VIENNA (Reuters) - Western nations pressed China at closed-door nuclear talks to provide more information and help address concerns about its plans to expand an atomic energy plant in Pakistan, diplomatic sources said on Wednesday.
But China showed no sign of reconsidering its position on building two more reactors at the Chashma nuclear power complex in Pakistan's Punjab region, said the sources who attended a June 23-24 meeting of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).
Beijing's nuclear ties with Islamabad have caused unease in Washington, Delhi and other capitals. They are worried about Pakistan's history of spreading nuclear arms technology and the integrity of international non-proliferation rules.
Washington and other governments have said China should seek approval for the planned reactors from the NSG, a 46-nation, consensus-based cartel that seeks to ensure nuclear exports do not get used for military purposes.
Beijing is likely to shun such calls, arguing that the construction of two additional units at Chashma would be part of a bilateral deal sealed before it joined the NSG in 2004. China also supplied the facility's first two reactors.
The United States and European countries made statements at the meeting in the Dutch town of Noordwijk that "both expressed concern and asked the Chinese to provide more information," one diplomat who attended the talks said.
"The Chinese came back and said that as far as they were concerned Chashma 3 and 4 came under the agreement that was grandfathered when they joined in 2004 and that is as far as they feel they need to go," the diplomat added.
The NSG's annual plenary session addressed a range of nuclear-related issues, and agreed to tighten guidelines for the transfer of sensitive enrichment and reprocessing technology that can be used to develop nuclear weapons.
But a statement about the talks did not mention Chashma.
"It is a very sensitive topic," said one European official.
POSSIBLE COMPROMISE?
Another diplomat who declined to be named said: "A number of countries expressed concern and requested more information. There was a brief response from China."
Close relations between China and Pakistan reflect a long-standing shared wariness of their common neighbor, India, and a desire to hedge against U.S. influence across the region.
Chinese nuclear companies have not issued detailed information about when they will start building the new units, but contracts have been signed and financing is being secured.
To receive nuclear exports, nations that are not one of the five officially recognized atomic weapons states must usually place all their nuclear activities under the safeguards of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, NSG rules say.
When the United States sealed a nuclear supply deal with India in 2008 that China and other countries found questionable because Delhi -- like Islamabad -- is outside the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Washington won a waiver from that rule after contentious negotiations.
Pakistan wants a similar civilian nuclear agreement with the United States to help meet its growing energy needs.
But Washington is reluctant, largely because a Pakistani nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, admitted in 2004 to transferring nuclear secrets to North Korea, Iran and Iraq.
Pakistan tested nuclear devices in 1998, soon after India, and both nations refuse to join the NPT, which would oblige them to scrap nuclear weapons.
The first diplomat suggested that a possible way forward on Chashma was if China said that the two new reactors would be the last it claims do not need approval from the NSG.
"What in reality is needed is something that says: this is it, this is the end. And if Chashma 3 and 4 are the end, that is possibly a price worth paying," the diplomat said.
Nuclear analyst Mark Hibbs said he believed China would press ahead with its Pakistan reactor plans and that there were divisions among other NSG states on how to respond to this.
"A kind of 'don't ask, don't tell policy' ... would be very damaging for the credibility of the NSG," said Hibbs, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
(Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Earlier: napaki.tumblr.com
Twitter handle: @napaki
Read the original article by clicking on the respective post titles
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Health personnel in #pakistan spreading hepatitis
LAHORE, 29 June 2011 (IRIN) - A year after Muhammad Ahsan’s elder brother, Muhammad Rafiq, 40, died of hepatitis C, the family has learnt that the widow, Amna Bibi, 35, has also contracted the infection.
“We spent over Rs 150,000 [US$1,764] on my brother’s treatment. The doctors prescribed injections and medicines that were really expensive. How are we to find more money for my sister-in-law and what will become of their three young children if she dies?” asks Ahsan who earns Rs 20,000 (US$235) a month as an office telephone operator, and has two children of his own to support.
Hepatitis is a viral infection spread through the transfusion of blood and body fluids, sexual contact and the use of improperly sterilized instruments. According to the World Health Organization, all five types of the hepatitis virus (A, B, C, D and E) exist in Pakistan.
Hepatitis A and E can be spread through faecal (sewage) contamination of food or drinking water, while B, C and D can be spread through transfusion of blood and body fluids, sexual contact and use of contaminated instruments which are not sterilized properly. While hepatitis A and B have an effective vaccine, the other types have no known vaccine for prevention.
A 2008 study on the prevalence of the disease carried out by the Pakistan Medical Research Council (PMRC), found that 12 million out of a population of 165 million were infected by hepatitis B or C. Mortality rates due to liver failure caused by hepatitis C were also among the highest in the world, according to medical researchers who noted that “Pakistan carries one of the world's highest burdens of chronic hepatitis and mortality due to liver failure and hepatocellular carcinomas.”
The lack of access to medical care for people like Ahsan is a factor in this.
Unsafe techniques
But what is especially alarming is the finding that healthcare practitioners themselves are responsible, in many cases, for the spread of the virus due to unsafe techniques. These include the re-use of syringes and needles. According to the PMRC, nearly 15 percent of paramedics are themselves infected by the hepatitis virus, as are 7.3 percent of nurses, 6.8 percent of doctors and 5.2 percent of medical students based at major hospitals.
The improper disposal of hospital waste adds to the risks. “Sharp waste generated at hospitals and similar settings contribute to a minimum of 20 percent of all infections in the country,” PMRC deputy director Waqaruddin Ahmed said.
“The published literature on the modes of transmission of hepatitis B and hepatitis C in Pakistan implicate contaminated needle use in medical care and drug abuse and unsafe blood and blood product transfusion as the major causal factors,” the researchers noted.
Media reports have suggested one in every 10 Pakistanis suffers from hepatitis B or C, and that the failure to implement laws such as the Safe Blood Transfusion Act of 2002 which puts in place rules for the screening of donated blood, has exacerbated the situation.
“One of the problems is the widespread belief among patients that injections are more effective than oral medications. People who come to clinics, such as the one I practice at, frequently demand an injection even when pills are available. This contributes to the spread of diseases such as hepatitis, since needles are quite often re-used at some places,” Aziz Ahmed, a doctor in Lahore, told IRIN.
The theft and re-sale of hospital waste, quite often by hospital staff, makes matters worse.
“There are people in this hospital - lab assistants, nurses, cleaners and others who take away used items, such as IV [intravenous] bags, and re-sell them in the market,” a doctor at a government hospital in Lahore, who asked not to be named, told IRIN. “Who knows what illnesses are spreading because of this?”
kh/eo/cb
“We spent over Rs 150,000 [US$1,764] on my brother’s treatment. The doctors prescribed injections and medicines that were really expensive. How are we to find more money for my sister-in-law and what will become of their three young children if she dies?” asks Ahsan who earns Rs 20,000 (US$235) a month as an office telephone operator, and has two children of his own to support.
Hepatitis is a viral infection spread through the transfusion of blood and body fluids, sexual contact and the use of improperly sterilized instruments. According to the World Health Organization, all five types of the hepatitis virus (A, B, C, D and E) exist in Pakistan.
Hepatitis A and E can be spread through faecal (sewage) contamination of food or drinking water, while B, C and D can be spread through transfusion of blood and body fluids, sexual contact and use of contaminated instruments which are not sterilized properly. While hepatitis A and B have an effective vaccine, the other types have no known vaccine for prevention.
A 2008 study on the prevalence of the disease carried out by the Pakistan Medical Research Council (PMRC), found that 12 million out of a population of 165 million were infected by hepatitis B or C. Mortality rates due to liver failure caused by hepatitis C were also among the highest in the world, according to medical researchers who noted that “Pakistan carries one of the world's highest burdens of chronic hepatitis and mortality due to liver failure and hepatocellular carcinomas.”
The lack of access to medical care for people like Ahsan is a factor in this.
Unsafe techniques
But what is especially alarming is the finding that healthcare practitioners themselves are responsible, in many cases, for the spread of the virus due to unsafe techniques. These include the re-use of syringes and needles. According to the PMRC, nearly 15 percent of paramedics are themselves infected by the hepatitis virus, as are 7.3 percent of nurses, 6.8 percent of doctors and 5.2 percent of medical students based at major hospitals.
The improper disposal of hospital waste adds to the risks. “Sharp waste generated at hospitals and similar settings contribute to a minimum of 20 percent of all infections in the country,” PMRC deputy director Waqaruddin Ahmed said.
“The published literature on the modes of transmission of hepatitis B and hepatitis C in Pakistan implicate contaminated needle use in medical care and drug abuse and unsafe blood and blood product transfusion as the major causal factors,” the researchers noted.
Media reports have suggested one in every 10 Pakistanis suffers from hepatitis B or C, and that the failure to implement laws such as the Safe Blood Transfusion Act of 2002 which puts in place rules for the screening of donated blood, has exacerbated the situation.
“One of the problems is the widespread belief among patients that injections are more effective than oral medications. People who come to clinics, such as the one I practice at, frequently demand an injection even when pills are available. This contributes to the spread of diseases such as hepatitis, since needles are quite often re-used at some places,” Aziz Ahmed, a doctor in Lahore, told IRIN.
The theft and re-sale of hospital waste, quite often by hospital staff, makes matters worse.
“There are people in this hospital - lab assistants, nurses, cleaners and others who take away used items, such as IV [intravenous] bags, and re-sell them in the market,” a doctor at a government hospital in Lahore, who asked not to be named, told IRIN. “Who knows what illnesses are spreading because of this?”
kh/eo/cb
Rampant Corruption derailing #pakistan Railways #pun #fail #fact
Karachi
The financial situation of the Pakistan Railways (PR) remains in dire straits while many of its engines are lying useless, despite the fact that the number of passengers as well as goods traveling on its trains are on the rise. Many blame this dismal situation on the mismanagement and corruption of Railway officials.
Around 35,000 passengers visit the city and cantonment stations on a daily basis for travel to different part of the country. But in June and July, that number grows to 60,000 at both stations everyday. Besides this, the number of passengers traveling out of the Landhi station also increases during the summer months. The growing number of passengers clearly indicates that although revenues are coming in, something is amiss as PR remains in financial doldrums.
In terms of cash flow, on usual days all the passengers combined pay a grand total of around Rs2.5 million for travel out of the City Station and Rs3.5 million from the Cantonment Station. That is a grand total of Rs6 million from both stations. But those figures jump even higher during the peak season, which begins in June and ends in July. Revenue earned at the City Station grows to approximately 3 million and the Cantonment Station earns around 5 million. The total amount of revenue collected by all the stations of Karachi combined is a staggering Rs10 million.
Despite these earnings, Pakistan Railways has a mere 156 engines, out of just six are used as used as goods trains. The government-run department has around 145 such engines that could easily be repaired, while there are around 200 of them that are completely out of order and are only good for scrap. It is believed that everything from small corruption to large scale irregularities is hampering the operations of Pakistan Railways.
In 2000, 69 engines were imported from China during the rule of General Pervez Musharraf. However, 40 of them developed problems after being used for just two years. Even the engines which are currently operating are not being run on full capacity, which is the primary reason behind the delayed arrival of trains at their destinations. Only the Tezgam and Karakoram Express are blessed with engines that can be used at their fullest capacity.
Generally an engine has six motors and only the aforementioned trains have that number. However, the rest of the engines being used by PR are running either two or four motor engines.
The power plants used to supply electricity to the trains that run along the country’s rail tracks are also in short supply. As a result, passengers suffer a great deal as they forced to ensure long journeys without fans or lights.
The Bolan Mail, Khushhal Khattak Express, Bhaudin Zakria Express and Qalandar Express operate without operational lights due to their non-operational power plants.
However, many fail to see a concrete reason behind the failure of PR to repair their engines and power plants, especially since several trains, carrying thousands of paying passengers are traveling along the country’s tracks, earning millions in revenue.
For example, the Faisalabad-bound Shah Rukan-e-Alam Express leaves Karachi with 14 to 15 economy class bogies and 1200 to 1500 passengers.
The Awam Express, a Peshawar-bound train has lower AC bogies, besides around 18 economy class bogies. The service may carry around 2000 passengers during its daily operations. Meanwhile, the Lahore-bound Karakoram Express has six business class and up to 10 economy class bogies. Another Faisalabad-bound train service called the Millat Express leaves Karachi with lower AC class and nine economy class bogies.
Other trains that leave Karachi for their respective destinations include Night Coach Karachi Express (Lahore), Tezgam (Rawalpindi), Bhaudin Zakria (Multan), Khushhal Khattak (Peshawar), Bolan Mail (Quetta), Qalandar Express (Larkana), Khyber Mail (Peshawar), Sukkar Express and Pakistan Express (Rawalpindi) Years ago, long-running train services including the Shalimar Express (Lahore), Jinnah Express (Rawalpindi), Tezro (Peshawar), Nishtar Express (Rawalpindi) and Bhanbor Express were suspended due to the lack of locomotives and other necessary facilities.
Interestingly workshops in Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi have the ability to repair faulty engines. In addition to this, there is a PR-owned factory in Risalpur which has the expertise to manufacture engines
However, Pakistan Railways’ losses are on the rise and the number of passenger and freight trains are decreasing. Now authorities are all set to outsource goods trains despite the fact that the main source of revenue for PR is the transportation of goods .
In 1999, PR suffered financial losses to the tune of Rs20 billion, which increased to Rs40 billion in 2006-07 and touched a staggering Rs52 billion by 2010-11.
During the tenure of Javed Ashraf Qazi as railways minister, lands, schools, clubs and other properties of the department were sold, but this could not help minimise the losses.
In Karachi, acres of land belonging of the railways in Landhi were taken by a private party belonging to the Pakistan Muslim League (Q) to set up a Bachat Bazar. The land had been leased out for a few years and according to the agreement, permanent structures could not be constructed on the land. However, hundreds of concrete shops were constructed.
Officially, Karachi City Railway Colony has 905 quarters for its employees. However, some 11,000 houses have been constructed on the land and these illegal encroachments also use electricity and water meant for the railways.
According to Chairman of the Railways Workers Union Manzoor Razi, the government-run department cannot emerge from this crisis unless it is bailed out with Rs50 billion.
The financial situation of the Pakistan Railways (PR) remains in dire straits while many of its engines are lying useless, despite the fact that the number of passengers as well as goods traveling on its trains are on the rise. Many blame this dismal situation on the mismanagement and corruption of Railway officials.
Around 35,000 passengers visit the city and cantonment stations on a daily basis for travel to different part of the country. But in June and July, that number grows to 60,000 at both stations everyday. Besides this, the number of passengers traveling out of the Landhi station also increases during the summer months. The growing number of passengers clearly indicates that although revenues are coming in, something is amiss as PR remains in financial doldrums.
In terms of cash flow, on usual days all the passengers combined pay a grand total of around Rs2.5 million for travel out of the City Station and Rs3.5 million from the Cantonment Station. That is a grand total of Rs6 million from both stations. But those figures jump even higher during the peak season, which begins in June and ends in July. Revenue earned at the City Station grows to approximately 3 million and the Cantonment Station earns around 5 million. The total amount of revenue collected by all the stations of Karachi combined is a staggering Rs10 million.
Despite these earnings, Pakistan Railways has a mere 156 engines, out of just six are used as used as goods trains. The government-run department has around 145 such engines that could easily be repaired, while there are around 200 of them that are completely out of order and are only good for scrap. It is believed that everything from small corruption to large scale irregularities is hampering the operations of Pakistan Railways.
In 2000, 69 engines were imported from China during the rule of General Pervez Musharraf. However, 40 of them developed problems after being used for just two years. Even the engines which are currently operating are not being run on full capacity, which is the primary reason behind the delayed arrival of trains at their destinations. Only the Tezgam and Karakoram Express are blessed with engines that can be used at their fullest capacity.
Generally an engine has six motors and only the aforementioned trains have that number. However, the rest of the engines being used by PR are running either two or four motor engines.
The power plants used to supply electricity to the trains that run along the country’s rail tracks are also in short supply. As a result, passengers suffer a great deal as they forced to ensure long journeys without fans or lights.
The Bolan Mail, Khushhal Khattak Express, Bhaudin Zakria Express and Qalandar Express operate without operational lights due to their non-operational power plants.
However, many fail to see a concrete reason behind the failure of PR to repair their engines and power plants, especially since several trains, carrying thousands of paying passengers are traveling along the country’s tracks, earning millions in revenue.
For example, the Faisalabad-bound Shah Rukan-e-Alam Express leaves Karachi with 14 to 15 economy class bogies and 1200 to 1500 passengers.
The Awam Express, a Peshawar-bound train has lower AC bogies, besides around 18 economy class bogies. The service may carry around 2000 passengers during its daily operations. Meanwhile, the Lahore-bound Karakoram Express has six business class and up to 10 economy class bogies. Another Faisalabad-bound train service called the Millat Express leaves Karachi with lower AC class and nine economy class bogies.
Other trains that leave Karachi for their respective destinations include Night Coach Karachi Express (Lahore), Tezgam (Rawalpindi), Bhaudin Zakria (Multan), Khushhal Khattak (Peshawar), Bolan Mail (Quetta), Qalandar Express (Larkana), Khyber Mail (Peshawar), Sukkar Express and Pakistan Express (Rawalpindi) Years ago, long-running train services including the Shalimar Express (Lahore), Jinnah Express (Rawalpindi), Tezro (Peshawar), Nishtar Express (Rawalpindi) and Bhanbor Express were suspended due to the lack of locomotives and other necessary facilities.
Interestingly workshops in Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi have the ability to repair faulty engines. In addition to this, there is a PR-owned factory in Risalpur which has the expertise to manufacture engines
However, Pakistan Railways’ losses are on the rise and the number of passenger and freight trains are decreasing. Now authorities are all set to outsource goods trains despite the fact that the main source of revenue for PR is the transportation of goods .
In 1999, PR suffered financial losses to the tune of Rs20 billion, which increased to Rs40 billion in 2006-07 and touched a staggering Rs52 billion by 2010-11.
During the tenure of Javed Ashraf Qazi as railways minister, lands, schools, clubs and other properties of the department were sold, but this could not help minimise the losses.
In Karachi, acres of land belonging of the railways in Landhi were taken by a private party belonging to the Pakistan Muslim League (Q) to set up a Bachat Bazar. The land had been leased out for a few years and according to the agreement, permanent structures could not be constructed on the land. However, hundreds of concrete shops were constructed.
Officially, Karachi City Railway Colony has 905 quarters for its employees. However, some 11,000 houses have been constructed on the land and these illegal encroachments also use electricity and water meant for the railways.
According to Chairman of the Railways Workers Union Manzoor Razi, the government-run department cannot emerge from this crisis unless it is bailed out with Rs50 billion.
Changes to #pakistan’s religious minorities ministry could aid persecutors #Jesus #christianity
Lahore, Pakistan, Jun 29, 2011 / 01:20 am (CNA).- The Pakistan government’s plan to abolish its national Ministry for Religious Minorities risks giving a “green light” to persecution and could eliminate the legacy of slain Catholic minorities minister Shahbaz Bhatti, Church sources in the country say.
“We are disappointed and saddened,” a Lahore priest told Fides news agency about a proposal to split the ministry into provincial divisions. “Thus the rights of Christians will be put further into obscurity and disappear from the national political agenda. We will be even more helpless. For the fundamentalists this will be a 'green light' to new aggression, violence and persecution against Christians.”
Unless there are last-minute changes, the Pakistan government plans the move as part of a “devolution” effort that will begin July 1. The government has said the moves will provide provincial autonomy.
Other ministries involved are the health, environment, sports, food and agriculture, women’s development, and labor and manpower, the Associated Press of Pakistan reports.
One unidentified source in Pakistani politics said that the measure will remove issues about minority rights from the agenda of the central government.
“So this kills the late Minister Shahbaz Bhatti a second time: the first was his physical elimination, the second is to eliminate his project and his political legacy, on which he had dedicated so much time,” the source told Fides.
Ackram Gill, a Catholic who is the present Minister of State for Minorities, has vigorously protested the abolition. He has led a delegation of parliamentarians and politicians in a meeting with Prime Minister Raza Gilani. He has also organized a protest outside of Parliament.
The plan has also faced strong opposition from the Permanent Committee of the Pakistani Parliament for Minority Affairs, and Christians and Hindus have also organized press conferences and public meetings calling for a reconsideration of the decentralization measure.
The project to eliminate the department was already a factor in the reorganization of Pakistan’s cabinet announced in February 2011. However, Bhatti had forestalled that proposal and had obtained strong support from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Bhatti was murdered by Islamic extremists on March 2. He had received death threats from extremists angered by his opposition to the nation’s strict anti-blasphemy law, which prevents any public criticism of Islam or its prophet Muhammad.
Islamabad police are seriously considering closing the case for lack of evidence, but Gill has demanded the formation of a judicial commission to investigate Bhatti’s murder.
“We are disappointed and saddened,” a Lahore priest told Fides news agency about a proposal to split the ministry into provincial divisions. “Thus the rights of Christians will be put further into obscurity and disappear from the national political agenda. We will be even more helpless. For the fundamentalists this will be a 'green light' to new aggression, violence and persecution against Christians.”
Unless there are last-minute changes, the Pakistan government plans the move as part of a “devolution” effort that will begin July 1. The government has said the moves will provide provincial autonomy.
Other ministries involved are the health, environment, sports, food and agriculture, women’s development, and labor and manpower, the Associated Press of Pakistan reports.
One unidentified source in Pakistani politics said that the measure will remove issues about minority rights from the agenda of the central government.
“So this kills the late Minister Shahbaz Bhatti a second time: the first was his physical elimination, the second is to eliminate his project and his political legacy, on which he had dedicated so much time,” the source told Fides.
Ackram Gill, a Catholic who is the present Minister of State for Minorities, has vigorously protested the abolition. He has led a delegation of parliamentarians and politicians in a meeting with Prime Minister Raza Gilani. He has also organized a protest outside of Parliament.
The plan has also faced strong opposition from the Permanent Committee of the Pakistani Parliament for Minority Affairs, and Christians and Hindus have also organized press conferences and public meetings calling for a reconsideration of the decentralization measure.
The project to eliminate the department was already a factor in the reorganization of Pakistan’s cabinet announced in February 2011. However, Bhatti had forestalled that proposal and had obtained strong support from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Bhatti was murdered by Islamic extremists on March 2. He had received death threats from extremists angered by his opposition to the nation’s strict anti-blasphemy law, which prevents any public criticism of Islam or its prophet Muhammad.
Islamabad police are seriously considering closing the case for lack of evidence, but Gill has demanded the formation of a judicial commission to investigate Bhatti’s murder.
Workers’ struggle at #Karachi Electric Supply Corporation against repressive management #pakistan
The struggle of the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation workers is continuing amid severe repression on the part of management and the government. On June 22 goons used by KESC management together with a neo-fascist organization in Karachi attacked the rally of KESC workers in Nazimabad with firearms in which three workers were seriously injured.
May 24, KarachiThe ruling class is terrified of this movement and is trying every means possible to crush it. Meanwhile the workers are getting support from other departments also. More than 20,000 workers participated in the June 20 rally, which included workers from Karachi Port Trust, State Bank of Pakistan, Railways and other departments.
The PTUDC has been playing a key role in this movement since the beginning and has staged many protests in support of the KESC workers in many cities of Pakistan. In the hot summer season power outages of up to 14 hours a day have made Karachi a living hell for ordinary people; therefore, common citizens of Karachi have started supporting the demand to bring KESC back under government control and to kick out private management.
The present struggle started on December 31, 2010, when the private management of KESC introduced a so called VSS (Voluntary Separation Scheme) which was rejected by the 4500 workers of KESC. The private management sacked all these workers on January 19. On January 20 the KESC Labour Union (CBA) went to the NIRC (National Industrial Relations Commission) at 8am to protests against this decision and ten thousand workers came along. They came to discover that the Judge was on leave and would return on January 24.
The labour union then staged a protest mass meeting in Fawara Square in front of the Governor’s House. The People’s Workers’ Union and the Kasoti Union also joined in. The leaders of all the unions took a decision that they should surround the KESC House. Then a great mass of workers started to march towards the KESC house. Inspired by the revolution in Tunisia, some of the workers could not control their anger and started to take revenge by attacking this magnificent palace in which conspiracies are plotted against the workers. The leadership had not made any such decision but the workers could not control themselves.
Afterwards there was a sit in outside the KESC House. All political parties and trade union federations came there to express solidarity with the workers but the workers were most impressed by the leadership of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign because there was truth in their sentiments and in what they expressed. The PTUDC’s leaflets and pamphlets also made a deep impression on the workers.
In order to show solidarity with the KESC workers, demonstrations were organized across the country. The MQM tried to hijack the workers’ movement using various tactics but the leadership of the workers defeated all such efforts.
The workers were very much disappointed by the role of Pakistani media and they came to realize that this media does not represent the workers and the poor but is in the pockets of the capitalists and always protects their interests. The role of the courts made it clear to the workers that they could not get justice from these either. The Chief Justice of Pakistan did not take Suo Moto action [i.e. did not initiate proceedings] against the injustices suffered by the 4500 workers.
After four days of hard struggle and duplicity and false promises on the part of the state, the wisdom and farsightedness of the leadership forced the Government to press upon the KESC management to reinstate the sacked workers. They did so in the fear that workers all over the country would rise up against the injustices and brutalities committed by the ruling class. Under this pressure the CEO of KESC, Tabish Gohar was forced to announce the restoration order in front of the press.
However, the joy of the workers was short lived as the CEO of KESC appeared on TV the following day to announce that the reinstatement order had been made under pressure from the Government and that the 4500 workers would be sacked anyway. This was an open threat by a small part of this rotten capitalist system. This was followed by oppressive measures against the workers on the part of Management. False cases were registered against the workers’ leaders, accusing them of attacking the KESC House. Workers were put in the surplus labour pool and made to work through a third party contractor. The workers were deprived of their benefits and the salaries of thousands of workers were stopped. The workers were subjected to mental torture. Electricity meters at their houses were being checked and despite the fact that they are entitled to free electricity they were given charge sheets. Some were accused of opening an envelope and others of stealing tea bags! 150 workers were given charge sheets for attacking the KESC House and were sacked.
Against this oppression by management the Workers’ Alliance announced a hunger strike till death on April 29. The leaders of the Labour Union (CBA) and Kasoti Union went on hunger strike, whereas the leaders of the People’s Workers’ Union participated in a symbolic hunger strike. On 1st May despite a boycott by MQM (neo-fascist party) the KESC workers organized the largest mass meeting in the city. The condition of the workers and leaders participating in the hunger strike became critical and they had to be taken to hospital. When this failed to move the management, the KESC workers stopped going to work and sat at the Press Club with their fellow workers and leaders which resulted in the disruption and disturbance of the power supply in the city of Karachi. All KESC centres were closed.
MQM units started rectifying the complaints by charging money from the public and used its goons to do the work of KESC workers. Millions of rupees have been extorted from the people of Karachi in this way. MQM thugs also threatened the workers and officers of KESC and forced them to open some of the KESC centres.
The KESC workers started organizing rallies against the management and the privatization of KESC. There have not been such big workers’ rallies in Karachi in the recent past and yet the media gave them no coverage. On Friday, June 3, the KESC workers called for a “shutter down” and transportation strike against privatization, load shedding, plunder and fake billing. The strike was supported by many parties along with Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign.
For the first time in Karachi a strike on specifically workers’ issue was a huge success. With their successful strike the workers of Karachi sent a message to the secret agencies and state that Karachi did not belong to any terrorist group but belonged to the poor and workers of this city. But still, the strike failed to shift the government and management and it was decided by the Workers’ Alliance to stage a rally and sit in at KESC House on June 13 which is still taking place.
On June 20 a huge rally was organized from the Tower to Jinnah’s Mausoleum which was attended by a large number of trade union activists. The participants in the rally staged a sit in at Geo TV channel’s office. Geo channel is supporting the brutal management and is broadcasting poisonous propaganda against the workers. At the end of the rally the leader of Workers’ Alliance, Akhlaq Ahmed Khan criticized the MQM for using its goons to open the KESC centres at gun point. He said that next plan of action would be announced soon.
The struggle of the KESC workers is part of the class war between the privileged, the capitalists, foreign extortionists and the working class. On one side there are those who are paid millions and on the other there are the deprived workers who are paid a mere few thousands. The current private management makes billions of rupees every month from electricity bills and uses this money to bribe the top layers of the government, the biggest mafia of the city called the MQM, and the media. There is an army of ministers, advisers and retired military officers who are paid millions just to keep the exploitation of the masses going on.
The leadership of the Workers’ Alliance should make the fight against privatization their top priority and should take this movement beyond KESC and include other workers in this struggle. The PPP is visibly divided into two groups. The top leadership is with the management, but the lower level leadership is with the workers but they don’t have any voice in making the decisions.
The PPP workers in KESC are disappointed with the criminal silence of their government. MQM has been exposed and contrary to their claims of being the representative of 98% the population, they have shown that they are with the capitalists who are attacking the workers. This time there were very few leaders that came from the political parties to express solidarity. This is because they don’t have any more lies to tell or any more dreams to sell. Although this movement has not yet reached its logical conclusion, the workers have shown their determination and revolutionary spirit.
The leaflets and speeches from the PTUDC comrades has shown the workers the real way forward, and subsequent events are proving them correct. This is why they have gained so much influence during the movement. They have appealed the workers to cut off electricity to the Governor’s House, the Chief Minister’s House, and other important state departments. Also they have gathered support for KESC workers from other institutions and industries. They have also explained that the real problem is the capitalists system itself which can only be replaced by socialism. The state is subservient to the foreign capitalists and imperialists and has nothing to offer the workers other than hunger, deprivation, price hikes and unemployment.
We appeal to the workers of the world to support this movement and raise this matter in their Trade Unions and Federations. Protests outside Pakistani Embassies around the world can give this movement real strength and can help KESC workers to achieve their cause.
May 24, KarachiThe ruling class is terrified of this movement and is trying every means possible to crush it. Meanwhile the workers are getting support from other departments also. More than 20,000 workers participated in the June 20 rally, which included workers from Karachi Port Trust, State Bank of Pakistan, Railways and other departments.
The PTUDC has been playing a key role in this movement since the beginning and has staged many protests in support of the KESC workers in many cities of Pakistan. In the hot summer season power outages of up to 14 hours a day have made Karachi a living hell for ordinary people; therefore, common citizens of Karachi have started supporting the demand to bring KESC back under government control and to kick out private management.
The present struggle started on December 31, 2010, when the private management of KESC introduced a so called VSS (Voluntary Separation Scheme) which was rejected by the 4500 workers of KESC. The private management sacked all these workers on January 19. On January 20 the KESC Labour Union (CBA) went to the NIRC (National Industrial Relations Commission) at 8am to protests against this decision and ten thousand workers came along. They came to discover that the Judge was on leave and would return on January 24.
The labour union then staged a protest mass meeting in Fawara Square in front of the Governor’s House. The People’s Workers’ Union and the Kasoti Union also joined in. The leaders of all the unions took a decision that they should surround the KESC House. Then a great mass of workers started to march towards the KESC house. Inspired by the revolution in Tunisia, some of the workers could not control their anger and started to take revenge by attacking this magnificent palace in which conspiracies are plotted against the workers. The leadership had not made any such decision but the workers could not control themselves.
Afterwards there was a sit in outside the KESC House. All political parties and trade union federations came there to express solidarity with the workers but the workers were most impressed by the leadership of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign because there was truth in their sentiments and in what they expressed. The PTUDC’s leaflets and pamphlets also made a deep impression on the workers.
In order to show solidarity with the KESC workers, demonstrations were organized across the country. The MQM tried to hijack the workers’ movement using various tactics but the leadership of the workers defeated all such efforts.
The workers were very much disappointed by the role of Pakistani media and they came to realize that this media does not represent the workers and the poor but is in the pockets of the capitalists and always protects their interests. The role of the courts made it clear to the workers that they could not get justice from these either. The Chief Justice of Pakistan did not take Suo Moto action [i.e. did not initiate proceedings] against the injustices suffered by the 4500 workers.
After four days of hard struggle and duplicity and false promises on the part of the state, the wisdom and farsightedness of the leadership forced the Government to press upon the KESC management to reinstate the sacked workers. They did so in the fear that workers all over the country would rise up against the injustices and brutalities committed by the ruling class. Under this pressure the CEO of KESC, Tabish Gohar was forced to announce the restoration order in front of the press.
However, the joy of the workers was short lived as the CEO of KESC appeared on TV the following day to announce that the reinstatement order had been made under pressure from the Government and that the 4500 workers would be sacked anyway. This was an open threat by a small part of this rotten capitalist system. This was followed by oppressive measures against the workers on the part of Management. False cases were registered against the workers’ leaders, accusing them of attacking the KESC House. Workers were put in the surplus labour pool and made to work through a third party contractor. The workers were deprived of their benefits and the salaries of thousands of workers were stopped. The workers were subjected to mental torture. Electricity meters at their houses were being checked and despite the fact that they are entitled to free electricity they were given charge sheets. Some were accused of opening an envelope and others of stealing tea bags! 150 workers were given charge sheets for attacking the KESC House and were sacked.
Against this oppression by management the Workers’ Alliance announced a hunger strike till death on April 29. The leaders of the Labour Union (CBA) and Kasoti Union went on hunger strike, whereas the leaders of the People’s Workers’ Union participated in a symbolic hunger strike. On 1st May despite a boycott by MQM (neo-fascist party) the KESC workers organized the largest mass meeting in the city. The condition of the workers and leaders participating in the hunger strike became critical and they had to be taken to hospital. When this failed to move the management, the KESC workers stopped going to work and sat at the Press Club with their fellow workers and leaders which resulted in the disruption and disturbance of the power supply in the city of Karachi. All KESC centres were closed.
MQM units started rectifying the complaints by charging money from the public and used its goons to do the work of KESC workers. Millions of rupees have been extorted from the people of Karachi in this way. MQM thugs also threatened the workers and officers of KESC and forced them to open some of the KESC centres.
The KESC workers started organizing rallies against the management and the privatization of KESC. There have not been such big workers’ rallies in Karachi in the recent past and yet the media gave them no coverage. On Friday, June 3, the KESC workers called for a “shutter down” and transportation strike against privatization, load shedding, plunder and fake billing. The strike was supported by many parties along with Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign.
For the first time in Karachi a strike on specifically workers’ issue was a huge success. With their successful strike the workers of Karachi sent a message to the secret agencies and state that Karachi did not belong to any terrorist group but belonged to the poor and workers of this city. But still, the strike failed to shift the government and management and it was decided by the Workers’ Alliance to stage a rally and sit in at KESC House on June 13 which is still taking place.
On June 20 a huge rally was organized from the Tower to Jinnah’s Mausoleum which was attended by a large number of trade union activists. The participants in the rally staged a sit in at Geo TV channel’s office. Geo channel is supporting the brutal management and is broadcasting poisonous propaganda against the workers. At the end of the rally the leader of Workers’ Alliance, Akhlaq Ahmed Khan criticized the MQM for using its goons to open the KESC centres at gun point. He said that next plan of action would be announced soon.
The struggle of the KESC workers is part of the class war between the privileged, the capitalists, foreign extortionists and the working class. On one side there are those who are paid millions and on the other there are the deprived workers who are paid a mere few thousands. The current private management makes billions of rupees every month from electricity bills and uses this money to bribe the top layers of the government, the biggest mafia of the city called the MQM, and the media. There is an army of ministers, advisers and retired military officers who are paid millions just to keep the exploitation of the masses going on.
The leadership of the Workers’ Alliance should make the fight against privatization their top priority and should take this movement beyond KESC and include other workers in this struggle. The PPP is visibly divided into two groups. The top leadership is with the management, but the lower level leadership is with the workers but they don’t have any voice in making the decisions.
The PPP workers in KESC are disappointed with the criminal silence of their government. MQM has been exposed and contrary to their claims of being the representative of 98% the population, they have shown that they are with the capitalists who are attacking the workers. This time there were very few leaders that came from the political parties to express solidarity. This is because they don’t have any more lies to tell or any more dreams to sell. Although this movement has not yet reached its logical conclusion, the workers have shown their determination and revolutionary spirit.
The leaflets and speeches from the PTUDC comrades has shown the workers the real way forward, and subsequent events are proving them correct. This is why they have gained so much influence during the movement. They have appealed the workers to cut off electricity to the Governor’s House, the Chief Minister’s House, and other important state departments. Also they have gathered support for KESC workers from other institutions and industries. They have also explained that the real problem is the capitalists system itself which can only be replaced by socialism. The state is subservient to the foreign capitalists and imperialists and has nothing to offer the workers other than hunger, deprivation, price hikes and unemployment.
We appeal to the workers of the world to support this movement and raise this matter in their Trade Unions and Federations. Protests outside Pakistani Embassies around the world can give this movement real strength and can help KESC workers to achieve their cause.
#pakistan's Army Rule
The daring raid that killed Osama Bin Laden marked a turning point not only in U.S-Pakistan ties but also in power relations within Pakistan. Most observers have focused on the first, but have failed to understand how worsening civil-military relations in Pakistan have contributed to the recent meltdown between Washington and Islamabad.
President Obama’s decision to launch Operation Neptune Spear without informing Pakistan exploded the myth of the U.S.-Pakistani “strategic partnership.” The discovery of Bin Laden close to the Pakistani Military Academy in Abbotabad—almost certainly protected by elements of its “deep state”—marked Pakistan as a “frenemy” rather than the “ally” it regularly claimed to be.
The consequent upsurge in American resentment, in turn, reinforced the Pakistani military view of Washington as a formidable but fickle friend. This peculiar marriage of convenience, where America was minimally appeased as long as the generals were well compensated and their interests protected, was torn asunder by the events of May 2, 2011. But what escalated the crisis in U.S.-Pakistan relations since that day was something unanticipated: the army’s plummeting credibility in the eyes of its own populace.
The shock that the United States could discover Bin Laden from thousands of miles away in a cantonment town, when he was overlooked by the military and its powerful intelligence services, confronted the Pakistani public with one of two possibilities: either their army was malicious, harboring an enemy whose allies were ravaging Pakistan every day, or it was incompetent, incapable of its discharging its principal task of protecting the nation.
In either case, the Bin Laden affair raised the fundamental question of why such a military was offered preferential access to the public trough given its debilitating failures. The ease with which homegrown insurgents were able to attack a major Pakistani naval base, even as the intelligence services, for all their fecklessness, were widely suspected of torturing and killing a prominent Pakistani journalist who had uncovered connections between the deep state and extremists, filled the Pakistani populace with dismay and revulsion.
Not since the disastrous Kargil war of 1999 has the army’s reputation fallen so low. In a praetorian state, a loss of credibility is a threat to survival—and, hence, the Pakistani army struck back resolutely and early.
In the immediate aftermath of the Bin Laden raid, it looked like Pakistan might have finally seized a moment for introspection. In his phone conversation with President Obama, Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, struck exactly the right note, recognizing correctly that Bin Laden’s death was a victory for both the United States and Pakistan. Given the disasters Islamist radicals have wreaked in Pakistan, his elimination—however achieved—was welcome news and the main task for both countries was to resolutely pursue the antiterrorism campaign because, as Zardari later put it, “the forces of modernity and moderation remain under serious threat.”
Unfortunately for Zardari, Rawalpindi—the headquarters of the Pakistani military—did not get the memo. Within days of his conversation with Obama, the army began hounding the civilian government for betraying the national interest by weakly opposing American military action after first having liberally issued visas to U.S. operatives that allegedly made the intrusion both inevitable and easy.
Before long, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani would be threatening the United States with a military response in the event of another similar operation, while defending the honor of the military and the intelligence services. Far from exploiting the opening created by Bin Laden’s death for reflection on Pakistan’s continued dalliance with jihadism, the official debate pressed by the army now centered on Pakistani sovereignty and the contempt conveyed by the United States in breaching it.
Except for small bastions of Pakistani liberalism, which persisted in asking the hard questions about the army’s involvement in Bin Laden’s sanctuary and what that meant for Pakistan’s future, the deep state successfully kept up the diversionary drumbeat about bruised sovereignty—a particularly ironic focus given that the purported ignorance about Bin Laden’s presence illuminated Pakistan’s empty sovereignty even more than the ensuing American raid.
A strong civilian government might have used this moment to demand the resignation of the Pakistani Chief of Army Staff and the Director-General of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), holding them accountable for their failures. In Pakistan, however, the opposite happened: in a particularly galling moment, some civilian politicians close to the army actually called on Zardari and Gilani to resign on the grounds that the Bin Laden episode demonstrated that their management of national security—on which they exercise no oversight, let alone control—was found wanting!
Operation Neptune Spear has thus proved to be a turning point—but not in the manner expected, at least concerning Pakistan. Far from strengthening civilian authority, the army’s embarrassment has provided new opportunities to decisively undermine counterterrorism cooperation with the United States and further weaken the civilian regime—even as the Pakistani military sold fantastic stories about the army chief’s struggle to keep his job because of “excessive” cooperation with the United States.
While recent Pakistani actions, such as the arrest of U.S. informants who supported the Bin Laden mission, the compromise of operations targeting facilities that produce improvised explosive devices, the reduction of Special Forces components training the Pakistani Frontier Corps, the sharply increased constraints on clandestine American counterterrorism operations inside Pakistan, the demanded diminution in the size and the status of the U.S. military assistance mission in Islamabad and the continued support of jihadi groups that continue to target U.S. troops in Afghanistan, remain disconcerting, the United States will find ways to circumvent these problems, albeit at greater cost and with greater risks.
More significant, however, is the damaging enervation of Pakistan’s already-frail civilian authority. While continuing American appeasement of its generals has contributed mightily to this outcome, the demise of the civilian government on issues of national security will not only undermine President Zardari’s bold assurance that “the war on terrorism is as much Pakistan’s war as it is America’s,” but it will also subvert Pakistan’s stability by further strengthening the power of the very military that has taken the country to perdition repeatedly since its formation.
President Obama’s decision to launch Operation Neptune Spear without informing Pakistan exploded the myth of the U.S.-Pakistani “strategic partnership.” The discovery of Bin Laden close to the Pakistani Military Academy in Abbotabad—almost certainly protected by elements of its “deep state”—marked Pakistan as a “frenemy” rather than the “ally” it regularly claimed to be.
The consequent upsurge in American resentment, in turn, reinforced the Pakistani military view of Washington as a formidable but fickle friend. This peculiar marriage of convenience, where America was minimally appeased as long as the generals were well compensated and their interests protected, was torn asunder by the events of May 2, 2011. But what escalated the crisis in U.S.-Pakistan relations since that day was something unanticipated: the army’s plummeting credibility in the eyes of its own populace.
The shock that the United States could discover Bin Laden from thousands of miles away in a cantonment town, when he was overlooked by the military and its powerful intelligence services, confronted the Pakistani public with one of two possibilities: either their army was malicious, harboring an enemy whose allies were ravaging Pakistan every day, or it was incompetent, incapable of its discharging its principal task of protecting the nation.
In either case, the Bin Laden affair raised the fundamental question of why such a military was offered preferential access to the public trough given its debilitating failures. The ease with which homegrown insurgents were able to attack a major Pakistani naval base, even as the intelligence services, for all their fecklessness, were widely suspected of torturing and killing a prominent Pakistani journalist who had uncovered connections between the deep state and extremists, filled the Pakistani populace with dismay and revulsion.
Not since the disastrous Kargil war of 1999 has the army’s reputation fallen so low. In a praetorian state, a loss of credibility is a threat to survival—and, hence, the Pakistani army struck back resolutely and early.
In the immediate aftermath of the Bin Laden raid, it looked like Pakistan might have finally seized a moment for introspection. In his phone conversation with President Obama, Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, struck exactly the right note, recognizing correctly that Bin Laden’s death was a victory for both the United States and Pakistan. Given the disasters Islamist radicals have wreaked in Pakistan, his elimination—however achieved—was welcome news and the main task for both countries was to resolutely pursue the antiterrorism campaign because, as Zardari later put it, “the forces of modernity and moderation remain under serious threat.”
Unfortunately for Zardari, Rawalpindi—the headquarters of the Pakistani military—did not get the memo. Within days of his conversation with Obama, the army began hounding the civilian government for betraying the national interest by weakly opposing American military action after first having liberally issued visas to U.S. operatives that allegedly made the intrusion both inevitable and easy.
Before long, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani would be threatening the United States with a military response in the event of another similar operation, while defending the honor of the military and the intelligence services. Far from exploiting the opening created by Bin Laden’s death for reflection on Pakistan’s continued dalliance with jihadism, the official debate pressed by the army now centered on Pakistani sovereignty and the contempt conveyed by the United States in breaching it.
Except for small bastions of Pakistani liberalism, which persisted in asking the hard questions about the army’s involvement in Bin Laden’s sanctuary and what that meant for Pakistan’s future, the deep state successfully kept up the diversionary drumbeat about bruised sovereignty—a particularly ironic focus given that the purported ignorance about Bin Laden’s presence illuminated Pakistan’s empty sovereignty even more than the ensuing American raid.
A strong civilian government might have used this moment to demand the resignation of the Pakistani Chief of Army Staff and the Director-General of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), holding them accountable for their failures. In Pakistan, however, the opposite happened: in a particularly galling moment, some civilian politicians close to the army actually called on Zardari and Gilani to resign on the grounds that the Bin Laden episode demonstrated that their management of national security—on which they exercise no oversight, let alone control—was found wanting!
Operation Neptune Spear has thus proved to be a turning point—but not in the manner expected, at least concerning Pakistan. Far from strengthening civilian authority, the army’s embarrassment has provided new opportunities to decisively undermine counterterrorism cooperation with the United States and further weaken the civilian regime—even as the Pakistani military sold fantastic stories about the army chief’s struggle to keep his job because of “excessive” cooperation with the United States.
While recent Pakistani actions, such as the arrest of U.S. informants who supported the Bin Laden mission, the compromise of operations targeting facilities that produce improvised explosive devices, the reduction of Special Forces components training the Pakistani Frontier Corps, the sharply increased constraints on clandestine American counterterrorism operations inside Pakistan, the demanded diminution in the size and the status of the U.S. military assistance mission in Islamabad and the continued support of jihadi groups that continue to target U.S. troops in Afghanistan, remain disconcerting, the United States will find ways to circumvent these problems, albeit at greater cost and with greater risks.
More significant, however, is the damaging enervation of Pakistan’s already-frail civilian authority. While continuing American appeasement of its generals has contributed mightily to this outcome, the demise of the civilian government on issues of national security will not only undermine President Zardari’s bold assurance that “the war on terrorism is as much Pakistan’s war as it is America’s,” but it will also subvert Pakistan’s stability by further strengthening the power of the very military that has taken the country to perdition repeatedly since its formation.
#pakistan unlikely to go after terrorists: US officer
WASHINGTON: A senior US military officer on Tuesday said Pakistani leaders show no sign they are ready to crack down on Haqqani militants operating from sanctuaries near the Afghan border, despite repeated US requests.
The United States has long demanded Pakistan go after the Haqqani network in North Waziristan that has staged attacks on NATO-led forces in Afghanistan.
But top officers indicated they did not expect any improvement in Islamabad's cooperation and that Pakistan lacked the will and the resources to move against Haqqani militants.
"Sir, I don't think it is likely to change," Vice Admiral William McRaven, who oversaw a raid last month by Navy SEALs that killed Osama bin Laden in his Pakistani hideout, told senators.
Referring to talks with Islamabad military leaders, McRaven said "it is both a capacity issue for the Pakistanis and I think potentially a willingness issue."
McRaven, nominated by President Barack Obama to take over US special operations command, said the situation in northwest tribal areas "is difficult for them to deal with."
Lieutenant General John Allen, named as the next commander in Afghanistan, suggested Pakistan was keeping its options open by allowing Haqqani fighters to operate within its borders.
The United States has long demanded Pakistan go after the Haqqani network in North Waziristan that has staged attacks on NATO-led forces in Afghanistan.
But top officers indicated they did not expect any improvement in Islamabad's cooperation and that Pakistan lacked the will and the resources to move against Haqqani militants.
"Sir, I don't think it is likely to change," Vice Admiral William McRaven, who oversaw a raid last month by Navy SEALs that killed Osama bin Laden in his Pakistani hideout, told senators.
Referring to talks with Islamabad military leaders, McRaven said "it is both a capacity issue for the Pakistanis and I think potentially a willingness issue."
McRaven, nominated by President Barack Obama to take over US special operations command, said the situation in northwest tribal areas "is difficult for them to deal with."
Lieutenant General John Allen, named as the next commander in Afghanistan, suggested Pakistan was keeping its options open by allowing Haqqani fighters to operate within its borders.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Calls Grow Louder For Probe Into #pakistan's Military
June 28, 2011
The U.S. operation that killed Osama Bin Laden at his Pakistani compound is re-shaping Pakistan's political landscape, and unleashing unprecedented criticism of its military. The raid, which humiliated Pakistan's army, is only one of a series of events that erupted in recent weeks challenging the powerful Pakistani military in ways thought unimaginable two months ago.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
The American operation that ended the life of Osama bin Laden has begun wrenching change in Pakistan. The raid is only one of a series of events in recent weeks. All of them signal that Pakistan's powerful military is under pressure in ways that would have been hard to imagine just a few months ago. And these events are reshaping the political landscape.
We should warn you that the first three minutes of this next report may, in some places, be disturbing. Here's NPR's Julie McCarthy.
JULIE MCCARTHY: Just as Pakistan was getting over the shock of the bin Laden operation, a disbelieving public watched as militants laid siege to Pakistan's naval complex in Karachi.
(Soundbite of sirens)
Unidentified Man: (Foreign language spoken)
MCCARTHY: The ordeal, covered minute by minute on live television, revived memories of the takeover of the army headquarters in 2009, and raised suspicions about extremists penetrating the navy this time and pulling off an inside job. A short time later, a prominent journalist who'd written about al-Qaida links to Pakistan's navy was kidnapped from one of the most secure roads in Islamabad.
Saleem Shahzad had documented his problems with the ISI, the country's ubiquitous intelligence agency, and left a statement blaming the ISI if he were harmed. He turned up June 1st, dead.
(Soundbite of crowd chanting)
MCCARTHY: Outraged journalists demanded a judicial inquiry, and the chief justice last week ordered a commission to find and punish Saleem Shahzad's killers. The ISI stoutly denies any responsibility.
As the public was absorbing the murder of the Asia Times Online bureau chief, another incident in Karachi this month ignited a national furor.
(Soundbite of gunshots)
(Soundbite of screaming)
MCCARTHY: This caught-on-camera killing shows a Pakistani ranger shooting at point-blank range an unarmed teenager suspected of stealing. As he pleads for help in a pool of blood, the video captures Sarfaraz Shah's life ebbing away. The rangers did nothing as he laid dying. The killing, seen by millions, infuriated Pakistanis tired of impunity and already fuming over their armed forces' apparent incompetence in connection with the American raid on bin Laden.
Mr. TALAT MASUD (Retired Pakistani General): And they are challenging its performance, they are challenging its policy, they are seeking accountability, they are seeking results.
MCCARTHY: Retired Lieutenant General and defense analyst Talat Maud says a new landscape is emerging in the aftermath of the bin Laden raid, which he says kicked open the door to unprecedented public anger about everything from the military's unpublished budget to the lavish way its elite officers live.
Mr. MASUD: It's one of the most extraordinary changes that are taking place in Pakistan. All the sacred cows are being challenged: the military and the military leadership; the intelligence agencies, including the interservices intelligence agency, the ISI. And the whole myth and aura that surrounded the military is over.
Mr. NAWAZ SHARIF (Opposition Leader): (Foreign language spoken)
MCCARTHY: Opposition leader Nawaz Sharif now confronts the military and the ISI in ways few would have dared even two months ago. A promised commission to probe the U.S. raid on bin Laden, and the inquiry into the murder of journalist Shahzad, were mired in weeks of delays. Sharif presses the question...
Mr. SHARIF: (Foreign language spoken)
MCCARTHY: Which hands are preventing the investigations? he asks. Which hands do not want to trace the murderer? Who is involved in such heinous crimes? he asks. Who is pushing Pakistan in this direction?
As questions mount, Pakistan's military and intelligence community have assumed a defensive crouch. And they've lashed out - rounding up residents in Abbottabad, where bin Laden lived; accusing them of helping Americans spy on his compound in the run-up to the U.S. raid that killed him.
We return to the neighborhood that is crawling with security. But we've discovered the people are fearful to speak with us. One young man we happened upon who we saw weeks ago, we saw today, who said: Please, please don't talk to me; I don't want to eat pulses - which is a shorthand way of saying, I don't want to go to jail.
(Soundbite of horns honking)
MCCARTHY: We drive two hours east of Abbottabad to this tourist hill town of Muri(ph), to rendezvous with a man who lives on the same street as bin Laden's compound but would not be interviewed there. We meet in a hotel here. He asks to be identified as Haji Rashid - not his real name. Fidgeting with his cell phone, he says he has no idea why authorities picked up his neighbors.
Do you have any sense about how many of your neighbors were arrested?
Mr. HAJI RASHID: (Foreign language spoken)
MCCARTHY: Five were arrested. Can you name them? Do you know who they are? Do you know these neighbors?
Mr. RASHID: (Foreign language spoken)
MCCARTHY: He says he believes they've done nothing wrong.
Mr. RASHID: (Foreign language spoken)
MCCARTHY: Haji Rashid says the people who have been arrested in that area are poor, ordinary citizens, and he doubts they were informants for the CIA.
(Soundbite of crowd noise)
MCCARTHY: Even back in the military town of Abbottabad, there are pockets of public dismay. In a lively market on the opposite side of town from bin Laden's compound, we find Mohammad Yousuf. The toothless 73-year-old has lost all patience with Pakistan's leadership.
Mr. MOHAMMAD YOUSUF: I say there is no government, there is no security, there is no military. They don't think about the people.
MCCARTHY: You're saying there's no government, there's no security and there's no military - and you're wondering where they are.
Despite the loud grumbling, defense analyst Ayesha Siddiqa sees no sign that the armed forces are yielding to the clamor that average citizens be better protected, or offering any open-hearted admission of fault.
Ms. AYESHA SIDDIQA (Defense Analyst): Instead, the way they want to present the situation is some kind of a conspiracy, an attack on the military. They're not seeing the reality as you or I would see it.
MCCARTHY: Army spokesman General Attar Abbas rejects that as untrue and completely unfounded. Yet a sense of dread is gathering. Another young reporter has gone missing. At least two prominent television anchors report that they have received threats, which they believe are emanating from the intelligence agency the ISI. Supreme Court Bar Association President Asma Jahangir says Pakistan's lawyers face the same intimidation as the journalists.
Ms. ASMA JAHANGIR (Pakistan Supreme Court Bar Association): There have been lawyers who have been killed. There have been lawyers who've been kidnapped. There have been lawyers who have been threatened, either by state agents themselves or by those whom the state agents sponsor and protect.
MCCARTHY: Ayesha Siddiqa insists the prevailing reality is very disturbing.
Ms. SIDDIQA: I'm suggesting something very dramatic - that each one of us who is a thinking, questioning Pakistani should now be writing their own obituaries.
MCCARTHY: Julie McCarthy, NPR News, Islamabad.
(Soundbite of music)
INSKEEP: Julie's part of a team of correspondents that has expanded their coverage of the world even as others step back. You hear her on NPR News.
The U.S. operation that killed Osama Bin Laden at his Pakistani compound is re-shaping Pakistan's political landscape, and unleashing unprecedented criticism of its military. The raid, which humiliated Pakistan's army, is only one of a series of events that erupted in recent weeks challenging the powerful Pakistani military in ways thought unimaginable two months ago.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
The American operation that ended the life of Osama bin Laden has begun wrenching change in Pakistan. The raid is only one of a series of events in recent weeks. All of them signal that Pakistan's powerful military is under pressure in ways that would have been hard to imagine just a few months ago. And these events are reshaping the political landscape.
We should warn you that the first three minutes of this next report may, in some places, be disturbing. Here's NPR's Julie McCarthy.
JULIE MCCARTHY: Just as Pakistan was getting over the shock of the bin Laden operation, a disbelieving public watched as militants laid siege to Pakistan's naval complex in Karachi.
(Soundbite of sirens)
Unidentified Man: (Foreign language spoken)
MCCARTHY: The ordeal, covered minute by minute on live television, revived memories of the takeover of the army headquarters in 2009, and raised suspicions about extremists penetrating the navy this time and pulling off an inside job. A short time later, a prominent journalist who'd written about al-Qaida links to Pakistan's navy was kidnapped from one of the most secure roads in Islamabad.
Saleem Shahzad had documented his problems with the ISI, the country's ubiquitous intelligence agency, and left a statement blaming the ISI if he were harmed. He turned up June 1st, dead.
(Soundbite of crowd chanting)
MCCARTHY: Outraged journalists demanded a judicial inquiry, and the chief justice last week ordered a commission to find and punish Saleem Shahzad's killers. The ISI stoutly denies any responsibility.
As the public was absorbing the murder of the Asia Times Online bureau chief, another incident in Karachi this month ignited a national furor.
(Soundbite of gunshots)
(Soundbite of screaming)
MCCARTHY: This caught-on-camera killing shows a Pakistani ranger shooting at point-blank range an unarmed teenager suspected of stealing. As he pleads for help in a pool of blood, the video captures Sarfaraz Shah's life ebbing away. The rangers did nothing as he laid dying. The killing, seen by millions, infuriated Pakistanis tired of impunity and already fuming over their armed forces' apparent incompetence in connection with the American raid on bin Laden.
Mr. TALAT MASUD (Retired Pakistani General): And they are challenging its performance, they are challenging its policy, they are seeking accountability, they are seeking results.
MCCARTHY: Retired Lieutenant General and defense analyst Talat Maud says a new landscape is emerging in the aftermath of the bin Laden raid, which he says kicked open the door to unprecedented public anger about everything from the military's unpublished budget to the lavish way its elite officers live.
Mr. MASUD: It's one of the most extraordinary changes that are taking place in Pakistan. All the sacred cows are being challenged: the military and the military leadership; the intelligence agencies, including the interservices intelligence agency, the ISI. And the whole myth and aura that surrounded the military is over.
Mr. NAWAZ SHARIF (Opposition Leader): (Foreign language spoken)
MCCARTHY: Opposition leader Nawaz Sharif now confronts the military and the ISI in ways few would have dared even two months ago. A promised commission to probe the U.S. raid on bin Laden, and the inquiry into the murder of journalist Shahzad, were mired in weeks of delays. Sharif presses the question...
Mr. SHARIF: (Foreign language spoken)
MCCARTHY: Which hands are preventing the investigations? he asks. Which hands do not want to trace the murderer? Who is involved in such heinous crimes? he asks. Who is pushing Pakistan in this direction?
As questions mount, Pakistan's military and intelligence community have assumed a defensive crouch. And they've lashed out - rounding up residents in Abbottabad, where bin Laden lived; accusing them of helping Americans spy on his compound in the run-up to the U.S. raid that killed him.
We return to the neighborhood that is crawling with security. But we've discovered the people are fearful to speak with us. One young man we happened upon who we saw weeks ago, we saw today, who said: Please, please don't talk to me; I don't want to eat pulses - which is a shorthand way of saying, I don't want to go to jail.
(Soundbite of horns honking)
MCCARTHY: We drive two hours east of Abbottabad to this tourist hill town of Muri(ph), to rendezvous with a man who lives on the same street as bin Laden's compound but would not be interviewed there. We meet in a hotel here. He asks to be identified as Haji Rashid - not his real name. Fidgeting with his cell phone, he says he has no idea why authorities picked up his neighbors.
Do you have any sense about how many of your neighbors were arrested?
Mr. HAJI RASHID: (Foreign language spoken)
MCCARTHY: Five were arrested. Can you name them? Do you know who they are? Do you know these neighbors?
Mr. RASHID: (Foreign language spoken)
MCCARTHY: He says he believes they've done nothing wrong.
Mr. RASHID: (Foreign language spoken)
MCCARTHY: Haji Rashid says the people who have been arrested in that area are poor, ordinary citizens, and he doubts they were informants for the CIA.
(Soundbite of crowd noise)
MCCARTHY: Even back in the military town of Abbottabad, there are pockets of public dismay. In a lively market on the opposite side of town from bin Laden's compound, we find Mohammad Yousuf. The toothless 73-year-old has lost all patience with Pakistan's leadership.
Mr. MOHAMMAD YOUSUF: I say there is no government, there is no security, there is no military. They don't think about the people.
MCCARTHY: You're saying there's no government, there's no security and there's no military - and you're wondering where they are.
Despite the loud grumbling, defense analyst Ayesha Siddiqa sees no sign that the armed forces are yielding to the clamor that average citizens be better protected, or offering any open-hearted admission of fault.
Ms. AYESHA SIDDIQA (Defense Analyst): Instead, the way they want to present the situation is some kind of a conspiracy, an attack on the military. They're not seeing the reality as you or I would see it.
MCCARTHY: Army spokesman General Attar Abbas rejects that as untrue and completely unfounded. Yet a sense of dread is gathering. Another young reporter has gone missing. At least two prominent television anchors report that they have received threats, which they believe are emanating from the intelligence agency the ISI. Supreme Court Bar Association President Asma Jahangir says Pakistan's lawyers face the same intimidation as the journalists.
Ms. ASMA JAHANGIR (Pakistan Supreme Court Bar Association): There have been lawyers who have been killed. There have been lawyers who've been kidnapped. There have been lawyers who have been threatened, either by state agents themselves or by those whom the state agents sponsor and protect.
MCCARTHY: Ayesha Siddiqa insists the prevailing reality is very disturbing.
Ms. SIDDIQA: I'm suggesting something very dramatic - that each one of us who is a thinking, questioning Pakistani should now be writing their own obituaries.
MCCARTHY: Julie McCarthy, NPR News, Islamabad.
(Soundbite of music)
INSKEEP: Julie's part of a team of correspondents that has expanded their coverage of the world even as others step back. You hear her on NPR News.
Human Rights violations & abuses worsen in #pakistan-Occupied #Baluchistan #Balochistan
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), an independent non-governmental organization, said in its report that lawlessness in the province had proliferated at an alarming rate with a growing numbers of targeted killings, kidnappings, enforced disappearances and attacks on religious minorities.
For decades, Baluchistan has been facing a low-level insurgency by nationalists who want more control over the province's natural resources, which they say are unfairly exploited by the federal government.
Zohra Yusuf, HRCP chairwoman, said at least 140 mutilated bodies of people gone missing had been found in the past year.
"A very dangerous trend has emerged that those who disappeared were now found dead on roadsides. The bodies have torture marks," she told a news conference at an Islamabad hotel.
HRCP report says 143 people have gone missing since 2009 but Yusuf said the number could be much higher because the commission reported only those cases which it could verify.
There was evidence to substantiate families' claims that victims were kidnapped by security forces or had been killed while in custody, she added.
Yusuf said insurgents and religious extremists were also involved in killings of ethnic and religious minorities.
Baluchistan is Pakistan's largest and poorest province, borders Afghanistan and Iran, and has large mineral reserves, including oil, gas, copper and gold.
Due to the continued violence and insecurity, most foreign and local investors avoid investing money in Baluchistan, which hinders its development.
Yusuf warned that the insurgency could flare up if the government continued to fail to implement a political solution to the Baluchistan situation.
"The Baluchistan government seems non-existent," she said. "They have surrendered their authority to security forces and they (forces) are calling the shots," she said.
(Editing by Chris Allbritton and Yoko Nishikawa)
For decades, Baluchistan has been facing a low-level insurgency by nationalists who want more control over the province's natural resources, which they say are unfairly exploited by the federal government.
Zohra Yusuf, HRCP chairwoman, said at least 140 mutilated bodies of people gone missing had been found in the past year.
"A very dangerous trend has emerged that those who disappeared were now found dead on roadsides. The bodies have torture marks," she told a news conference at an Islamabad hotel.
HRCP report says 143 people have gone missing since 2009 but Yusuf said the number could be much higher because the commission reported only those cases which it could verify.
There was evidence to substantiate families' claims that victims were kidnapped by security forces or had been killed while in custody, she added.
Yusuf said insurgents and religious extremists were also involved in killings of ethnic and religious minorities.
Baluchistan is Pakistan's largest and poorest province, borders Afghanistan and Iran, and has large mineral reserves, including oil, gas, copper and gold.
Due to the continued violence and insecurity, most foreign and local investors avoid investing money in Baluchistan, which hinders its development.
Yusuf warned that the insurgency could flare up if the government continued to fail to implement a political solution to the Baluchistan situation.
"The Baluchistan government seems non-existent," she said. "They have surrendered their authority to security forces and they (forces) are calling the shots," she said.
(Editing by Chris Allbritton and Yoko Nishikawa)
How #pakistan's Imran Khan taps anti-Americanism to fuel political rise
By Issam Ahmed, Correspondent
posted June 28, 2011 at 12:02 pm EDT
Islamabad, Pakistan
Imran Khan once won glory for his country as its most successful cricket captain. After making an unspectacular debut into Pakistani politics as leader of the Movement for Justice party 15 years ago, he positioned himself as a maverick outsider calling for sweeping reform within Islamabad’s murky corridors of power.
Now, it looks as though he might be about to make a comeback on the wave of anti-American sentiment that's sweeping the country.
Mr. Khan's political life appears to be experiencing a new high thanks in part to his unique brand of anti-Americanism, which finds support among Pakistan’s professional classes, youth, and women.
Gallery: Athletes turned politicians
According to research carried out by Pew polling in Pakistan, he enjoys a 68 percent approval rating, making him Pakistan’s most popular politician, up from 52 percent last year. The relationship between the United States and Pakistan, meanwhile, has sunk to new lows in recent months, following the Osama bin Laden raid and the release of a CIA agent who killed two Pakistani citizens.
Long derided as a non-serious candidate in an electoral system dominated by two major parties, Khan surprised political pundits last month by attracting thousands of supporters to a major protest in the northwestern city of Peshawar against US drone attacks in Pakistan’s tribal areas, before going on to stage a sit-in to “symbolically block” NATO supply lines for Afghanistan that pass through the port city of Karachi.
With his good looks and seeming willingness to speak plainly, Khan is to Pakistan what Sarah Palin is to the US: controversial, an antidote to current administration, and, some say, a force to be reckoned with.
American officials in Islamabad concede they are watching him closely, and Khan’s antics often dominate local news coverage. But while Khan’s rising stature may be indicative of rising anti-American sentiment among Pakistan’s educated classes, analysts still aren’t convinced of how seriously to take him.
“The whole world knows that an accused is innocent until a court says you are guilty. He who takes the law into his own hand and kills is himself a terrorist,” he said at the Peshawar rally, referring to US forces.
RELATED US aid in Pakistan: Where's the money going?
Such rhetoric is common among Islamist hard-liners and religious party leaders, but Khan’s urbane appeal as a former cricketer who won international acclaim means he can reach a wider, less religious audience and position himself as the acceptable face of anti-Americanism, says Badar Alam, editor of Pakistan’s Herald Magazine.
When mullahs talk, people don't stop to listen. "But when a Western educated clean-shaven man does the same, it does suit them,” Mr. Alam says of Khan, who was educated at Oxford and maintained a reputation as a playboy throughout his cricketing career, before his nine-year marriage with British heiress Jemima Goldsmith.
Khan has what the US wants
Khan’s support base of Pakistan’s middle class, women, and the youth (who make up 70 percent of the country) are exactly the groups the US has targeted in its battle to win hearts and minds in Pakistan.
The country’s youth are particularly rapt by Khan, who appeals to their sense of national pride, says columnist Fasi Zaka.
“The youth of this country think politics is entirely rubbish,” he says. Therefore, Khan’s message of bringing about a "revolution" appeals to young people turned off by traditional politics.
Another part of Khan’s appeal is his squeaky-clean reputation in a country where allegations of corruption are rampant. His Shaukat Khanum hospital, established in memory of his mother, is regarded as one of the best in the country. Last year he was active in fundraising after the worst flooding to hit the country. And in 2008 he set up a college in his home district of Mianwali. “When compared to the other personalities in Pakistani politics, he is a saint,” says Mr. Zaka.
Sign up for the daily World Editor's Picks newsletter. Our best stories, in your inbox.
He’s also known for being a straight shooter.
According to a US embassy cable leaked by the whistle-blower website Wikileaks, Khan made “often pointed and critical statements on US policy, which he characterized as dangerous and in need of change” in a meeting with former US Ambassador Anne Patterson last year. That’s in stark contrast to other leaders like Nawaz Sharif, the country’s main opposition leader, and Maulana Fazlur Rehman, its most powerful Islamist party leader – both known for their hostile stances toward the US in public. Leaked US embassy cables showed their tone in private meetings to be far more conciliatory, to the point of fawning.
Though his party has never won more than one seat (his own) in previous elections, Khan is treated by the media as one of a handful of top political leaders, and was offered the position of prime minister in 2002 by former military ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf, according to his former wife.
What critics say
With his oft-stated desire for the Pakistani state to cut deals with, rather than fight, the Pakistani Taliban, Khan found himself out of touch with the public as it began to heavily back the Army in its fight against the Taliban after 2009.
Critics say that Khan's penchant for citing the US as the only major factor behind terrorism in Pakistan is flawed, if ridiculous. He once stated that if the US left Afghanistan, he could end all terror in 90 days, says Alam, the editor. Khan has also been accused of being simple-minded – he has long been a vociferous supporter of Pakistan’s Chief Justice Ifthikar Chauhdry, while at the same time advocating for the traditional Pashtun jirga courts, which often push harsh and collective punishments.
As with Sarah Palin, he elicits polarizing reactions.
But with trust in America at a fresh nadir and his own career back on track, Khan has a unique opportunity. At present, his popularity eclipses main opposition leader Nawaz Sharif (63 percent) and even Pakistan’s Army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani (52 percent), whose ratings have suffered as the Army has come in for criticism following the fallout from the Bin Laden raid.
So does America need to be wary?
With elections still two years away, Alam says he and others remain skeptical. The professional middle classes and youth may have a big presence in the mainstream and social media, he says, “but historically, those who comprise his support base are the people who never bother to vote.”
posted June 28, 2011 at 12:02 pm EDT
Islamabad, Pakistan
Imran Khan once won glory for his country as its most successful cricket captain. After making an unspectacular debut into Pakistani politics as leader of the Movement for Justice party 15 years ago, he positioned himself as a maverick outsider calling for sweeping reform within Islamabad’s murky corridors of power.
Now, it looks as though he might be about to make a comeback on the wave of anti-American sentiment that's sweeping the country.
Mr. Khan's political life appears to be experiencing a new high thanks in part to his unique brand of anti-Americanism, which finds support among Pakistan’s professional classes, youth, and women.
Gallery: Athletes turned politicians
According to research carried out by Pew polling in Pakistan, he enjoys a 68 percent approval rating, making him Pakistan’s most popular politician, up from 52 percent last year. The relationship between the United States and Pakistan, meanwhile, has sunk to new lows in recent months, following the Osama bin Laden raid and the release of a CIA agent who killed two Pakistani citizens.
Long derided as a non-serious candidate in an electoral system dominated by two major parties, Khan surprised political pundits last month by attracting thousands of supporters to a major protest in the northwestern city of Peshawar against US drone attacks in Pakistan’s tribal areas, before going on to stage a sit-in to “symbolically block” NATO supply lines for Afghanistan that pass through the port city of Karachi.
With his good looks and seeming willingness to speak plainly, Khan is to Pakistan what Sarah Palin is to the US: controversial, an antidote to current administration, and, some say, a force to be reckoned with.
American officials in Islamabad concede they are watching him closely, and Khan’s antics often dominate local news coverage. But while Khan’s rising stature may be indicative of rising anti-American sentiment among Pakistan’s educated classes, analysts still aren’t convinced of how seriously to take him.
“The whole world knows that an accused is innocent until a court says you are guilty. He who takes the law into his own hand and kills is himself a terrorist,” he said at the Peshawar rally, referring to US forces.
RELATED US aid in Pakistan: Where's the money going?
Such rhetoric is common among Islamist hard-liners and religious party leaders, but Khan’s urbane appeal as a former cricketer who won international acclaim means he can reach a wider, less religious audience and position himself as the acceptable face of anti-Americanism, says Badar Alam, editor of Pakistan’s Herald Magazine.
When mullahs talk, people don't stop to listen. "But when a Western educated clean-shaven man does the same, it does suit them,” Mr. Alam says of Khan, who was educated at Oxford and maintained a reputation as a playboy throughout his cricketing career, before his nine-year marriage with British heiress Jemima Goldsmith.
Khan has what the US wants
Khan’s support base of Pakistan’s middle class, women, and the youth (who make up 70 percent of the country) are exactly the groups the US has targeted in its battle to win hearts and minds in Pakistan.
The country’s youth are particularly rapt by Khan, who appeals to their sense of national pride, says columnist Fasi Zaka.
“The youth of this country think politics is entirely rubbish,” he says. Therefore, Khan’s message of bringing about a "revolution" appeals to young people turned off by traditional politics.
Another part of Khan’s appeal is his squeaky-clean reputation in a country where allegations of corruption are rampant. His Shaukat Khanum hospital, established in memory of his mother, is regarded as one of the best in the country. Last year he was active in fundraising after the worst flooding to hit the country. And in 2008 he set up a college in his home district of Mianwali. “When compared to the other personalities in Pakistani politics, he is a saint,” says Mr. Zaka.
Sign up for the daily World Editor's Picks newsletter. Our best stories, in your inbox.
He’s also known for being a straight shooter.
According to a US embassy cable leaked by the whistle-blower website Wikileaks, Khan made “often pointed and critical statements on US policy, which he characterized as dangerous and in need of change” in a meeting with former US Ambassador Anne Patterson last year. That’s in stark contrast to other leaders like Nawaz Sharif, the country’s main opposition leader, and Maulana Fazlur Rehman, its most powerful Islamist party leader – both known for their hostile stances toward the US in public. Leaked US embassy cables showed their tone in private meetings to be far more conciliatory, to the point of fawning.
Though his party has never won more than one seat (his own) in previous elections, Khan is treated by the media as one of a handful of top political leaders, and was offered the position of prime minister in 2002 by former military ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf, according to his former wife.
What critics say
With his oft-stated desire for the Pakistani state to cut deals with, rather than fight, the Pakistani Taliban, Khan found himself out of touch with the public as it began to heavily back the Army in its fight against the Taliban after 2009.
Critics say that Khan's penchant for citing the US as the only major factor behind terrorism in Pakistan is flawed, if ridiculous. He once stated that if the US left Afghanistan, he could end all terror in 90 days, says Alam, the editor. Khan has also been accused of being simple-minded – he has long been a vociferous supporter of Pakistan’s Chief Justice Ifthikar Chauhdry, while at the same time advocating for the traditional Pashtun jirga courts, which often push harsh and collective punishments.
As with Sarah Palin, he elicits polarizing reactions.
But with trust in America at a fresh nadir and his own career back on track, Khan has a unique opportunity. At present, his popularity eclipses main opposition leader Nawaz Sharif (63 percent) and even Pakistan’s Army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani (52 percent), whose ratings have suffered as the Army has come in for criticism following the fallout from the Bin Laden raid.
So does America need to be wary?
With elections still two years away, Alam says he and others remain skeptical. The professional middle classes and youth may have a big presence in the mainstream and social media, he says, “but historically, those who comprise his support base are the people who never bother to vote.”
Laurie Deamer urges US to Condemn #pakistan's atrocities & brutalities in #Balochistan
Washington DC: June 28, 2011. (PCP) A four-member team led by Laurie Deamer, presiding council member of the American Friends of Balochistan, has sought the help of Senator Robert Casey to get justice for the Baloch people in Occupied Balochistan.
The team met with Casey's staffers at the U.S. Capitol. Casey who is chairman of the Senate's Near Eastern and South and Central Asian Affairs Subcommittee were represented by Damian Murphy and Michelle Warren.
The team met Casey's staff as part of A.F.B.’s observance of the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture 2011:
In her missive to Casey, Deamer brought up the following points:
•“Since 2005, the 5th military operation started against the Baloch people in Balochistan. There are 1, 300 documented missing Baloch persons and more than 8, 000 Baloch had gone missing throughout Balochistan at one point or another but Pakistan judiciary is blindly ignoring these enforced disappearances and neither is the international community holding such human rights abusers regimes accountable.“1
•“Balochistan has a long history of civil and armed unrest since the creation of Pakistan in 1947 and Balochistan's invasion and forced annexation in May 1948, with ethnic Baloch groups advocating greater autonomy within the state or complete separation.”2
•“Balochistan holds the largest single source of domestic energy reserves in Pakistan, but Baloch groups argue these resources disproportionately benefit other provinces and ethnic communities.”3
•“[T]here is a strong movement for autonomy by its people, who want their share of the province's natural resources. They also want a say in local governance, which is being blocked by Pakistan’s government.”4
•“The Baloch people remain one of the poorest communities within Pakistan with some of the lowest literacy and employment rates and life expectancies.5”
•Generally, security forces of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan – in particular the Frontier Corps, Military Intelligence and Inter-Services Intelligence -- have been engaging in the torture, enforced disappearance and killing of people from Balochistan, with journalists, teachers, political activists, students and human rights defenders, being targeted in particular.6
•Since July, 2010, nearly 200 extra-judicial killings have been documented. “Most of the victims belong to the Baloch National Front, a coalition of eight different pro-independence organizations. More than a dozen belong to the Balochistan National Party, which advocates the right of self-determination and autonomy.”7
•The victims' relatives primarily blame the Pakistani Frontier Corps and intelligence services. Security forces deny the allegations and blame fighting between conflicting Baloch militant groups.8
•Family members of opposition fighters are being targeted for disappearances and killings by Pakistani security forces.9 This has created a climate of fear for the families of the disappeared.10
•Several lawyers have been the victims of extrajudicial killings and disappearances for acting as defence counsel for Baloch political and human rights activists. Evidence of the use of torture is also reported.11
•Baloch political leaders have also been targeted by Pakistani security forces.12
•Police have been unwilling to investigate cases of disappearances and killings. They are reported to have been present during abductions and to be colluding with Pakistani security forces.13
Deamer asked Casey to urgently act on behalf of the Baloch people and consider introducing a resolution condemning Islamabad’s treatment of its Baloch citizens, in the same way that you cosponsored the May 2011 resolution holding Syrian president Bashar Al Assad accountable for escalation of the conflict within his borders and human rights violations of his people. You urged Congress and President Obama to "…stand in solidarity with the Syrian people during this dark period in the country's history and support their efforts to bring about democratic change." The Baloch people also seek to govern themselves democratically, and they need your help in holding Islamabad accountable to the political values it claims to champion.
The team met with Casey's staffers at the U.S. Capitol. Casey who is chairman of the Senate's Near Eastern and South and Central Asian Affairs Subcommittee were represented by Damian Murphy and Michelle Warren.
The team met Casey's staff as part of A.F.B.’s observance of the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture 2011:
In her missive to Casey, Deamer brought up the following points:
•“Since 2005, the 5th military operation started against the Baloch people in Balochistan. There are 1, 300 documented missing Baloch persons and more than 8, 000 Baloch had gone missing throughout Balochistan at one point or another but Pakistan judiciary is blindly ignoring these enforced disappearances and neither is the international community holding such human rights abusers regimes accountable.“1
•“Balochistan has a long history of civil and armed unrest since the creation of Pakistan in 1947 and Balochistan's invasion and forced annexation in May 1948, with ethnic Baloch groups advocating greater autonomy within the state or complete separation.”2
•“Balochistan holds the largest single source of domestic energy reserves in Pakistan, but Baloch groups argue these resources disproportionately benefit other provinces and ethnic communities.”3
•“[T]here is a strong movement for autonomy by its people, who want their share of the province's natural resources. They also want a say in local governance, which is being blocked by Pakistan’s government.”4
•“The Baloch people remain one of the poorest communities within Pakistan with some of the lowest literacy and employment rates and life expectancies.5”
•Generally, security forces of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan – in particular the Frontier Corps, Military Intelligence and Inter-Services Intelligence -- have been engaging in the torture, enforced disappearance and killing of people from Balochistan, with journalists, teachers, political activists, students and human rights defenders, being targeted in particular.6
•Since July, 2010, nearly 200 extra-judicial killings have been documented. “Most of the victims belong to the Baloch National Front, a coalition of eight different pro-independence organizations. More than a dozen belong to the Balochistan National Party, which advocates the right of self-determination and autonomy.”7
•The victims' relatives primarily blame the Pakistani Frontier Corps and intelligence services. Security forces deny the allegations and blame fighting between conflicting Baloch militant groups.8
•Family members of opposition fighters are being targeted for disappearances and killings by Pakistani security forces.9 This has created a climate of fear for the families of the disappeared.10
•Several lawyers have been the victims of extrajudicial killings and disappearances for acting as defence counsel for Baloch political and human rights activists. Evidence of the use of torture is also reported.11
•Baloch political leaders have also been targeted by Pakistani security forces.12
•Police have been unwilling to investigate cases of disappearances and killings. They are reported to have been present during abductions and to be colluding with Pakistani security forces.13
Deamer asked Casey to urgently act on behalf of the Baloch people and consider introducing a resolution condemning Islamabad’s treatment of its Baloch citizens, in the same way that you cosponsored the May 2011 resolution holding Syrian president Bashar Al Assad accountable for escalation of the conflict within his borders and human rights violations of his people. You urged Congress and President Obama to "…stand in solidarity with the Syrian people during this dark period in the country's history and support their efforts to bring about democratic change." The Baloch people also seek to govern themselves democratically, and they need your help in holding Islamabad accountable to the political values it claims to champion.
Islamists Closer Than Ever To #pakistan's Nuclear weapons
A new report by the Federation of American Scientists says Pakistani nuclear weapons are more vulnerable to capture by jihadist radicals than ever before — despite months of increased drone attacks on militant groups and the killing of Osama bin Laden.
The nuclear watchdog's report, to be released tomorrow, says ties between organizations like Pakistani Taliban and the country's intelligence service are particularly troubling for the security of its nuclear stockpile.
“If you had asked me 10 years ago if Pakistan’s nuclear weapons were likely to fall in the hands of the Islamic groups, I would say it was very unlikely,” Charles P. Blair, the author of the study, told iWatch news, which obtained an advance copy of the report. “But now it is getting more likely.”
The report comes amid more brazen attacks launched by Pakistani militants against the country's military, which has opted to store its nuclear weapons across the country in multiple less secure facilities to avoid their destruction in a single attack.
The nuclear watchdog's report, to be released tomorrow, says ties between organizations like Pakistani Taliban and the country's intelligence service are particularly troubling for the security of its nuclear stockpile.
“If you had asked me 10 years ago if Pakistan’s nuclear weapons were likely to fall in the hands of the Islamic groups, I would say it was very unlikely,” Charles P. Blair, the author of the study, told iWatch news, which obtained an advance copy of the report. “But now it is getting more likely.”
The report comes amid more brazen attacks launched by Pakistani militants against the country's military, which has opted to store its nuclear weapons across the country in multiple less secure facilities to avoid their destruction in a single attack.
US Senators level new criticism at #pakistan for sheltering terrorists
Washington (CNN) -- U.S. senators didn't miss a chance Tuesday to voice frustration with Pakistan over how it takes billions of dollars of American aid while providing safe havens to terrorists to build bombs and launch cross-border attacks on U.S.troops in Afghanistan.
"Well, something's got to give, something's got to change," Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, said at a hearing. "Because it just can't continue this way, for them to expect that we're going to have a normal relationship with them -- which we all hope for."
And Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, also was critical of Pakistan; specifically, whether the top Taliban leader and al Qaeda ally Mullah Omar was hiding there.
"Is Mullah Omar in Pakistan?" Graham asked Vice Adm.William McRaven, who supervised the raid on the Osama bin Laden compound In Pakistan that ended with the death of al Qaeda leader.
"Sir, we believe he is," McRaven replied.
The hearing was the next step toward Senate approval of President Barack Obama's decision to promote McRaven to become commander of the U.S. Special Forces Command.
Graham nudged McRaven along. "Do we believe he is there is with the knowledge of the ISI (Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate) and the upper echelon of the (Pakistani) army?" asked Graham.
"Sir, I believe the Pakistanis know he is in Pakistan," McRaven said.
"Let me ask you this -- If they tried for about a week do you think they could then find him?" said Graham.
"I can't answer that because i don't know whether they could or not because i don't know exactly where Mullah Omar is," answered McRaven, who said he believed the United States. has asked Pakistan to find the Taliban leader.
"Well, I'm asking," said Graham. "I think Sen. Levin and I will both ask together today."
And the ranking Republican on the committee, Sen.John McCain, R-Arizona, praised McRaven and his un-named fellow special operators for their success against bin Laden. "The leader of al Qaida is dead, but a new one has taken his place," McCain said. "Your mission will be to help ensure he meets the same end."
McCain used the hearing to voice again his strong criticism of President Obama's troop drawdown timetable for Afghanistan.
"I'm very concerned that the president's decision poses an unnecessary risk to the progress we've made thus far, to our mission, and to our men and women in uniform," McCain warned
Marine Corps Lt. Gen. John Allen -- poised to take over from Army Gen. David Petraeus as commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan -- promised McCain and the other senators he would closely monitor the withdrawal plan and give candid advice where he saw fit.
"If confirmed, I will offer my candid assessment to the chain of command on the current state of the conflict, as well as provide options with respect to the president's goals in accomplishing this strategy," Allen said.
Last week Petraeus and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen said the president had chosen a more aggressive withdrawal timetable than they had expected.
McCain grilled Allen on support for the White House plan.
"Gen. Allen, do you know of any military leader that recommended in 2009 that the president make an announcement in 2011 of drawdown of troops?" McCain asked.
"I do not, senator," Allen replied.
"Do you know of any military leader that recommended the drawdown plan that the president announced last week?" McCain asked.
"I do not, senator," Allen answered.
And the general said planning already was underway on how to implement the president's plan to withdraw 10,000 troops this year, starting next month, and an additional 23,000 by next summer.
The hearing shed new light on U.S. concerns that al Qaeda and the Taliban are assembling explosives in Pakistan and then planting them in Afghanistan to kill Americans.
McRaven said he was certain IEDs -- improvised explosive devices such as roadside bombs -- used against Americans and coalition troops are coming out of Pakistan and that information about where the bombs are being assembled has been provided to Pakistani authorities.
"Have they (the Pakistanis) responded effectively?" asked Graham.
"They have not, sir," McRaven replied.
"Well, something's got to give, something's got to change," Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, said at a hearing. "Because it just can't continue this way, for them to expect that we're going to have a normal relationship with them -- which we all hope for."
And Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, also was critical of Pakistan; specifically, whether the top Taliban leader and al Qaeda ally Mullah Omar was hiding there.
"Is Mullah Omar in Pakistan?" Graham asked Vice Adm.William McRaven, who supervised the raid on the Osama bin Laden compound In Pakistan that ended with the death of al Qaeda leader.
"Sir, we believe he is," McRaven replied.
The hearing was the next step toward Senate approval of President Barack Obama's decision to promote McRaven to become commander of the U.S. Special Forces Command.
Graham nudged McRaven along. "Do we believe he is there is with the knowledge of the ISI (Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate) and the upper echelon of the (Pakistani) army?" asked Graham.
"Sir, I believe the Pakistanis know he is in Pakistan," McRaven said.
"Let me ask you this -- If they tried for about a week do you think they could then find him?" said Graham.
"I can't answer that because i don't know whether they could or not because i don't know exactly where Mullah Omar is," answered McRaven, who said he believed the United States. has asked Pakistan to find the Taliban leader.
"Well, I'm asking," said Graham. "I think Sen. Levin and I will both ask together today."
And the ranking Republican on the committee, Sen.John McCain, R-Arizona, praised McRaven and his un-named fellow special operators for their success against bin Laden. "The leader of al Qaida is dead, but a new one has taken his place," McCain said. "Your mission will be to help ensure he meets the same end."
McCain used the hearing to voice again his strong criticism of President Obama's troop drawdown timetable for Afghanistan.
"I'm very concerned that the president's decision poses an unnecessary risk to the progress we've made thus far, to our mission, and to our men and women in uniform," McCain warned
Marine Corps Lt. Gen. John Allen -- poised to take over from Army Gen. David Petraeus as commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan -- promised McCain and the other senators he would closely monitor the withdrawal plan and give candid advice where he saw fit.
"If confirmed, I will offer my candid assessment to the chain of command on the current state of the conflict, as well as provide options with respect to the president's goals in accomplishing this strategy," Allen said.
Last week Petraeus and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen said the president had chosen a more aggressive withdrawal timetable than they had expected.
McCain grilled Allen on support for the White House plan.
"Gen. Allen, do you know of any military leader that recommended in 2009 that the president make an announcement in 2011 of drawdown of troops?" McCain asked.
"I do not, senator," Allen replied.
"Do you know of any military leader that recommended the drawdown plan that the president announced last week?" McCain asked.
"I do not, senator," Allen answered.
And the general said planning already was underway on how to implement the president's plan to withdraw 10,000 troops this year, starting next month, and an additional 23,000 by next summer.
The hearing shed new light on U.S. concerns that al Qaeda and the Taliban are assembling explosives in Pakistan and then planting them in Afghanistan to kill Americans.
McRaven said he was certain IEDs -- improvised explosive devices such as roadside bombs -- used against Americans and coalition troops are coming out of Pakistan and that information about where the bombs are being assembled has been provided to Pakistani authorities.
"Have they (the Pakistanis) responded effectively?" asked Graham.
"They have not, sir," McRaven replied.
US message in drone strikes: If #pakistan doesn't take on Taliban, we will #terrorism #jihad
The drone attacks Monday targeted militants in Pakistan’s North Waziristan region. The Pakistani military has promised its own offensive in the region, but no such operation has been launched.
By Howard LaFranchi, Staff writer / June 28, 2011
Washington
US drone attacks targeting militants in Pakistan’s North Waziristan region Monday sent a “we told you” message to Pakistan’s leadership: If you won’t take on the Taliban and other extremists crossing over to fight in Afghanistan, we will.
The Obama administration has stepped up drone strikes inside Pakistan over the past year – in particular in the North Waziristan region abutting Afghanistan in recent months. Pakistani officials have called publicly for the strikes to cease, insisting they alienate the general population.
At the same time, the Pakistani military has also promised – as recently as late May – that an offensive against North Waziristan’s havens was imminent. But no such offensive into North Waziristan, stronghold of groups like the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network, has been launched.
The strikes this week, which reportedly killed up to 21 militants, suggest the US has no intention of waiting.
The attacks occur as US-Pakistan relations, never easy, pass through a particularly tense period in the aftermath of the successful American raid that killed Osama bin Laden in his compound not far from the Pakistani capital.
Pakistan has ordered a steep reduction in the number of US intelligence agents and special-operations forces in the country, while some in the US Congress advocate cuts in aid to Pakistan. Some officials and experts on both sides conclude it’s time for a divorce between the two countries.
But Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week that, even though conducting diplomatic relations with Pakistan can be a “very outraging experience,” there remain compelling national security and regional stability reasons for the US to offer Pakistan substantial defense and development assistance.
Speaking at the same hearing, Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the senior Republican on the committee, offered a succinct argument for why the US needs a strategic partnership with Pakistan.
“Despite the death of Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups maintain a strong presence. And there is no question that the threat of these groups – combined with worries about state collapse, a Pakistani war with India, the safety of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal, and Pakistan’s intersection with other states in the region – make it a strategically vital country, worth the cost of engagement,” Senator Lugar said.
The drone strikes do not contradict that argument, but they also convey a message that the US has certain expectations of the relationship – and that the US will not sit by if it determines its national security is threatened, as President Obama stated in his June 22 speech on Afghanistan policy.
“So long as I am president, the United States will never tolerate a safe haven for those who aim to kill us,” Mr. Obama said.
Secretary Clinton has said she told Pakistani officials when she visited the country after the bin Laden operation that the US has set benchmarks for Pakistan to meet. Those include taking a more aggressive stance against terrorist groups and senior Al Qaeda leaders and supporting Taliban reconciliation in Afghanistan.
It is not clear if Clinton, who was accompanied by Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pressed upon the Pakistanis the importance of undertaking an offensive into North Waziristan. Some Pakistani military commanders announced publicly in the days following the Americans’ visit that such an operation would be forthcoming.
Some Pakistan experts caution against the US pressing for something that might end up backfiring. A Pakistani military push into North Waziristan could end up further destabilizing a precariously fragile Pakistani state, says Michael Kugelman, a South Asia expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.
“The US either doesn’t understand or chooses to disregard that having Pakistani forces enter that particular tribal area would have huge blowback,” Mr. Kugelman says. “It would very likely destabilize Pakistan more than it is now.”
Why? Militants in the region primarily focused on routing the US from Afghanistan might be flushed out of North Waziristan, Kugelman argues – and they might end up in neighboring territories where the militants are more focused on undermining the Pakistani state.
“If you have all these different groups banding together, you essentially have the conditions for the insurgency against the Pakistani government to increase,” Kugelman says. “The US has to consider that it has a much more vital interest in a stable Pakistan than any other interest in Afghanistan.”
By Howard LaFranchi, Staff writer / June 28, 2011
Washington
US drone attacks targeting militants in Pakistan’s North Waziristan region Monday sent a “we told you” message to Pakistan’s leadership: If you won’t take on the Taliban and other extremists crossing over to fight in Afghanistan, we will.
The Obama administration has stepped up drone strikes inside Pakistan over the past year – in particular in the North Waziristan region abutting Afghanistan in recent months. Pakistani officials have called publicly for the strikes to cease, insisting they alienate the general population.
At the same time, the Pakistani military has also promised – as recently as late May – that an offensive against North Waziristan’s havens was imminent. But no such offensive into North Waziristan, stronghold of groups like the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network, has been launched.
The strikes this week, which reportedly killed up to 21 militants, suggest the US has no intention of waiting.
The attacks occur as US-Pakistan relations, never easy, pass through a particularly tense period in the aftermath of the successful American raid that killed Osama bin Laden in his compound not far from the Pakistani capital.
Pakistan has ordered a steep reduction in the number of US intelligence agents and special-operations forces in the country, while some in the US Congress advocate cuts in aid to Pakistan. Some officials and experts on both sides conclude it’s time for a divorce between the two countries.
But Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week that, even though conducting diplomatic relations with Pakistan can be a “very outraging experience,” there remain compelling national security and regional stability reasons for the US to offer Pakistan substantial defense and development assistance.
Speaking at the same hearing, Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the senior Republican on the committee, offered a succinct argument for why the US needs a strategic partnership with Pakistan.
“Despite the death of Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups maintain a strong presence. And there is no question that the threat of these groups – combined with worries about state collapse, a Pakistani war with India, the safety of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal, and Pakistan’s intersection with other states in the region – make it a strategically vital country, worth the cost of engagement,” Senator Lugar said.
The drone strikes do not contradict that argument, but they also convey a message that the US has certain expectations of the relationship – and that the US will not sit by if it determines its national security is threatened, as President Obama stated in his June 22 speech on Afghanistan policy.
“So long as I am president, the United States will never tolerate a safe haven for those who aim to kill us,” Mr. Obama said.
Secretary Clinton has said she told Pakistani officials when she visited the country after the bin Laden operation that the US has set benchmarks for Pakistan to meet. Those include taking a more aggressive stance against terrorist groups and senior Al Qaeda leaders and supporting Taliban reconciliation in Afghanistan.
It is not clear if Clinton, who was accompanied by Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pressed upon the Pakistanis the importance of undertaking an offensive into North Waziristan. Some Pakistani military commanders announced publicly in the days following the Americans’ visit that such an operation would be forthcoming.
Some Pakistan experts caution against the US pressing for something that might end up backfiring. A Pakistani military push into North Waziristan could end up further destabilizing a precariously fragile Pakistani state, says Michael Kugelman, a South Asia expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.
“The US either doesn’t understand or chooses to disregard that having Pakistani forces enter that particular tribal area would have huge blowback,” Mr. Kugelman says. “It would very likely destabilize Pakistan more than it is now.”
Why? Militants in the region primarily focused on routing the US from Afghanistan might be flushed out of North Waziristan, Kugelman argues – and they might end up in neighboring territories where the militants are more focused on undermining the Pakistani state.
“If you have all these different groups banding together, you essentially have the conditions for the insurgency against the Pakistani government to increase,” Kugelman says. “The US has to consider that it has a much more vital interest in a stable Pakistan than any other interest in Afghanistan.”
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
U.S. cannot ignore #pakistan - must intervene & prevent anarchy
For decades religious intolerance and violence have created havoc in Pakistan. On June 11, an extremist group, the All Pakistan Students Khatam-e-Nabuwat Federation, handed out pamphlets in the country's third largest city, Faisalabad, inciting people to kill hundreds of members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community, thus fulfilling their religious duty and cleansing the place of infidels.
The pamphlets included a hit list with names and addresses of industrialists, teachers and doctors. The Pakistani government has chosen to look the other way.
Ahmadi Muslims believe in the Messiah. They condemn religious violence and compulsion, promote universal human rights and practice universal social justice, regardless of race, religion or gender.
Other faith communities have also been targeted by the extremists. The minister for religious minorities, a Christian, was killed earlier this year. The Muslim governor of the Punjab province was assassinated for supporting the release of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman imprisoned for allegedly insulting Prophet Muhammad and criticizing Pakistan's blasphemy law. The Draconian law is open not only to misinterpretation, but to every kind of abuse. It is often used to settle personal scores.
The United States cannot turn a blind eye to the increasing religious extremism and intolerance in Pakistan, its ally in war on terror. It should pressure Pakistan to put an end to the state-sponsored terror and repeal the blasphemy law.
Samin Khan
Albany
The pamphlets included a hit list with names and addresses of industrialists, teachers and doctors. The Pakistani government has chosen to look the other way.
Ahmadi Muslims believe in the Messiah. They condemn religious violence and compulsion, promote universal human rights and practice universal social justice, regardless of race, religion or gender.
Other faith communities have also been targeted by the extremists. The minister for religious minorities, a Christian, was killed earlier this year. The Muslim governor of the Punjab province was assassinated for supporting the release of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman imprisoned for allegedly insulting Prophet Muhammad and criticizing Pakistan's blasphemy law. The Draconian law is open not only to misinterpretation, but to every kind of abuse. It is often used to settle personal scores.
The United States cannot turn a blind eye to the increasing religious extremism and intolerance in Pakistan, its ally in war on terror. It should pressure Pakistan to put an end to the state-sponsored terror and repeal the blasphemy law.
Samin Khan
Albany
Does New Report on Courier's Cell Phone Contacts Prove #pakistan Was Hiding Bin Laden?
click the title to read the interview
Why Is #pakistan Arresting Those Who Helped Find Osama Bin Laden?
Pakistan's military has reportedly arrested five Pakistani informants who helped give information to the CIA about activities at Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan ahead of the raid that led to his death in May.
RFE/RL correspondent Ron Synovitz spoke about the implications of the arrests with Sebastian Gorka, a military affairs analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington who advises the United States and its NATO allies, as well as the British military and the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM).
RFE/RL: What does it say to you about Pakistan's military when you hear that instead of hunting down the people who helped bin Laden hide in their country, it is instead hunting down the people who helped the United States find and kill Osama bin Laden?
Gorka: I think this is a wonderful example of why one cannot talk of Pakistan as a unitary nation. After bin Laden was killed, the immediate comment one heard in the American media and internationally was, "Clearly Pakistan must have known. Or if Pakistan didn't know, they were incompetent." This is a misunderstanding of the reality that is today's Pakistan. There is no one political elite in Pakistan.
You can quite easily imagine, for example, that the political leadership -- the civilian leadership in Islamabad -- had no idea that bin Laden was living in Abbottabad. But at the same time, you could imagine, for example, that the ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] or that members of the military were well aware of it because, let's be honest, he was within a block and a half of the equivalent of the [U.S. Military Academy at] West Point for Pakistan. So here, what we are seeing is perhaps one of these actors, one of these sub actors inside Pakistan, trying to divert attention consciously. Perhaps one of those groups that knows they may be in trouble if the civilian leadership investigates bin Laden's being in Pakistan needs to take a rearguard action and instead of hunting down those people who facilitated his stay in Abbottabad, they are trying to push and divert attention away from themselves.
RFE/RL: In interviews that RFE/RL has done with U.S. lawmakers who sit on congressional intelligence and foreign affairs committees, one of the suggestions we hear is "Somebody in Pakistan knew" bin Laden was hiding close to a prominent Pakistani military academy -- not necessarily someone in the civilian government, but perhaps someone in Pakistan's military or intelligence communities. You've just described a possible diversionary tactic by elements with the military. What does that say about the relationship between the United States and Pakistan's military and intelligence communities who are supposed to be allies in the war against terrorism?
Gorka: The military has to be understood to be a world unto itself in Pakistan. If you walk onto a military base, if you see how people are housed, if you see the quality of living, the quality of just basic food supplies amongst the military families, you understand that there is a real Catch 22 situation. On the one hand, the Pakistan military is driven -- is truly driven -- by the concept of having to fight another war against India. At the same time, they understand that they are receiving huge amounts of financial and military support from the United States, which guarantees very much not just their national security capacity but also the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed. Secondly, there is this very influential substratum of doctrinal thought that because war with India drives the strategic culture of the Pakistani military, Afghanistan is seen as a rearguard territory where the forces of Pakistan can retreat to should there be a war with India.
On top of that, because India is so much larger, so much more capable and has more nuclear weapons, Pakistan has a very interesting -- to say the least -- attitude toward the use of proxy forces. I have been in debate on Pakistani television with senior Pakistani generals, retired generals, who said there is absolutely no problem with creating, maintaining, and utilizing proxy insurgent forces on your own territory. This is a very strange attitude to how war should be waged. Could you imagine any NATO nation -- France, Belgium, the United Kingdom, the United States -- maintaining irregular, nongovernment insurgent forces on their own territory just in case they had to go to war with a neighbor? This is not how we understand military strategy. And I think this one of, perhaps, the reasons that influenced the decision for some people to provide succor and harbor to bin Laden on the soil of Pakistan.
RFE/RL: One of the interesting details reported about the arrest of the Pakistani's who helped the United States ahead of the raid against Osama bin Laden is now being denied by the public relations department of Pakistan's ISI intelligence service. It is the report that a Pakistani army major was among the five informants arrested, and that he had been observing and taking license plate numbers of cars going inside Osama bin Laden's compound. U.S. lawmakers have told RFE/RL the U.S. intelligence sources -- not U.S. agents, but their sources -- were in a position to identify exactly who within Pakistan's military and intelligence community may have helped Osama bin Laden stay hidden in Pakistan for so long. With that in mind, doesn't the arrest of the Pakistan informants suggest that high-ranking officials in Pakistan's military are now involved in a cover-up?
Gorka: Possibly. One always has to be very, very cautious with initial media reports. But we seem to have confirmed by various sources in the open source unclassified domain that the U.S. intelligence community had assets on the ground for a matter of months surveilling bin Laden's house. So perhaps there wasn't even a need for local sources to do surveillance. Perhaps there was. But again, we enter this "Twilight Zone" -- this "Alice In Wonderland" reality of Pakistan-U.S. relations. The fact is that on numerous operations in the last nine years, Pakistan has provided intelligence to the United States and the United States has provided intelligence to Pakistan, when it is deemed to be of mutual interest. So perhaps, in this case, we just have a poor soul who has been in the wrong place at the wrong time and who has been identified as a potential scapegoat. But let's wait and see what happens and who they arraign in a hearing -- if there is ever an open hearing in Pakistan after these arrests.
RFE/RL: And we should remember that it is Pakistan's military that has arrested these informants, not Pakistan's government?
Gorka: Yes, I think this is an important point.
RFE/RL: It also is being reported that another one of the five arrested was the man who owned the property next to Osama bin Laden's compound which was used by the CIA as a safe house.
Gorka: Well, if that's true, that is very unfortunate. If that is the case, then this is clearly a message that Pakistan is sending to America: "Yes, you got bin Laden, but we have ways to get back at you." So if that turns out to be true, that is not a good sign.
RFE/RL correspondent Ron Synovitz spoke about the implications of the arrests with Sebastian Gorka, a military affairs analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington who advises the United States and its NATO allies, as well as the British military and the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM).
RFE/RL: What does it say to you about Pakistan's military when you hear that instead of hunting down the people who helped bin Laden hide in their country, it is instead hunting down the people who helped the United States find and kill Osama bin Laden?
Gorka: I think this is a wonderful example of why one cannot talk of Pakistan as a unitary nation. After bin Laden was killed, the immediate comment one heard in the American media and internationally was, "Clearly Pakistan must have known. Or if Pakistan didn't know, they were incompetent." This is a misunderstanding of the reality that is today's Pakistan. There is no one political elite in Pakistan.
You can quite easily imagine, for example, that the political leadership -- the civilian leadership in Islamabad -- had no idea that bin Laden was living in Abbottabad. But at the same time, you could imagine, for example, that the ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] or that members of the military were well aware of it because, let's be honest, he was within a block and a half of the equivalent of the [U.S. Military Academy at] West Point for Pakistan. So here, what we are seeing is perhaps one of these actors, one of these sub actors inside Pakistan, trying to divert attention consciously. Perhaps one of those groups that knows they may be in trouble if the civilian leadership investigates bin Laden's being in Pakistan needs to take a rearguard action and instead of hunting down those people who facilitated his stay in Abbottabad, they are trying to push and divert attention away from themselves.
RFE/RL: In interviews that RFE/RL has done with U.S. lawmakers who sit on congressional intelligence and foreign affairs committees, one of the suggestions we hear is "Somebody in Pakistan knew" bin Laden was hiding close to a prominent Pakistani military academy -- not necessarily someone in the civilian government, but perhaps someone in Pakistan's military or intelligence communities. You've just described a possible diversionary tactic by elements with the military. What does that say about the relationship between the United States and Pakistan's military and intelligence communities who are supposed to be allies in the war against terrorism?
Gorka: The military has to be understood to be a world unto itself in Pakistan. If you walk onto a military base, if you see how people are housed, if you see the quality of living, the quality of just basic food supplies amongst the military families, you understand that there is a real Catch 22 situation. On the one hand, the Pakistan military is driven -- is truly driven -- by the concept of having to fight another war against India. At the same time, they understand that they are receiving huge amounts of financial and military support from the United States, which guarantees very much not just their national security capacity but also the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed. Secondly, there is this very influential substratum of doctrinal thought that because war with India drives the strategic culture of the Pakistani military, Afghanistan is seen as a rearguard territory where the forces of Pakistan can retreat to should there be a war with India.
On top of that, because India is so much larger, so much more capable and has more nuclear weapons, Pakistan has a very interesting -- to say the least -- attitude toward the use of proxy forces. I have been in debate on Pakistani television with senior Pakistani generals, retired generals, who said there is absolutely no problem with creating, maintaining, and utilizing proxy insurgent forces on your own territory. This is a very strange attitude to how war should be waged. Could you imagine any NATO nation -- France, Belgium, the United Kingdom, the United States -- maintaining irregular, nongovernment insurgent forces on their own territory just in case they had to go to war with a neighbor? This is not how we understand military strategy. And I think this one of, perhaps, the reasons that influenced the decision for some people to provide succor and harbor to bin Laden on the soil of Pakistan.
RFE/RL: One of the interesting details reported about the arrest of the Pakistani's who helped the United States ahead of the raid against Osama bin Laden is now being denied by the public relations department of Pakistan's ISI intelligence service. It is the report that a Pakistani army major was among the five informants arrested, and that he had been observing and taking license plate numbers of cars going inside Osama bin Laden's compound. U.S. lawmakers have told RFE/RL the U.S. intelligence sources -- not U.S. agents, but their sources -- were in a position to identify exactly who within Pakistan's military and intelligence community may have helped Osama bin Laden stay hidden in Pakistan for so long. With that in mind, doesn't the arrest of the Pakistan informants suggest that high-ranking officials in Pakistan's military are now involved in a cover-up?
Gorka: Possibly. One always has to be very, very cautious with initial media reports. But we seem to have confirmed by various sources in the open source unclassified domain that the U.S. intelligence community had assets on the ground for a matter of months surveilling bin Laden's house. So perhaps there wasn't even a need for local sources to do surveillance. Perhaps there was. But again, we enter this "Twilight Zone" -- this "Alice In Wonderland" reality of Pakistan-U.S. relations. The fact is that on numerous operations in the last nine years, Pakistan has provided intelligence to the United States and the United States has provided intelligence to Pakistan, when it is deemed to be of mutual interest. So perhaps, in this case, we just have a poor soul who has been in the wrong place at the wrong time and who has been identified as a potential scapegoat. But let's wait and see what happens and who they arraign in a hearing -- if there is ever an open hearing in Pakistan after these arrests.
RFE/RL: And we should remember that it is Pakistan's military that has arrested these informants, not Pakistan's government?
Gorka: Yes, I think this is an important point.
RFE/RL: It also is being reported that another one of the five arrested was the man who owned the property next to Osama bin Laden's compound which was used by the CIA as a safe house.
Gorka: Well, if that's true, that is very unfortunate. If that is the case, then this is clearly a message that Pakistan is sending to America: "Yes, you got bin Laden, but we have ways to get back at you." So if that turns out to be true, that is not a good sign.
US: #pakistan must prove it wants peace in #Afghanistan
Washington's special envoy to Afghanistan said Monday that Pakistan must prove it wants an end to the war by preventing militants from hiding out on its soil and enabling those who launch attacks on the Afghan side of the border.
Marc Grossman, U.S. special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said in Kabul that discussions among Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United States being held this week in the Afghan capital are important to coordinate efforts to find a political resolution to the nearly decade-long war.
He said they also are an opportunity to clearly convey to Pakistani officials that part of their responsibility for bringing peace is to stop supporting insurgent safe havens and those who attack Afghans and international forces in Afghanistan.
"We've been pretty clear that going forward here, we want the government of Pakistan to participate positively in the reconciliation process," Grossman said at a news conference. "Pakistan now has important choices to make."
Grossman and representatives from more than 40 nations are attending a meeting of the International Contact Group. The group's 11th meeting comes after President Barack Obama announced last week he was ordering 10,000 U.S. troops home by year's end; as many as 23,000 more are to leave by September 2012. That would leave 68,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
The 33,000 total to be withdrawn is the number Obama sent as reinforcements in December 2009 as part of an effort to reverse the Taliban's momentum and hasten an eventual political settlement of the conflict. The U.S. and its allies plan a full combat withdrawal by the end of 2014.
Michael Steiner, German representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said at the news conference that the international community's engagement will not end in 2014, when Afghan security forces are to have the lead responsibility for security across the nation, a process he said is on track.
"I think we have a strategy which is working despite the difficulties we have," Steiner said. "I am not painting here any illusions. We will have problems ahead. But I think we have a realistic strategy."
Separately, the U.N. World Food Program announced Monday it will cut food assistance to more than 3 million Afghans in about half the country's 34 provinces because of a shortage of money from donor nations.
The U.N. agency said it had planned to help feed more than 7 million people in Afghanistan this year, but a shortage of donor funds means only 3.8 million people will be helped through meals provided at schools and training and work programs. It said it needed an additional $220 million to continue its work in Afghanistan at the level originally planned.
The program will focus food assistance on helping the most needy Afghans, especially women and children, said Bradley Guerrant, the agency's deputy country director.
"We are working hard to raise the funds needed to restart these activities as soon as we can," he said.
Also, two roadside bomb blasts killed seven civilians Monday in Ghazni province in eastern Afghanistan, the Interior Ministry said. A vehicle struck one of the bombs in Qarabagh district, killing four civilians, including two children, the ministry said. Another vehicle hit a roadside bomb in Ghazni city, killing three civilians.
Marc Grossman, U.S. special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said in Kabul that discussions among Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United States being held this week in the Afghan capital are important to coordinate efforts to find a political resolution to the nearly decade-long war.
He said they also are an opportunity to clearly convey to Pakistani officials that part of their responsibility for bringing peace is to stop supporting insurgent safe havens and those who attack Afghans and international forces in Afghanistan.
"We've been pretty clear that going forward here, we want the government of Pakistan to participate positively in the reconciliation process," Grossman said at a news conference. "Pakistan now has important choices to make."
Grossman and representatives from more than 40 nations are attending a meeting of the International Contact Group. The group's 11th meeting comes after President Barack Obama announced last week he was ordering 10,000 U.S. troops home by year's end; as many as 23,000 more are to leave by September 2012. That would leave 68,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
The 33,000 total to be withdrawn is the number Obama sent as reinforcements in December 2009 as part of an effort to reverse the Taliban's momentum and hasten an eventual political settlement of the conflict. The U.S. and its allies plan a full combat withdrawal by the end of 2014.
Michael Steiner, German representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said at the news conference that the international community's engagement will not end in 2014, when Afghan security forces are to have the lead responsibility for security across the nation, a process he said is on track.
"I think we have a strategy which is working despite the difficulties we have," Steiner said. "I am not painting here any illusions. We will have problems ahead. But I think we have a realistic strategy."
Separately, the U.N. World Food Program announced Monday it will cut food assistance to more than 3 million Afghans in about half the country's 34 provinces because of a shortage of money from donor nations.
The U.N. agency said it had planned to help feed more than 7 million people in Afghanistan this year, but a shortage of donor funds means only 3.8 million people will be helped through meals provided at schools and training and work programs. It said it needed an additional $220 million to continue its work in Afghanistan at the level originally planned.
The program will focus food assistance on helping the most needy Afghans, especially women and children, said Bradley Guerrant, the agency's deputy country director.
"We are working hard to raise the funds needed to restart these activities as soon as we can," he said.
Also, two roadside bomb blasts killed seven civilians Monday in Ghazni province in eastern Afghanistan, the Interior Ministry said. A vehicle struck one of the bombs in Qarabagh district, killing four civilians, including two children, the ministry said. Another vehicle hit a roadside bomb in Ghazni city, killing three civilians.
Introspection In #pakistan: Will It Endure? – Analysis
The anger and humiliation caused in Pakistan by the unilateral raid by US naval commandos on the residence of Osama bin Laden at Abbottabad on May 2, 2011, and by the inability of the Pakistani Army and Air Force to prevent the raid have had two significant effects.
The first is widespread questioning by different sections of public and military opinion of the advisability of the present level of co-operation with the US and other NATO countries in counter-terrorism and the increasing dependence on the US for military and economic assistance.
While the state of Pakistan is not in a position to reduce its dependence on the US for assistance, an exercise is already on to curtail the present level of co-operation in counter-terrorism. As part of this exercise, there has been a reduction in the presence of intelligence officers and trainers from the US and other NATO countries based in Pakistan. The US and the UK have been told that Pakistan no longer requires training assistance for its security forces engaged in counter-terrorism duties and asked to withdraw the bulk of their trainers from Pakistani territory.
Only two aspects of the bilateral co-operation between Pakistan and the US have remained untouched till now. The first relates to the permission given by the Pakistani authorities for the unloading of logistic supplies for the NATO forces in Afghanistan at the Karachi port and their road movement to Afghanistan by trucks. The second relates to the informal acceptance by the Pakistani authorities of the operations of the US Drone (pilotless plane) strikes on suspected terrorist infrastructure in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Recently, the US has stepped up its Drone strikes on suspected hide-outs of the Haqqani Network in the Kurram area of the FATA without facing any objection from the military leadership.
Simultaneously with the exercise to re-fashion Pakistan’s relations with the US, one could also discern initial signs of an introspection over the advisability of the present policy of unrelenting hostility to India. Some have started arguing that it is this hostility to India encouraged and promoted by the military leadership that has been leading to a high level of dependence on the US. It is, therefore, argued that if Pakistan wants to reduce its strategic dependence on the US, it has to have a new look at its present policies towards India.
In an article carried by the “Dawn” of Karachi on June 20,2011, Adnan Rehmat a journalist, analyst and media development specialist, who heads an NGO called Intermedia, argued for a new look India policy in the following words: “Misplaced bravado does not make pride and there’s no shame in desiring peace with someone we’ve painted as an enemy. The only way the delusional mindset that ill-serves Pakistan will be righted is when the national security doctrine puts the people, not the military establishment, at the center of Pakistan’s raison d ‘etre. We have tried India as an enemy and it has cost us dearly. It’s time to try India as a friend because the cost of being a friend is far, far less than the cost of being an enemy.”
More than the article itself, what has been a pleasant surprise is the large number of favourable readers’ endorsement that it has been receiving. The article has already received 162 feed-backs from the readers —many of them positive.
The mood of less suspicion towards India which one notices could be attributed not only to the realisation that the past policy of hostility to India has proved counter-productive and increased Pakistan’s dependence on the US, but also to the improvement in the ground situation in Balochistan. The Baloch freedom-struggle is showing signs of losing steam. The number of attacks on Punjabi settlers working in Balochistan has declined. There is less disruption of the gas supply to industrial units in Punjab and Sindh from Balochistan.
The weakening of the Baloch freedom struggle is partly due to infighting among Baloch nationalist leaders and partly due to the ruthless suppression by the Army. India never had any role in encouraging the separatist movement in Balochistan. Despite this, the Pakistani authorities had convinced themselves that the Baloch freedom struggle could not have achieved the successes that it had without clandestine Indian support.
The splits in the movement and its consequent weakening have come as a pleasant surprise to the Pakistani authorities. This seems to be having a benign effect on their perception of India vis-à-vis Balochistan.
The attempt to look at India less negatively as a result of these developments is presently confined to sections of the civil society and to the non-governmental world. One does not as yet see signs of it in the Armed Forces, but the civilian bureaucracy shows signs of keeping its traditional anti-India reflexes in check. The ambiance of declining negativism towards each other noticed during the just concluded talks between Smt. NirupamaRao, India’s Foreign Secretary, and Mr. Salman Bashir, her Pakistani counterpart, at Islamabad, is a sign of hope. Will it endure and gather strength?
The first is widespread questioning by different sections of public and military opinion of the advisability of the present level of co-operation with the US and other NATO countries in counter-terrorism and the increasing dependence on the US for military and economic assistance.
While the state of Pakistan is not in a position to reduce its dependence on the US for assistance, an exercise is already on to curtail the present level of co-operation in counter-terrorism. As part of this exercise, there has been a reduction in the presence of intelligence officers and trainers from the US and other NATO countries based in Pakistan. The US and the UK have been told that Pakistan no longer requires training assistance for its security forces engaged in counter-terrorism duties and asked to withdraw the bulk of their trainers from Pakistani territory.
Only two aspects of the bilateral co-operation between Pakistan and the US have remained untouched till now. The first relates to the permission given by the Pakistani authorities for the unloading of logistic supplies for the NATO forces in Afghanistan at the Karachi port and their road movement to Afghanistan by trucks. The second relates to the informal acceptance by the Pakistani authorities of the operations of the US Drone (pilotless plane) strikes on suspected terrorist infrastructure in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Recently, the US has stepped up its Drone strikes on suspected hide-outs of the Haqqani Network in the Kurram area of the FATA without facing any objection from the military leadership.
Simultaneously with the exercise to re-fashion Pakistan’s relations with the US, one could also discern initial signs of an introspection over the advisability of the present policy of unrelenting hostility to India. Some have started arguing that it is this hostility to India encouraged and promoted by the military leadership that has been leading to a high level of dependence on the US. It is, therefore, argued that if Pakistan wants to reduce its strategic dependence on the US, it has to have a new look at its present policies towards India.
In an article carried by the “Dawn” of Karachi on June 20,2011, Adnan Rehmat a journalist, analyst and media development specialist, who heads an NGO called Intermedia, argued for a new look India policy in the following words: “Misplaced bravado does not make pride and there’s no shame in desiring peace with someone we’ve painted as an enemy. The only way the delusional mindset that ill-serves Pakistan will be righted is when the national security doctrine puts the people, not the military establishment, at the center of Pakistan’s raison d ‘etre. We have tried India as an enemy and it has cost us dearly. It’s time to try India as a friend because the cost of being a friend is far, far less than the cost of being an enemy.”
More than the article itself, what has been a pleasant surprise is the large number of favourable readers’ endorsement that it has been receiving. The article has already received 162 feed-backs from the readers —many of them positive.
The mood of less suspicion towards India which one notices could be attributed not only to the realisation that the past policy of hostility to India has proved counter-productive and increased Pakistan’s dependence on the US, but also to the improvement in the ground situation in Balochistan. The Baloch freedom-struggle is showing signs of losing steam. The number of attacks on Punjabi settlers working in Balochistan has declined. There is less disruption of the gas supply to industrial units in Punjab and Sindh from Balochistan.
The weakening of the Baloch freedom struggle is partly due to infighting among Baloch nationalist leaders and partly due to the ruthless suppression by the Army. India never had any role in encouraging the separatist movement in Balochistan. Despite this, the Pakistani authorities had convinced themselves that the Baloch freedom struggle could not have achieved the successes that it had without clandestine Indian support.
The splits in the movement and its consequent weakening have come as a pleasant surprise to the Pakistani authorities. This seems to be having a benign effect on their perception of India vis-à-vis Balochistan.
The attempt to look at India less negatively as a result of these developments is presently confined to sections of the civil society and to the non-governmental world. One does not as yet see signs of it in the Armed Forces, but the civilian bureaucracy shows signs of keeping its traditional anti-India reflexes in check. The ambiance of declining negativism towards each other noticed during the just concluded talks between Smt. NirupamaRao, India’s Foreign Secretary, and Mr. Salman Bashir, her Pakistani counterpart, at Islamabad, is a sign of hope. Will it endure and gather strength?
#pakistan 'can't protect #Nuclear arsenal from Islamic extremists' #Islam #terrorism
Pakistan is unable to protect its growing atomic arsenal from the threat of Islamic extremists, according to one of the country's leading nuclear scientists.
Their security in a country known for political instability has long been a matter of concern and has taken on added urgency in recent weeks, ever since militants took control of a naval base in Karachi, holding elite troops at bay for more than 16 hours.
Professor Pervez Hoodbhoy, who teaches at universities in Lahore and Islamabad, said there was evidence that the Army had been infiltrated by extremist elements.
"We have reason to worry because the most secure installations, bases, and headquarters of the military have been successfully attacked by Islamic militants who have sympathisers within the military," he said.
"What is the proof that nuclear installations or weapon stocks would be exempt from this? My worry is not limited to nuclear arsenals because places that deal with fissile materials can also be similarly infiltrated."
Pakistan's military is reeling from a series of humiliating attacks that has led to fresh questions about whether it can protect the country from enemies – and its nuclear weapons, thought to number up to 120 warheads, from militants.
Last month, officers failed to detect a covert raid conducted by US special forces as they raided Osama bin Laden's hideaway.
Later that month, the Pakistan Taliban claimed responsibility for attacking PNS Mehran, a naval base in Karachi.
That attack suggested the "safety and security of nuclear weapons materials in Pakistan may very well be compromised," according to an article published in the Combating Terrorism Center's magazine, Sentinel, at the US military academy West Point.
"A frontal assault on nuclear weapons storage facilities, which are the most robustly defended elements of Pakistan's nuclear weapons cycle, is no longer an implausible event," wrote Shaun Gregory, director of the Pakistan Security Unit at the University of Bradford in Britain.
But Pakistan has always insisted its nuclear weapons were safe.
And last month Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Nato secretary-general, said: "I feel confident that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is safe and well protected. But of course it is a matter of concern and we follow the situation closely."
Their security in a country known for political instability has long been a matter of concern and has taken on added urgency in recent weeks, ever since militants took control of a naval base in Karachi, holding elite troops at bay for more than 16 hours.
Professor Pervez Hoodbhoy, who teaches at universities in Lahore and Islamabad, said there was evidence that the Army had been infiltrated by extremist elements.
"We have reason to worry because the most secure installations, bases, and headquarters of the military have been successfully attacked by Islamic militants who have sympathisers within the military," he said.
"What is the proof that nuclear installations or weapon stocks would be exempt from this? My worry is not limited to nuclear arsenals because places that deal with fissile materials can also be similarly infiltrated."
Pakistan's military is reeling from a series of humiliating attacks that has led to fresh questions about whether it can protect the country from enemies – and its nuclear weapons, thought to number up to 120 warheads, from militants.
Last month, officers failed to detect a covert raid conducted by US special forces as they raided Osama bin Laden's hideaway.
Later that month, the Pakistan Taliban claimed responsibility for attacking PNS Mehran, a naval base in Karachi.
That attack suggested the "safety and security of nuclear weapons materials in Pakistan may very well be compromised," according to an article published in the Combating Terrorism Center's magazine, Sentinel, at the US military academy West Point.
"A frontal assault on nuclear weapons storage facilities, which are the most robustly defended elements of Pakistan's nuclear weapons cycle, is no longer an implausible event," wrote Shaun Gregory, director of the Pakistan Security Unit at the University of Bradford in Britain.
But Pakistan has always insisted its nuclear weapons were safe.
And last month Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Nato secretary-general, said: "I feel confident that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is safe and well protected. But of course it is a matter of concern and we follow the situation closely."
#pakistan Army generals mismanaging logistics funds #fact #fail
Khalid Munir Khan, Mohammad Afzal Muzaffar, andKhalid Zaheer Akhtar – along with a civilian chief financial officer, Saeedur Rehman, have been found responsible for the losses at the NLC, a commercial logistics company operated by the military.
Committee Chairman Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said: “In the light of three inquiry reports, the public accounts committee finds serious violation of rules, the prime minister’s directives and discipline. It holds three generals and a bureaucrat responsible.”
It is understood the committee has postponed a decision on penalties, in anticipation of receiving a military internal inquiry report by 30 June.
The decision comes after months of wrangling between the public accounts committee and the military hierarchy, which had set up its own inquiry commission in November, even though the committee had been investigating the matter since February 2009.
Five people in the NLC management – three retired generals and two civil servants – were allegedly responsible for illegally borrowing Rs4.3 billion from commercial banks between 2003 and 2008 which was then invested on the Karachi Stock Exchange. The investments led to NLC losing Rs1.8 billion.
Committee Chairman Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said: “In the light of three inquiry reports, the public accounts committee finds serious violation of rules, the prime minister’s directives and discipline. It holds three generals and a bureaucrat responsible.”
It is understood the committee has postponed a decision on penalties, in anticipation of receiving a military internal inquiry report by 30 June.
The decision comes after months of wrangling between the public accounts committee and the military hierarchy, which had set up its own inquiry commission in November, even though the committee had been investigating the matter since February 2009.
Five people in the NLC management – three retired generals and two civil servants – were allegedly responsible for illegally borrowing Rs4.3 billion from commercial banks between 2003 and 2008 which was then invested on the Karachi Stock Exchange. The investments led to NLC losing Rs1.8 billion.
Polio cases rising in Nuclear-armed #pakistan
ISLAMABAD, 27 June 2011 (IRIN) - Confirmation that a two-year-old has polio in Diamer District of Gilgit-Baltistan region, northern Pakistan, has raised fears that the disease could have spread to areas previously believed to be free of it, despite a
national polio emergency plan
launched by the government in January.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recently confirmed the case: “This is the first polio case reported from Gilgit Baltistan after over 12 years. The last case was also reported from the same district, Diamer, in 1998,” WHO spokesperson Gul Afridi told IRIN.
Since Diamer District is outside the zones previously thought to be affected by the virus, WHO has immediately initiated a number of aggressive vaccination measures to help “stop the polio virus circulation in the area, limiting further spread to neighbouring areas”.
The affected child, Afridi said, was a female from a family originally from Mohmand Agency in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas along the Pakistan-Afghan border, but who settled in Gilgit Baltistan four years ago. "The child reportedly missed the OPV [Oral Polio Vaccine] dose due to the refusal of the family,” he added.
In March, the Speaker of Gilgit Baltistan Assembly, Wazir Baig, said: “The region was polio free for the past 13 years and, God willing, we will keep the region free of this disease in the future too.” Baig was inaugurating a three-day anti-polio drive targeting more than 200,000 children.
“Refusals” by parents to have their children vaccinated have been a frequently reported problem, notably in Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa Province (KP), with campaigns by militants opposed to vaccination further complicating the situation.
Pakistan, one of four remaining polio endemic countries in the world, reported 32 cases in 2007, but that number rose to 144 in 2010, according to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) - the highest in any country in the world.
Cases over wide area
This year, 51 cases have already been reported. To add to the difficulties, according to GPEI, “five new positive environmental samples were reported from across the country, including from Karachi, further confirming widespread geographic transmission of wild poliovirus.”
While the disease had mainly been restricted to three groups of districts - Karachi city, a group of districts in Balochistan Province, and districts in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and KP - new evidence points to a spread across a wider area.
“Oral Polio Vaccine will be given to all the targeted children in Gilgit-Baltistan during the measles-Maternal Neonatal Tetanus campaign running 4-9 July. The target children of Gilgit Baltistan will have their fifth dose of OPV during the next National Immunization Days campaign on 18-20 July,” WHO’s Afridi said.
Medical experts say “irresponsible” media reports, such as one stating that a 16-day-old infant died in Punjab Province this month after receiving expired polio drops, have added to fears among parents and encouraged “refusals”.
“It does not seem likely the vaccine caused the death, but rumours about such incidents spread fast,” Hassan Ali, a general practioner in Lahore, said.
Chaudhry Muhammad Aslam, director-general for health in Punjab, said in a statement: “The death of a baby due to the polio vaccination is out of [the] question. The polio vaccination is an oral treatment in the form of liquid which remains in the bowels while the other medicine is administered through the veins or stomach to be mixed in blood."
kh/eo/cb
national polio emergency plan
launched by the government in January.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recently confirmed the case: “This is the first polio case reported from Gilgit Baltistan after over 12 years. The last case was also reported from the same district, Diamer, in 1998,” WHO spokesperson Gul Afridi told IRIN.
Since Diamer District is outside the zones previously thought to be affected by the virus, WHO has immediately initiated a number of aggressive vaccination measures to help “stop the polio virus circulation in the area, limiting further spread to neighbouring areas”.
The affected child, Afridi said, was a female from a family originally from Mohmand Agency in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas along the Pakistan-Afghan border, but who settled in Gilgit Baltistan four years ago. "The child reportedly missed the OPV [Oral Polio Vaccine] dose due to the refusal of the family,” he added.
In March, the Speaker of Gilgit Baltistan Assembly, Wazir Baig, said: “The region was polio free for the past 13 years and, God willing, we will keep the region free of this disease in the future too.” Baig was inaugurating a three-day anti-polio drive targeting more than 200,000 children.
“Refusals” by parents to have their children vaccinated have been a frequently reported problem, notably in Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa Province (KP), with campaigns by militants opposed to vaccination further complicating the situation.
Pakistan, one of four remaining polio endemic countries in the world, reported 32 cases in 2007, but that number rose to 144 in 2010, according to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) - the highest in any country in the world.
Cases over wide area
This year, 51 cases have already been reported. To add to the difficulties, according to GPEI, “five new positive environmental samples were reported from across the country, including from Karachi, further confirming widespread geographic transmission of wild poliovirus.”
While the disease had mainly been restricted to three groups of districts - Karachi city, a group of districts in Balochistan Province, and districts in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and KP - new evidence points to a spread across a wider area.
“Oral Polio Vaccine will be given to all the targeted children in Gilgit-Baltistan during the measles-Maternal Neonatal Tetanus campaign running 4-9 July. The target children of Gilgit Baltistan will have their fifth dose of OPV during the next National Immunization Days campaign on 18-20 July,” WHO’s Afridi said.
Medical experts say “irresponsible” media reports, such as one stating that a 16-day-old infant died in Punjab Province this month after receiving expired polio drops, have added to fears among parents and encouraged “refusals”.
“It does not seem likely the vaccine caused the death, but rumours about such incidents spread fast,” Hassan Ali, a general practioner in Lahore, said.
Chaudhry Muhammad Aslam, director-general for health in Punjab, said in a statement: “The death of a baby due to the polio vaccination is out of [the] question. The polio vaccination is an oral treatment in the form of liquid which remains in the bowels while the other medicine is administered through the veins or stomach to be mixed in blood."
kh/eo/cb
On the Line #pakistan
Al-Qaida cell phones confirmed Pakistani complicity in the hiding of Osama Bin Laden. That country’s military and intelligence patronage of terrorism requires the United States to take a harder line there.
The May 1 commando strike in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that killed Osama Bin Laden demonstrated one thing conclusively: that the United States cannot rely on Pakistan to deal with the al-Qaida threat. We don’t know for sure yet if the Pakistani intelligence service, or ISI, was clueless or actively complicit in hiding the most wanted man in the world, who was living a mile down the road from the Kakul military academy, the country’s West Point. In either case the ISI is not a reliable or effective counter-terrorist partner.
Now the evidence is growing that at least some part of the ISI and the Pakistani army was, in fact, actively complicit in hiding Bin Laden for the past five years. The evidence laid out Friday in the New York Times and based on cell phones found in the hideout is not a smoking gun, but it is very suggestive. Bin Laden was in regular contact with the Harakat ul Mujahedin terror group, which the ISI created in the 1980s to fight India. The Harakat ul Mujahedin has loyally worked with the ISI for decades, and its members hijacked an Indian airliner in 1999 with al-Qaida and the ISI. Fazlur Rehman Khalil, head of Harakat ul Mujahedin, lives openly in an Islamabad suburb.
If Harakat helped Bin Laden, it is not hard to imagine that someone in the ISI knew that the world’s most wanted terrorist was been hidden somewhere inside Pakistan.
There is other circumstantial evidence of official Pakistani complicity in hiding Bin Laden. The commandant of the Kakul academy in 2006 was General Nadeem Taj, the right-hand man of former President Pervez Musharraf. After his service in Abbottabad, Taj became director general of the ISI in late 2007. On his watch, the ISI blew up the Indian embassy in Kabul and Benazir Bhutto was murdered by al-Qaida. The U.N. investigation of Benazir’s murder held the ISI as possibly culpable.
In September 2008, the George W. Bush Administration demanded that Taj be fired. Instead, he was promoted to corps commander. The terrorist attacks on Mumbai came a month later, and we know the ISI helped plan that. Taj had the means and access in 2006 to help Bin Laden, and he is clearly a problematic partner. Not a smoking gun by any means, but suggestive.
Pakistan is home to more terrorists than any other country, many of them harbored by the Pakistani army and the ISI. Osama Bin Laden’s deputy and now heir, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is probably somewhere nearby. Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, the tactical maestro of the Sept. 11 attacks, was living in Pakistan’s military capital, Rawalpindi, when he was captured (albeit with the ISI’s help). Mullah Omar, Emir of Believers to al-Qaida and head of the Afghan Taliban, was trained by the ISI and commutes between Quetta and Karachi. Hafez Saed, head of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant Islamist group, and mastermind of the Mumbai massacre, lives and preaches openly in Lahore. Dawood Ibrahim, who killed hundreds with bombs on Mumbai’s metro in 1993, lives in Karachi. There are no secrets here—the south Asian press reports their hideouts on a regular basis.
Pakistan’s civilian government is not implicated in any of this. Nor is Pakistan al-Qaida’s patronage akin to Iran’s role with Hezbollah. Pakistan is as much a victim of terror as its sponsor. It is a maze of contradictions. Analogies to the Cold War partnerships that matched patron state to terrorist group don’t work in Pakistan. The army sponsors some groups like Harakat and Lashkar-e-Taiba, but it is at war with others like the Pakistan Taliban. In the case of other terror groups like al-Qaida, the government is infiltrated by sympathizers. These varying relationships pose unique challenges that need tailored responses.
So, what should the United States do with Pakistan? First, we should tell the Pakistani army leadership that if we learn one of their officers is involved in harboring terrorists, planning terror operations, or tipping terrorist bomb factories off to drone raids, we will make it personal. Don’t sanction the country or the ISI; sanction individuals. Hold them accountable. That officer will go on our terrorist most-wanted list, and we will seize his property if we can, arrest him if he travels, expel his kids from school here or in England, and—if he is truly dangerous enough—take direct action. We should not do this alone. We should get allies, especially the British, to help, since Pakistanis love to visit London and send their kids to school in the United Kingdom.
Second, we will need a base to stage unilateral operations into Pakistan for the foreseeable future. We can hope al-Qaida will implode soon, but we cannot count on that. The Arabian Sea is too far away. So, we need a U.S. military presence in Afghanistan so we can continue to send drones and commandos over the Pakistani border. We don’t need 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, but we do need Afghan permission to operate in that country for the long term. That is the other hard lesson of Abbottabad.
Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow in the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, is a former Central Intelligence Agency officer and the author of Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America, and the Future of the Global Jihad.
The May 1 commando strike in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that killed Osama Bin Laden demonstrated one thing conclusively: that the United States cannot rely on Pakistan to deal with the al-Qaida threat. We don’t know for sure yet if the Pakistani intelligence service, or ISI, was clueless or actively complicit in hiding the most wanted man in the world, who was living a mile down the road from the Kakul military academy, the country’s West Point. In either case the ISI is not a reliable or effective counter-terrorist partner.
Now the evidence is growing that at least some part of the ISI and the Pakistani army was, in fact, actively complicit in hiding Bin Laden for the past five years. The evidence laid out Friday in the New York Times and based on cell phones found in the hideout is not a smoking gun, but it is very suggestive. Bin Laden was in regular contact with the Harakat ul Mujahedin terror group, which the ISI created in the 1980s to fight India. The Harakat ul Mujahedin has loyally worked with the ISI for decades, and its members hijacked an Indian airliner in 1999 with al-Qaida and the ISI. Fazlur Rehman Khalil, head of Harakat ul Mujahedin, lives openly in an Islamabad suburb.
If Harakat helped Bin Laden, it is not hard to imagine that someone in the ISI knew that the world’s most wanted terrorist was been hidden somewhere inside Pakistan.
There is other circumstantial evidence of official Pakistani complicity in hiding Bin Laden. The commandant of the Kakul academy in 2006 was General Nadeem Taj, the right-hand man of former President Pervez Musharraf. After his service in Abbottabad, Taj became director general of the ISI in late 2007. On his watch, the ISI blew up the Indian embassy in Kabul and Benazir Bhutto was murdered by al-Qaida. The U.N. investigation of Benazir’s murder held the ISI as possibly culpable.
In September 2008, the George W. Bush Administration demanded that Taj be fired. Instead, he was promoted to corps commander. The terrorist attacks on Mumbai came a month later, and we know the ISI helped plan that. Taj had the means and access in 2006 to help Bin Laden, and he is clearly a problematic partner. Not a smoking gun by any means, but suggestive.
Pakistan is home to more terrorists than any other country, many of them harbored by the Pakistani army and the ISI. Osama Bin Laden’s deputy and now heir, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is probably somewhere nearby. Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, the tactical maestro of the Sept. 11 attacks, was living in Pakistan’s military capital, Rawalpindi, when he was captured (albeit with the ISI’s help). Mullah Omar, Emir of Believers to al-Qaida and head of the Afghan Taliban, was trained by the ISI and commutes between Quetta and Karachi. Hafez Saed, head of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant Islamist group, and mastermind of the Mumbai massacre, lives and preaches openly in Lahore. Dawood Ibrahim, who killed hundreds with bombs on Mumbai’s metro in 1993, lives in Karachi. There are no secrets here—the south Asian press reports their hideouts on a regular basis.
Pakistan’s civilian government is not implicated in any of this. Nor is Pakistan al-Qaida’s patronage akin to Iran’s role with Hezbollah. Pakistan is as much a victim of terror as its sponsor. It is a maze of contradictions. Analogies to the Cold War partnerships that matched patron state to terrorist group don’t work in Pakistan. The army sponsors some groups like Harakat and Lashkar-e-Taiba, but it is at war with others like the Pakistan Taliban. In the case of other terror groups like al-Qaida, the government is infiltrated by sympathizers. These varying relationships pose unique challenges that need tailored responses.
So, what should the United States do with Pakistan? First, we should tell the Pakistani army leadership that if we learn one of their officers is involved in harboring terrorists, planning terror operations, or tipping terrorist bomb factories off to drone raids, we will make it personal. Don’t sanction the country or the ISI; sanction individuals. Hold them accountable. That officer will go on our terrorist most-wanted list, and we will seize his property if we can, arrest him if he travels, expel his kids from school here or in England, and—if he is truly dangerous enough—take direct action. We should not do this alone. We should get allies, especially the British, to help, since Pakistanis love to visit London and send their kids to school in the United Kingdom.
Second, we will need a base to stage unilateral operations into Pakistan for the foreseeable future. We can hope al-Qaida will implode soon, but we cannot count on that. The Arabian Sea is too far away. So, we need a U.S. military presence in Afghanistan so we can continue to send drones and commandos over the Pakistani border. We don’t need 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, but we do need Afghan permission to operate in that country for the long term. That is the other hard lesson of Abbottabad.
Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow in the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, is a former Central Intelligence Agency officer and the author of Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America, and the Future of the Global Jihad.
#pakistan’s fiscal woes: Budget-making in an economic crisis
The budget for the current fiscal year exudes an air of complacency. There have been a number of critical commentaries, including by Messrs Abid Hasan, Sakib Sherani and Ashfaque Khan. There also was a spirited defence by Farahnaz Isphani in this paper. But, as the finance minister has correctly stated, the budget document is less important than the overall strategy to address the difficulties facing the nation.
Critical in determining the policy stance is an assessment of where the country finds itself and its medium-term prospects. In 2007/8, there was an unsustainable fiscal position and a collapse in reserves. The IMF provided a bridging loan of over $8 billion (later raised to $11.5 billion) because of the administration’s promise to raise the tax/GDP ratio from 9% towards 14% to address repayments coming due from 2012. But the government’s medium-term strategy paper now targets a tax/GDP ratio of 10.1% over the next three years. And the target for 2011/12 is 9.1% of GDP, which several commentators suggest is not achievable. Like Alice in Wonderland, FBR has to run faster to stand still. We are more vulnerable than in 2007. How will we repay the IMF, and address our now growing unsustainable total debt? Who will ride to our rescue this time?
In addition, the new tax revenue targets will mean that much of the current spending being devolved under the 18th Amendment will become unfunded mandates, with serious consequences for basic health care and education — especially for the poor. Expecting a provincial surplus under these circumstances is naïve at best.
While some of the sentiments in the budget about widening the tax base are to be welcomed, the approach to tax policy in the budget is baffling, especially the decision to eliminate excises and reduce the existing GST, in the presence of mounting security and social pressures and in the middle of a full-blown economic crisis and a failed IMF program.
Excises are used in most countries in order to meet multiple objectives: taxing “bads” on health grounds (eg, tobacco and other items); for environmental protection; and for distributional purposes (to tax more heavily items consumed by the rich–e.g., cars and luxury items). This permits the proper “arms-length” functioning of a single rate GST, need to reform the FBR so that it does not require special SROs (which are really only to the advantage of vested interests, or well to do consumers). So why are excises being eliminated by a party that claims the legacy of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto?
Despite the talk about removing exemptions, SRO283 of April 1, 2011 still stands, and it is not clear which items are “protected”. A lower GST rate on luxury carpets or textiles does not protect the industry, but provides a benefit to the consumers of such goods. A cascading and lower rate for some sectors makes nonsense of the talk about “fixing the GST”. Continuation of the SRO culture, together with the planned merger of the FBR IT with NADRA, without a completely reformed bureaucracy and tight safeguards, will provide ample opportunities for new rent-seeking.
Together, the government’s proposals appear to put greater weight on the extra rupee that goes to the rich as opposed to the poor. The situation is compounded by the unspoken “I” tax – the elephant in the room — or the “inflation tax.” The strategy appears to be increasingly to keep borrowing from the banking system (external loans are now going to be hard to find, given Pakistan’s credit ratings), and then inflate out of the liabilities. Such a policy proved disastrous in Latin America. The inflation tax is the most regressive instrument, attractive though it may be to a cash-strapped government. The poorest and the middle classes pay it, given that the rich are fully hedged with domestic and external assets.
The government missed a chance to start to rationalise direct taxation, together with a more efficient assignment of responsibilities and the creation of an arms’ length tax administration that would be trusted by the provinces as well as taxpayers.
It may be possible to rationalise this approach to tax policy on the grounds of expediency, but it can hardly represent the preferences of a government committed to the welfare of the poor.
The writer has served as Executive Director on the IMF for Pakistan and as adviser to the Finance Minister on tax reforms. He teaches at the London School of Economics
Critical in determining the policy stance is an assessment of where the country finds itself and its medium-term prospects. In 2007/8, there was an unsustainable fiscal position and a collapse in reserves. The IMF provided a bridging loan of over $8 billion (later raised to $11.5 billion) because of the administration’s promise to raise the tax/GDP ratio from 9% towards 14% to address repayments coming due from 2012. But the government’s medium-term strategy paper now targets a tax/GDP ratio of 10.1% over the next three years. And the target for 2011/12 is 9.1% of GDP, which several commentators suggest is not achievable. Like Alice in Wonderland, FBR has to run faster to stand still. We are more vulnerable than in 2007. How will we repay the IMF, and address our now growing unsustainable total debt? Who will ride to our rescue this time?
In addition, the new tax revenue targets will mean that much of the current spending being devolved under the 18th Amendment will become unfunded mandates, with serious consequences for basic health care and education — especially for the poor. Expecting a provincial surplus under these circumstances is naïve at best.
While some of the sentiments in the budget about widening the tax base are to be welcomed, the approach to tax policy in the budget is baffling, especially the decision to eliminate excises and reduce the existing GST, in the presence of mounting security and social pressures and in the middle of a full-blown economic crisis and a failed IMF program.
Excises are used in most countries in order to meet multiple objectives: taxing “bads” on health grounds (eg, tobacco and other items); for environmental protection; and for distributional purposes (to tax more heavily items consumed by the rich–e.g., cars and luxury items). This permits the proper “arms-length” functioning of a single rate GST, need to reform the FBR so that it does not require special SROs (which are really only to the advantage of vested interests, or well to do consumers). So why are excises being eliminated by a party that claims the legacy of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto?
Despite the talk about removing exemptions, SRO283 of April 1, 2011 still stands, and it is not clear which items are “protected”. A lower GST rate on luxury carpets or textiles does not protect the industry, but provides a benefit to the consumers of such goods. A cascading and lower rate for some sectors makes nonsense of the talk about “fixing the GST”. Continuation of the SRO culture, together with the planned merger of the FBR IT with NADRA, without a completely reformed bureaucracy and tight safeguards, will provide ample opportunities for new rent-seeking.
Together, the government’s proposals appear to put greater weight on the extra rupee that goes to the rich as opposed to the poor. The situation is compounded by the unspoken “I” tax – the elephant in the room — or the “inflation tax.” The strategy appears to be increasingly to keep borrowing from the banking system (external loans are now going to be hard to find, given Pakistan’s credit ratings), and then inflate out of the liabilities. Such a policy proved disastrous in Latin America. The inflation tax is the most regressive instrument, attractive though it may be to a cash-strapped government. The poorest and the middle classes pay it, given that the rich are fully hedged with domestic and external assets.
The government missed a chance to start to rationalise direct taxation, together with a more efficient assignment of responsibilities and the creation of an arms’ length tax administration that would be trusted by the provinces as well as taxpayers.
It may be possible to rationalise this approach to tax policy on the grounds of expediency, but it can hardly represent the preferences of a government committed to the welfare of the poor.
The writer has served as Executive Director on the IMF for Pakistan and as adviser to the Finance Minister on tax reforms. He teaches at the London School of Economics
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