has repeatedly asked Islamabad to move against militants there. However, Pakistan has so far not launched an offensive against militants there.
Malik said Sunday that Islamabad had killed or extradited several Chinese militants, but didn't say when or from where.
___
he two officials say a pair of missiles struck a house near the town of Wana in South Waziristan on Tuesday.
They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk with reporters.
Washington has fired scores of missiles into northwest Pakistan since 2008 to target Taliban and al-Qaida operatives.
The latest strike comes at a time when tension are already high between Washington and Islamabad following a recent claim by a top U.S. military officer, Adm. Mike Mullen, that Pakistan's main spy agency backed those militants who carried out attacks against American targets in Afghanistan.
Pakistan has denied the allegation.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan's interior minister vowed Tuesday to attack Chinese militants hiding out in his country's tribal region, an apparent attempt to curry favor with China at a time when its alliance with the U.S. is severely strained.
Rehman Malik relayed the strong show of support for Beijing after a meeting in Islamabad with Chinese Public Security Minister Meng Jianzhu.
Meng's visit comes as Pakistan's ties with the U.S. have soured over allegations that Islamabad supports Afghan insurgents that are based in Pakistan's tribal regions.
Some Pakistani officials hope that China can fill the diplomatic and economic void if Washington decides to sever or downgrade ties with Islamabad.
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani heaped praise on China, saying the friendship between the two countries was "higher than mountains, deeper than oceans, stronger than steel and sweeter than honey."
However, many analysts doubt that China is interested in replacing the billions of dollars in aid the Americans give Pakistan every year.
Security and political ties between Pakistan and the United States hit a near crisis-point after a top U.S. military officer, Adm. Mike Mullen, claimed last week that Pakistan's main spy agency backed militants that carried out attacks against American targets in Afghanistan. Pakistani officials have denied the allegations and said Washington is trying to use Pakistan as a scapegoat for its troubled war in Afghanistan.
But China also has concerns about the spread of Islamist militancy in Pakistan.
Muslim militants from China's western Xinjiang are known to be training and fighting on the Pakistan side of the Afghan border, along with al-Qaida and other international extremist networks. They have claimed attacks in China and issued statements threatening Beijing.
"We will strike very hard against them," Malik said. "Anybody who is the enemy of China is the enemy of Pakistan."
It remains unclear how Pakistan will do this. Most of the militants are believed to be in the North Waziristan tribal area. Pakistan's army has a presence there, and the U.S. has repeatedly asked Islamabad to move against militants there. However, Pakistan has so far not launched an offensive against militants there.
Malik said Sunday that Islamabad had killed or extradited several Chinese militants, but didn't say when or from where.
___
Monday, September 26, 2011
Officials: No action against Haqqani network by Pakistan military
Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) -- The Pakistani Army has decided not to take action against the Haqqani network for the time being despite a fresh wave of intense pressure from Washington for a military offensive against the Pakistani-based militant group, two military officials told CNN on Monday
Pakistan's army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani summoned an impromptu meeting early Sunday with top generals, two Pakistani military officials told CNN. They asked for anonymity because they are not authorized to talk to the media.
The meeting comes days after the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, made allegations that Pakistan's Intelligence agency, ISI, has direct links with the Haqqani network and was involved in the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul last week.
"The allegation of Pakistan's involvement on the attack on U.S. Embassy in Kabul is just a conspiracy against us," one of the officials said.
He went on to say that the United States was using Pakistan as a scapegoat for its imminent defeat in Afghanistan.
A second official said the decision about taking action against the Haqqani network would be made public at a later time, maybe by the Foreign Ministry, but he did not say when.
The second official said the military has decided not to take action, for the time being, because the army is stretched too thin with several other operations against militants in northwest Pakistan. This is the same reason the army has used on numerous occasion in the past to explain why they have not launched an operation in North Waziristan, where the Haqqani network is based.
"We are not in a position to undertake an operation at this point," the official said.
In a statement Friday, the White House demanded that Pakistan break any links it has with the Haqqani network despite Pakistan's insistence that it had no links with the group.
Pakistan's Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar has been on a diplomatic mission in the United States and is scheduled to speak at the U.N. General Assembly despite receiving orders by Pakistan's prime minister to return to Pakistan.
Pakistan's army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani summoned an impromptu meeting early Sunday with top generals, two Pakistani military officials told CNN. They asked for anonymity because they are not authorized to talk to the media.
The meeting comes days after the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, made allegations that Pakistan's Intelligence agency, ISI, has direct links with the Haqqani network and was involved in the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul last week.
"The allegation of Pakistan's involvement on the attack on U.S. Embassy in Kabul is just a conspiracy against us," one of the officials said.
He went on to say that the United States was using Pakistan as a scapegoat for its imminent defeat in Afghanistan.
A second official said the decision about taking action against the Haqqani network would be made public at a later time, maybe by the Foreign Ministry, but he did not say when.
The second official said the military has decided not to take action, for the time being, because the army is stretched too thin with several other operations against militants in northwest Pakistan. This is the same reason the army has used on numerous occasion in the past to explain why they have not launched an operation in North Waziristan, where the Haqqani network is based.
"We are not in a position to undertake an operation at this point," the official said.
In a statement Friday, the White House demanded that Pakistan break any links it has with the Haqqani network despite Pakistan's insistence that it had no links with the group.
Pakistan's Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar has been on a diplomatic mission in the United States and is scheduled to speak at the U.N. General Assembly despite receiving orders by Pakistan's prime minister to return to Pakistan.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Women in Saudi Arabia to vote and run in elections
Women in Saudi Arabia are to be given the right to vote and run in future municipal elections, King Abdullah has announced.
He said they would also have the right to be appointed to the consultative Shura Council.
The move was welcomed by activists who have called for greater rights for women in the kingdom, which enforces a strict version of Sunni Islamic law.
The changes will occur after municipal polls on Thursday, the king said.
King Abdullah announced the move in a speech at the opening of the new term of the Shura Council - the formal body advising the king, whose members are all appointed.
"Because we refuse to marginalise women in society in all roles that comply with sharia, we have decided, after deliberation with our senior clerics and others... to involve women in the Shura Council as members, starting from next term," he said.
"Women will be able to run as candidates in the municipal election and will even have a right to vote."
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
This is something we have long waited for and long worked towards”
Nimah Ismail Nawwab Saudi writer and activist
Cautious reformer
The BBC's world affairs correspondent Emily Buchanan says it is an extraordinary development for women in Saudi Arabia, who are not allowed to drive, or to leave the country unaccompanied.
She says there has been a big debate about the role of women in the kingdom and, although not everyone will welcome the decision, such a reform will ease some of the tension that has been growing over the issue.
Saudi writer Nimah Ismail Nawwab told the BBC: "This is something we have long waited for and long worked towards."
She said activists had been campaigning for 20 years on driving, guardianship and voting issues.
Another campaigner, Wajeha al-Huwaider, said the king's announcement was "great news".
"Now it is time to remove other barriers like not allowing women to drive cars and not being able to function, to live a normal life without male guardians," she told Reuters news agency.
Correspondents say King Abdullah has been cautiously pressing for political reforms, but in a country where conservative clerics and some members of the royal family resist change, liberalisation has been very gradual.
In May more than 60 intellectuals called for a boycott of Thursday's ballot saying "municipal councils lack the authority to effectively carry out their role".
Municipal elections are the only public polls in Saudi Arabia.
More than 5,000 men will compete in municipal elections on Thursday - the second-ever in the kingdom - to fill half the seats in local councils. The other half are appointed by the government.
He said they would also have the right to be appointed to the consultative Shura Council.
The move was welcomed by activists who have called for greater rights for women in the kingdom, which enforces a strict version of Sunni Islamic law.
The changes will occur after municipal polls on Thursday, the king said.
King Abdullah announced the move in a speech at the opening of the new term of the Shura Council - the formal body advising the king, whose members are all appointed.
"Because we refuse to marginalise women in society in all roles that comply with sharia, we have decided, after deliberation with our senior clerics and others... to involve women in the Shura Council as members, starting from next term," he said.
"Women will be able to run as candidates in the municipal election and will even have a right to vote."
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
This is something we have long waited for and long worked towards”
Nimah Ismail Nawwab Saudi writer and activist
Cautious reformer
The BBC's world affairs correspondent Emily Buchanan says it is an extraordinary development for women in Saudi Arabia, who are not allowed to drive, or to leave the country unaccompanied.
She says there has been a big debate about the role of women in the kingdom and, although not everyone will welcome the decision, such a reform will ease some of the tension that has been growing over the issue.
Saudi writer Nimah Ismail Nawwab told the BBC: "This is something we have long waited for and long worked towards."
She said activists had been campaigning for 20 years on driving, guardianship and voting issues.
Another campaigner, Wajeha al-Huwaider, said the king's announcement was "great news".
"Now it is time to remove other barriers like not allowing women to drive cars and not being able to function, to live a normal life without male guardians," she told Reuters news agency.
Correspondents say King Abdullah has been cautiously pressing for political reforms, but in a country where conservative clerics and some members of the royal family resist change, liberalisation has been very gradual.
In May more than 60 intellectuals called for a boycott of Thursday's ballot saying "municipal councils lack the authority to effectively carry out their role".
Municipal elections are the only public polls in Saudi Arabia.
More than 5,000 men will compete in municipal elections on Thursday - the second-ever in the kingdom - to fill half the seats in local councils. The other half are appointed by the government.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Pakistan warns that U.S. accusations may cost Washington an ally
Pakistani officials warned Friday that they could jettison the United States as an ally if American officials continued to accuse Islamabad's intelligence agency of assisting a leading Afghan Taliban group in recent attacks in Afghanistan.
Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar cautioned the U.S. against airing allegations such as the blunt charge of collusion between Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, known as ISI, and the militant Haqqani network made Thursday by Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
"You cannot afford to alienate Pakistan; you cannot afford to alienate the Pakistani people," Khar said in New York, speaking to a Pakistani television channel. She was in the U.S. for the U.N. General Assembly session.
Pakistani army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani in a statement called Mullen's remarks "very unfortunate and not based on facts."
Pakistani officials continued to tersely reject the allegations and challenged the U.S. to furnish evidence of ties between the country's intelligence community and the Haqqani group.
Mullen called the Haqqani network "a veritable arm" of the ISI and said the intelligence agency helped Haqqani militants during attacks Sept. 13 on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul as well as a truck bomb blast in Wardak province three days earlier that injured 77 American troops.
U.S. military officers and former officials say ISI communicated with Afghan insurgents who attacked the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters nearby and appears to have provided them with equipment.
Estimated to number more than 10,000 fighters, the Haqqani network uses Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal region along the Afghan border to launch suicide bombings, commando-style assaults and other strikes on U.S., Afghan and North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces in eastern Afghanistan and in the capital, Kabul.
The group has never carried out any attacks against targets in Pakistan. The country's links with the Haqqani network date to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, when the ISI backed the group's founder, Jalaluddin Haqqani, and other resistance fighters.
Mullen's allegations probably will widen the chasm between Pakistan and the U.S., tenuous allies whose mutual mistrust deepened considerably this year. The U.S. commando raid in May that killed Osama bin Laden in the city of Abbottabad raised questions in Washington about whether elements of the Pakistan's intelligence agencies knew that the Al Qaeda leader had been hiding for five years just a few miles north of the capital, Islamabad. The January arrest of CIA contractor Raymond Davis, accused of shooting to death two Pakistani men he said were trying to rob him, sparked fear among Pakistanis that scores of CIA operatives were secretly roaming the country.
To get Pakistan to act against the Haqqani network, Washington has signaled a willingness to link future financial aid with Islamabad's cooperation against extremists, and has hinted that it could even mount some kind of unilateral, targeted strike on Haqqani strongholds in Pakistani territory.
In Karachi, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told reporters that the onus was on Washington to pull back and begin mending frayed relations between the two countries.
"They can't live with us; they can't live without us," Gilani said. "So I would say to them that if they can't live without us, they should increase contacts with us to remove misunderstandings."
Security analyst Javed Hussain, a retired Pakistani brigadier, said a U.S. strike on Haqqani would backfire, given the array of militant groups beyond the Haqqani network that also use North Waziristan as a base of operations.
"It would be a strategic blunder," Hussain said. "North Waziristan is a hornet's nest.... They would all converge and coordinate activities against the U.S. Can [Defense Secretary Leon E.] Panetta or President Obama afford to open another front under the present circumstances? If he does, good luck to him."
Experts say no measure may be enough to prod Pakistan's security establishment into severing ties with the Haqqani group. The military views the militant network as a valuable asset in a post-U.S. Afghanistan to prevent nuclear archrival India from extending its influence to Kabul. Pakistan's military and intelligence chiefs have always regarded India, and not Islamic extremists, as their primary enemy.
Pakistan's military leaders, says security analyst and former Pakistani Gen. Talat Masood, "do feel that the policy they are pursuing is, in the long term, in their interest.... There are others in Pakistan who believe this association with the Haqqani network is extremely detrimental to Pakistan's interests. But they are in the minority."
Friday, September 23, 2011
Pakistan Condemns Collusion Comments
(ISLAMABAD) — Pakistan lashed out at the U.S. for accusing the country's most powerful intelligence agency of supporting extremist attacks against American troops in Afghanistan — the most serious allegations against Islamabad since the beginning of the Afghan war.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar dismissed the claims as mere allegations. She warned the U.S. that it risked losing Pakistan as an ally and could not afford to alienate the Pakistani government or its people.(See more on difficulties in U.S.-Pakistan relations.)
"If they are choosing to do so, it will be at their own cost," Khar told Geo TV on Thursday from New York City, where she is attending a U.N. General Assembly meeting. "Anything which is said about an ally, about a partner publicly to recriminate it, to humiliate it is not acceptable."
Khar's comments were first aired in Pakistan on Friday.
The foreign minister spoke following congressional testimony by the top U.S. military officer about Pakistan.(See more on how the U.S. is stuck with Pakistan.)
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, accused Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency Thursday of supporting the Haqqani insurgent network in planning and executing the assault on the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan last week and a truck bomb that wounded 77 American soldiers days earlier.
He also said the U.S. had credible information that Haqqani extremists, with help from the ISI, were responsible for the June 28 attack on the Inter-Continental Hotel in Kabul and other small but effective assaults.
The Haqqani insurgent network is widely believed to be based in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal area along the Afghan border. The group has historical ties to Pakistani intelligence, dating back to the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The U.S. military has said the Haqqani network, which has ties to both al-Qaeda and the Taliban, poses the greatest threat to American troops in Afghanistan.
Mullen insisted that the Haqqani insurgent network "acts as a veritable arm" of the ISI, undermining the uneasy U.S.-Pakistan relationship forged in the terror fight and endangering American troops in the almost 10-year-old war in Afghanistan.
Pakistan is "exporting violence" and threatening any success in Afghanistan, Mullen told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
"In choosing to use violent extremism as an instrument of policy, the government of Pakistan, and most especially the Pakistani army and ISI, jeopardizes not only the prospect of our strategic partnership but Pakistan's opportunity to be a respected nation with legitimate regional influence," Mullen said. "They may believe that by using these proxies, they are hedging their bets or redressing what they feel is an imbalance in regional power. But in reality, they have already lost that bet."
Mullen's harsh words marked the first time an American official had tied Pakistan's intelligence agency directly to the attacks and signaled a significant shift in the U.S. approach to Islamabad. In the past, U.S. criticism of Pakistan largely had been relayed in private conversations with the countries' leaders while American officials publicly offered encouraging words for Islamabad's participation in the terror fight.
Mullen did not provide specific evidence backing up his accusations or indicate what the U.S. would do if Pakistan refuses to cut ties to the Haqqani network. The U.S. has repeatedly demanded that Pakistan attack the insurgents and prevent them from using the country's territory.
Pakistan has denied ties to the group in the past and has said it cannot attack them because its troops are stretched too thin fighting other militants in the country's semiautonomous tribal region. Many analysts believe, however, that Pakistan wants to remain on good terms with the militants because they could be useful allies in Afghanistan after foreign forces withdraw.
Mullen's comments carry particular weight since the Joint Chiefs chairman has nurtured ties with the Pakistanis during his tenure, meeting with officials more than two dozen times. His congressional testimony was his last before he retires next week.
Mullen reaffirmed his support for continued U.S. engagement with the nuclear-armed Pakistan and warned of the consequences if the relationship should break down. But his comments could make that engagement harder and continue a recent downward trend in ties between the two countries.
The relationship took one of its hardest hits when U.S. commandos sneaked into Pakistan on May 2 and killed al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in a garrison town not far from Islamabad.
The covert raid outraged the Pakistani government because it was not told about it beforehand, while bin Laden's presence in Abbottabad raised further suspicions among U.S. officials about the country's duplicity in the anti-terror fight.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar dismissed the claims as mere allegations. She warned the U.S. that it risked losing Pakistan as an ally and could not afford to alienate the Pakistani government or its people.(See more on difficulties in U.S.-Pakistan relations.)
"If they are choosing to do so, it will be at their own cost," Khar told Geo TV on Thursday from New York City, where she is attending a U.N. General Assembly meeting. "Anything which is said about an ally, about a partner publicly to recriminate it, to humiliate it is not acceptable."
Khar's comments were first aired in Pakistan on Friday.
The foreign minister spoke following congressional testimony by the top U.S. military officer about Pakistan.(See more on how the U.S. is stuck with Pakistan.)
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, accused Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency Thursday of supporting the Haqqani insurgent network in planning and executing the assault on the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan last week and a truck bomb that wounded 77 American soldiers days earlier.
He also said the U.S. had credible information that Haqqani extremists, with help from the ISI, were responsible for the June 28 attack on the Inter-Continental Hotel in Kabul and other small but effective assaults.
The Haqqani insurgent network is widely believed to be based in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal area along the Afghan border. The group has historical ties to Pakistani intelligence, dating back to the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The U.S. military has said the Haqqani network, which has ties to both al-Qaeda and the Taliban, poses the greatest threat to American troops in Afghanistan.
Mullen insisted that the Haqqani insurgent network "acts as a veritable arm" of the ISI, undermining the uneasy U.S.-Pakistan relationship forged in the terror fight and endangering American troops in the almost 10-year-old war in Afghanistan.
Pakistan is "exporting violence" and threatening any success in Afghanistan, Mullen told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
"In choosing to use violent extremism as an instrument of policy, the government of Pakistan, and most especially the Pakistani army and ISI, jeopardizes not only the prospect of our strategic partnership but Pakistan's opportunity to be a respected nation with legitimate regional influence," Mullen said. "They may believe that by using these proxies, they are hedging their bets or redressing what they feel is an imbalance in regional power. But in reality, they have already lost that bet."
Mullen's harsh words marked the first time an American official had tied Pakistan's intelligence agency directly to the attacks and signaled a significant shift in the U.S. approach to Islamabad. In the past, U.S. criticism of Pakistan largely had been relayed in private conversations with the countries' leaders while American officials publicly offered encouraging words for Islamabad's participation in the terror fight.
Mullen did not provide specific evidence backing up his accusations or indicate what the U.S. would do if Pakistan refuses to cut ties to the Haqqani network. The U.S. has repeatedly demanded that Pakistan attack the insurgents and prevent them from using the country's territory.
Pakistan has denied ties to the group in the past and has said it cannot attack them because its troops are stretched too thin fighting other militants in the country's semiautonomous tribal region. Many analysts believe, however, that Pakistan wants to remain on good terms with the militants because they could be useful allies in Afghanistan after foreign forces withdraw.
Mullen's comments carry particular weight since the Joint Chiefs chairman has nurtured ties with the Pakistanis during his tenure, meeting with officials more than two dozen times. His congressional testimony was his last before he retires next week.
Mullen reaffirmed his support for continued U.S. engagement with the nuclear-armed Pakistan and warned of the consequences if the relationship should break down. But his comments could make that engagement harder and continue a recent downward trend in ties between the two countries.
The relationship took one of its hardest hits when U.S. commandos sneaked into Pakistan on May 2 and killed al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in a garrison town not far from Islamabad.
The covert raid outraged the Pakistani government because it was not told about it beforehand, while bin Laden's presence in Abbottabad raised further suspicions among U.S. officials about the country's duplicity in the anti-terror fight.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Pakistan vows action on Haqqanis if intel provided: Malik
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has promised action against the Haqqani network if the United States provides sufficient intelligence, but denied that the al Qaeda-linked Taliban faction was on Pakistani soil.
Ties between Pakistan and the United States appear to be slowly warming after the May 2 unilateral American raid that killed Osama bin Laden not far from the capital Islamabad saw relations sour.
But the US has significantly increased pressure on Pakistan to cut alleged ties with the Haqqani network, which Washington believes is based in Pakistan’s northwest.
The Haqqani network is probably the most dangerous faction in the Afghan Taliban and founded by a CIA asset turned al Qaeda ally.
“I have assured them (the United States) they are not on the Pakistani side (of the border with Afghanistan) but if there is intelligence which is provided by the US we will definitely take action,” Interior Minister Rehman Malik said.
Malik spoke to reporters after talks with FBI director Robert Mueller late Wednesday. The minister said Pakistan and the United States were “resolving” together the “irritant” of the Haqqani group issue.
Washington blames the Haqqanis for some of the most spectacular attacks in Afghanistan, such as last week’s 19-hour siege in Kabul and the 2009 killing of seven CIA agents, and accuses Pakistani spies of having ties to the group.
Ties between Pakistan and the United States appear to be slowly warming after the May 2 unilateral American raid that killed Osama bin Laden not far from the capital Islamabad saw relations sour.
But the US has significantly increased pressure on Pakistan to cut alleged ties with the Haqqani network, which Washington believes is based in Pakistan’s northwest.
The Haqqani network is probably the most dangerous faction in the Afghan Taliban and founded by a CIA asset turned al Qaeda ally.
“I have assured them (the United States) they are not on the Pakistani side (of the border with Afghanistan) but if there is intelligence which is provided by the US we will definitely take action,” Interior Minister Rehman Malik said.
Malik spoke to reporters after talks with FBI director Robert Mueller late Wednesday. The minister said Pakistan and the United States were “resolving” together the “irritant” of the Haqqani group issue.
Washington blames the Haqqanis for some of the most spectacular attacks in Afghanistan, such as last week’s 19-hour siege in Kabul and the 2009 killing of seven CIA agents, and accuses Pakistani spies of having ties to the group.
Taliban sent CD before Burhanuddin Rabbani killing: Hamid Karzai
President Hamid Karzai today said that the assassin of Afghan peace broker Burhanuddin Rabbani had come to Kabul with a CD carrying an apparent audio "message of peace", allegedly from Taliban leaders.
Karzai said he had heard the CD, passed to him by a High Peace Council representative, before Rabbani's assassination and initially thought it carried the peace message.
The Afghan president then headed to the United States but cut short the visit after Rabbani was killed at his Kabul home on Tuesday. Officials say the killer had waited in the Afghan capital for up to four days to see him.
In an emotional press conference in the presidential palace gardens, Karzai said: "We saw that that message was not a message of peace, it was rather a deception... and the peace emissary was a murderer."
Rabbani, chairman of Karzai's High Peace Council, was killed by a bomber wearing explosives in his turban.
The Taliban have yet to claim responsibility for the attack but officials have blamed them for carrying it out.
In a separate press conference, Afghanistan's intelligence agency the National Directorate of Security (NDS) said it believed the Taliban's leadership body -- the Quetta Shura -- was involved.
"Our investigation is continuing but we know that someone named Mullah Hamidullah from the Quetta Shura was involved," said spokesperson Shafiqullah Taheri. "This means that the Quetta Shura was also involved."
He added that the initial contact which led to the fatal meeting dated back to June.
Karzai said he had heard the CD, passed to him by a High Peace Council representative, before Rabbani's assassination and initially thought it carried the peace message.
The Afghan president then headed to the United States but cut short the visit after Rabbani was killed at his Kabul home on Tuesday. Officials say the killer had waited in the Afghan capital for up to four days to see him.
In an emotional press conference in the presidential palace gardens, Karzai said: "We saw that that message was not a message of peace, it was rather a deception... and the peace emissary was a murderer."
Rabbani, chairman of Karzai's High Peace Council, was killed by a bomber wearing explosives in his turban.
The Taliban have yet to claim responsibility for the attack but officials have blamed them for carrying it out.
In a separate press conference, Afghanistan's intelligence agency the National Directorate of Security (NDS) said it believed the Taliban's leadership body -- the Quetta Shura -- was involved.
"Our investigation is continuing but we know that someone named Mullah Hamidullah from the Quetta Shura was involved," said spokesperson Shafiqullah Taheri. "This means that the Quetta Shura was also involved."
He added that the initial contact which led to the fatal meeting dated back to June.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
American ultimatum to Pakistan: End ISI's proxy war
WASHINGTON: Accusing Pakistan's military-run ISI of using the Haqqani network to carry out a "proxy war", US has warned Islamabad to cut ties with the terror group and help eliminate its leaders or it will act unilaterally.
In what amounts to an ultimatum, the US administration have indicated that the US will act unilaterally if Pakistan does not comply, 'The Washington Post' daily reported.
Quoting officials, the paper said the message was delivered in high-level meetings and public statements over the past several days reflecting Washington's view that the year-long strategy of using persuasion and military assistance to influence Pakistan's behaviour has been ineffective.
According to the Post, White House officials and defence secretary Leon Panetta are said to be adamant in their determination to change the approach.
The report comes as chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen told a meeting here on Tuesday night that in his discussions with Pakistan army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, he had pressed Islamabad to end its links with the terror group.
"We covered a full range of issues focusing on the danger of the Haqqani network, the need for the Haqqani network to disengage...the need for the Haqqani network to disengage, specifically the need for the ISI to disconnect from Haqqani and from this proxy war that they're fighting," he said during his address at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace here.
He added, "The ISI has been doing this - working for - supporting proxies for an extended period of time. It is a strategy in the country and I think that strategic approach has to shift in the future."
In what amounts to an ultimatum, the US administration have indicated that the US will act unilaterally if Pakistan does not comply, 'The Washington Post' daily reported.
Quoting officials, the paper said the message was delivered in high-level meetings and public statements over the past several days reflecting Washington's view that the year-long strategy of using persuasion and military assistance to influence Pakistan's behaviour has been ineffective.
According to the Post, White House officials and defence secretary Leon Panetta are said to be adamant in their determination to change the approach.
The report comes as chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen told a meeting here on Tuesday night that in his discussions with Pakistan army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, he had pressed Islamabad to end its links with the terror group.
"We covered a full range of issues focusing on the danger of the Haqqani network, the need for the Haqqani network to disengage...the need for the Haqqani network to disengage, specifically the need for the ISI to disconnect from Haqqani and from this proxy war that they're fighting," he said during his address at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace here.
He added, "The ISI has been doing this - working for - supporting proxies for an extended period of time. It is a strategy in the country and I think that strategic approach has to shift in the future."
29 pilgrims killed in firing on bus
MASTUNG: In the incident of target killing, at least 29 passengers
were killed and more than 20 injured when unknown assailants opened fire
on a bus going to Iran.
Unlucky bus had started its journey at about 4 in the afternoon from Quetta for Iran via Tafftan on Tuesday carrying 60 pilgrims, when it reached at Ghunja Dori near Lak Pass some 25 km away from Quetta, four unknown motorcyclists blocked the way of the bus.
When driver stopped the bus, the assailants entered and opened indiscriminate fire on the pilgrims resulting in the death of 29 passengers while more than 20 were injured. The attackers managed to escape from the crime scene. The eye witnessed said that the killers completed the massacre without any haste.
After the incipient Levies Force and other rescue teams reached the spot and shifted dead bodies as well as wounded persons to Bolan Medical Complex and other hospitals of Quetta and Mastung. Police started investigation of the incident.
It is pertinent to mention here that during Ramazan same kind of incident was occurred in the area, when unknown miscreants opened fire on a vehicle killing the nephew of Chief Minister Baluchistan.
Unlucky bus had started its journey at about 4 in the afternoon from Quetta for Iran via Tafftan on Tuesday carrying 60 pilgrims, when it reached at Ghunja Dori near Lak Pass some 25 km away from Quetta, four unknown motorcyclists blocked the way of the bus.
When driver stopped the bus, the assailants entered and opened indiscriminate fire on the pilgrims resulting in the death of 29 passengers while more than 20 were injured. The attackers managed to escape from the crime scene. The eye witnessed said that the killers completed the massacre without any haste.
After the incipient Levies Force and other rescue teams reached the spot and shifted dead bodies as well as wounded persons to Bolan Medical Complex and other hospitals of Quetta and Mastung. Police started investigation of the incident.
It is pertinent to mention here that during Ramazan same kind of incident was occurred in the area, when unknown miscreants opened fire on a vehicle killing the nephew of Chief Minister Baluchistan.
Killing of Afghan leader endangers peace process
KABUL, Afghanistan — The suicide bomber who killed the head of an
Afghan peace council struggling to start meaningful negotiations with
the Taliban delivered a potentially fatal blow to the efforts to find a
political settlement in Afghanistan.
Afghan officials on Wednesday mourned the death of former President Berhanuddin Rabbani, who headed the High Peace Council. His assassin had claimed he was a Taliban leader seeking to reconcile with the government and had waited for days in Kabul on the pretext of wanting to talk to Rabbani about peace.
The assassination sapped hope for reconciling with the Taliban and raised fears about deteriorating security in Afghanistan just as foreign combat troops are starting to pull out. Some U.S. and Canadian troops have left in recent months and all foreign combat forces are to go home or move into support roles by the end of 2014 when Afghan forces are to be in charge of protecting and defending the nation.
Mohammad Ismail Qasemyar, the international relations adviser for the peace council, said the bomber, identified as Esmatullah, had approached several council officials, telling them that he was an important figure in the Taliban insurgency and would only speak directly with Rabbani.
"He wanted to talk about peace with Professor Rabbani," Qasemyar said.
The appeal was passed up to President Hamid Karzai, who called Rabbani and encouraged him to meet with Esmatullah, said Ahmad Wali Masood, the brother of Ahmed Shah Masood, the resistance leader who was killed by al-Qaida in 2001. It's unclear if Esmatullah was the attacker's real name.
The bomber stayed for days at a house used for guests of the peace council while waiting for Rabbani to return from a trip to Iran, Qasemyar said.
On Tuesday, the two met and the attacker went to shake hands with Rabbani at his home, bowing his head near the former president's chest and detonating a bomb hidden in his turban, Qasemyar said.
The U.S.-led coalition said another attacker was also involved, but that could not be confirmed by Afghan officials. The Interior Ministry said one person had been detained in connection with Rabbani's death — the driver of the car that took the bomber to Rabbani's house.
Rabbani was seen as a unifying force who brought together different ethnic factions, many of whom disagreed about whether the government should even be seeking negotiations with the insurgency.
Rabbani had been a leader of the Northern Alliance resistance movement, and his involvement in the peace council silenced many in that group that didn't want to sit around a table with Taliban militants.
It was unclear who — if anyone — among Afghan powerbrokers might be able to fill that role now.
Waheed Muzhda, a Kabul-based analyst and former foreign ministry official under the Taliban regime that was toppled in late 2001, said it was hard to foresee a future for the year-old peace council.
"It is clear for Afghan people, and even for the international community, that the Taliban do not agree with what the Afghan government is suggesting," Muzhda said. "Nobody thinks that any positive development regarding the peace process through the High Peace Council is possible."
Sarajuddin Sirat, who is active in the council and headed Rabbani's political party in northern Baghlan province, said the former president's death will make it very difficult for peace negotiators to move safely around the country to talk with Taliban figures.
"How can we feel safe?" he asked. "Look what happened to Rabbani."
The street where Rabbani lived was under tight security Wednesday and those gathered outside feared another suicide attack because so many dignitaries were there paying their respects.
A black cloth, a symbol of mourning, was draped over a wall. Throughout the day, top clerics, tribal leaders, government officials, former jihadi commanders and members of Rabbani's party streamed in and out of the house as a loudspeaker broadcast readings of the Quran, the Muslim holy book.
The dignitaries included Vice President Gen. Mohammed Qasim Fahim; Abdullah Abdullah, a top opposition leader who ran against Karzai in the last election; Ismail Khan, a former warlord and current minister of water and power; and Atta Mohammed Noor, a powerful governor of Balkh province in the north. Local citizens denounced the Taliban, saying it was shameful for insurgents to kill an old man working for peace.
Neyamatullah Shahrani, a religious adviser to Karzai, said it will be difficult to replace Rabbani.
"He belonged to all Afghans. He was serving all the Afghan people. It's too early to say how it will affect the peace efforts, but it is very difficult to replace Rabbani. He had relations with all these tribes in Afghanistan."
The Pakistani government and leaders across the world condemned the killing. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called Afghan President Hamid Karzai as he rushed back to Kabul from the United States.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, but Gen. Mohammad Ayub Salangi, police chief in Kabul, said the Taliban were behind it.
When contacted by The Associated Press, Taliban spokesmen declined to discuss the killing and spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said they were still investigating the killing.
"We are still gathering information on this. Right now our position is that we cannot say anything about this incident," Mujahid said in a statement posted Wednesday on a Taliban website.
In Washington, John Kerry, the chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called Rabbani's assassination a "great setback" for the cause of peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan.
"Former President Rabbani was a historic figure who fought the Taliban in the 1990s and who continued to work for peace and stability as the head of the High Peace Council," Kerry said in a statement. "Afghanistan's enemies want to use his death along with other previous attacks to destabilize the region. We cannot let that happen. Too much is at stake for the people of Afghanistan and the country's future."
Afghans at Rabbani's home blamed the Haqqani network, a militant organization based in Pakistan and affiliated with the Taliban and al-Qaida that has conducted several attacks in the capital.
And some criticized the government for failing to provide security while standing just steps away from its top officials.
"They are continuing to kill our leaders," said Rashuddin, who was a close associate of Rabbani. "How can the bombers get into Kabul? How can they get into the house close to Rabbani? There should be tight security. The Americans are saying they are for peace and security while our leaders are dying in front of our eyes."
Rabbani, whose death came just days after insurgents attacked the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, was the latest high-ranking official close to Karzai to be killed by militants in recent months. Outnumbered on the battlefield, insurgents are conducting targeted attacks against officials aligned with the Afghan government and U.S.-led coalition, lowering hopes that Afghan forces can secure the country.
"Every day they are killing," said Mirza Mohammad, a 50-year-old former Afghan Army officer from Parwan province. "The killing of Rabbani has brought chaos to Afghanistan."
Mohammad, who was among those paying respects Wednesday at Rabbani's home in Kabul, called for a national uprising. "We will soon get revenge," he said. "Pakistan is behind this attack."
Meanwhile, in the Waghaz district of eastern Ghazni province, nine Afghan policemen were killed Tuesday evening while they were trying to defuse a roadside bomb, said Gen. Zirawer Zahid, provincial police chief.
And in the south, two NATO service members were killed in an insurgent attack, the alliance said in a statement Wednesday. NATO did not provide further details.
Including the latest deaths, at least 28 international troops have been killed so far this month in Afghanistan.
Afghan officials on Wednesday mourned the death of former President Berhanuddin Rabbani, who headed the High Peace Council. His assassin had claimed he was a Taliban leader seeking to reconcile with the government and had waited for days in Kabul on the pretext of wanting to talk to Rabbani about peace.
The assassination sapped hope for reconciling with the Taliban and raised fears about deteriorating security in Afghanistan just as foreign combat troops are starting to pull out. Some U.S. and Canadian troops have left in recent months and all foreign combat forces are to go home or move into support roles by the end of 2014 when Afghan forces are to be in charge of protecting and defending the nation.
Mohammad Ismail Qasemyar, the international relations adviser for the peace council, said the bomber, identified as Esmatullah, had approached several council officials, telling them that he was an important figure in the Taliban insurgency and would only speak directly with Rabbani.
"He wanted to talk about peace with Professor Rabbani," Qasemyar said.
The appeal was passed up to President Hamid Karzai, who called Rabbani and encouraged him to meet with Esmatullah, said Ahmad Wali Masood, the brother of Ahmed Shah Masood, the resistance leader who was killed by al-Qaida in 2001. It's unclear if Esmatullah was the attacker's real name.
The bomber stayed for days at a house used for guests of the peace council while waiting for Rabbani to return from a trip to Iran, Qasemyar said.
On Tuesday, the two met and the attacker went to shake hands with Rabbani at his home, bowing his head near the former president's chest and detonating a bomb hidden in his turban, Qasemyar said.
The U.S.-led coalition said another attacker was also involved, but that could not be confirmed by Afghan officials. The Interior Ministry said one person had been detained in connection with Rabbani's death — the driver of the car that took the bomber to Rabbani's house.
Rabbani was seen as a unifying force who brought together different ethnic factions, many of whom disagreed about whether the government should even be seeking negotiations with the insurgency.
Rabbani had been a leader of the Northern Alliance resistance movement, and his involvement in the peace council silenced many in that group that didn't want to sit around a table with Taliban militants.
It was unclear who — if anyone — among Afghan powerbrokers might be able to fill that role now.
Waheed Muzhda, a Kabul-based analyst and former foreign ministry official under the Taliban regime that was toppled in late 2001, said it was hard to foresee a future for the year-old peace council.
"It is clear for Afghan people, and even for the international community, that the Taliban do not agree with what the Afghan government is suggesting," Muzhda said. "Nobody thinks that any positive development regarding the peace process through the High Peace Council is possible."
Sarajuddin Sirat, who is active in the council and headed Rabbani's political party in northern Baghlan province, said the former president's death will make it very difficult for peace negotiators to move safely around the country to talk with Taliban figures.
"How can we feel safe?" he asked. "Look what happened to Rabbani."
The street where Rabbani lived was under tight security Wednesday and those gathered outside feared another suicide attack because so many dignitaries were there paying their respects.
A black cloth, a symbol of mourning, was draped over a wall. Throughout the day, top clerics, tribal leaders, government officials, former jihadi commanders and members of Rabbani's party streamed in and out of the house as a loudspeaker broadcast readings of the Quran, the Muslim holy book.
The dignitaries included Vice President Gen. Mohammed Qasim Fahim; Abdullah Abdullah, a top opposition leader who ran against Karzai in the last election; Ismail Khan, a former warlord and current minister of water and power; and Atta Mohammed Noor, a powerful governor of Balkh province in the north. Local citizens denounced the Taliban, saying it was shameful for insurgents to kill an old man working for peace.
Neyamatullah Shahrani, a religious adviser to Karzai, said it will be difficult to replace Rabbani.
"He belonged to all Afghans. He was serving all the Afghan people. It's too early to say how it will affect the peace efforts, but it is very difficult to replace Rabbani. He had relations with all these tribes in Afghanistan."
The Pakistani government and leaders across the world condemned the killing. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called Afghan President Hamid Karzai as he rushed back to Kabul from the United States.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, but Gen. Mohammad Ayub Salangi, police chief in Kabul, said the Taliban were behind it.
When contacted by The Associated Press, Taliban spokesmen declined to discuss the killing and spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said they were still investigating the killing.
"We are still gathering information on this. Right now our position is that we cannot say anything about this incident," Mujahid said in a statement posted Wednesday on a Taliban website.
In Washington, John Kerry, the chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called Rabbani's assassination a "great setback" for the cause of peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan.
"Former President Rabbani was a historic figure who fought the Taliban in the 1990s and who continued to work for peace and stability as the head of the High Peace Council," Kerry said in a statement. "Afghanistan's enemies want to use his death along with other previous attacks to destabilize the region. We cannot let that happen. Too much is at stake for the people of Afghanistan and the country's future."
Afghans at Rabbani's home blamed the Haqqani network, a militant organization based in Pakistan and affiliated with the Taliban and al-Qaida that has conducted several attacks in the capital.
And some criticized the government for failing to provide security while standing just steps away from its top officials.
"They are continuing to kill our leaders," said Rashuddin, who was a close associate of Rabbani. "How can the bombers get into Kabul? How can they get into the house close to Rabbani? There should be tight security. The Americans are saying they are for peace and security while our leaders are dying in front of our eyes."
Rabbani, whose death came just days after insurgents attacked the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, was the latest high-ranking official close to Karzai to be killed by militants in recent months. Outnumbered on the battlefield, insurgents are conducting targeted attacks against officials aligned with the Afghan government and U.S.-led coalition, lowering hopes that Afghan forces can secure the country.
"Every day they are killing," said Mirza Mohammad, a 50-year-old former Afghan Army officer from Parwan province. "The killing of Rabbani has brought chaos to Afghanistan."
Mohammad, who was among those paying respects Wednesday at Rabbani's home in Kabul, called for a national uprising. "We will soon get revenge," he said. "Pakistan is behind this attack."
Meanwhile, in the Waghaz district of eastern Ghazni province, nine Afghan policemen were killed Tuesday evening while they were trying to defuse a roadside bomb, said Gen. Zirawer Zahid, provincial police chief.
And in the south, two NATO service members were killed in an insurgent attack, the alliance said in a statement Wednesday. NATO did not provide further details.
Including the latest deaths, at least 28 international troops have been killed so far this month in Afghanistan.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Can I convert my car to run on water?
Believe it or not, the answer is a resounding yes. There are even conversion kits to help you. And some Web sites offer do-it-yourself guides that explain how to set up a hydrogen fuel cell for your car from common items you can find at any hardware store.
Tap water as fuel?
Can plain old tap water power your car? It's possible, but it may not be worth it.
Whether you'd want to convert your car to run on water is another matter. The process of turning water into fuel is based in science, but whether or not it will improve your gas mileage (as these sites claim) is debatable.
Most conversion kits are based on a concept spread by Dr. Yul Brown, who extolled the virtues of extracting energy from plain old water. Dr. Brown used the process of electrolysis to separate water into its components -- two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule. This mixture, called HHO (also known as Brown's gas), can be burned and the resulting energy used to power your car [source: Yul Brown.org]. This fuel requires very little water and is meant to supplement the gas you use in your car [source: Run Your Car With Water.com].
Can plain old tap water power your car? It's possible, but it may not be worth it.
So what's the problem? Like most other alternative fuel sources, HHO conversion kits for use onboard a car have a negative net energy ratio [source: du Plessis]. This means that the amount of energy you get out of the conversion is actually less than the amount you put in. Think about it like this: If it takes one gallon of gasoline to convert water into HHO, your energy output will equal one-half gallon of gasoline. You've just used one gallon of gas to produce the energy of one-half gallon. Speaking strictly in terms of energy, you would've been better off simply using that one gallon of gas to fuel your car. You would have gotten the benefit of the whole gallon, rather than just half of it.
There's another side effect of using hydrogen as fuel that auto researchers are still grappling with. Studies of hydrogen (which is a viable fuel) show it can cause brittleness and breakage in metal car engine parts [source: CEC].
But skepticism toward the water conversion kits available online and a little brittleness aren't stopping researchers from figuring out how to overcome the negative net energy ratio of exploiting hydrogen aboard vehicles. Some car companies have already created electric cars that run on hydrogen you pump into a gas tank at the service station.
What if a process could be developed to separate hydrogen from water without using more energy? That would be the Holy Grail. One group from Purdue University is hot on the trail. They've come up with a process to split hydrogen from water that requires little or no energy input. Adding water to a composite metal (alloy) made of aluminum and gallium separates water into its component molecules. The composite attracts oxygen, but not hydrogen, leaving the former element free and separated.
The Purdue researchers are still developing the technology, and it may be awhile before you find it under your hood. If you can't wait to run your car on water, you could always order a conversion kit in the meantime.
Tap water as fuel?
Can plain old tap water power your car? It's possible, but it may not be worth it.
Whether you'd want to convert your car to run on water is another matter. The process of turning water into fuel is based in science, but whether or not it will improve your gas mileage (as these sites claim) is debatable.
Most conversion kits are based on a concept spread by Dr. Yul Brown, who extolled the virtues of extracting energy from plain old water. Dr. Brown used the process of electrolysis to separate water into its components -- two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule. This mixture, called HHO (also known as Brown's gas), can be burned and the resulting energy used to power your car [source: Yul Brown.org]. This fuel requires very little water and is meant to supplement the gas you use in your car [source: Run Your Car With Water.com].
Can plain old tap water power your car? It's possible, but it may not be worth it.
So what's the problem? Like most other alternative fuel sources, HHO conversion kits for use onboard a car have a negative net energy ratio [source: du Plessis]. This means that the amount of energy you get out of the conversion is actually less than the amount you put in. Think about it like this: If it takes one gallon of gasoline to convert water into HHO, your energy output will equal one-half gallon of gasoline. You've just used one gallon of gas to produce the energy of one-half gallon. Speaking strictly in terms of energy, you would've been better off simply using that one gallon of gas to fuel your car. You would have gotten the benefit of the whole gallon, rather than just half of it.
There's another side effect of using hydrogen as fuel that auto researchers are still grappling with. Studies of hydrogen (which is a viable fuel) show it can cause brittleness and breakage in metal car engine parts [source: CEC].
But skepticism toward the water conversion kits available online and a little brittleness aren't stopping researchers from figuring out how to overcome the negative net energy ratio of exploiting hydrogen aboard vehicles. Some car companies have already created electric cars that run on hydrogen you pump into a gas tank at the service station.
What if a process could be developed to separate hydrogen from water without using more energy? That would be the Holy Grail. One group from Purdue University is hot on the trail. They've come up with a process to split hydrogen from water that requires little or no energy input. Adding water to a composite metal (alloy) made of aluminum and gallium separates water into its component molecules. The composite attracts oxygen, but not hydrogen, leaving the former element free and separated.
The Purdue researchers are still developing the technology, and it may be awhile before you find it under your hood. If you can't wait to run your car on water, you could always order a conversion kit in the meantime.
‘Pak must stop treating Afghanistan like a colony’
slamabad: Pakistan must stop treating Afghanistan like its colony and fight the war against terror for its own good, according to an editorial in a leading Pakistani newspaper.
The editorial in the Daily Times also said that instead of complaining about the United States’ “do more” mantra, Pakistan should take swift action against the Haqqani network.
Sirajuddin Haqqani’s statement about having shifted to Afghanistan sounds hollow. The Haqqani network might not be present in North Waziristan now as some reports suggest that they have moved to Kurram Agency. Our intelligence agencies are well aware of their presence in the country,” the editorial said.
“Instead of supporting the Afghan Taliban, we must realise that in the end, the Taliban — be they local or otherwise — are no one’s friends, but themselves. The attacks by the Pakistan Taliban from across the border show that they have found support from the Afghan Taliban,” it added.
It further said that the US-led war in Afghanistan is far from over.
“It has already spilled into our borders and when the foreign troops leave, there is more danger of an escalation in the Taliban’s activities,” the editorial said.
The editorial further stressed that Pakistan should not take the US warnings lightly.
ANI
The editorial in the Daily Times also said that instead of complaining about the United States’ “do more” mantra, Pakistan should take swift action against the Haqqani network.
Sirajuddin Haqqani’s statement about having shifted to Afghanistan sounds hollow. The Haqqani network might not be present in North Waziristan now as some reports suggest that they have moved to Kurram Agency. Our intelligence agencies are well aware of their presence in the country,” the editorial said.
“Instead of supporting the Afghan Taliban, we must realise that in the end, the Taliban — be they local or otherwise — are no one’s friends, but themselves. The attacks by the Pakistan Taliban from across the border show that they have found support from the Afghan Taliban,” it added.
It further said that the US-led war in Afghanistan is far from over.
“It has already spilled into our borders and when the foreign troops leave, there is more danger of an escalation in the Taliban’s activities,” the editorial said.
The editorial further stressed that Pakistan should not take the US warnings lightly.
ANI
‘Bomb, bomb phata’
These are precisely the lyrics of an Ali Azmat song that’s been sailing high on the video charts. Why? Because they reflect fear based on reality; on how life has come to be lived in our cities, towns and far off mountainous valleys alike. The suicide bombing targeting the CID SSP’s home in Karachi’s DHA district on Monday morning during the school-rush hour is but the latest case in point.
The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan hurriedly claimed responsibility for the attack which left eight dead, including a schoolboy and his mother who were on their way to school.
This and many other such assaults in our cities, on schools and shrines, are not the handy work of CIA drones which Imran Khan and others, like the Jamaat-i-Islami and Shahbaz Sharif, are so worried about. The last mentioned had requested the Taliban last year to spare Punjab because his government was opposed to the American action against the extremists hiding in Pakistan. One has yet to hear a word of condemnation coming out of such leaders’ big and loud mouths when it’s Pakistani extremists targeting their own innocent people. Is the killing by US drones more lethal and thus an attack on our sovereignty than that carried out by our own, home grown militants? It is the latter for the most part who have taken away much of the state’s sovereignty within its own borders by eroding the state’s ability to enforce its writ, to protect its citizens from the enemies within.
How many such terrorists from our own midst have we been able to nab and bring to justice thus far? Even when they are caught and arraigned in a court of law they manage to be set free by the judges for lack of evidence, and because of sloppy prosecution cases prepared against them that will not stand the court’s scrutiny. Not only that, known militant leaders spouting hate and venom, like Hafiz Saeed and Masood Azhar, are left to preach hate and intolerance, along with nutty televangelists like Zaid Hamid and Aamir Liaquat Husain.
People like Farhat Hashmi and her Al Huda deputies, too, are free to hold forth, openly declaring Muslims not so puritan in their way of life heretics. On another bizarre plain, the media’s darling also remains Fauzia Siddiqui, the venom-spouting sister of Dr Aafia Siddiqui, who is now out, together with the JI on a fundraiser, to collect 15 crore rupees to defend her convicted sister in the US, this at a time, when money should be raised to alleviate the sufferings of the flood-hit people in Sindh. In Punjab, where the Dengue epidemic has spread, the Punjab Assembly meets only to call the virus God’s wrath visiting upon us for our sins. President Zardari too called for a day of prayers to ward off the curses of floods and Dengue! This is precisely what ‘Talibanisation’ (radicalisation) of society is all about. While in Afghanistan it was the illiterate masses who were Talibanised, it is the urban middle class in Pakistan which is becoming the tool of such rapid mass radicalisation.
This has to be stopped, and here’s how: the state should declare war on anti-social elements. To start with, hate speeches must be banned on all public forums, and more so on television that beams straight into our homes. Hate-mongers must be apprehended and brought to justice using due process of law, and not through summery prosecution by some special courts that have little credibility with the public and which in turn add to sympathy for them. The state needs to come out clean and put its resolve before the public that it is doing this in public interest and not at the instance of the US or any other foreign power.
As for the army establishment, which makes it its business to comment on foreign policy all the time, perhaps it too is required to tell the people that if ordered to assist the civilian security apparatus, as it did in Swat, it is willing to fight terrorists who are out on a killing spree in our own cities and towns. How could there be any external security when internal security stands so compromised, and of which the army itself has been a target, as the militants’ siege of the GHQ in Rawalpindi two years ago made it so very clear.
Before looking for strategic depth in Afghanistan, we should be reclaiming that same depth in our own country. This cannot be done by pursuing only the CIA sleuths that are there in Pakistan, but also through getting on the tracks of home-grown militants who have terrorised the average citizen.
The writer is a member of the staff at Dawn Newspaper.
The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan hurriedly claimed responsibility for the attack which left eight dead, including a schoolboy and his mother who were on their way to school.
This and many other such assaults in our cities, on schools and shrines, are not the handy work of CIA drones which Imran Khan and others, like the Jamaat-i-Islami and Shahbaz Sharif, are so worried about. The last mentioned had requested the Taliban last year to spare Punjab because his government was opposed to the American action against the extremists hiding in Pakistan. One has yet to hear a word of condemnation coming out of such leaders’ big and loud mouths when it’s Pakistani extremists targeting their own innocent people. Is the killing by US drones more lethal and thus an attack on our sovereignty than that carried out by our own, home grown militants? It is the latter for the most part who have taken away much of the state’s sovereignty within its own borders by eroding the state’s ability to enforce its writ, to protect its citizens from the enemies within.
How many such terrorists from our own midst have we been able to nab and bring to justice thus far? Even when they are caught and arraigned in a court of law they manage to be set free by the judges for lack of evidence, and because of sloppy prosecution cases prepared against them that will not stand the court’s scrutiny. Not only that, known militant leaders spouting hate and venom, like Hafiz Saeed and Masood Azhar, are left to preach hate and intolerance, along with nutty televangelists like Zaid Hamid and Aamir Liaquat Husain.
People like Farhat Hashmi and her Al Huda deputies, too, are free to hold forth, openly declaring Muslims not so puritan in their way of life heretics. On another bizarre plain, the media’s darling also remains Fauzia Siddiqui, the venom-spouting sister of Dr Aafia Siddiqui, who is now out, together with the JI on a fundraiser, to collect 15 crore rupees to defend her convicted sister in the US, this at a time, when money should be raised to alleviate the sufferings of the flood-hit people in Sindh. In Punjab, where the Dengue epidemic has spread, the Punjab Assembly meets only to call the virus God’s wrath visiting upon us for our sins. President Zardari too called for a day of prayers to ward off the curses of floods and Dengue! This is precisely what ‘Talibanisation’ (radicalisation) of society is all about. While in Afghanistan it was the illiterate masses who were Talibanised, it is the urban middle class in Pakistan which is becoming the tool of such rapid mass radicalisation.
This has to be stopped, and here’s how: the state should declare war on anti-social elements. To start with, hate speeches must be banned on all public forums, and more so on television that beams straight into our homes. Hate-mongers must be apprehended and brought to justice using due process of law, and not through summery prosecution by some special courts that have little credibility with the public and which in turn add to sympathy for them. The state needs to come out clean and put its resolve before the public that it is doing this in public interest and not at the instance of the US or any other foreign power.
As for the army establishment, which makes it its business to comment on foreign policy all the time, perhaps it too is required to tell the people that if ordered to assist the civilian security apparatus, as it did in Swat, it is willing to fight terrorists who are out on a killing spree in our own cities and towns. How could there be any external security when internal security stands so compromised, and of which the army itself has been a target, as the militants’ siege of the GHQ in Rawalpindi two years ago made it so very clear.
Before looking for strategic depth in Afghanistan, we should be reclaiming that same depth in our own country. This cannot be done by pursuing only the CIA sleuths that are there in Pakistan, but also through getting on the tracks of home-grown militants who have terrorised the average citizen.
The writer is a member of the staff at Dawn Newspaper.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Pakistan threatens to block Google, YouTube
Pakistan Interior Minister Rehman Malik has warned that popular websites like Google or YouTube could be shut down if they did not cooperate with the government to prevent terrorists from using them.
Talking to media persons after attending a high-level meeting at the headquarters of the Federal Investigation Agency in Islamabad, Malik said the administrations of Internet based search engines like Google or YouTube were not extending their support with the FIA to nab the people involved in cyber crime, and that Interpol help was being sought in this regard.
PM Gilani vows to give Seraiki masses separate province
Muzaffargarh: Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said on Saturday that
new province for southern Punjab would remove the sense of deprivation
among people and the creation of a new province was part the the PPP's
manifesto.
He said his party would give the Seraiki masses a separate province and no one should dare oppose it.
Addressing a public gathering here after performing the ground-breaking ceremony of the multi-million housing project for flood-affected people, Gilani said people would reject those who were against the creation of a new province.
He assured the large gathering that the new province would guarantee their rights. The prime minister delivered his address in the Seraiki language, and said it was due to the demand of the native people who desired a separate province.
During the ceremony, Gilani was informed that the New Muzaffargarh City project would comprise 1,274 new homes to be built with donations collected by the people of Turkey to help their flood-hit brethren in Pakistan. A 432-kanal piece of land has been allocated for the purpose in the city's suburbs.
The prime minister was informed that 500 houses would be built in Fazalpur and another 346 in Jampur tehsil of Rajanpur district. Another 2,000 homes would be built in Shikarpur (Sindh) and 500 in Dera Allah Yar (Balochistan). The overall cost of the houses being built for the flood-hit people of the areas was estimated at $138 million. The work on the initiative began in March 2011and it would be completed in 700 days by Feb 2013, officials said.
Prime Minister Gilani said that Turkey would build 4,620 residential units for the flood affected people of Pakistan. He said other ancillary facilities like schools, mosques, health centres would also be constructed.
Premier Gilani urged the people to reach out to help their brethren who were homeless and do as much as possible so that they may be rehabilitated without any delay.
He said an installation of Parco refinery would be set up in the vicinity which would generate employment opportunities in the area.
Gilani also paid rich tributes to the people of Muzaffargarh who were staunch supporters of the PPP and had rendered numerous sacrifices. He said the party drew its strength from the people and would do everything to bring all facilities of life to their doorsteps. The event was also attended by the Turkish ambassador.
The premier asked the authorities to send medical teams, including lady doctors to the camps for the treatment of women patients.
He said his party would give the Seraiki masses a separate province and no one should dare oppose it.
Addressing a public gathering here after performing the ground-breaking ceremony of the multi-million housing project for flood-affected people, Gilani said people would reject those who were against the creation of a new province.
He assured the large gathering that the new province would guarantee their rights. The prime minister delivered his address in the Seraiki language, and said it was due to the demand of the native people who desired a separate province.
During the ceremony, Gilani was informed that the New Muzaffargarh City project would comprise 1,274 new homes to be built with donations collected by the people of Turkey to help their flood-hit brethren in Pakistan. A 432-kanal piece of land has been allocated for the purpose in the city's suburbs.
The prime minister was informed that 500 houses would be built in Fazalpur and another 346 in Jampur tehsil of Rajanpur district. Another 2,000 homes would be built in Shikarpur (Sindh) and 500 in Dera Allah Yar (Balochistan). The overall cost of the houses being built for the flood-hit people of the areas was estimated at $138 million. The work on the initiative began in March 2011and it would be completed in 700 days by Feb 2013, officials said.
Prime Minister Gilani said that Turkey would build 4,620 residential units for the flood affected people of Pakistan. He said other ancillary facilities like schools, mosques, health centres would also be constructed.
Premier Gilani urged the people to reach out to help their brethren who were homeless and do as much as possible so that they may be rehabilitated without any delay.
He said an installation of Parco refinery would be set up in the vicinity which would generate employment opportunities in the area.
Gilani also paid rich tributes to the people of Muzaffargarh who were staunch supporters of the PPP and had rendered numerous sacrifices. He said the party drew its strength from the people and would do everything to bring all facilities of life to their doorsteps. The event was also attended by the Turkish ambassador.
The premier asked the authorities to send medical teams, including lady doctors to the camps for the treatment of women patients.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Kyrgyzstan Independence Day: Commemorating 20 years of freedom and development Published
ISLAMABAD:
Music echoed as Kyrgyz artists, dressed in lively attires,
enthralled the audience at National University of Modern Languages
(NUML) with cultural dances and soulful tunes at Kyrgyzstan’s 20th
anniversary.
They played folk, cultural and national songs. The popular Pakistani
song “Jeevay Pakistan” was also performed by Kyrgyz artist Gull Nara.
Kyrgyzstan’s Ambassador to Pakistan Alik Orozov was the chief guest at
the event.A documentary depicting Kyrgyz culture and the Kyrgyz nation’s march towards development and modernisation while preserving their cultural values was also played on the occasion.
In his speech, the Kyrgyz ambassador emphasised on expanding communication means between the two countries, saying that Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan hold close historical, cultural and geographical ties.
But, he said, they need to build on air, railways and other modes of communication.
While talking on the evolution of Kyrgyz nation and its link with the subcontinent, the ambassador told the students that Sultan Babook was their ancestor, who visited India and declared it his second home.
NUML Director General (retd) Brig Azam Jamal said that it was interesting to gain insight into the Kyrgyzstani culture through an in-depth documentary and musical performances of the Kyrgyz artists.
He added that Kyrgyztan enjoys cordial relations with Pakistan since its independence on 1991 as they have common roots, norms and values.
In the end, Deputy Head Mission Councillor Kubanchbek Toktorbaev highlighted the prospects that both countries can avail for better economic and bilateral ties.
Anti-terrror cooperation: N Waziristan remains key sticking point
ISLAMABAD: Despite renewed
US pressure to eliminate ‘terrorist safe havens’ from the tribal belt,
the Pakistan Army has no plans to launch a full-scale offensive against
the Haqqani network, military officials said.
The issue was raised by US Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen at a meeting with Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani in Seville, Spain, on the sidelines of the ongoing Nato conference.
The development may further sour already strained relations between the two anti-terror war allies.
The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) confirmed that a meeting between the two had taken place, but would not share any details. However, sources say the two military commanders discussed the fallout of a recent attack in Kabul, which the US suspect was carried out by militants from the Haqqani network, which is allegedly based in the North Waziristan Agency.
The deadly attack has become the latest obstacle to normal ties between Islamabad and Washington, which have deteriorated steadily since the May 2 US raid that killed al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden. Since then the US has intensified efforts to push Pakistan to clamp down on the Haqqanis, blamed for this week’s 20-hour-long assault on the US embassy in Kabul.
US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta, expressing his frustration over Pakistan’s continued reluctance to go after the Afghan insurgent group, has threatened to take unilateral action.
A statement issued by the ISPR said that Kayani delivered a talk on ‘Pakistan’s role in the global war on terror’ at the meeting of Nato Chiefs of Defence. Kayani reportedly highlighted the sacrifices given by Pakistan in the fight against terrorism. He also spoke of Pakistan’s expectations of support from the rest of the world.
Speaking to The Express Tribune, Captain John Kirby, Special Assistant for Public Affairs for the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that General Kayani had been invited to Seville by alliance leaders to brief them on his efforts to combat extremist elements inside Pakistan. “He has done this before, and when he does, the Chairman always schedules some private time with him. I expect they will talk about ongoing operations in the border areas, about mutual efforts to improve cooperation and about the continuing and growing threat posed by the Haqqani network.”
However, in his talk Kayani underlined Pakistan’s sovereign right to formulate policy “in accordance with its national interests and the wishes of the Pakistani people.” Kayani did not name a specific country but a security official said his remarks “were certainly referring to the American pressure on Pakistan to do things which we believe are not in our national interest.”
The official, who requested to remain anonymous, confirmed that the US was increasing pressure on the army to conduct operations in North Waziristan. He said Pakistan, despite US demands, will not commit to any such offensive in the near future.
A senior military official refused to comment on the meeting between Kayani and Mullen. However, he added that the Pakistan Army cannot give any time frame for assaults in the restive tribal agency bordering Afghanistan.
Defence analysts say going after the Haqqani network at this stage will have huge repercussions for the country.
Meanwhile, tensions between Islamabad and Washington overshadowed the meeting of senior Pakistani and Afghan diplomats.
Speaking at a joint news conference with Pakistani Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir, the Afghan Deputy Foreign Minister Jawed Ludin said his country would not allow its territory to be used against Pakistan. He termed the meeting as ‘substantive’, saying some concrete steps and proposals were identified to take action against extremists.
Ludin insisted that the outcome of the talks would be visible before the Karzai-Gilani meeting next month.
The issue was raised by US Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen at a meeting with Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani in Seville, Spain, on the sidelines of the ongoing Nato conference.
The development may further sour already strained relations between the two anti-terror war allies.
The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) confirmed that a meeting between the two had taken place, but would not share any details. However, sources say the two military commanders discussed the fallout of a recent attack in Kabul, which the US suspect was carried out by militants from the Haqqani network, which is allegedly based in the North Waziristan Agency.
The deadly attack has become the latest obstacle to normal ties between Islamabad and Washington, which have deteriorated steadily since the May 2 US raid that killed al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden. Since then the US has intensified efforts to push Pakistan to clamp down on the Haqqanis, blamed for this week’s 20-hour-long assault on the US embassy in Kabul.
US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta, expressing his frustration over Pakistan’s continued reluctance to go after the Afghan insurgent group, has threatened to take unilateral action.
A statement issued by the ISPR said that Kayani delivered a talk on ‘Pakistan’s role in the global war on terror’ at the meeting of Nato Chiefs of Defence. Kayani reportedly highlighted the sacrifices given by Pakistan in the fight against terrorism. He also spoke of Pakistan’s expectations of support from the rest of the world.
Speaking to The Express Tribune, Captain John Kirby, Special Assistant for Public Affairs for the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that General Kayani had been invited to Seville by alliance leaders to brief them on his efforts to combat extremist elements inside Pakistan. “He has done this before, and when he does, the Chairman always schedules some private time with him. I expect they will talk about ongoing operations in the border areas, about mutual efforts to improve cooperation and about the continuing and growing threat posed by the Haqqani network.”
However, in his talk Kayani underlined Pakistan’s sovereign right to formulate policy “in accordance with its national interests and the wishes of the Pakistani people.” Kayani did not name a specific country but a security official said his remarks “were certainly referring to the American pressure on Pakistan to do things which we believe are not in our national interest.”
The official, who requested to remain anonymous, confirmed that the US was increasing pressure on the army to conduct operations in North Waziristan. He said Pakistan, despite US demands, will not commit to any such offensive in the near future.
A senior military official refused to comment on the meeting between Kayani and Mullen. However, he added that the Pakistan Army cannot give any time frame for assaults in the restive tribal agency bordering Afghanistan.
Defence analysts say going after the Haqqani network at this stage will have huge repercussions for the country.
Meanwhile, tensions between Islamabad and Washington overshadowed the meeting of senior Pakistani and Afghan diplomats.
Speaking at a joint news conference with Pakistani Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir, the Afghan Deputy Foreign Minister Jawed Ludin said his country would not allow its territory to be used against Pakistan. He termed the meeting as ‘substantive’, saying some concrete steps and proposals were identified to take action against extremists.
Ludin insisted that the outcome of the talks would be visible before the Karzai-Gilani meeting next month.
Unreliable ally: Pakistan or America?
United States Vice President Joe Biden told Cable News Network (CNN) in
an interview on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terror
attacks that Pakistan had been an unreliable ally of the US in the war
against Al-Qaeda and other extremist organisations. The price of
Pakistan’s choices had been the “loss of life of American soldiers in
Afghanistan”, the vice president said. He added that “Islamabad has been
very helpful in other times, but it’s not sufficient. They have to get
better. We need a relationship that is born out of mutual interest. And
it’s in their interest that they be more cooperative with us.” In view
of the deception, manipulation, betrayal and blackmailing Pakistan by
American leadership, the crown of unreliability fits squarely America’s
own head. For having failed to decimate Taliban in Afghanistan and
establish the writ of Afghan government they are trying to make Pakistan
a scapegoat by inventing a whole litany of charges of its collusion
with Afghan Taliban. In a recent attack by the Taliban in Kabul, Leon
Panetta and others say that militants of Haqqani network come from
Pakistan. One should ask them what the hell they are doing on their side
of the border. And why they do not stop them and kill them when trying
to cross the border.
In fact, the CIA’s was responsible for all the mess in Afghanista when it cobbled together the conglomerate of Northern Alliance, primarily Tajiks, and imported Afghan expatriates, all animated with compulsive hostility against Pakistan. Former director of the CIA and present Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Wednesday warned Pakistan the US would do everything to defend US forces from Pakistan-based militants staging a dramatic attack in the Afghan capital. A day after a 19-hour assault staged near the US embassy and NATO headquarters, Panetta expressed frustration that the Pakistani government has so far failed to crack down on Haqqani network militants that Washington suspects carried out Tuesday’s attack. ”Time and again we’ve urged the Pakistanis to exercise their influence over these kinds of attacks from the Haqqanis and we’ve made very little progress in that area,” Panetta told reporters aboard his plane before landing in San Francisco. “I’m not going to talk about how we’re going to respond. I’ll just let you know that we’re not going to allow these kinds of attacks to go on,” he said.
The dilemma of releasing Abdullah Mehsud from the American Guantanamo prison and initially sending him to Afghanistan and not Pakistan despite being a Pakistani national still remains unresolved. And who tasked him to kidnap two Chinese engineers working on the Gomal Dam project in the tribal area immediately on his return home too remains unanswered. The question also is where had Swati thug Fazlullah disappeared for years in Afghanistan after the US-led invasion and who provided cash, weapons and munitions to him to confront the Pakistani state with a fierce insurrection immediately on his return home? That remains as mystifying as was the bonhomie of Abdolmalek Rigi, the now-hanged head of Iranian dissidents’ terrorist Jundullah outfit, with the tribal militants like Baitullah.
The Americans may have put this outfit on their terrorist list, but the fact remains that the Iranians had arrested Rigi midair as he emerged from US Bagram military base in Afghanistan and boarded a Gulf flight. His Jundullah terrorists have at times been cited for involvement in Karachi bloodletting. Many books have been written on the CIA but the recent article by Brian Cloughley, a renowned defence analyst is revealing. Brian Cloughley has laid bare some of the facts about the CIA in his article captioned ‘A killing machine called CIA’. In the very first para he writes: “The CIA’s drone attacks in Pakistan have killed a lot more innocent people than it does in more mundane day-to-day butchery; but the plain fact is that it has always been in the business of killing, and always will be. The double murder in Lahore by the CIA employee Raymond Davis was bizarre and outrageous but only a minor indication of its embrace of criminality”. Brian, former deputy head of UN Mission in Kashmir 1980-82 had served as Australian defence attaché in Pakistan from 1988-1994. In his article, he also referred to the US declassified documents including a memo that revealed the then CIA director Allen Dulles having personally approved a plot to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro. Brian also mentioned about American support to the dictators in the Middle Eastern countries and elsewhere.
Anyhow, it has to be mentioned that after the Soviet Union was defeated in Afghan war and disintegrated, the US withdrew its support to Pakistan and left it to the CIA to ‘look after’ Afghanistan. When the Taliban taking advantage of the war between the mujahideen groups gained control of about 90 per cent of Afghanistan, the CIA strengthened the Northern Alliance to overthrow Taliban, but it was only after 9/11 that Pakistan was coerced into joining the war on terror, and the Taliban government was overthrown. Meanwhile, CIA-RAW-RAAM-Mossad-MI6 initiated a covert war against Pakistan. In this context, Karzai regime offered Afghan soil to anti-Pakistan intelligence agencies to indulge in cross-border terrorism inside Pakistan. The saboteurs, arms, ammunition, explosives and funds are being funneled into Pakistan from Afghanistan to aid anti-Pakistan forces in Balochistan and FATA. Armed attacks by foreign militants in Chitral from Kunar/ Nooristan provinces (Afghanistan) are the recent examples. Since former Director CIA, Leon Panata has taken over as us Secretary for Defence, relations between Pakistan and the US are likely to be strained, as it was during his tenure that 2nd May attack on Abbottabad compound was planned and executed. In fact, callous and indiscriminate use of drones by the CIA, Raymond Davis fiasco and US Navy Seals raid inside Pakistan’s territory have created an environment of suspicion and mistrust adversely impacting Pak – US relations. There is no denying that the US needs Pakistan, and the war on terror over time has become Pakistan’s war as well. Therefore both parties must realize the core requirement and remove mistrust by accommodating each others interests. Unfortunately US is giving too much space to India in Afghanistan which can impede the peace process in the region. It is not only Pakistan’s concern against Indian role in Afghanistan but the people of Afghanistan especially Pashtuns do not like to see India being given bigger role in Afghanistan.
We should not feel hesitate in saying that Pakistan has legitimate interest and stakes in Afghanistan and should be on board in shaping the outcome of Afghan conflict. The situation demands mutual trust and confidence among the stakeholders including US, Afghan Government, Taliban and Pakistan. British newspaper ‘Time’ has reported the other day that the US has endorsed plans for the Taliban to open political headquarters in the Gulf state of Qatar by the end of the year just to keep Pakistan out of the loop. The move is designed to allow foreign powers to begin formal peace talks with the Taliban. This would be the first internationally recognised representation for the Taliban since it was ousted from power by the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. The US and its allies hope that opening a Taliban office in Qatar would push forward the prospect of talks intended to reconcile insurgents with the Afghan government and bring an end to the decade-long war, but this hope could become reality with the help of Pakistan.
In fact, the CIA’s was responsible for all the mess in Afghanista when it cobbled together the conglomerate of Northern Alliance, primarily Tajiks, and imported Afghan expatriates, all animated with compulsive hostility against Pakistan. Former director of the CIA and present Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Wednesday warned Pakistan the US would do everything to defend US forces from Pakistan-based militants staging a dramatic attack in the Afghan capital. A day after a 19-hour assault staged near the US embassy and NATO headquarters, Panetta expressed frustration that the Pakistani government has so far failed to crack down on Haqqani network militants that Washington suspects carried out Tuesday’s attack. ”Time and again we’ve urged the Pakistanis to exercise their influence over these kinds of attacks from the Haqqanis and we’ve made very little progress in that area,” Panetta told reporters aboard his plane before landing in San Francisco. “I’m not going to talk about how we’re going to respond. I’ll just let you know that we’re not going to allow these kinds of attacks to go on,” he said.
The dilemma of releasing Abdullah Mehsud from the American Guantanamo prison and initially sending him to Afghanistan and not Pakistan despite being a Pakistani national still remains unresolved. And who tasked him to kidnap two Chinese engineers working on the Gomal Dam project in the tribal area immediately on his return home too remains unanswered. The question also is where had Swati thug Fazlullah disappeared for years in Afghanistan after the US-led invasion and who provided cash, weapons and munitions to him to confront the Pakistani state with a fierce insurrection immediately on his return home? That remains as mystifying as was the bonhomie of Abdolmalek Rigi, the now-hanged head of Iranian dissidents’ terrorist Jundullah outfit, with the tribal militants like Baitullah.
The Americans may have put this outfit on their terrorist list, but the fact remains that the Iranians had arrested Rigi midair as he emerged from US Bagram military base in Afghanistan and boarded a Gulf flight. His Jundullah terrorists have at times been cited for involvement in Karachi bloodletting. Many books have been written on the CIA but the recent article by Brian Cloughley, a renowned defence analyst is revealing. Brian Cloughley has laid bare some of the facts about the CIA in his article captioned ‘A killing machine called CIA’. In the very first para he writes: “The CIA’s drone attacks in Pakistan have killed a lot more innocent people than it does in more mundane day-to-day butchery; but the plain fact is that it has always been in the business of killing, and always will be. The double murder in Lahore by the CIA employee Raymond Davis was bizarre and outrageous but only a minor indication of its embrace of criminality”. Brian, former deputy head of UN Mission in Kashmir 1980-82 had served as Australian defence attaché in Pakistan from 1988-1994. In his article, he also referred to the US declassified documents including a memo that revealed the then CIA director Allen Dulles having personally approved a plot to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro. Brian also mentioned about American support to the dictators in the Middle Eastern countries and elsewhere.
Anyhow, it has to be mentioned that after the Soviet Union was defeated in Afghan war and disintegrated, the US withdrew its support to Pakistan and left it to the CIA to ‘look after’ Afghanistan. When the Taliban taking advantage of the war between the mujahideen groups gained control of about 90 per cent of Afghanistan, the CIA strengthened the Northern Alliance to overthrow Taliban, but it was only after 9/11 that Pakistan was coerced into joining the war on terror, and the Taliban government was overthrown. Meanwhile, CIA-RAW-RAAM-Mossad-MI6 initiated a covert war against Pakistan. In this context, Karzai regime offered Afghan soil to anti-Pakistan intelligence agencies to indulge in cross-border terrorism inside Pakistan. The saboteurs, arms, ammunition, explosives and funds are being funneled into Pakistan from Afghanistan to aid anti-Pakistan forces in Balochistan and FATA. Armed attacks by foreign militants in Chitral from Kunar/ Nooristan provinces (Afghanistan) are the recent examples. Since former Director CIA, Leon Panata has taken over as us Secretary for Defence, relations between Pakistan and the US are likely to be strained, as it was during his tenure that 2nd May attack on Abbottabad compound was planned and executed. In fact, callous and indiscriminate use of drones by the CIA, Raymond Davis fiasco and US Navy Seals raid inside Pakistan’s territory have created an environment of suspicion and mistrust adversely impacting Pak – US relations. There is no denying that the US needs Pakistan, and the war on terror over time has become Pakistan’s war as well. Therefore both parties must realize the core requirement and remove mistrust by accommodating each others interests. Unfortunately US is giving too much space to India in Afghanistan which can impede the peace process in the region. It is not only Pakistan’s concern against Indian role in Afghanistan but the people of Afghanistan especially Pashtuns do not like to see India being given bigger role in Afghanistan.
We should not feel hesitate in saying that Pakistan has legitimate interest and stakes in Afghanistan and should be on board in shaping the outcome of Afghan conflict. The situation demands mutual trust and confidence among the stakeholders including US, Afghan Government, Taliban and Pakistan. British newspaper ‘Time’ has reported the other day that the US has endorsed plans for the Taliban to open political headquarters in the Gulf state of Qatar by the end of the year just to keep Pakistan out of the loop. The move is designed to allow foreign powers to begin formal peace talks with the Taliban. This would be the first internationally recognised representation for the Taliban since it was ousted from power by the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. The US and its allies hope that opening a Taliban office in Qatar would push forward the prospect of talks intended to reconcile insurgents with the Afghan government and bring an end to the decade-long war, but this hope could become reality with the help of Pakistan.
Sindh floods: UN launches international appeal
“The secretary-general calls for solidarity of the international community in support of disaster management and risk reduction in Pakistan,” his office said in a statement on Thursday.
The statement followed Ban’s discussions with Pakistan’s UN Ambassador Abdullah Hussain Haroon on the worsening situation in Sindh and Balochistan, and his consultations with concerned UN officials.
In Sindh, the World Food Programme, National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs completed the first joint assessment of the affected areas.
The rapid assessment was conducted in over 10,600 villages in 17 out of the 22 affected districts a week ago. The findings show that 73% of food crops have been inundated and food losses are estimated at 67%.
A UN official told The Express Tribune that VIP movement by politicians is also hampering relief work.
Meanwhile, British Prime Minister David Cameron called Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and said his country was ready to help the people affected by the devastating rains and floods in Sindh. APP
(With additional reporting by Maha Mussadaq in Islamabad)
Friday, September 16, 2011
Death Toll in Pakistan Suicide Attack Rises to 40
The death toll from a suicide attack on a funeral in northwest Pakistan has risen to 40.
Thursday's bombing targeted members of an anti-Taliban militia as they gathered for funeral prayers in the Lower Dir tribal area. Some 70 people were hospitalized with injuries.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Pakistani Taliban has stepped up attacks on pro-government tribes.
On Tuesday, gunmen opened fire on a school bus on the outskirts of the city of Peshawar, killing four children and the driver.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the shooting, saying the children were from a local tribe that has been fighting insurgents in the region.
Thursday's bombing targeted members of an anti-Taliban militia as they gathered for funeral prayers in the Lower Dir tribal area. Some 70 people were hospitalized with injuries.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Pakistani Taliban has stepped up attacks on pro-government tribes.
On Tuesday, gunmen opened fire on a school bus on the outskirts of the city of Peshawar, killing four children and the driver.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the shooting, saying the children were from a local tribe that has been fighting insurgents in the region.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Altaf Hussain phones President Zardari; inquires after his health
ISLAMABAD, Sept 15 (APP): MQM Quaid Altaf Hussain phoned President Asif Ali Zardari on Thursday and inquired after his health.Altaf Hussain prayed for the health of President.The President thanked MQM Quaid Altaf Hussain for the gesture,Spokesperson for the President Farhatullah Babar said.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
'Iran-Pak trade to reach $10bn'
Pakistani Prime
Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani says Tehran and Islamabad have agreed to
boost bilateral trade to $10 billion in coming years.
Addressing a joint press conference with Iran's First Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi in Tehran on Monday, Gilani said, “The enhancement will promote regional peace and convergence,” IRNA reported.
Trade volume between the two nations jumped from $141 million in 2000 to $1 billion last year.
“We agreed to expand our projects in the field of electricity transfer from Iran to Pakistan,” Gilani added.
During a meeting on Monday Gilani and Rahimi pledged to deepen bilateral ties in different fields and to speed up work on the ongoing joint projects.
The two officials held detailed discussion on promoting cooperation in the fields of infrastructure, energy, banking, trade, agriculture, education and oil and gas.
They called for the need to rapid implementation of the $7.5 billion Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project which is expected to be completed by mid-2014.
The Iranian official said Iran considers Pakistan as an important country and attaches immense importance to relations with its neighbor.
“Iran desires to improve its bilateral relations with Pakistan,” Rahimi said, adding that the friendship of two countries goes back to many decades.
He underlined the need for both countries to transform their neighboring ties into broad ranging economic and commercial ties.
Gilani arrived in Tehran on Sunday at the head of a high-ranking delegation, including Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar.
Monday, September 12, 2011
President sends bouquet to Altaf Hassan Qureshi, Dr. Ajmal Niazi
ISLAMABAD,
Sep 12 (APP): President Asif Ali Zardari on Monday sent bouquet to Altaf
Hassan Qureshi, a renowned journalist and columnist and Dr. Ajmal
Niazi, a poet and columnist in Lahore. The President wished them speedy recovery from Dengue fever.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Pakistan PM calls for global flood relief
ISLAMABAD — Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has called
for international help for up to five million people affected by recent
monsoon rains.
Floods in Pakistan have killed 138 people in a month and affected up to five million more, according to the National Disaster Management Authority.
Sindh, a flood-prone southern province, was the hardest-hit area with thousands of houses and large areas of crops destroyed.
"International organisations and the world community should focus their attention on the affected people," Gilani said in an address to the nation late Saturday.
"We are sure that international organisations and the world community would sympathetically consider the appeal by the President of Pakistan and take immediate steps for the rehabilitation of flood-affected people," Gilani said.
President Asif Ali Zardari on Thursday asked the United Nations to issue an international appeal for humanitarian assistance.
Gilani said that recent rains in Sindh were almost two and a half times normal levels at 142 percent greater than average, and had inundated an area of 4.1 million acres, including 1.7 million acres of crops.
Some 700,000 houses were damaged across 21 districts, 150,000 people in relief camps needed immediate assistance, and 64,000 livestock had been lost, the prime minister said.
Last year, the worst floods in Pakistan's history affected 21 million people and killed an estimated 1,750, with the south again taking the brunt of the devastation.
Floods in Pakistan have killed 138 people in a month and affected up to five million more, according to the National Disaster Management Authority.
Sindh, a flood-prone southern province, was the hardest-hit area with thousands of houses and large areas of crops destroyed.
"International organisations and the world community should focus their attention on the affected people," Gilani said in an address to the nation late Saturday.
"We are sure that international organisations and the world community would sympathetically consider the appeal by the President of Pakistan and take immediate steps for the rehabilitation of flood-affected people," Gilani said.
President Asif Ali Zardari on Thursday asked the United Nations to issue an international appeal for humanitarian assistance.
Gilani said that recent rains in Sindh were almost two and a half times normal levels at 142 percent greater than average, and had inundated an area of 4.1 million acres, including 1.7 million acres of crops.
Some 700,000 houses were damaged across 21 districts, 150,000 people in relief camps needed immediate assistance, and 64,000 livestock had been lost, the prime minister said.
Last year, the worst floods in Pakistan's history affected 21 million people and killed an estimated 1,750, with the south again taking the brunt of the devastation.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
MQM in the way of plot against Pakistan: Altaf
KARACHI, Sept 9: As had Zulfikar Mirza before him, Altaf
Hussain also kept his party and the nation spellbound when he spoke at a
press conference on Friday evening. But Mr Hussain managed to do this
without revealing explosive secrets or facts or announcing any major
decisions. Instead, it was his performance that kept the audience
enthralled.
He laughed, he talked, he cried and he sang — Indian songs with hand gestures and shrugs thrown in for good measure. Even when he stuck to prose, the delivery was declamatory, with words accented and stressed for dramatic effect.
There was little focus on content. Topics were touched and abandoned. History rubbed shoulders with polemic and conspiracy theories. A dash of religion was added now and then. To add gravitas to the press conference, books and articles written by journalists and think-tanks and half-baked political analyses of little-known authors were quoted as well as shown to the audience – highlighted and marked with notes.
But their significance remained well hidden as it was difficult to follow the grand sweep of the narrator’s views.
The gist of the press conference was that Western powers were plotting the dismemberment of Pakistan, but the Muttahida had resolved to foil the design.
Repeated assurances were made to the armed forces, the Inter-Services Intelligence as well as the nation that the MQM was against conspiracies being hatched against the country.
Mr Hussain chose not to answer the serious allegations levelled by former Sindh home minister Dr Zulfikar Mirza against him and his party over the past fortnight, parrying a number of questions by reporters.
He concentrated on showing documents, maps and reports from the international media to strengthen his contention that international powers were working for the break-up of Pakistan.
Although he refused to pinpoint the international powers he was referring to, an allusion left no doubt: “The country which has the biggest influence in Pakistan is behind such conspiracies”. The MQM cannot fight such powers alone, Mr Hussain added.
“There would have been no super power had the army, the ISI and the MQM got united.”
The MQM supremo accused the leadership of the Awami National Party of “misleading the Pukhtoons living in Karachi and Peshawar”. He even went to the extent of claiming that the United States had given millions of dollars to Asfandyar Wali for
contesting the 2008 general election.
He, however, said that he was the first who openly said in 1986 that Khan Ghaffar Khan was not a traitor.
The media did not emerge unscathed. Lashing out at news anchors, he said those who were unable to see dismembered bodies and torture cells were hypocrites.
Mr Hussain apologised to two television anchors whom former Karachi nazim Mustafa Kamal had termed ‘Yajuj Majooj” (Gog and Magog).
APPEAL TO HIGH-UPS
Referring to the killings of Muhajirs, Mr Hussain appealed to the president, the prime minister, the army chief and the director general of the ISI to watch a video made by “criminals of Lyari Amn Committee” and try to understand why this brutality had befallen Muhajirs.. “If I were not the leader of the party I would have ventured out to the place and killed some people before sacrificing my life,” he said.
The Muttahida chief appealed to authorities concerned to arrest the killers, threatening to “unleash my workers if action is not taken”.
A large number of workers present in the press conference and outside the hall replied in the affirmative when Mr Hussain
asked them whether they were ready to storm any place where Muhajirs were kept.
He said since he was facing death threats, he had called two members of his party from Pakistan to record “my will”.
In reply to a question about his potential successor, he said since the MQM was not a feudal party he had laid down a criteria for the purpose.
While the MQM chief criticised Nawaz Sharif, he termed President Asif Zardari his brother.
His reply was in the affirmative when asked whether the Pakistan People’s Party and the MQM could sit together again. “No leniency must be shown to a criminal regardless of his party affiliation. The extortion racket should be curbed… if the PPP is
ready to end such things then we would also think about going with the PPP. If they cannot do this then we will remain their friends but stay in the opposition.”
In reply to a question about a separate province for Muihajirs, he said although I cherished peaceful coexistence, “disillusioned workers could come up with any demand any time”. But at the same time he urged Sindhis to consider him and other Urdu-speaking people as their brothers.
He alleged that the violence in Lyari had the government’s patronage and there were certain people who openly boasted that they were behind the criminals.
Altaf Hussain also clarified his position about the happenings on May 12, 2007, protesting that the MQM’s rally on that fateful day was not against Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry. “It was a conspiracy to which we were not a
party.”
He claimed that both the PPP and the PML-N had maligned the Chief Justice in the charter of democracy without using his name.
He laughed, he talked, he cried and he sang — Indian songs with hand gestures and shrugs thrown in for good measure. Even when he stuck to prose, the delivery was declamatory, with words accented and stressed for dramatic effect.
There was little focus on content. Topics were touched and abandoned. History rubbed shoulders with polemic and conspiracy theories. A dash of religion was added now and then. To add gravitas to the press conference, books and articles written by journalists and think-tanks and half-baked political analyses of little-known authors were quoted as well as shown to the audience – highlighted and marked with notes.
But their significance remained well hidden as it was difficult to follow the grand sweep of the narrator’s views.
The gist of the press conference was that Western powers were plotting the dismemberment of Pakistan, but the Muttahida had resolved to foil the design.
Repeated assurances were made to the armed forces, the Inter-Services Intelligence as well as the nation that the MQM was against conspiracies being hatched against the country.
Mr Hussain chose not to answer the serious allegations levelled by former Sindh home minister Dr Zulfikar Mirza against him and his party over the past fortnight, parrying a number of questions by reporters.
He concentrated on showing documents, maps and reports from the international media to strengthen his contention that international powers were working for the break-up of Pakistan.
Although he refused to pinpoint the international powers he was referring to, an allusion left no doubt: “The country which has the biggest influence in Pakistan is behind such conspiracies”. The MQM cannot fight such powers alone, Mr Hussain added.
“There would have been no super power had the army, the ISI and the MQM got united.”
The MQM supremo accused the leadership of the Awami National Party of “misleading the Pukhtoons living in Karachi and Peshawar”. He even went to the extent of claiming that the United States had given millions of dollars to Asfandyar Wali for
contesting the 2008 general election.
He, however, said that he was the first who openly said in 1986 that Khan Ghaffar Khan was not a traitor.
The media did not emerge unscathed. Lashing out at news anchors, he said those who were unable to see dismembered bodies and torture cells were hypocrites.
Mr Hussain apologised to two television anchors whom former Karachi nazim Mustafa Kamal had termed ‘Yajuj Majooj” (Gog and Magog).
APPEAL TO HIGH-UPS
Referring to the killings of Muhajirs, Mr Hussain appealed to the president, the prime minister, the army chief and the director general of the ISI to watch a video made by “criminals of Lyari Amn Committee” and try to understand why this brutality had befallen Muhajirs.. “If I were not the leader of the party I would have ventured out to the place and killed some people before sacrificing my life,” he said.
The Muttahida chief appealed to authorities concerned to arrest the killers, threatening to “unleash my workers if action is not taken”.
A large number of workers present in the press conference and outside the hall replied in the affirmative when Mr Hussain
asked them whether they were ready to storm any place where Muhajirs were kept.
He said since he was facing death threats, he had called two members of his party from Pakistan to record “my will”.
In reply to a question about his potential successor, he said since the MQM was not a feudal party he had laid down a criteria for the purpose.
While the MQM chief criticised Nawaz Sharif, he termed President Asif Zardari his brother.
His reply was in the affirmative when asked whether the Pakistan People’s Party and the MQM could sit together again. “No leniency must be shown to a criminal regardless of his party affiliation. The extortion racket should be curbed… if the PPP is
ready to end such things then we would also think about going with the PPP. If they cannot do this then we will remain their friends but stay in the opposition.”
In reply to a question about a separate province for Muihajirs, he said although I cherished peaceful coexistence, “disillusioned workers could come up with any demand any time”. But at the same time he urged Sindhis to consider him and other Urdu-speaking people as their brothers.
He alleged that the violence in Lyari had the government’s patronage and there were certain people who openly boasted that they were behind the criminals.
Altaf Hussain also clarified his position about the happenings on May 12, 2007, protesting that the MQM’s rally on that fateful day was not against Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry. “It was a conspiracy to which we were not a
party.”
He claimed that both the PPP and the PML-N had maligned the Chief Justice in the charter of democracy without using his name.
Nation looking towards army: Mirza
Karachi—Former interior minister of Sindh and PPP dissident leader
Zulfiqar Mirza has said that the nation, disappointed by the government
and judiciary, is looking towards army.
In an interview to a private TV channel on Friday, he said that hundreds of people were killed in Karachi but the government did not take stern action against the involved people.
He said that 10 activists of Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) are awaiting execution but they are not being hanged due to President Asif Ali Zardari. He said that thousands of plots are under the possession of Sindh Governor Ishrat-ul-Ibad, adding that he has documentary proofs of his several plots.
He said that he has complete trust in her wife and she would not take any decision against the country and nation. To a query he said that Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani had told him that Rehman Malik is a conclusive liar and the prime minister had told him the story of apple and banana regarding the interior minister.
e further said that Rehman Malik is responsible for avoiding to hold a through investigation into Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. Zulfiqar Mirza said that the Sindh Interior Minister is an illiterate and ignorant person and if arms licences are being cancelled in Sindh, then Wasan’s licences should be cancelled first.
He said that death is his beloved, adding that he would address a public gathering in Mukka Chowk in Karachi at any cost.—INP
In an interview to a private TV channel on Friday, he said that hundreds of people were killed in Karachi but the government did not take stern action against the involved people.
He said that 10 activists of Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) are awaiting execution but they are not being hanged due to President Asif Ali Zardari. He said that thousands of plots are under the possession of Sindh Governor Ishrat-ul-Ibad, adding that he has documentary proofs of his several plots.
He said that he has complete trust in her wife and she would not take any decision against the country and nation. To a query he said that Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani had told him that Rehman Malik is a conclusive liar and the prime minister had told him the story of apple and banana regarding the interior minister.
e further said that Rehman Malik is responsible for avoiding to hold a through investigation into Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. Zulfiqar Mirza said that the Sindh Interior Minister is an illiterate and ignorant person and if arms licences are being cancelled in Sindh, then Wasan’s licences should be cancelled first.
He said that death is his beloved, adding that he would address a public gathering in Mukka Chowk in Karachi at any cost.—INP
Friday, September 9, 2011
CJ invokes martial law sceptre to warn parties
KARACHI, Sept 8: Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar
Muhammad Chaudhry said on Thursday that the worsening law and order
situation in the past had led to military takeovers, adding that the
security situation in Karachi could be controlled only if constitutional
provisions were strictly followed.
“Allegations and counter-allegations are levelled by political parties against each other. Criminal gangs have been formed in the parties and people have been made hostage,” the chief justice observed during the hearing by a five-judge special bench of a suo motu case on target killings in Karachi.
He said political parties appeared to have become militant outfits.
The bench, headed by the chief justice and comprising Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali, Justice Sarmad Jalal Osmany, Justice Ghulam Rabbani and Justice Amir Hani Muslim, adjourned the hearing till Friday when the Sindh High Court Bar Association President Anwer Mansoor Khan will conclude his remaining submissions.
After the hearing, the Inter-Services Intelligence briefed the bench on the Karachi situation in the presence of representatives of other intelligence agencies.
Attorney General Maulvi Anwarul Haq pleaded that the matter was of sensitive nature and, therefore, no-one except members of bench should be allowed to attend the briefing. The court accepted the request and got the briefing in the committee room.
Earlier, Advocate Jamil Ahmed Virk, counsel for the Baloch Ittehad, and Advocate Farogh Naseem, representing the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, made their submissions.
The chief justice said the only politics in practice was to remain in power. Justice Anwar Jamali said Sindh would become the most peaceful province if political parties stopped depending on criminals. He referred to incidents of violence on the eve of
strike called by political parties and said that violence in Karachi had political background.
Advocate Jamil Virk called for measures to eradicate violence at the grassroots level and sought powers for the army to control law and order in the city. He alleged that a large number of police personnel were politically affiliated and said people
were still being kidnapped and killed in parts of the city.
The chief justice said the court was worried about continuing violence in the city. “The violence must come to a halt.”
Advocate Farogh Naseem said people of Karachi had heaved a sigh of relief because of the Supreme Court proceedings. He said that 34 of the 42 seats in the Sindh Assembly from Karachi had been won by the MQM, six by the PPP and two by the ANP.
He said the two seats bagged by the ANP were not won by the Muttahida in the 2003 election and, therefore, a perception about the change of demography in the city was incorrect.
The MQM counsel said a conspiracy was being hatched to kill innocent workers and supporters of the Muttahida because of its ever-increasing popularity.
“This was done at the behest of some gangs of extortionists calling themselves the People’s Aman Committee. They with the support of some armed terrorists and criminals claiming to belong to the ANP and land, arms and drug mafias carried out the
genocide in Karachi.”
Mr Naseem said police and law-enforcement agencies were not taking any action to protect the common and distressed people.
He said the MQM completely dismissed as incorrect and false all allegations levelled against it in the electronic and print media and in the suo motu proceedings. He placed on record a list of people allegedly kidnapped and killed by Lyari gangsters.
The chief justice asked why had the MQM presented the list of only its workers and supporters and not of other innocent people who had been killed in incidents of violence. Advocate Naseem said the record suggested that about 300,000 arms licences had recently been issued by the provincial government and some 10,000 people inducted into police. He said a committee should be formed to investigate the matter. The failure of law-enforcement agencies, he said, had provided safe havens for mafias.
He called for setting up pickets in Lyari, Kati Pahari, Malir, Qasba Colony, Moghalabad, Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Gulistan-i-Jauhar and Lines Area. He requested the court to direct law-enforcement agencies to take an across-the-board action against criminals without fear, favour or interference by any political party.
The MQM lawyer requested the court to constitute a monitoring cell headed by a judge of the Sindh High Court and empower it to issue orders for carrying out investigation and lodging FIRs against criminals to curb violence. The cell should also investigate murders, target killings, torture and kidnappings carried out over the past three years, he said, adding that it might also frame rules and seek assistance from the Citizen-Police Liaison Committee and law-enforcement and intelligence agencies.
The MQM counsel requested the court to issue orders for induction into police of people from local areas to facilitate the concept of community policing. He said the MQM denounced collection of donations and opposed militancy. He said the party had submitted a bill in parliament for de-weaponisation. He alleged that the Muttahida was being subjected to genocide for the past three months.
Justice Sarmad Osmany said: “You (Advocate Naseem) have submitted the list of victims as done by others. It’s tit-for-tat.”
The chief justice said all this was happening because there was no writ of the government.
The MQM lawyer said the government had failed to protect people’s fundamental right to live.
The chief justice asked him to suggest a method for conducting fair investigation without political influence.
Sindh Advocate General Abdul Fatah Malik informed the court that army had conducted the 1992 operation and, therefore, no reports of intelligence agencies on it were available with the provincial authorities. However, he said the report, if any, would either be with the Intelligence Bureau or with the federal government.
The court asked the attorney general to seek the report from the quarters concerned.
“Allegations and counter-allegations are levelled by political parties against each other. Criminal gangs have been formed in the parties and people have been made hostage,” the chief justice observed during the hearing by a five-judge special bench of a suo motu case on target killings in Karachi.
He said political parties appeared to have become militant outfits.
The bench, headed by the chief justice and comprising Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali, Justice Sarmad Jalal Osmany, Justice Ghulam Rabbani and Justice Amir Hani Muslim, adjourned the hearing till Friday when the Sindh High Court Bar Association President Anwer Mansoor Khan will conclude his remaining submissions.
After the hearing, the Inter-Services Intelligence briefed the bench on the Karachi situation in the presence of representatives of other intelligence agencies.
Attorney General Maulvi Anwarul Haq pleaded that the matter was of sensitive nature and, therefore, no-one except members of bench should be allowed to attend the briefing. The court accepted the request and got the briefing in the committee room.
Earlier, Advocate Jamil Ahmed Virk, counsel for the Baloch Ittehad, and Advocate Farogh Naseem, representing the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, made their submissions.
The chief justice said the only politics in practice was to remain in power. Justice Anwar Jamali said Sindh would become the most peaceful province if political parties stopped depending on criminals. He referred to incidents of violence on the eve of
strike called by political parties and said that violence in Karachi had political background.
Advocate Jamil Virk called for measures to eradicate violence at the grassroots level and sought powers for the army to control law and order in the city. He alleged that a large number of police personnel were politically affiliated and said people
were still being kidnapped and killed in parts of the city.
The chief justice said the court was worried about continuing violence in the city. “The violence must come to a halt.”
Advocate Farogh Naseem said people of Karachi had heaved a sigh of relief because of the Supreme Court proceedings. He said that 34 of the 42 seats in the Sindh Assembly from Karachi had been won by the MQM, six by the PPP and two by the ANP.
He said the two seats bagged by the ANP were not won by the Muttahida in the 2003 election and, therefore, a perception about the change of demography in the city was incorrect.
The MQM counsel said a conspiracy was being hatched to kill innocent workers and supporters of the Muttahida because of its ever-increasing popularity.
“This was done at the behest of some gangs of extortionists calling themselves the People’s Aman Committee. They with the support of some armed terrorists and criminals claiming to belong to the ANP and land, arms and drug mafias carried out the
genocide in Karachi.”
Mr Naseem said police and law-enforcement agencies were not taking any action to protect the common and distressed people.
He said the MQM completely dismissed as incorrect and false all allegations levelled against it in the electronic and print media and in the suo motu proceedings. He placed on record a list of people allegedly kidnapped and killed by Lyari gangsters.
The chief justice asked why had the MQM presented the list of only its workers and supporters and not of other innocent people who had been killed in incidents of violence. Advocate Naseem said the record suggested that about 300,000 arms licences had recently been issued by the provincial government and some 10,000 people inducted into police. He said a committee should be formed to investigate the matter. The failure of law-enforcement agencies, he said, had provided safe havens for mafias.
He called for setting up pickets in Lyari, Kati Pahari, Malir, Qasba Colony, Moghalabad, Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Gulistan-i-Jauhar and Lines Area. He requested the court to direct law-enforcement agencies to take an across-the-board action against criminals without fear, favour or interference by any political party.
The MQM lawyer requested the court to constitute a monitoring cell headed by a judge of the Sindh High Court and empower it to issue orders for carrying out investigation and lodging FIRs against criminals to curb violence. The cell should also investigate murders, target killings, torture and kidnappings carried out over the past three years, he said, adding that it might also frame rules and seek assistance from the Citizen-Police Liaison Committee and law-enforcement and intelligence agencies.
The MQM counsel requested the court to issue orders for induction into police of people from local areas to facilitate the concept of community policing. He said the MQM denounced collection of donations and opposed militancy. He said the party had submitted a bill in parliament for de-weaponisation. He alleged that the Muttahida was being subjected to genocide for the past three months.
Justice Sarmad Osmany said: “You (Advocate Naseem) have submitted the list of victims as done by others. It’s tit-for-tat.”
The chief justice said all this was happening because there was no writ of the government.
The MQM lawyer said the government had failed to protect people’s fundamental right to live.
The chief justice asked him to suggest a method for conducting fair investigation without political influence.
Sindh Advocate General Abdul Fatah Malik informed the court that army had conducted the 1992 operation and, therefore, no reports of intelligence agencies on it were available with the provincial authorities. However, he said the report, if any, would either be with the Intelligence Bureau or with the federal government.
The court asked the attorney general to seek the report from the quarters concerned.
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