Civil War is being Incited in Pakistan - a new murderous phase begins

[bigron]

USA: Acronym For United States Of Assassinations?


By Sherwood Ross

http://uruknet.info/?p=m66705&hd=&size=1&l=e

June 5, 2010


What the United Nations independent investigator on extrajudicial killings would like is for countries that employ surprise drone attacks to first prove they have attempted to capture or incapacitate suspects. The investigator, Philip Alston, issued a 29-page report Wednesday that the New York Times termed "Highly Critical" of such attacks by the U.S. and, says the Associated Press, "called on countries to lay out rules and safeguards for carrying out the strikes." By going after terrorist networks, Alston warned, the U.S. example "could quickly lead to a situation in which dozens of countries carry out 'competing drone attacks’ outside their borders against people 'labeled as terrorists by one group or another,’" Charlie Savage reported for the Times. "I’m particularly concerned that the United States seems oblivious to this fact when it asserts an ever-expanding entitlement for itself to target individuals across the globe," Alston is quoted as saying. "This expansive and open-ended interpretation of the right to self-defense goes a long way towards destroying the prohibition on the use of armed force contained in the U.N. Charter," Alston pointed out.

Alston can demand restraint all he likes but the administration of Nobel Peace Prize recipient Barack Obama is not apt to listen. Obama has dramatically stepped up such attacks by the CIA over the occasional sorties resorted to by his predecessor. Washington’s thinking appears to be, Why should U.S. troops risk storming some alleged terrorist hideout when a CIA operator in far-off Langley, Va., needs only to manipulate a computer screen to have a drone wipe them out?

Reasons against using the drones include the possibility there may be innocent persons in the same building as the alleged terrorists. Only a week ago the military conceded its own drone operators called in an airstrike in February that killed 23 Afghan civilians, including women and children. Another argument against drones is that the alleged terrorists have no opportunity to surrender or to get a jury trial. The U.N.’s Alston also warns that for CIA operators thousands of miles from the point of attack "there is a risk of developing a 'PlayStation’ mentality to killing." Yet another argument against the drones is that the survivors of those killed regard such attacks as cowardly and each successful (from the CIA’s viewpoint) air strike only increases the public’s resolve to resist the U.S. occupation. Friends and relatives of the slain innocents turn bitterly against the U.S. This situation, by the way, is nothing new. U.S. and British air attacks on German facilities in occupied France during World War II were frequently so off target that the French Resistance pleaded with the U.S. to stop the bombing and to let them take out the Nazi targets from the ground, even at great risk to themselves. Sadly, 70,000 French civilians were killed by Allied aerial bombardments gone awry. "So far," says international legal authority Francis Boyle of the University of Illinois at Champaign, "all CIA drone attacks have been murders, assassinations, and extrajudicial executions--a grave violation of international human rights law, the laws of the countries where the attacks took place, and of US domestic law." Boyle added, "All CIA drone strikes in Pakistan are criminal and a grave violation of international human rights law."

While the laws of war apply to insurgents engaged in armed combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, Boyle says, they do not apply "when they are sleeping at their homes with their families." Moreover, "it appears that the Pentagon's use of drones has serious problems of discriminating between civilians and insurgents engaged in armed combat, (resulting in a seriously disproportional ratio between allegedly dead insurgents and civilian casualties) which raises the issue of war crimes accountability." In about his first 10 months in office, President Obama okayed at least 41 drone strikes in Pakistan that killed between 326 and 538 people, many of them "innocent bystanders, including children," according to a study by the non-profit New America Foundation of Washington, D.C. Example: on his third day in the White House, Obama sanctioned two strikes, the second of which mistakenly struck the home of a pro-government tribal leader that killed his entire family, including three children, one as young as five. "The point is," Louise Doswald-Beck, a professor of international law at the Geneva Graduate Institute in Switzerland, told the AP, "innocent people have been killed, this has been proved over and over again."

Civilian casualties raise the issue of whether remote controlled drones "can ever be used in a manner consistent with the laws of war in actual war zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan," Boyle says. "I suspect that…the Pentagon has consigned this 'wet-work’ to the CIA," Boyle added, because "they have a long history of doing it, especially in Operation Phoenix during the Vietnam War. The CIA is an organized and ongoing criminal conspiracy under international law and US domestic law. Does the Pentagon want to or intend to become the same?" he asks.

The CIA’s key role in carrying out what academic critics call international crime, raises troubling questions about who actually is running the United States of America. It should be recalled that Obama---who was employed after graduating Columbia University as a business writer for CIA-front Business International Corp.---wrote a letter to the CIA on April 16, 2009, that stated, "It is a core American value that we are a Nation of laws, and the CIA protects and upholds that principle under extraordinarily difficult circumstances every day." "Laws?" When Obama has declined to prosecute CIA thugs for torture (in violation of U.S. law), officials who obstructed justice by destroying taped recordings of torture sessions! By contrast, Pentagon jailers accused of torturing in the Middle East have been tried and convicted. Bluntly, CIA officials appear to be above the law. The bottom line today is that CIA officials seated at computers in Langley, Va., can decide who lives or dies most anywhere on the planet without regard for international law or fear of prosecution from Obama’s Justice Department. And we have a president formerly employed by the CIA who is empowering its crimes, including assassination, which Webster’s defines as "to kill suddenly or secretively, especially to murder a politically prominent person." (Italics added.)

(Sherwood Ross is a Miami-based writer and author of "Gruening of Alaska"(Best Books). His articles have been published by The New York Herald-Tribune, The Washington Post and the U.S. Information Agency, among other media outlets. Reach him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com).




 

[bigron]

'New US plan for fight in Pakistan'


Mon, 07 Jun 2010 15:49:06 GMT
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=129406&sectionid=351020401

 
Pentagon is devising a $100-million plan to replace its unmanned drones in operations against pro-Taliban militants in the troubled northwest Pakistan, a report says.

The US Air Force plans to train airmen to use the new aircraft, known as the MC-12 Liberty, a four-passenger, twin-engine propeller plane, Dawn reported Monday.

The decision has been taken to deal with possible legal ramifications of the indiscriminate use of unmanned drones in the war against militants, the report said.

The report came days after a United Nations official said the US-operated drone strikes in Pakistan pose a growing challenge to the international rule of law.

Philip Alston, UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, said the attacks were undermining the rules designed to protect the right of life.

The UN says the drone killings by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) could develop a "playstation" mentality. However, top CIA officials say that the unmanned drones would continue to remain their weapon of choice.

Washington claims its airstrikes target militants. Most of the attacks, however, result in the death of civilians. Since August 2008, such strikes have killed nearly a thousand people in the country's troubled tribal areas.

The raids, initiated by former US President George W. Bush, have escalated by President Barack Obama.

The issue of civilian casualties has strained relations between Islamabad and Washington with the Pakistani government repeatedly voicing its objection to the attacks.

JR/MD

[bigron]

Pakistan PM Claims US Abandoned Demands to ‘Do More’

US Mum So Far on Abandoning Ultimatum

by Jason Ditz, June 07, 2010
http://news.antiwar.com/2010/06/07/pakistan-pm-claims-us-abandoned-demands-to-do-more/

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani today claimed that the United States government has abandoned all demands on Pakistan to do more and that the nation is instead praising Pakistan’s military “successes” in the Swat Valley and the tribal areas.

So far US officials have neither commented on the report of the abandonment of such demands nor offered any specific praise for Pakistan’s past US demanded military operations.

The announcement comes less than two weeks after the US was said to have given Pakistan an ultimatum, demanding that they launch an invasion of North Waziristan and other regions “within weeks.”

The US has regularly demanded such invasions, and usually gotten its way in the end. The latest demands were seen as a default response to the failed Times Square bombing.

The wisdom of the call to invade North Waziristan has been in serious doubt, particularly since the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) had already left the region. As the previous invasions have likewise failed to capture any major TTP leaders, however, this may only be a minor complaint.

[bigron]

Posted by skeetervt1 at 2:00 am
June 8, 2010
 http://blogs.alternet.org/skeeterbitesreport/2010/06/08/cias-drone-attacks-in-pakistan-drawing-new-round-of-opposition-from-inside-cia/

CIA’s Drone Attacks in Pakistan Drawing New Round of Opposition — From Inside CIA

Dissenting Officials Inside Spy Agency Say That Remote Air Strikes With Predator Drones Against Suspected Al-Qaida Operatives in Pakistan are ‘Doing More Harm Than Good’ by Boosting Recruitment of New Jihadist Militants Into Ranks of Al-Qaida, Taliban

UNDER FIRE — The use by the Central Intelligence Agency of unmanned, remote-controlled Predator attack drones, such as the one photographed above, against suspected al-Qaida operatives in Pakistan is drawing new criticism from an unlikely source: Dissenting CIA officials involved in the strikes, who argue that the attacks are “counterproductive” and resulting in making it easier for al-Qaida and its Taliban allies to recruit new militants into its ranks. (Photo Courtesy U.S. Air Force)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EDT Tuesday, June 8, 2010)

===============
SPECIAL REPORT
===============

By GARETH PORTER
Inter-Press Service
(Published under a Creative Commons license)

Some Central Intelligence Agency officers involved in its drone strikes program in Pakistan and elsewhere are privately expressing their opposition to the program within the agency, because it is helping al-Qaida and its Taliban allies recruit new jihadist militants, according to a retired military officer in contact with them.

“Some of the CIA operators are concerned that, because of its blowback effect, it is doing more harm than good,” said Jeffrey Addicott, former legal adviser to U.S. Special Forces and director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas, in an interview with Inter-Press Service.

Addicott said the CIA operatives he knows have told him the drone strikes are being used effectively by al-Qaida and Taliban leaders to recruit more militants.

CIA officers “are very upset” with the drone strike policy, Addicott said. “They’ll do what the boss says, but they view it as a harmful exercise. They say we’re largely killing rank and file Pakistani Taliban, and they are the ones who are agitated by the campaign.”

ATTACKS KILLING CIVILIANS,’INFURIATING’ MUSLIM MEN INTO BECOMING JIHADISTS

Because the drone strikes kill innocent civilians and bystanders along with leaders from far away, they “infuriate the Muslim male”, said Addicott, thus making them more willing to join the movement. The men in Pakistan’s tribal region “view Americans as cowards and weasels,” he added.

Addicott retired from the U.S. Army as a lieutenant colonel in 2000 after serving for six years as senior legal adviser to the Special Operations Forces but is still a consultant for the U.S. military on issues of terrorism and law.

Addicot said the CIA officers expressing concern about the blowback effects of the drone policy are “mid-grade and below.”

They learned about the impact of drone strikes on recruiting by extremist leaders in Pakistan from intelligence gathered by CIA and the National Security Agency, which intercepts electronic communications, according to Addicott.

They have informed high-level CIA officials about their concerns that the program is backfiring. “The people at the top are not believers,” said Addicott, referring to the CIA. “They know that the objective is not going to be achieved.”

DISSENTING CIA OFFICERS’ CONCERNS CONFIRM 2009 WARNINGS

The complaints by CIA operatives about the drone strikes’ blowback effect reported by Addicott are identical to warnings by military and intelligence officials reported in April 2009 by the McClatchy News Service.

McClatchy quoted an intelligence official with deep involvement in both Afghanistan and Pakistan as saying al-Qaida and the Taliban had used the strikes in propaganda to “portray Americans as cowards who are afraid to face their enemies and risk death.” The official called the operations “a major catalyst” for the jihadi movement in Pakistan.

A military official involved in counterterrorism operations told McClatchy the drone strikes were a “recruiting windfall for the Pakistani Taliban.”

DRONE ATTACKS IN AFGHANISTAN, YEMEN AND ELSEWHERE ALSO UNDER FIRE

The CIA operatives’ opposition to the drone strikes program extends to Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and Sudan, all of which now have confirmed deaths from drone strikes, according to Addicott.

The official goal of the geographical expansion of drone strikes is to destroy or disrupt al-Qaida. But al-Qaida today is less a major organization than “a mentality” in most Middle Eastern countries, Addicott said, and the CIA officers fear that the strikes will only reinforce that way of thinking.

BEGUN UNDER BUSH, DRONE STRIKE EXPANDED UNDER OBAMA

Addicott said the drone program has been driven by President Obama, rather than by the CIA. “Obama’s trying to show people that we’re winning,” he added.

The program was originally authorized by President George W. Bush against a relatively short list of high-level al-Qaida officials, and with highly restrictive conditions on approval of each strike. The strike could not be approved unless the target was identified with high confidence, and a complete assessment of “collateral damage” had to ensure against significant civilian casualties.

In early 2008, however, Bush approved the removal of previous restraints. As recounted by David Sanger in his 2009 book, The Inheritance, Bush authorized strikes against targets merely based on visual evidence of a “typical” al-Qaida motorcade or a group entering a house that had been linked to al-Qaida or its Pakistani Taliban allies.

As a top national security aide to Bush acknowledged to Sanger, the shift was “risky” because, “you can hit the wrong house or mistakenly misidentify the motorcade.”

It also meant that anyone who could be linked in some way to al-Qaida, the Taliban or “associated forces” could now be targeted for drone attacks.

OBAMA STRATEGY TO ‘DEMORALIZE’ AL-QAIDA WITH DRONE STRIKES FAILING

The Obama administration has continued to justify the program as aimed at high-value targets, suggesting that it can degrade al-Qaida as an organization by a “decapitation” strategy, according to Addicott. However administration officials now privately admit that the objective of the program is to “demoralize the rank and file,” he said.

That won’t work, according to Addicott, because, “These are tribal people. They don’t view life and death the way we expect them to.”

In effect, the drone strikes program has become an “attrition” strategy for Pakistan, Addicott said.

Such a strategy in Pakistan’s tribal regions appears to be futile. Madrasas in the region have churned out tens of thousands of young men with militant views, and their activities are spread across hundreds of sites in the region.

ATTACKS SEEN BY ADMINISTRATION AS ‘GETTING RESULTS’

Within the Obama administration, it appears that the logic behind the program is that it has to be seen to be doing something about al-Qaida. “The argument I get from people associated with the program,” said Micah Zenko, a fellow in conflict prevention at the Council on Foreign Relations, “is the same as the one [CIA Director Leon] Panetta gave last year.”

“Very frankly,” Panetta declared on May 18 of last year, “it’s the only game in town in terms of confronting or trying to disrupt the al-Qaida leadership.”

Zenko, who has studied the bureaucratic in-fighting surrounding such limited uses of military force, told IPS that the drone strikes have appealed to the Obama administration because they offer “clear results that are obtained quickly and are easily measured.”

All the other tools that might be used to try to reduce al-Qaida’s influence in Pakistan and elsewhere take a long time, require cooperation among multiple actors and have no powerful political constituency behind them, Zenko observed.

Dissent from those who are involved in the program itself has little effect when it is up against what is perceived as political pressure to show progress against al-Qaida — no matter how illusory.

# # #

Special Report Copyright 2010, Inter-Press Service. Reposted under a Creative Commons license.
The ‘Skeeter Bites Report Copyright 2010, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

[citizenx]

..they are galactic federation drones and will outfly a fighter..

WTF!

So, it's really aliens killing women and children in AfPakistan (for whatever reason), and the terrorist entity known as the United States government just wants to take credit to keep up their body count.

Ummmm...Ok.

That's why I stopped smoking it, bro.  Take it easy, eh.

[bigron]

NATO supply vehicle fleet attacked in Pakistan,
leaving at least 8 killed, some 30 vehicles destroyed 
 
English.news.cn   2010-06-09 07:21:11 
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2010-06/09/c_13340510.htm


 
At least eight were killed, five injured when 10 to 12 unknown gunmen reportedly attacked 50 NATO tankers carrying oil and other essentials for supply in Afghanistan near Islamabad early morning on June 9, 2010. (Xinhua/AFP Photo)


ISLAMABAD, June 9 (Xinhua) -- At least eight persons were killed and another six injured when some 30 unknown gunmen reportedly attacked a NATO vehicle fleet comprising some 50 trucks carrying oil tankers and other essentials for supply in Afghanistan near Pakistan's capital city of Islamabad late Tuesday night.

The attack took place in a parking lot at Tarnol area, some 50 kilometers southwest of Islamabad, at around 11:30 p.m. local time. Witnesses told Xinhua Wedesday the attackers opened the fire at the fleet parked there indiscriminately and then set the oil tankers on fire.

Shortly after the incident happened, the local police rushed to the site for rescue work and conducted a large scale search operation in the nearby area. Police sources said that some of the attackers have fled the site while 26 suspected people at the site were arrested.

The fire set on the NATO vehicle fleet has now been put off, said the police sources, adding the injured people have been shifted to a nearby hospital.

An official with the Islamabad police department said that ensuring safety of oil tankers is the responsibility of NATO. Witnesses told Xinhua when the attack was launched there was only one security guard at the parking lot to protect the NATO fleet parked there.

So far no organization has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik has ordered a probe into the incident and demanded a report on the attack in three days.

[bigron]

Wednesday, June 09, 2010
15:04 Mecca time, 12:04 GMT   
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/06/20106915555658186.html
 
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
 
Nato convoy attacked in Pakistan 
 
WATCH VIDEO :
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/06/20106915555658186.html
 
At least six people have been killed and seven others injured after a Nato convoy was attacked just outside Pakistan's capital, Islamabad.

Up to 12 fighters fired machine guns and threw grenades before torching more than 50 lorries carrying military vehicles for Nato forces in Afghanistan late on Tuesday, Kalim Imam, a police officer, said.

The raid occurred in Tarnol, about 10km from Islamabad, on the main road leading to the border with Afghanistan.

It was the first such attack so close to Pakistan's well-protected capital.

Imam said six people were killed, but their identities were not yet known.

He said police were not aware that the depot was used by vehicles carrying supplies for Nato and US forces in Afghanistan.

"The attack took place around 11.35pm [1835 GMT] and we are still trying to find out how this attack has happened," Shah Nawaz, head of Tarnol police station, said.

Much of the supplies and fuel for the US-led force in landlocked Afghanistan are transported in lorries through Pakistan after arriving on ships that dock at the Arabian Sea port of Karachi.

Insufficient security

Thousands of lorries make the journey across the border each week, making it a lucrative business for transporters.

In depth

  Inside Story: The Taliban's counter-strategy
  Profile: Pakistani Taliban
  Video: Summer offensive warning
  Who are the Taliban?
  Pakistan needs friendly Afghanistan
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/06/20106915555658186.html
 
Imtiaz Gul, a security analyst in Pakistan, told Al Jazeera that the raid was probably carried out by Pakistani Taliban fighters who have made a habit of targeting Nato convoys.

"Until a few months ago, Afghanistan-bound vehicles had been transiting through the city of Peshawar," Gul said.

"They still do but following a couple of hundred attacks and the torching of several hundred containers, the transporters decided to relocate the parking and overnight stops closer to Islamabad.

"We are told the terminals they use for parking didn't have enough security. It would be very difficult and expensive for the US to find a different route to Afghanistan."

Regular attacks

Fighters with bases along the remote Afghan border in Pakistan's northwest regularly attack government and security force targets.

Also on Wednesday, Pakistani officials said fighters attacked two security checkpoints in Mohmand, in the northwest tribal belt.

The overnight attack sparked clashes that killed two soldiers and six fighters and wounded several from both sides.

On Tuesday night in Orakzai, near the border with Afghanistan, fighters attacked a security convoy leading to a battle that killed six soldiers and 40 fighters, a Pakistani official said on Wednesday.

Fifteen soldiers also were wounded in the fighting, Samiullah Khan, a government official, said.
 
 

[bigron]

Thursday, June 10, 2010
04:45 Mecca time, 01:45 GMT   
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/06/201069211619617242.html
 
Focus 
 
Caught in the crossfire in Pakistan 
 
 By Gregg Carlstrom

 
Three million Pakistanis fled their homes to escape fighting in 2009, according to the UN [AFP]


 
Years of fighting between the Taliban and the Pakistani government have turned much of northwest Pakistan into a "human rights-free zone", according to a new report from Amnesty International.

More than 1,300 civilians were killed by violence in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) last year, a time that saw a marked increase in both Taliban and government attacks.

Millions of people fled their homes; basic services, notably education and healthcare, were often unavailable; and the Taliban trampled individual rights, particularly those of women.

Many of Amnesty's findings have been widely reported; few will surprise longtime Pakistan watchers.

Still, the report highlights the grim - and often overlooked - plight of civilians in the Fata. And it lays much of the blame on the Pakistani government's strategy for dealing with the Taliban, which has oscillated between heavy-handed military offensives and ineffective peace agreements that cement the Taliban's control.

One in eight fled

Those military campaigns - in the Swat valley, South Waziristan, and the Bajaur and Orakzai tribal agencies - created a massive displacement crisis in Pakistan in 2009.

The United Nations reported earlier this year that more than three million Pakistanis fled their homes in 2009 - or roughly one out of every eight people in northwest Pakistan.

Some of the internally displaced persons (IDPs) moved in with friends and family, sometimes forcing three or four families to share a single house.

Others lived in squalor in government-sponsored IDP camps.

"Amnesty International found consistent problems of poor sanitation and insufficient distribution of food and water [in the camps]," the report said.

While many IDPs have returned - roughly two million of them, according to the UN - they often go home to find their property destroyed and their communities insecure.

Widespread damage to infrastructure has not been repaired, and Taliban fighters pushed out by the fighting have slowly started to return as well.

The Frontier Corps, the paramilitary force responsible for security in the Fata, is "poorly equipped, poorly trained and poorly motivated", Amnesty wrote. And government-backed militias called lashkars, far from bringing security to the population, often commit abuses of their own.

One such lashkar, in the Swat valley, killed six people alleged to be Taliban fighters and then burned down the houses of 20 people suspected of harbouring Taliban members.

Hiding among civilians

Taliban groups, which have continued to expand their control in northwest Pakistan over the last few years, have assassinated politicians - particularly members of the secular Awami National party - banned music, forced men to grow beards, destroyed hundreds of schools, and sharply curtailed women's rights.

While some locals did initially welcome the Taliban's presence - as an alternative to the Fata's judicial system, widely viewed as corrupt and inefficient - the group quickly wore out its welcome.

"According to several locals interviewed by Amnesty International, Taliban norms soon felt more like a straitjacket on everyday freedoms than a security blanket from criminals," the report said.

In addition to what Amnesty called the "violent imposition of social norms", Taliban fighters were accused of frequently hiding amid the civilian population, particularly in schools and markets, which the Taliban often used to stage attacks on Pakistani soldiers.

One man in the village of Loi Sam, in Bajaur agency, said most of his family was killed when the Pakistani army shelled a market in a residential area where Taliban fighters were hiding.

"Two shells fell on his house, killing his father, mother, three daughters, two sons, two nephews as well as several neighbours," Amnesty wrote.

Heavy fighting

The Taliban still maintains control of "substantial parts" of all seven tribal agencies in the Fata. Heavy fighting has done little to displace them, as demonstrated by the Pakistani army's recent campaign in Orakzai agency.

The army announced the end of that offensive last week - but a shootout on Wednesday reportedly killed at least 50 people, including seven soldiers, and local media report that the Taliban remains strong in the agency.

Amnesty closed its report with a series of recommendations for the Pakistani government and the Taliban - urging them to protect civilians in combat zones, respect women's rights and hold lashkars accountable, among others - and noted that the abuses fuel grievances against both parties, prolonging the conflict.

"They are wrongs in themselves, but ... they have [also] fed a conflict that poses an acute danger to people in Pakistan, Afghanistan and beyond."
 
 

[bigron]

Amnesty: Four million living under Taliban rule in Pakistan


By Agence France-Presse
Wednesday, June 9th, 2010 -- 10:48 pm
http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0609/4-million-living-taliban-rule-pakistan/

Pakistani Women Pray

Human rights group Amnesty International said Thursday that nearly four million people are effectively living under Taliban rule in northwest Pakistan and have been abandoned by the government.

The 130-page report entitled "As if Hell Fell on Me: The Human Rights Crisis in Northwest Pakistan" is likely to ruffle Pakistani officials who believe they made great strides last year in regaining ground from the Taliban.

The London-based organisation said there were credible reports that at least 1,300 civilians were killed during fighting in the northwest in 2009. There has been little official word on civilians hurt in anti-Taliban campaigns.

"Nearly four million people are effectively living under the Taliban in northwest Pakistan without rule of law and effectively abandoned by the Pakistani government," said Amnesty's acting head, Claudio Cordone.

The group called the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) a "human rights free zone" and said more than one million displaced people were "in desperate need of aid".


It urged Pakistan and the Taliban to prevent loss of civilian life and allow unfettered aid workers' access to provide food, shelter and medical supplies to the injured and displaced.

"We have an historic opportunity regarding FATA right now," Amnesty's Asia-Pacific Director Sam Zarifi told AFP.

The international community has put up donor funds and Pakistani troops are operating in an "unprecedented" six of the seven tribal agencies, he said.

"The old tribal order has been hugely disrupted by the Taliban and we have a civilian government in Pakistan that has talked about short and medium-term reform. There is an opportunity to do something about the people of FATA."

The British colonial-era law governing FATA denies residents basic rights and protections, including their rights to political representation, judicial appeal and freedom from collective punishment.

"The Pakistani government has to follow through on its promises to bring the region out of this human rights black hole and place the people of FATA under the protection of the law and constitution of Pakistan," said Cordone.

Amnesty, which based its report on nearly 300 interviews with residents in the northwest, accused Pakistan of launching "heavy handed" operations, including "indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks".

It said the Taliban were guilty of systematic abuses, killing those who challenge their authority and imposing their rule through torture and other ill-treatment, targeting women, teachers, aid workers and political activists.

Insurgents increased the likelihood of civilian casualties by dispersing themselves in communities and blocking roads to prevent villagers from escaping "heavy bombardment by government forces".

But a Pakistani security official contacted by AFP challenged Amnesty to visit Swat, where commanders say a decisive battle last year returned much of the northwest valley to relative normality after a two-year uprising.

Significant territory that fell to the Taliban had been regained and urgent efforts were being made to stabilise the areas allowing the displaced to return as soon as it was safe, the official said.

[bigron]

Taliban torch 50 trucks near Islamabad

The National

http://uruknet.info/?p=m66850&hd=&size=1&l=e
 

A policeman stands guard near the Pakistani truck drivers who sit by their burnt out vehicles carrying logistics for the Nato forces in Afghanistan, after insurgents attacked at them in Sangjani area on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan on Wednesday, June 9, 2010. T Mughal / EPA


June 9, 2010

Suspected Taliban gunmen in Pakistan have set fire to more than 50 trucks carrying supplies for Western forces in Afghanistan, killing at least seven people in the first such attack near the capital, police said.

The Taliban have previously attacked trucks carrying supplies for US-led foreign forces in Pakistan’s volatile northwest and southwest bordering Afghanistan, but this raid, less than 30 minutes’ drive from Islamabad late on Tuesday, was unprecedented.

At least 10 gunmen arrived on motorbikes and small pickup trucks at a depot near Tarnol village, killing drivers and workers. The militants escaped, leaving the shells of supply trucks in flames.

"Seven people were killed and more than 50 trucks were set on fire," a police official Ghulam Mustafa said. Six people were wounded.

The trucks were due to carry fuel, food and other supplies to Afghanistan. The trucks do not usually carry arms.

The assault underscores growing insecurity in Pakistan where the Taliban have unleashed a wave of suicide and bomb attacks across the country in retaliation for military offensives on their strongholds in the northwest.

Militants allied to the Pakistani Taliban killed more than 80 people in two brazen attacks on Ahmadiyya, a minority religious sect, in the eastern city of Lahore late last month.

But the latest attack comes after months of relative calm around the heavily guarded Pakistan capital and throws into question how safe Islamabad is from attack.


 

[bigron]

Published on Thursday, June 10, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

Drones: Backfiring on U.S. Strategy


by César Chelala

Predator drones are equipped with large and powerful cameras that beam real-time images to their operators. Last February, a Predator crew operating out of Creech Air Force Base, Nevada, asked for an air strike against three vehicles with males supposed to be insurgents. An OH-58D Kiowa helicopter fired Hellfire missiles and rockets which destroyed the three vehicles. Instead of insurgents, 23 innocent men, women and children were killed and 12 more were seriously injured.

In a scathing report released on May 29, the American military blamed the "inaccurate and unprofessional reporting" by a team of Predator drone operators that led to the strikes. This episode illustrates the serious risks involved in the use of drones, which many law experts consider violate rules of war. Predator drones are extensively used in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they track and kill suspected insurgents, sometimes with their own missiles.

A report by the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Philip Alston, makes a thorough assessment on the effect of drones, whose use has provoked significant controversy.

Drones' proponents argue that since they have significant surveillance capacity and great precision, they are able to avoid collateral civilian casualties and injuries. They also state that since drones may provide the ability to conduct aerial surveillance and to gather "pattern of life" information, they may allow operators to distinguish between peaceful civilians and those engaged in direct hostilities. The above episode is a clear demonstration of the fallacy of this argument and of the dangers to civilians of using such lethal weapons.

According to the Alston report, the main concern about drones is that they make it easier to kill without any risk to a State's forces. I believe that an even greater risk is the process of trivializing war, making it thus a deadlier, more dangerous activity since it affects not only those who are target but also those who direct the operation and for whom war becomes no more significant than a video game.

An additional complication to the use of drones is that in many cases international forces are too often uninformed of local practices, or too credulous in interpreting information, to be able to arrive at a reliable understanding of a situation, wrote Michael N. Schmitt, a Professor of International Law at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, in Germany.

According to Schmitt, precision warfare such as the one carried out by drones intersects (or has the potential to interact) with international humanitarian law in four specific areas: the prohibition of indiscriminate attacks; the principle of proportionality, the requirement to take precautions in attack; and perfidy and other misuses of protected status.

Precision attacks as carried out by drones may violate international humanitarian law's tenet of distinction, as stated in Articles 48, 51 and 52 of Additional Protocol I. As indicated by Schmitt, distinction has been cited as a "cardinal" principle of international humanitarian law by the International Court of Justice.

CIA officers are concerned that the use of drones will backfire and may help Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders recruit more militants. "Some of the CIA operators are concerned that, because of its blowback effect, [the drones' program] is doing more harm than good," said Jeffrey Addicott, former legal adviser to U.S. Special Forces in an interview with Inter Press Service.

Presently, several countries including China, France, India, Israel, Iran, Russia, Turkey and the United Kingdom either have or are seeking drones with the capability to shoot laser-guided missiles. If the use of these dangerous weapons becomes more frequent, so will the safety of innocent civilians and violations of international humanitarian law.

César Chelala is a co-winner of an Overseas Press Club of America award for an article on human rights.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/06/10-5

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Sunday, June 13, 2010
13:55 Mecca time, 10:55 GMT   
 http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/06/201061335321532937.html

News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
 
Report: Pakistani ISI backs Taliban 


 
The report is based on interviews with Taliban commanders in Afghanistan [Getty]

A report by a leading British institution claims that Pakistan's intelligence service has a direct link with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Published on Sunday by the London School of Economics, the report said that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) has an "official policy" of support for the Taliban.

It claims the ISI provides funding and training for the Taliban, and that the agency has representatives on the so-called Quetta Shura, the Taliban's leadership council, which is believed to meet in Pakistan.

The report is based on interviews with Taliban commanders in Afghanistan, and was written by Matt Waldman, a fellow at Harvard University.

US officials have long suspected a link between the ISI and the Taliban, but those suspicions are rarely confirmed.

"Pakistan appears to be playing a double-game of astonishing magnitude," the report said.

A Pakistani diplomatic source dismissed the report as "naive".

Asad Durrani, a former head of the ISI, told Al Jazeera that he does not believe the report, and that intelligence agencies are supposed to maintain relationships with groups like the Taliban.

Durrani also dismissed the claim that ISI representatives met with the Quetta Shura, calling it "nonsense".

'Apparent duplicity'

The report also links high-level members of the Pakistani government with the Taliban.

It claims Asif Ali Zardari, the Pakistani president, met with senior Taliban prisoners earlier this year and promised to release them. Zardari reportedly told the detainees they were only arrested because of American pressure.

"The Pakistan government's apparent duplicity - and awareness of it among the American public and political establishment - could have enormous geopolitical implications," Waldman said.

"Without a change in Pakistani behaviour it will be difficult if not impossible for international forces and the Afghan government to make progress against the insurgency."

Afghan officials have long been suspicious of the ISI's role.

Amrullah Saleh, the former director of Afghanistan's intelligence service, told Reuters last week that the ISI was "part of a landscape of destruction in this country". Saleh resigned last week over a dispute with Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president.

Even Karzai himself has in the past accused the ISI of working with the Taliban.

"These allegations have been made so many times in the past," said Al Jazeera's James Bays, reporting from Kandahar.

"The debate is whether it's a formal involvement with Pakistani authorities, or whether these are just people left over in the Pakistani government who have their old connections [to the Taliban]."

The report comes as Nato and Afghan officials are preparing for a major offensive against the Taliban in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan.
 
 

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15 killed in U.S. drone strike in Pakistan


--Indo-Asian News service

http://uruknet.info/?p=m66948&hd=&size=1&l=e

June 11, 2010

The toll in the US drone strike in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal area has risen to 15 while 10 were wounded in the incident Friday, media reports said.

The drone fired four missiles at a house in Datta Khel area, killing four people on the spot, Xinhua quoted a news channel as saying.

The injured were rushed to a hospital as 11 people succumbed to injuries later, the private Geo News channel reported, citing local sources. Several others were in critical condition.

Meanwhile, drone flights are still hovering over the area creating panic among the locals, the report said.

It is the second US strike in North Waziristan region, the stronghold of Taliban militants, in two days.

A US drone aircraft targeted Thursday a compound of suspected militants in Mir Ali, a main town in North Waziristan, and killed at least three people.

The US has intensified drone strike in North Waziristan in recent months despite outcry against the attacks by international rights groups and Pakistan.

The Amnesty International in a report said Thursday the US use of drones to target insurgents in northwest Pakistan has generated considerable resentment inside Pakistan. It called on the US to clarify its rules of engagement for the use of drones and ensure proper accountability for civilian casualties.

Washington has refused to halt drone strike while considering the use of the technology as effective to eliminate Al Qaeda and Taliban militants.

In August last year Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsood was killed along with his wife in South Waziristan when a US drone fired missiles at the house of his father-in-law.

The Friday's strike is 50th in Pakistan's tribal region this year. Out of 50, a total of 47 attacks were carried out in North Waziristan, killing 335 people. Only two attacks targeted South Waziristan and one Khyber Agency.

--Indo-Asian News service





 

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Pakistani tribesmen voice against licensed-to-kill drone attacks 

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2010-06/12/c_13347314.htm
 
Pakistani people joined hands by the international watchdogs in condemning the increasing licensed-to-kill unmanned drone strikes that have killed much more innocent civilians than the targeted militants.

During the eight-year term of George W. Bush's presidency, the unmanned aircraft attacked militant targets 45 times. Since U.S. President Barack Obama took office, the number rose sharply from 53 last year to some 50 this year in Pakistan alone, according to the New America Foundation, a Washington-based foreign policy think tank.

An Amnesty International report, "As if Hell Fell on Me: The Human Rights Crisis in Northwest Pakistan," launched last week, revealed that in 2009 at least 1,300 civilians were killed in the northwest Pakistan from a total of more than 8,500 casualties that include combatants.

Calling the drone attacks part of a "strongly asserted but ill- defined license to kill without accountability," Philip Alston, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions in his report declared the drone strikes as an act of extra- judicial killing that are contributing to an erosion of long- standing international rules governing warfare.

Some 40 countries possess drone technology, and many of them either have or are attempting to acquire the capability to launch missiles from drones. Pakistan's request to have drone technology has so far not been entertained by the U.S.

The U.N. report especially referred the use of drones by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in its operations that are largely unaccountable. The international community needs to be more forceful in demanding accountability, Alston emphasized.

The question of legitimacy and erratic "efficiency" of drone strikes looms large in the minds of 170 million Pakistani people that have been dragged into the U.S. war-on-terror.
 

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South Asia
Jun 16, 2010 
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LF16Df01.html 
 
Bloody fight over Taliban lifelines


By Saleem Shahzad

ISLAMABAD - After the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, Karachi, Pakistan's largest city and its industrial and financial backbone, became a main transit route for al-Qaeda - illustrated in gruesome fashion by the beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl in May 2002; he was on al-Qaeda's trail.

Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, in collaboration with United States intelligence, tackled the problem head-on and by 2007 dozens of al-Qaeda cells had been broken up, all but cleaning the southern port city of al-Qaeda's influence.

The Taliban's resurgence in Kandahar and Helmand provinces in Afghanistan in 2006 led the authorities to investigate the sources of their support, and it emerged that more than 3,000 madrassas (Islamic seminaries) sprawled across every nook and cranny of Karachi were linked to major markets and served as financial arteries for the Taliban.

In response, Karachi had by 2008 became an outpost of the war in Afghanistan and major covert operations were launched to root out the militants and their supporters. These were largely successful, but ahead of what promises to be an all-out offensive against the Taliban's stronghold in Kandahar, militants have regrouped to protect their support bases in Karachi by taking on anti-Taliban forces.

Over the past week, more than a dozen people have been killed in clashes in a vicious outbreak of multi-faceted sectarian strife.

These include targeted killings between activists of Shi'ite organizations and members of the Sepah-e-Sahaba (SSP). The SSP, now operating under the name Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat, is a banned sectarian organization and a former registered political party primarily established to deter Shi'ite influence.

In central parts of the city there have been killings between the anti-Taliban Sunni organization Sunni Tehrik and members of the SSP.

Karachi has a long history of sectarian violence, with the worst Shi'ite-Sunni clashes taking place in the early 1980s. However, after the emergence of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) in 1984, founded by Marxist intellectuals to protect the rights of Karachiites and aimed at launching a self-styled class war between the feudal and capitalist classes, sectarian tension eased markedly. However, serious ethnic clashes resulted in two military operations in the city in 1992 and in 1995-96.

The MQM has shed much of its Marxist thought, replacing it with neo-liberalism, and politically it follows Washington's line. It is influential across the country.

In past outbreaks of violence in Karachi, the situation invariably returned to normal after the imposition of curfews and political dialogue. This time, it is expected the trouble will last much longer as the Taliban's lifelines are at stake.

Militant sources tell Asia Times Online that while the chief of the coordination committee of the MQM and a former mayor of Karachi, Mustafa Kamal, was recently in the US for over a month, at least 200 SSP members poured into the city to help their members beset by the anti-Taliban Sunni Tehrik and Shi'ite organizations.

They immediately turned the tables. In one incident in the central part of Karachi known as New Karachi, they stopped two vehicles loaded with weapons from reaching the Sunni Tehrik.

"The present fight is a response to last year's Bolton Market rampage that aimed to destroy the people who supported the Taliban," a militant told Asia Times Online on condition of anonymity, He was referring to a raid in which Shi'ite agitators set the main downtown market on fire after a Shi'ite funeral procession had been bombed in Karachi. The market fire did damage worth millions of dollars.

Meanwhile, Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday gave the green light to a major security crackdown in Kandahar, assuring residents that the operation was aimed at battling corruption and bad government as much as insurgents. Hundreds of tribal and religious leaders endorsed the plan, although Afghan officials acknowledged lingering skepticism about the high-stakes operation, seen as a possible turning point in the nearly nine-year-old war, according to the Associated Press.

Before a start of a full military operation in Kandahar, which the US says might be delayed for another two months, Karachi can expect more bloodshed as the Taliban fight to protect their assets.

Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com

(Copyright 2010 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.) 
   

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South Asia
Jun 16, 2010 
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LF16Df02.html 
 
 
 Pakistan, US play waiting game
By Abubakar Siddique

Think of Pakistan and Afghanistan as a giant chessboard. General Stanley McChrystal, commander of United States and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces in Afghanistan, and General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani, head of the Pakistani army, sit on its opposing ends.

And both men are waiting for each other to make the next move.

The two allies await each other's promised offensive against Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Washington has encouraged Pakistan to move its forces into North Waziristan, where powerful Afghan Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani and an assortment of Pakistani, Arab and Central Asian militants wield tense control.

But regional expert and author Ahmed Rashid tells RFE/RL that the Pakistanis are unlikely to move into North Waziristan until they see the outcome of NATO's much-talked-about offensive in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar.

Perceptions in Islamabad are shaped by this spring's smaller NATO offensive in Marjah - a key insurgent and smuggling crossroads in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province. Marjah's capture by coalition troops has failed to end the local Taliban's campaign of assassinations and intimidation, which keeps local people wary of the Afghan government and has stalled the coalition's rehabilitation and development projects.

'Worrying the Americans'
Rashid says Islamabad sees the Marjah offensive as unsuccessful and this colors its reading of the current situation and its plans for action.

"Why should Pakistan endanger its forces and commit more forces in what is already, according to them, a losing military campaign?" he asks. "And this obviously is worrying the Americans enormously because Kandahar can't be a success unless you stop some of the recruits and logistics and weapons and manpower that are being shunted into Afghanistan by the Afghan Taliban [from Pakistan] in support of their resistance to the Kandahar offensive."

Former Afghan interior minister Ali Ahmad Jalali questions the notion that the two campaigns are tightly interlinked. He says that Kandahar and North Waziristan require distinct military interventions.

Jalali, a professor at Washington's National Defense University, suggests that Kandahar is still under tenuous Afghan government control but Pakistan's North Waziristan region is the de-facto headquarters for al-Qaeda and allied extremists.

"What is needed in Kandahar is to establish full control of the government so that it can protect the population and deliver services," he says. "While in Waziristan, it's totally different. You have to remove the bases of extremists and terrorists who are launching attacks not only in Pakistan but mostly across the border in Afghanistan."

Indeed, full government control is the declared aim of the slowly unfolding Kandahar campaign. Speaking to tribal leaders in Kandahar on June 13, Afghan President Hamid Karzai urged them to cooperate fully with a sustained operation to clear the region of insurgents and criminals.

"I want your cooperation in this operation," Karzai told Kandahari elders. "It is something definite and I won't accept any excuses."

'Pivotal' campaigns
Julian Lindley-French, a military affairs expert who closely watches developments in the Afghan theater, tells RFE/RL that this summer's military campaigns in Afghanistan and Pakistan are "pivotal".

Lindley-French, a professor of military operational science at the Royal Military Academy of the Netherlands, suggests that a successful US-led NATO campaign in Kandahar would compel Pakistanis to go against extremist havens inside their country.

"The first critical step for the coalition is to make sure that the space it effectively seeks to control is under its control," he says. "[This is] because all other elements of the campaign, be they political military or whatever - stabilization, governance, rule of law, justice - they all flow from that.

"It would also extend the writ of the Afghan government and will give some of the discussions that took place in the peace jirga [council] some chances of traction on the ground."

McChrystal, the man in charge of Western military efforts in Afghanistan, says that he has a cooperative relationship with Kiani, the Pakistani military chief. In an interview with RFE/RL's Afghan and Pakistani services last week, McChrystal said the two sides regularly coordinated their operations, which has recently led to progress on the long and porous border between the two countries.

'Complex effort'
McChrystal says coalition forces have killed or captured a significant number of Haqqani network commanders in the southeastern Afghan province of Khost across the border from North Waziristan. But he says that the coalition is not pressuring Kayani to go after Haqqani's stronghold in North Waziristan.

"There is not a large pressure from me to kick off operations in northern Waziristan," he says. "I speak to General Kiani frequently and in-depth and we talk about each other's campaigns and syncing them.

"I've been very pleased and impressed with the work that he has done. He has a complex effort going in multiple areas: southern Waziristan, Orakzai, Bajaur, Swat Valley. So I am confident that his timing and his focus is good and it works well with ours."

But Jalali, the Afghan military expert, suggests that even regular operational cooperation is not tantamount to strategic cooperation. He says that regional powers, in particular Islamabad, are vying for a future role in Afghanistan because they sense an imminent US withdrawal from the country. As he announced a major troop surge in Afghanistan last year, US President Barack Obama also announced he would begin withdrawing forces in July 2011.

"If the United States stays in this area for a long time, then that will be different," Jalali says. "If it is going to leave, Pakistan would like to have some of these [extremist] elements as allies. And they do not want to alienate some of these forces just for the sake of Washington, which is about to leave the area - or the perception is ... that it is about to leave this area."

Such perceptions prompt Western analysts to read Pakistani intentions with great suspicion. Islamabad vehemently denied claims made in a controversial London School of Economics "discussion paper" last weekend that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) "orchestrates, sustains and strongly influences" Afghan insurgent networks.

Wake-up call
Speaking to RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal, Pakistani military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas even rejected claims that the report was based on in-depth interviews with unidentified insurgent commanders.

"Those are not credible sources and can't substantiate themselves in the open," he said.

Rashid, Pakistani author and long-time observer of Islamist militancy in South Asia, says that the rising internal threat from extremists might give Pakistan reasons to move into North Waziristan. He suggests that the recent high-profile attacks in Pakistan's most affluent and populated eastern Punjab province by the so-called Punjabi Taliban should serve as a wake-up call for Pakistani leaders.

"The fact is that many of these Punjabi groups are hanging out in North Waziristan and you can't tackle these Punjabi groups without first tackling the issue in North Waziristan," Rashid concludes.

This summer, observers will be closely watching to see whether McChrystal and Kiani can team up and turn the tables on extremists both have publicly described as their common enemy - or whether they will continue to play an unending, unwinnable chess game.

Copyright (c) 2010, RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington DC 20036

 
 
 

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June 15, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/16/world/asia/16lashkar.html?partner=TOPIXNEWS&ei=5099


Militant Group Expands Attacks in Afghanistan

By ALISSA J. RUBIN


An Afghan man walked recently past the wreckage of a guesthouse in Kabul, Afghanistan. A car bomb destroyed it in February.

KABUL, Afghanistan — A Pakistani-based militant group identified with attacks on Indian targets has expanded its operations in Afghanistan, inflicting casualties on Afghans and Indians alike, setting up training camps, and adding new volatility to relations between India and Pakistan.

The group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, is believed to have planned or executed three major attacks against Indian government employees and private workers in Afghanistan in recent months, according to Afghan and international intelligence officers and diplomats here. It continues to track Indian development workers and others for possible attack, they said.

Lashkar was behind the synchronized attacks on several civilian targets in Mumbai, India, in 2008, in which at least 163 people were killed. Its inroads in Afghanistan provide a fresh indication of its growing ambitions to confront India even beyond the disputed territory of Kashmir, for which Pakistan’s military and intelligence services created the group as a proxy force decades ago.

Officially, Pakistan says it no longer supports or finances the group. But Lashkar’s expanded activities in Afghanistan, particularly against Indian targets, prompt suspicions that it has become one of Pakistan’s proxies to counteract India’s influence in the country.

They provide yet another indicator of the extent to which Pakistani militants are working to shape the outcome of the Afghan war as the July 2011 deadline approaches to begin withdrawing American troops.

Recently retired Pakistani military officials are known to have directed the Mumbai attacks, and some Lashkar members have said only a thin line separates the group from its longtime bosses in the Pakistan security establishment.

Some intelligence officials say it is also possible that factions of Lashkar-e-Taiba, which means “army of the pure,” have broken from their onetime handlers and are working more independently, though Indian and Afghan authorities say the focus on Indian targets is being interpreted as a direct challenge from Pakistan.

“Our concern is that there are still players involved that are trying to use Afghanistan’s ground as a place for a proxy war,” said Shaida Abdali, Afghanistan’s deputy national security adviser. “It is being carried out by certain state actors to fight their opponents.”

A number of experts now say Lashkar presents more of a threat in Afghanistan than even Al Qaeda does, because its operatives are from the region, less readily identified and less resented than the Arabs who make up Al Qaeda’s ranks. There were a few Lashkar cells in Afghanistan three or four years ago, but they were not focused on Indian targets and, until recently, their presence seemed to be diminishing.

A recent Pentagon report to Congress on Afghanistan listed Lashkar as one of the major extremist threats here. In Congressional testimony in March by Pakistan experts, the group was described as having ambitions well beyond India.

“They are active now in six or eight provinces” in Afghanistan, said a senior NATO intelligence official who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to speak publicly on the subject.

“They are currently most interested in Indian targets here, but they can readily trade attacks on international targets for money or influence or an alliance with other groups,” he said.

Lashkar’s capabilities, terrorism experts say, have grown in recent years, since the group relocated many of its operations to Pakistan’s tribal areas, where it trades intelligence, training and expertise with other militant groups, including Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the insurgent network run by Siraj Haqqani, also a longtime asset of Pakistan.

“A lot of hard-liners have broken away from LeT and gone to North and South Waziristan,” said a Pakistani intelligence official, using an acronym for Lashkar-e-Taiba. “There are a number of splinter groups that are much more radical. The problem is not LeT per se, it’s the elements of LeT that have broken away and found their place in Waziristan.”

In that lawless expanse on the Afghan border, security officials said, Lashkar could help other militant groups plan complex attacks against Afghan and international targets, possibly in exchange for reconnaissance on Indian targets from its militant allies who have operatives in Afghanistan.

The Indian targets are easy enough to find. Since the overthrow of the Taliban government by American and international forces in 2001, India has poured about a billion dollars’ worth of development aid into Afghanistan, including the construction of the new Afghan Parliament and several major electricity and road projects.

It has also revitalized consulates in four of Afghanistan’s major cities — Herat, Jalalabad, Mazar-i-Sharif and Kandahar — fueling Pakistani fears of encirclement by hostile neighbors and suspicions that India is using Afghanistan as a listening post for intelligence gathering.

“What does an Indian consulate do in Afghanistan when there is no Indian population?” asked a Pakistani intelligence official, who also alleged that the Indians were providing funds, ammunition and explosives to the Pakistani Taliban in the tribal areas, smuggling it through Afghanistan. The Indians dismiss the allegations.

“It’s a matter of faith, that’s fixed in Pakistan’s thinking, that India will take every opportunity to put Pakistan at a disadvantage,” said Marvin Weinbaum, a senior analyst at the Middle East Institute, who testified before Congress in March about the mounting danger posed by Lashkar.

India supported an alliance of fighters in northern Afghanistan against the Taliban when the Taliban — a Pakistan ally — governed Afghanistan, and it maintains close relations with the alliance’s former commanders, Mr. Weinbaum and others noted. The relationship adds to Pakistani fears that India will turn to proxies of its own in Afghanistan once the United States leaves.

Pakistan, meanwhile, has continued to allow Afghan Taliban leaders and other fighters battling NATO forces to base themselves in Pakistan. The intent seems to be to retain ties to those who might one day return to power in Afghanistan or exercise influence there.

One indication of Lashkar’s presence in Afghanistan came on April 8, when a joint American-Afghan Special Operations force killed nine militants and captured one after a firefight in Nangarhar Province, in eastern Afghanistan. All of them were Pakistani and “a concentration of them were LeT,” according to a senior American military official.

Lashkar is believed to have orchestrated the Feb. 26 car bombing and suicide attack on two guesthouses in the heart of Kabul frequented by Indians. An attack on a shopping center and bank in downtown Kabul in January also suggested Lashkar’s influence.

Both attacks bore some resemblance to those in Mumbai. They involved meticulous planning and multiple targets, and in the case of the guesthouses, Indian targets. Also, multiple attackers were coordinated by people outside the country on cellphones during the attacks.

Witnesses told investigators that the attackers at one guesthouse came in shouting, “Where is the head Indian doctor?”

Hanif Atmar, the interior minister who resigned this month, lost three police on the day of that attack. He said at least two of the attackers had been speaking Urdu, a language found in Pakistan and parts of India. “They were not Afghans,” he said.

“What we know for sure is that it was planned, financed, organized, and that people trained for it, outside Afghanistan,” he said. “Over the past six months more than four attacks in Kabul had suicide bombers with telephones that we recovered with active numbers that were from Pakistan.”

Several intelligence experts here said they doubted that Lashkar could have done the guesthouse attack alone. Lashkar operatives would have needed help to get into Afghanistan, a place to stay, weapons, explosive materials, vehicles and an opportunity to carry out reconnaissance on their targets, they noted.

The most likely partner, they said, would have been the Haqqani network, which is based in North Waziristan, has links to Al Qaeda, and is believed to have carried out a number of attacks of its own in Kabul.

Lashkar, in conjunction with Afghan extremist groups, was also believed to be involved in the Oct. 8, 2009, attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul, which killed 17 people, and the Dec. 15 attack in front of the Heetal Hotel, which killed 8. At the time of the hotel attack, nearly two dozen Indian engineers were staying either in the hotel or in a building next door.


Sabrina Tavernise contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan.

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UPDATED ON:
Thursday, June 17, 2010
00:15 Mecca time, 21:15 GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/06/2010616183934278780.html
   
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
 
Taliban 'seize Pakistani troops'  

 
Pakistan said it killed 38 Afghan Taliban fighters in Bajaur district on Wednesday 
 
The Afghan Taliban says it has captured dozens of Pakistani soldiers following an attack on their checkpoint during a cross-border raid.

Athar Abbas, a major general in Pakistan's army, confirmed on Wednesday that 40 frontier corps troops were missing after their post on the border between Pakistan's Mohmand and Bajaur districts was overrun by Afghan Taliban on Monday.

Abbas said the Taliban had handed over five of the soldiers to the Pakistani consulate in Jalalabad, in Afghanistan, but the whereabouts of the other 35 was unknown.

The Pakistani army also said it had killed 38 Afghan Taliban fighters in Bajaur on Wednesday, where commanders had previously said the Taliban were purged.

Officials said 10 soldiers were also killed in the fighting.

Taliban resurgence

"At least 38 militants were killed and 10 soldiers were martyred," Zakir Hussain Afridi, the Bajaur administration chief, told reporters as he showed 18 bodies of fighters in the presence of local forces commanders.

In depth :

-  Video: Taliban vows 'summer offensive'
-  Focus: Afghanistan's governance problem
-  Focus: Making room for the Taliban
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/06/2010616183934278780.html

 
He said security forces destroyed two Taliban hideouts and arrested 23 fighters during the clashes.

Troops mounted another offensive in Bajaur earlier this year and declared the terrain to be free of Taliban in March.

Commanders claimed an earlier victory in February 2009, but violence returned when the military turned its attention to fighting the Taliban in South Waziristan and Swat, also in the northwest.

Pakistani troops have been fighting in Bajaur since August 2008, trying to wipe-out Taliban and al-Qaeda hideouts, but there are indications that the Taliban is trying to make another comeback.
 
 

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South Asia
Jun 18, 2010 
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LF18Df03.html 
 
Pakistan seethes at bad-boy image


By Zahid U Kramet

LAHORE - While Pakistan - and even the Taliban - have reacted angrily to a report that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has "strong" ties to the Taliban in Afghanistan, the sensitive issue highlights Islamabad's growing concerns over losing what has for many years been its key role in Afghanistan as a United States ally.

The London School of Economics (LSE) this weekend released a report that said its research "strongly suggested" that support for the Taliban was the ISI's official policy, adding that the intelligence agency "orchestrates, sustains and strongly influences the [Taliban] movement".

The LSE said that its report, prepared by Matt Waldman, a former Oxfam official, was based on interviews with nine Taliban field commanders in Afghanistan between February and May of this year. The document also claimed that Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari visited senior Taliban prisoners in Pakistan this year and promised their release and help for militant operations.

A spokeswoman for Zardari called the allegations "absolutely spurious" and suggested they were an attempt to derail US-Pakistani strategic talks. Military spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas said, "It's the same old story which provides no credible evidence. It is misleading with malicious intent. We reject it." And Taliban spokesman Mullah Abdus Salam Zaeef called the report "ridiculous and absurd". A senior ISI official simply dismissed it is "rubbish".

An editorial on June 14 by Pakistan's Nation newspaper possibly came closest to the heart of the matter. Under the headline "Pakistan targeted again", it wrote, "There is certainly a double game going on here but it is being played rather skillfully by the US and India with NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] a compliant partner."

In the bloody civil war of the early 1990s that followed the withdrawal of the Soviet Union from Afghanistan, Pakistan saw the emerging Taliban as a key strategic asset against bitter rival India, and it encouraged and nurtured the movement.

When the Taliban took Kabul in 1996, Pakistan was one of only a few countries to recognize the government. Although this support officially ended when the Taliban were driven from power in the US-led invasion in late 2001 and Islamabad signed onto the US's "war on terror", the ties to the Taliban run very deep among sections of the security apparatus.

Footprint in Afghanistan
On Tuesday, two days after the release of the LSE report, America's top commander in Iraq and Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, fainted during a congressional hearing in which he was being questioned by senators about US strategy in Afghanistan.

In particular, he was asked about President Barack Obama's resolve to begin a US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in July 2011. Republican Senator John McCain asked, "When you say that you continue to support the president's policy both in terms of additional troops and also the setting of that date to begin the [troop] reduction, does that represent your best professional judgement?"

Petraeus hesitated before replying in the affirmative and McCain responded that the deadline was "convincing the key actors inside and outside of Afghanistan that the United States is more interested in leaving than succeeding in this conflict".

Pakistan sees itself as one of these key actors. And while it roundly rejects accusations such as those made in the LSE report of direct intervention in the Afghan war, it has repeatedly voiced its concern about the expanded Indian presence in that country.

Islamabad has been concerned over the reluctance of the US to press India to work for a resolution of the Kashmir dispute with Pakistan, and it is also upset that the US signed a civilian nuclear deal with India while refusing to do so with Pakistan.

Ultimately, however, Pakistan remains concerned about the US's seemingly ambivalent policy in the AfPak region, with Under Secretary of State William Burns announcing at a seminar in Washington early this month that the US sees "India's continued involvement in there [Afghanistan] as a key part of that country's success, not part of its problems".

Yet a day later, General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of the US-led NATO troops in Afghanistan, ventured in a "leaked" report, "Increasing Indian influence in Afghanistan is likely to exacerbate tensions and encourage Pakistani counter measures."
Confusion was compounded when Senator John Kerry, chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, reaffirmed in a Times of India article titled "Promoting Strategic Dialogue" that India “will be a defining partnership of the 21st century" to effectively marginalize the significance of Pakistan. [1]

This will not go down well with the Pakistani military, which is still smarting over last year's Kerry Lugar bill that grants Pakistan US$1.5 billion annually for five years. Although it is essentially a non-military aid package granted for Pakistan's efforts in the "war on terror", it imposes some checks on the military. The army's top commanders have officially expressed their "serious concerns" on some of the clauses of the bill that they believe affect national security. The objections center on clauses about the country's nuclear program and suggestions of Pakistan’s support for cross-border militancy.

US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Robert Blake recently made an effort to pacify Pakistan. During a web chat with a confrontational Indian press he reminded that "we [the US] will not be able to succeed without the active support of our friends in Pakistan".

But then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took up the cudgels on India's behalf, again in the Times of India, in a column on June 4 entitled "Partnership of Democracies" in which she wrote, "Through our strategic dialogue, we are expanding our cooperation on global issues on which India can and must play a leading role." [2]

Meanwhile, this month's peace jirga (council) instigated by Afghan President Hamid Karzai ended with a call to "reintegrate" the Taliban (supported by Pakistan initially) into the political system, but it has drawn little water.

A major offensive planned against the Taliban in their strongholds in Kandahar province has been delayed for several months, causing Obama, in an effort to sustain public support for the war in Afghanistan, to give a December deadline to show progress.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates and McChrystal are confident of some success by year's end, but they apparently warned during a closed-door meeting of NATO ministers in Brussels that "gains will not come easily or without high cost".

Karzai's "talking with the Taliban" still appears the best option, but it is clear that this has to be occasioned under the flag of a truce negotiated directly with the Taliban leadership - and this would not go down well in India. Delhi sees the Taliban as a Pakistan by-product and fears integrating them into the Afghan political fold would jeopardize whatever efforts it is willing to make towards Afghanistan's reconstruction.

Still, the news of a trillion dollars of minerals waiting to be tapped in Afghanistan would have whetted the Indian appetite - more so with Afghanistan reportedly having asked Indian companies to prospect and extract minerals such as copper, lithium, iron ore, gold and precious stones. [3]

But herein lies the rub. A New York Times report by Alissa J Rubin warns that the Laskar-e-Taiba, a "Pakistani-based militant group identified with attacks on targets [in India] has expanded its operations in Afghanistan, inflicting casualties on Afghans and Indians alike, setting up training camps, and adding new volatility to relations between India and Pakistan". [4]

The United States needs to accommodate both Pakistan's and India's interests in Afghanistan, while also trying to tame the Taliban. These complex inter-relationships - and ups and downs like the LSE report - make the likelihood of any US withdrawal most unlikely, let alone showing any progress by December.

Note
1. Promoting Strategic Dialogue Times of India, June 2, 2010.
2. Partnership Of Democracies by Hillary Rodham Clinton, Times of India, June 4, 2010.
3. The Pentagon strikes it rich Asia Times Online, June 16, 2010.
4. Militant Group Expands Attacks in Afghanistan New York Times, June 15, 2010.

Zahid U Kramet, a Lahore-based political analyst specializing in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, is the founder of the research and analysis website the Asia Despatch.

 
 
 

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Taliban capture Pakistani troops in raid



UPI

http://uruknet.com/?p=m67108&hd=&size=1&l=e

June 16, 2010

KABUL, Afghanistan, June 16 (UPI) -- The Afghan Taliban say they captured dozens of Pakistani soldiers at their checkpoint in a cross-border raid, a claim confirmed by Pakistan.

Pakistani security sources have verified that some troops are missing, the BBC reported Wednesday.

The Taliban say they have around 40 troops taken in a raid in the Mohmand tribal area Monday.

Officials in Afghanistan reported eight soldiers were handed over to the Pakistani consulate in Jalalabad but the Pakistani army said it could not confirm that.

Taliban raids on border checkpoints are fairly common but it is rare for Pakistani soldiers to be held by the militants in Afghanistan, the BBC said.

A Taliban spokesman said they are holding Pakistani troops on both sides of the border after Monday's attack. He said 30 soldiers were being held in Afghanistan and 10 in Pakistan, the BBC reported.


 

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Saturday, June 19, 2010
11:36 Mecca time, 08:36 GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/06/201061973218311918.html
   
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
 
Pakistan deaths in drone attack 

 
US Predator unmanned drones have been used for missile attacks in Pakistan's northwest [AFP]
 
A missile, suspected to have been fired by an unmanned US drone, is reported to have killed 13 people and wounded seven others after it struck a house in the Mir Ali area of Pakistan's North Waziristan.

Two missiles struck the house in Haider Khel village on Saturday, a Pakistani intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told a Reuters journalist.

The intelligence official initially put the death toll at three, but Noor Mohammad, a local government official, said later in the day that at least 13 people had been killed but their identities were not yet clear.

The US frequently uses missile attacks to hit Taliban and al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan's northwest, especially the tribal regions where many fighters are based.

This year, the vast majority of the missiles have landed in North Waziristan, a segment of the tribal belt that houses several groups of fighters.

Unpopular attacks

Pakistan publicly condemns the attacks as violations of its sovereignty, and the attacks are unpopular among the Pakistani people.

IN DEPTH

-  US to expand Pakistan drone strikes
-  How accurate are US drones?
-  Pakistan drone attack 'kills many'
-  Blog: Return to the Swat Valley
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/06/201061973218311918.html
 
But the Pakistani government is believed to assist in at least some of the missile attacks, although the US does not publicly acknowledge the existence of the covert, CIA-run operation.

In another incident, a roadside bomb in Dera Ismail Khan, which lies near the tribal belt, killed a civilian and wounded eight people, including six policemen.

Aslam Khatak, a police official, said that the attack happened as a police patrol vehicle travelled through the town.

Separately, assailiants opened fire on Saturday on a vehicle carrying Abdul Wahab, an area police chief, in the southwestern city of Quetta.

Hamid Shakeel, another police official, said that Wahab was critically wounded.
 
 

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Unrest in Pakistan: Moving Beyond "the U.S. National Interest"


By Josh Brollier and Kathy Kelly
 
Global Research, June 19, 2010
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19809

WarIsACrime 


“The military is the muscle that protects the ruling elite from the wrath of the people,” says Pakistani political analyst Dr. Mubashir Hassan. “Right now, people are out on the street; blocking roads, attacking railway stations, etc. If you read the papers, it seems as though a general uprising has started all over Pakistan.”

 

Dr. Hassan says that sporadic outbursts of anger in Pakistan won’t coalesce into a people’s revolution anytime soon. The demonstrators are too disorganized. But, the sheer volume of daily protests shows that many sectors of Pakistani society have pressing needs and priorities that do not include enlistment as foot soldiers in a proxy force for the United States’ War on Terror.

 

Dr. Hassan, a co-founder of the People’s Party of Pakistan, is a respected scholar and statesman. Last year, when we met with him, he had just returned from a visit, in the U.S., with Professors Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, his contemporaries in seeking to build just and fair social structures. Last month, in Lahore, he spoke with us about U.S. interference in the region and changing dynamics in Pakistan.

 

A snapshot of unrest in Pakistan offers a framework for outsiders to understand why it is unfair to insist that Pakistan “do more” to fulfill the United States’ vision for fighting extremism. It may also suggest why strong anti-American sentiments prevail, in Pakistan, among the peasantry, the middle class, religious and secular groups, and the highly educated and privileged classes.

 

Throughout the past several months, demonstrators burned tires nearly every day in the streets of Karachi, Rawalpindi, Lahore and other population centers as they voiced their opposition to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and it’s insistence on the implementation of a Value Added Tax (VAT) along with a proposed 11.3 billion dollar bailout package. In a special meeting convened by the Farmers Association of Pakistan, (FAP), participants said that the VAT would “totally kill the farmers and cause irreparable damage to the agriculture sector by making inputs more expensive. This would, in turn, increase the prices of agriculture produce, adding to the miseries of both the farmer and consumer, who are already facing extreme economic depression.”

 

Ashraf Javed, writing for The Nation, reported that economic experts estimated that the IMF and the Pakistani government’s original plan for the VAT would increase the prices of over 122 major categories of items, including food, by at least 15 percent.

 

These proposed policies led to protests by the All Pakistan Organization of Small Traders and Cottage Industries, the Pakistan Muslim League, Jamaat-e-Islami, textile workers, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, and even spawned a nationwide mobile phone boycott. Because of the immense pressure put on the government to reject the VAT, Pakistan decided to postpone implementation of the tax from July to October. The government, under the leadership of the People’s Party of Pakistan, has also come up with plans to incorporate many of the IMF’s demands for the VAT into the General Sales Tax (GST), which already sits at about 16 percent. In response, the IMF has threatened to freeze future disbursements coming to Pakistan if the VAT is not implemented by July 1st along with a “power tariff,” or 6 percent increase in electricity rates.

 

As the IMF and World Bank are insisting on a 6 percent hike in electricity rates, there has been nationwide upheaval over increased “load shedding,” the term for scheduled power outages in Pakistan, which sometimes last for 10-12 hours per day. Protests against the power cuts, often quite militant, have consistently erupted in major cities like Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad. Demonstrators in other provinces and cities including Hyderabad, Multan, Quetta, Bahawalnagar, Sukkur, Badin, Mirpur Khas, Larkana, Thatta and Ghotki, Dera Ismail Khan, Hangu, Kurk, Swat and Muzaffarabad have also registered their outrage. Textile mills, manufacturers, the agricultural sector and traders are among the hardest hit by load shedding which limits the hours of operation, disrupting production and interfering with worker schedules. Protesters have created roadblocks, burned tires, gone on strike and organized massive sit-ins.

 

In Punjab, Pakistan’s most densely populated province, the Tenants Association of Punjab, (AMP), demands “Ownership or Death.” Involving 1 million landless tenants, based in villages stretching over 15 districts, AMP is one of Pakistan’s largest political movements. For ten years, the AMP has struggled to secure ownership rights for poor families that have tilled their land for over four generations.

 

The military is one of the largest landholders in Pakistan, and military agencies such as the Remount Veterinary and Farms Corps (RVFC), Military Seed Corporation, Livestock Agricultural Department and Dairy Farm, and the Seed Research Farm have been claiming ownership and collecting revenue from tenants. The Punjab Board of Revenue has ruled that these military companies have no legal claim to the land or its revenue, but tenants have faced campaigns of intimidation, coercion, cruelty and murder by armed police and paramilitary forces.

 

Led by peasant women organizers, AMP scored a major victory in March, 2010, after staging a long march and sit-in. Thirty-thousand tenants, women and children shut down the Multan-Lahore expressway for over ten hours and succeeded in securing ownership rights from the Government of Punjab. The government agreed that transfer of land ownership was to start with immediate effect and that a committee for monitoring of the process for transfer of land to tenants would include representatives of the Women’s Peasant Society and AMP.

 

While in Islamabad, we spent time with two groups of workers involved in long demonstrations for economic rights. The first was a group of nine men who, for the past month, had been occupying a tent outside the city’s Press Center. They represent 491 former employees of the Federal Bureau of Statistics, all of whom were suddenly fired from their jobs before their contracts were finished. They suspect that their jobs are now being filled with new employees hired on the basis of patronage and not merit. The nine we met with were all college educated and probably considered middle class before they lost their jobs. However, many of them were the sole providers for households ranging from 8-10 in number. The group aims to remain in the streets, in protest, until their jobs are reinstated.

 

The second group of workers we interviewed was from the All Pakistan Clerks Association. The clerks were in their third month of public protest. They had moved, the previous day, to an encampment in front of the parliament where they demanded that Members of Parliament devise a budget that would give the clerks a pay raise proportionate to inflation and commensurate with salaries of the police, army and the judiciary. They explained to us that the army, police and judiciary have received consistent pay raises and healthcare benefits; meanwhile, civil society has been abandoned. One man said, “Our pay only covers utilities. We have no remaining money for health care or education. How can we care for our children?” Solidarity demonstrations with the All Clerks Association occurred across the country and picked up in number and intensity after June 3rd when the police baton charged the clerks and members of United Teachers Association in front of the parliament. The clerks intended to remain in protest until the announcement of the 2010-2011 budget on June 15th.

 

With the announcement by Pakistan's Finance Minister, Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, that the country's defense spending will be raised to more than 5 billion beginning July 1st, a 17 percent increase from last year, it’s unlikely that the clerks will receive the raises and benefits they’ve sought.

 

Since Pakistan’s inception, the military has been a dominant force in running both internal politics and foreign policy. In The State of Martial Rule: The Origins of Pakistan’s Political Economy of Defense, Ayesha Jalal notes that the Pakistani government has faced a menacing set of challenges on the domestic, regional and international fronts that have tipped the balance in favor of the military and civil bureaucracies which were not elected democratically.

 

Additionally, as detailed in a recent report by Amnesty International, residents in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) “continue to be governed by a colonial-era law, the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) of 1901, which denies basic constitutional rights and protections for the residents of FATA, including their rights to political representation, judicial appeal, and freedom from collective punishment.”

 

Pakistan faced a considerable increase in external pressure from the United States after the Iranian revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Pakistan’s greater significance in Western security calculations bolstered Pakistan’s strategic defenses, leading to bloated defense budgets that the country didn’t have the resources and capacity to meet. Pressure to increase military spending and expand military powers “intensified Pakistan’s internal socio-economic and political dilemmas,” Ayesha Jalal writes. “The negative impact of economic policies geared to sustain the needs of defense and requirements of international allies contributed to a wide array of social disaffections.” The pattern has really remained largely the same ever since.

 

During the Bush-Mush years, (President George W. Bush and General Pervez Musharraf headed the U.S. and Pakistan, respectively), the U.S. gave Pakistan 11.9 billion dollars in assistance, 8 billion of which went directly to the military. Now, the Obama Administration is insisting on more military offensives in the northwest parts of the country while Pakistan wrestles with the aftermath of a 2009 military offensive that displaced 3.5 million people, hundreds of thousands of whom still live as refugees. Following the 2009 military operations in Swat and neighboring provinces, the Pakistani armed forces began attacks against alleged militant strongholds in North and South Waziristan, creating new waves of displacement as people were forced to abandon their homes. Continued military operations will require funding, which then diverts needed resources that might otherwise be used to assist remaining refugees, alleviate poverty and reduce wealth disparities.

 

The military operations are taking place in an almost total media vacuum, in an area which Amnesty International has called a “human rights free zone.” Amnesty has documented that over 1,300 civilians were killed in last year’s fighting in northwest Pakistan and that the Pakistani government has indefinitely detained some 2,500 people without bringing any charges against them. Thirteen hundred people killed? That’s nearly as many lives as were lost during the 2008- 2009 Israeli massacre in Gaza, and where is the outcry? 2,500 people detained and likely tortured? Guantanamo has a long way to go to catch up to those statistics. “It's the opposite of enforcing the rule of the law,” says Saman Zia Zarifi, the director of Amnesty Asia-Pacific. “This is moving towards chaos."

 

The U.S. has insisted that Pakistan undertake military offensives that attack their own people. Meanwhile, U.S. drone strikes kill and maim many hundreds of Pakistanis. Exactly how many? It’s difficult to say. “Killing or violating even one person is wrong,” Dr. Hassan advised us. “The use of weapons against non-combatants is wrong.” These wrongs fuel distrust and hatred of the United States across Pakistan.

 

Pakistanis also suffer as a result of U.S. and NATO supply convoys that travel through Pakistan en route to Afghanistan. Just outside Islamabad, on June 8, 2010, militants attacked 50 NATO supply trucks headed for Afghanistan. Seven people were killed and 20 trucks were set ablaze. Just as there is no accountability when the CIA destroys a family home from a drone strike, it is doubtful that the United States offers any compensation to those who are injured or have lost family members as a result of an attack on a supply convoy. In fact, we met a young Afghan man who was hired by NATO as a convoy driver three years ago and who, earlier this year, while driving with a NATO convoy, drove over an Improvised Explosive Device (IED). The explosion shattered his leg. He received no compensation whatsoever from NATO forces.

 

Pakistanis also face increased militant and terrorist attacks in their cities as a result of U.S. policy. Continued U.S. interference serves as a recruitment tool for extremists. Militant and religious organizations train others to attack population centers and marginalized minority groups within Pakistani society. Recently, a Taliban group attacked two Ahmadi mosques in Lahore, killing over 80 people. Obviously, this kind of behavior cannot be attributed solely to the United States, but the U.S. government has to face its history of fostering and arming radical Islamic movements in South Asia when it suited U.S. geo-strategic interest. And after increased U.S. operations in the country since 2004, U.S. policy seems to be intensifying rather than decreasing militancy. Since the Pakistani government’s military offensives in the spring of 2009, launched under great pressure from the United States, hundreds of Pakistani civilians have been killed by retaliatory terror attacks.

 

With 60 million people living in poverty and many more living just above the poverty line, the people of Pakistan have priorities that do not include acting as a proxy to fight U.S. wars against purported terrorists. For many people, including those like Muhammad Akbar, a desperate rickshaw driver who committed suicide on Wednesday due to prolonged financial hardships, these priorities may be simply to put food on the table and to provide for their families. For others, including women’s and minority groups, fighting for their own political and human rights takes precedence.

 

People in the United States wishing to show solidarity with Pakistanis struggling to make ends meet should try to dialogue with Pakistani led grassroots movements. These indigenous efforts hold the keys to reducing poverty, ending discrimination and countering extremism in the region. We should also simplify our lifestyles and consumption patterns to require less of a share in the world’s resources, so that corrupt institutions like the U.S. government and the IMF do not have a pretext or a supposed mandate to continue interfering in the lives of others in order to serve the so-called U.S. “national interest.”

 

We would do well to heed Dr. Mubashir Hassan’s words. “Please leave us to our fate and to our devices,” he requested. “We’ll mess up, but we’ll get there.” He added that in spite of anxieties that his country is unraveling, there is still something hopeful. It’s this: perhaps people will be shown the result of violence and be prepared to believe that war doesn’t solve anything.

 

Joshua Brollier (Joshua@vcnv.org) and Kathy Kelly (Kathy@vcnv.org) are co-coordinators of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. www.vcnv.org
 

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US drones kill hundreds in Pakistan

Sat, 19 Jun 2010 17:03:22 GMT
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=131141&sectionid=351020401 

Latest figures show that US military drone missile attacks in Pakistan have killed nearly four hundred people in 2010, Press TV has learned.

The figure shows an increase in the Pentagon's attacks over the past few months. Overall, 36 strikes have been lunched since January this year, killing at least 390 people.

The latest drone strike, which claimed 15 lives on Saturday, targeted a house in a village near Mir Ali town in North Waziristan.

Washington claims its airstrikes target militant hideouts, but most of the attacks have killed civilians -- since August 2008, such strikes have killed nearly a thousand people in rural areas.

The attacks were initiated under former US President George W. Bush and have escalated under President Barack Obama.

The issue of civilian casualties has strained relations between Islamabad and Washington with the Pakistani government objecting to the attacks.

A United Nations report says the US-operated drone strikes in Pakistan pose a growing challenge to the international rule of law.

JR/MD

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13 killed in US drone attack in Pakistan

Sify

http://uruknet.info/?p=m67190&hd=&size=1&l=e

June 19, 2010

Islamabad: At least 13 people were killed and several injured on Saturday in an air strike by unmanned US drones in Pakistan's restive northwestern tribal region.

A drone fired two missiles at a house in Inzarabad village of North Waziristan mountainous region near Afghanistan border, killing 13 and injuring several others, Geo TV reported quoting sources.

Meanwhile, a roadside bomb killed one person and injured three policemen in Dera Islmail Khan, a northwestern district that borders the tribal district of South Waziristan.

Pakistani militancy spreads to country's heartland

Senior police official Mohammad Aslam Khattak said a police patrol was escorting regional investigation unit chief Mohammad Ashraf when it came under attack. Ashraf and five police guards survived with injuries but his relative Zumard Hussain died, Khattak said.

Ashraf was responsible for interrogating Taliban militants captured by security forces during an ongoing military offensive in South Waziristan.




 

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Pakistan’s slide into total chaos


Zafar Bangash

http://uruknet.info/?p=m67210&hd=&size=1&l=e

June 20, 2010

For nearly 16 hours a day, power (electricity) is out in Pakistan. For those who can afford them, battery-operated units have been installed to produce enough electricity to light a few bulbs and run cooling fans but not air conditioners. In the scorching summer heat of Pakistan, one can imagine the people’s misery. There are no such problems for the elite — civilian and military — who live in their air-conditioned bubbles with an army of servants ready at their command.

But if summer heat were the only challenge facing the people, they would have put up with it. There is rising pollution as a result of millions of vehicles plowing the already congested streets, belching thick smoke; the water is contaminated, food prices are skyrocketing and the gap between the rich and poor is widening. The latest budget estimates, released by finance ministry officials paint a dismal economic picture. The country’s total debt is Rs8.922 trillion ($106 billion) — 59.3% of GDP. This includes $51.5 billion of domestic debt and $54.5 billion in foreign debt. Of the total annual budget, $8.02 billion will go for interest payments and $5.2 billion for defence.

Add to this grim picture the lawlessness that has gripped Pakistan from Karachi to the Khyber Pass, thanks to America’s war on terror that will escalate further following the failed Time Square bomb plot in New York. A Pakistani American, Faisal Shahzad, has been arrested in the case. The US is now demanding that the Pakistani military launch operations in North Waziristan as well, following its murderous rampage through South Waziristan. US drone attacks have escalated killing hundreds of civilians and a few militants. Even if all the militants were guilty, such killings only heighten resentment against the US and its Pakistani agents.

One must look at specific examples to understand how bad the situation has become in Pakistan. Peshawar is the capital of the North West Frontier Province, renamed Pakhtunkhwa-Khyber, a tortuous name even more ridiculous than the old name bequeathed by the British. Every morning, parents run the gauntlet of multiple security checkpoints to get children to school. A journey that normally took 15 minutes now stretches to two hours or more. Once parents reach the school gate, they must leave their children outside; they are not permitted to enter school premises. Children are subjected to body and bag searches. The same routine is repeated in the afternoon. Even getting children to school and back is a battle. There is no guarantee that they will make it safely. Car bombings and other crimes are routine. Prayer is all that keeps them going.

Kidnappings have escalated alarmingly. This is particularly acute in such places as Hangu and Tall. These previously peaceful and serene towns have become safe havens for an assortment of terrorists and kidnappers. Hangu, the birthplace of this writer, is particularly bad because it lies in a valley bordering the tribal area of Orakzai where the Pakistan military is currently engaged in vicious attacks. There are daily announcements of 20 or 30 "militants" killed as a result of aerial bombings or artillery fire. Anyone who is killed by the army is immediately branded a militant, presumably to get some bakhsheesh from the Americans.

Numerous relatives of this writer, both distant and close, have been kidnapped in recent months. Some have been ransomed for millions of rupees thereby bankrupting the family; others have been shot and killed, execution style. Almost everyone who can afford has an armed bodyguard but they are unable to confront the heavily armed kidnappers that attack in large numbers. It is Pakistan’s own Wild West. The government has no writ; it does not even care what happens to the people. All it is concerned about is carrying out America’s orders whose Blackwater mercenaries, now rebranded as Xe Services, continue to indulge in all kinds of criminal activities on Pakistani soil with the connivance of those in power in the country.

In a May 22 speech to military cadets at West Point, US President Barack Obama said: "We need intelligence agencies that work seamlessly with their counterparts to unravel plots that run from the mountains of Pakistan to the streets of our cities." This is the same rhetoric his discredited predecessor used: we attack them "there" before they attack us here. The Western media talk about Obama’s belief in "reconciliation" — through drone attacks and Xe Service mercenaries; the people of Pakistan pay the price.

Some Americans still wonder, why they are hated.

Editorials, Zafar Bangash





 

[bigron]

South Asia
Jun 22, 2010 
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LF22Df01.html 
 
Pakistan might fight - for a price

By Syed Saleem Shahzad

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan's inaction against the network of Jalaluddin and Sirajuddin Haqqani, the most effective of Afghan Taliban groups and which operates out of Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal area, is a constant irritation in relations between Washington and Islamabad, with senior United States military officials even accusing the Pakistanis of having ties with the group.

However, Pakistan has made it clear to Washington through diplomatic channels and most recently during this weekend's visit to Pakistan of US special AfPak envoy Richard Holbrooke that every sacrifice has a price tag. Islamabad argues that if it is to launch a major military offensive in North Waziristan against
militants, including al-Qaeda, the monetary costs will be high, as will the risk of a militant backlash across the country. The war itself could also drag on for many months.

The US is desperate that militant bases in North Waziristan be destroyed as these feed directly into the ever-growing insurgency across the border in Afghanistan. As the Americans see it, without an operation in North Waziristan, the chances of US troops beginning a withdrawal by next summer are slim.

A major offensive against the Taliban in Kandahar province has already been delayed for another few months, in part pending Pakistani action in North Waziristan. All that Islamabad will say is that while it is committed to an operation, it will do so at a date of its convenience.

This is despite the fact that Pakistan's political government and security apparatus are as a whole very much onboard with American policies.

Pakistan's position comes at an awkward time for Washington. Many of its allies in Afghanistan, including Britain and Canada, aim to distance their troops from hot fronts such as Kandahar.

United States Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen has expressed his exasperation; he is one of those to have alleged that Pakistan has ties to Sirajuddin Haqqani.

Before the arrival in Pakistan of Holbrooke, who was accompanied by Under Secretary of Treasury for International Affairs David Lipton, Islamabad had made it clear to Washington that it would need military hardware worth US$2.5 billion to launch an operation in North Waziristan.

Speaking to The Washington Times, Pakistani ambassador in Washington Husain Haqqani said the equipment was needed to take the war against al-Qaeda into the mountains bordering Afghanistan. He said Pakistan required new helicopter gunships, including the Apache-64-D, AH-1W, AH-6 and MD-530 Little Bird.

Haqqani said utility and cargo helicopters such as the UH-60 Black Hawk, the CH-47 D Chinook and the UH-1Y Huey would also be required. He pointed out that Pakistan only had eight second-hand Mi-17 transport helicopters at its disposal. Two separate demands were conveyed to Washington through public forums as American demands for an operation mounted.

On Thursday, the Public Accounts Committee said 170,000 soldiers were deployed on the Afghan border. However, a close friend of army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani, Secretary of Defense Lieutenant General (retired) Syed Athar Ali, told the same meeting that if Coalition Support Fund (CSF) money was not released, the troops at the Afghan border would be pulled back.

Ali added that Pakistan had spent an additional 10 billion rupees (US$117 million) moving the army to the border areas and needed to be compensated for this from the CSF.

Diplomatic contacts tell Asia Times Online that Pakistan has also told Washington that if the Americans want to take surgical strikes against militants like Sirajuddin Haqqani, they can go ahead.

The impasse between Pakistan and the US over North Waziristan comes at a time that both sides are having a rough ride at the hands of insurgents.

A United Nations report released this weekend gave a grim picture of the security situation in Afghanistan, saying roadside bombings - up an "alarming 94% - and assassinations - up 45% - had soared in the first four months of the year.

UN officials said the number of coordinated attacks had also increased, with an average of two per month, about double last year's average. Coalition casualties are rising, with at least 53 troops killed this month, including 34 US service members.

Across the border, despite intense military operations in Orakzai Agency, South Waziristan and Mohmand and Bajaur tribal areas, militants have made a comeback. In the past week, they have attacked military positions in Mohmand and Bajaur. In one unconfirmed incident, reports said several soldiers were killed and 54 others were missing.

Security officials who spoke to Asia Times Online believe that the next few months will be critical for the US if Pakistan does not begin an operation in North Waziristan within a few weeks.

If the North Waziristan operation is delayed for a few more months, it is unlikely the Kandahar offensive will be effective, while the Taliban are strengthening in Helmand and, Kabul and Uruzgan provinces, besides Khost, Paktia and Paktika (bordering North Waziristan and South Waziristan) and Kunar, Nuristan and Nangarhar in the east.

United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is due to visit Pakistan next month for another round of dialogue in which officials are likely to address Pakistan's strategic as well as economic interests. There could be some fiery exchanges.

Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com

 
 
 

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Pakistan ignores US on Iran gas deal

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 06:06:33 GMT
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=131335&sectionid=351020103

 
 The Foreign Minster of Pakistan Shah Mehmood Qureshi


Pakistan's Foreign Minister says his country needs energy, emphasizing that Islamabad will continue a gas pipeline deal with Iran despite sanctions on Tehran.

Shah Mehmood Qureshi told reporters on Sunday that the present government has struck the gas pipeline deal with Iran in view of Pakistan's energy requirements.

"This agreement is in the interest of Pakistan and it will only see its interests and the international laws…… the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline agreement will not come under the ambit of the sanctions on Tehran," he said, a Press TV correspondent reported.

Pakistan's Foreign Minister disclosed that all the different phases of the gas pipeline agreement have been finalized and Islamabad wants it to proceed as planned.

On Sunday, Tehran and Islamabad finished signing a multi-billion-dollar contract, which supplies Pakistan with Iranian natural gas from 2014.

That same day, the US special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, warned Islamabad that a recently signed gas pipeline deal with Iran could run afoul of new sanctions being finalized in the US Congress.

"We cautioned the Pakistanis to try to see what the (Congressional) legislation is, before deciding how to proceed because it would be a disaster if ... we had a situation develop where an agreement was reached which then triggered something under the law," he said.

Under the $7.6 billion deal, the Islamic Republic has agreed to provide 50 million cubic feet of natural gas to Pakistan on a daily basis from mid-2014.

The pipeline will account for 20 percent of the recipient's demands once Iran's giant South Pars gas field is connected with Pakistan's Baluchistan province.

Iran has already constructed more than 900 kilometers of the pipeline, stating that as a country with huge gas reserves, it is capable of guaranteeing global energy security.

The project, which aims to transport gas from Iran to Pakistan through a 2,600-kilometer pipeline, was first advanced in 1994 but has been stalled by a series of disputes between Pakistan and India.

MVZ/TG/MMA

Related Stories:
Pakistan firm on Iran gas deal
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=130482

Iran, Pakistan finalize gas export deal
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=130237

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- Associated Press
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/06/22/pm-defies-warning-says-pakistan-ahead-iran-gas-deal-despite-new-sanctions/

 - June 22, 2010

PM defies US warning, says Pakistan will go ahead with Iran gas deal despite new sanctions

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Defying a warning from Washington, Pakistan's prime minister promised Tuesday to go ahead with a plan to import natural gas from Iran even if the U.S. levies additional sanctions against the Mideast country.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani's comments came two days after the U.S. special envoy to Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, cautioned Pakistan not to "overcommit" itself to the deal because it could run afoul of new sanctions against Iran being finalized by Congress.

The deal has been a constant source of tension between the two countries, with Pakistan arguing that it is vital to its ability to cope with an energy crisis and the U.S. stressing that it would undercut international pressure on Iran over its nuclear program.

Gilani said Pakistan would reconsider the deal if it violated U.N. sanctions, but the country was "not bound to follow" unilateral U.S. measures. He said media reports that quoted him as saying that Pakistan would heed Holbrooke's warning were incorrect.

The U.N. has levied four sets of sanctions against Iran for failing to suspend uranium enrichment, a process that can produce fuel for a nuclear weapon. The latest set of U.N. sanctions was approved earlier this month.

The U.S. has also applied a number of unilateral sanctions against Iran, and Congress is currently finalizing a new set largely aimed at the country's petroleum industry. Both houses have passed versions of the sanctions and are working to reconcile their differences.

Pakistan and Iran finalized the gas deal earlier this month. Under the contract, Iran will export 760 million cubic feet (21.5 million cubic meters) of gas per day to Pakistan through a new pipeline beginning in 2014. The construction of the pipeline is estimated to cost some $7 billion.

While U.S. officials have expressed opposition to the Pakistan-Iran gas pipeline deal, the issue is complicated by Washington's reliance on Pakistan's cooperation to fight al-Qaida and the Taliban.

The U.S. also acknowledges that Pakistan faces a severe energy crisis and has made aid to the energy sector one of its top development priorities. Electricity shortages in Pakistan cause rolling blackouts that affect businesses and intensify suffering during the hot summer months.

___

Associated Press writer Munir Ahmed contributed to this report.

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Unrest in Pakistan: Moving Beyond U.S. National Interest


by Joshua Brollier and Kathy Kelly
Posted: June 21, 2010 12:29 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joshua-brollier/unrest-in-pakistan-moving_b_619629.html


"The military is the muscle that protects the ruling elite from the wrath of the people," says Pakistani political analyst Dr. Mubashir Hassan. "Right now, people are out on the street; blocking roads, attacking railway stations, etc. If you read the papers, it seems as though a general uprising has started all over Pakistan."

Dr. Hassan says that sporadic outbursts of anger in Pakistan won't coalesce into a people's revolution anytime soon. The demonstrators are too disorganized. But, the sheer volume of daily protests shows that many sectors of Pakistani society have pressing needs and priorities that do not include enlistment as foot soldiers in a proxy force for the United States' War on Terror.

Dr. Hassan, a co-founder of the People's Party of Pakistan, is a respected scholar and statesman. Last year, when we met with him, he had just returned from a visit, in the U.S., with Professors Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, his contemporaries in seeking to build just and fair social structures. Last month, in Lahore, he spoke with us about U.S. interference in the region and changing dynamics in Pakistan.

A snapshot of unrest in Pakistan offers a framework for outsiders to understand why it is unfair to insist that Pakistan "do more" to fulfill the United States' vision for fighting extremism. It may also suggest why strong anti-American sentiments prevail, in Pakistan, among the peasantry, the middle class, religious and secular groups, and the highly educated and privileged classes.

Throughout the past several months, demonstrators burned tires nearly every day in the streets of Karachi, Rawalpindi, Lahore and other population centers as they voiced their opposition to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and it's insistence on the implementation of a Value Added Tax (VAT) along with a proposed 11.3 billion dollar bailout package. In a special meeting convened by the Farmers Association of Pakistan, (FAP), participants said that the VAT would "totally kill the farmers and cause irreparable damage to the agriculture sector by making inputs more expensive. This would, in turn, increase the prices of agriculture produce, adding to the miseries of both the farmer and consumer, who are already facing extreme economic depression."



Ashraf Javed, writing for The Nation, reported that economic experts estimated that the IMF and the Pakistani government's original plan for the VAT would increase the prices of over 122 major categories of items, including food, by at least 15 percent.

These proposed policies led to protests by the All Pakistan Organization of Small Traders and Cottage Industries, the Pakistan Muslim League, Jamaat-e-Islami, textile workers, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, and even spawned a nationwide mobile phone boycott. Because of the immense pressure put on the government to reject the VAT, Pakistan decided to postpone implementation of the tax from July to October. The government, under the leadership of the People's Party of Pakistan, has also come up with plans to incorporate many of the IMF's demands for the VAT into the General Sales Tax (GST), which already sits at about 16 percent. In response, the IMF has threatened to freeze future disbursements coming to Pakistan if the VAT is not implemented by July 1st along with a "power tariff," or 6 percent increase in electricity rates.

As the IMF and World Bank are insisting on a 6 percent hike in electricity rates, there has been nationwide upheaval over increased "load shedding," the term for scheduled power outages in Pakistan, which sometimes last for 10-12 hours per day. Protests against the power cuts, often quite militant, have consistently erupted in major cities like Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad. Demonstrators in other provinces and cities including Hyderabad, Multan, Quetta, Bahawalnagar, Sukkur, Badin, Mirpur Khas, Larkana, Thatta and Ghotki, Dera Ismail Khan, Hangu, Kurk, Swat and Muzaffarabad have also registered their outrage. Textile mills, manufacturers, the agricultural sector and traders are among the hardest hit by load shedding which limits the hours of operation, disrupting production and interfering with worker schedules. Protesters have created roadblocks, burned tires, gone on strike and organized massive sit-ins.

In Punjab, Pakistan's most densely populated province, the Tenants Association of Punjab, (AMP), demands "Ownership or Death." Involving 1 million landless tenants, based in villages stretching over 15 districts, AMP is one of Pakistan's largest political movements. For ten years, the AMP has struggled to secure ownership rights for poor families that have tilled their land for over four generations.

The military is one of the largest landholders in Pakistan, and military agencies such as the

Remount Veterinary and Farms Corps (RVFC), Military Seed Corporation, Livestock Agricultural Department and Dairy Farm, and the Seed Research Farm have been claiming ownership and collecting revenue from tenants. The Punjab Board of Revenue has ruled that these military companies have no legal claim to the land or its revenue, but tenants have faced campaigns of intimidation, coercion, cruelty and murder by armed police and paramilitary forces.

Led by peasant women organizers, AMP scored a major victory in March, 2010, after staging a long march and sit-in. Thirty-thousand tenants, women and children shut down the Multan-Lahore expressway for over ten hours and succeeded in securing ownership rights from the Government of Punjab. The government agreed that transfer of land ownership was to start with immediate effect and that a committee for monitoring of the process for transfer of land to tenants would include representatives of the Women's Peasant Society and AMP.

While in Islamabad, we spent time with two groups of workers involved in long demonstrations for economic rights. The first was a group of nine men who, for the past month, had been occupying a tent outside the city's Press Center. They represent 491 former employees of the Federal Bureau of Statistics, all of whom were suddenly fired from their jobs before their contracts were finished. They suspect that their jobs are now being filled with new employees hired on the basis of patronage and not merit. The nine we met with were all college educated and probably considered middle class before they lost their jobs. However, many of them were the sole providers for households ranging from 8-10 in number. The group aims to remain in the streets, in protest, until their jobs are reinstated.

The second group of workers we interviewed was from the All Pakistan Clerks Association. The clerks were in their third month of public protest. They had moved, the previous day, to an encampment in front of the parliament where they demanded that Members of Parliament devise a budget that would give the clerks a pay raise proportionate to inflation and commensurate with salaries of the police, army and the judiciary. They explained to us that the army, police and judiciary have received consistent pay raises and healthcare benefits; meanwhile, civil society has been abandoned. One man said, "Our pay only covers utilities. We have no remaining money for health care or education. How can we care for our children?" Solidarity demonstrations with the All Clerks Association occurred across the country and picked up in number and intensity after June 3rd when the police baton charged the clerks and members of United Teachers Association in front of the parliament. The clerks intended to remain in protest until the announcement of the 2010-2011 budget on June 15th.

With the announcement by Pakistan's Finance Minister, Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, that the country's defense spending will be raised to more than 5 billion beginning July 1st, a 17 percent increase from last year, it's unlikely that the clerks will receive the raises and benefits they've sought.

Since Pakistan's inception, the military has been a dominant force in running both internal politics and foreign policy. In The State of Martial Rule: The Origins of Pakistan's Political Economy of Defense, Ayesha Jalal notes that the Pakistani government has faced a menacing set of challenges on the domestic, regional and international fronts that have tipped the balance in favor of the military and civil bureaucracies which were not elected democratically.

Additionally, as detailed in a recent report by Amnesty International, residents in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) "continue to be governed by a colonial-era law, the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) of 1901, which denies basic constitutional rights and protections for the residents of FATA, including their rights to political representation, judicial appeal, and freedom from collective punishment."

Pakistan faced a considerable increase in external pressure from the United States after the Iranian revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Pakistan's greater significance in Western security calculations bolstered Pakistan's strategic defenses, leading to bloated defense budgets that the country didn't have the resources and capacity to meet. Pressure to increase military spending and expand military powers "intensified Pakistan's internal socio-economic and political dilemmas," Ayesha Jalal writes. "The negative impact of economic policies geared to sustain the needs of defense and requirements of international allies contributed to a wide array of social disaffections." The pattern has really remained largely the same ever since.

During the Bush-Mush years, (President George W. Bush and General Pervez Musharraf headed the U.S. and Pakistan, respectively), the U.S. gave Pakistan 11.9 billion dollars in assistance, 8 billion of which went directly to the military. Now, the Obama Administration is insisting on more military offensives in the northwest parts of the country while Pakistan wrestles with the aftermath of a 2009 military offensive that displaced 3.5 million people, hundreds of thousands of whom still live as refugees. Following the 2009 military operations in Swat and neighboring provinces, the Pakistani armed forces began attacks against alleged militant strongholds in North and South Waziristan, creating new waves of displacement as people were forced to abandon their homes. Continued military operations will require funding, which then diverts needed resources that might otherwise be used to assist remaining refugees, alleviate poverty and reduce wealth disparities.



The military operations are taking place in an almost total media vacuum, in an area which Amnesty International has called a "human rights free zone." Amnesty has documented that over 1,300 civilians were killed in last year's fighting in northwest Pakistan and that the Pakistani government has indefinitely detained some 2,500 people without bringing any charges against them. Thirteen hundred people killed? That's nearly as many lives as were lost during the 2008- 2009 Israeli massacre in Gaza, and where is the outcry? 2,500 people detained and likely tortured? Guantanamo has a long way to go to catch up to those statistics. "It's the opposite of enforcing the rule of the law," says Saman Zia Zarifi, the director of Amnesty Asia-Pacific. "This is moving towards chaos."

The U.S. has insisted that Pakistan undertake military offensives that attack their own people. Meanwhile, U.S. drone strikes kill and maim many hundreds of Pakistanis. Exactly how many? It's difficult to say. "Killing or violating even one person is wrong," Dr. Hassan advised us. "The use of weapons against non-combatants is wrong." These wrongs fuel distrust and hatred of the United States across Pakistan.

Pakistanis also suffer as a result of U.S. and NATO supply convoys that travel through Pakistan en route to Afghanistan. Just outside Islamabad, on June 8, 2010, militants attacked 50 NATO supply trucks headed for Afghanistan. Seven people were killed and 20 trucks were set ablaze. Just as there is no accountability when the CIA destroys a family home from a drone strike, it is doubtful that the United States offers any compensation to those who are injured or have lost family members as a result of an attack on a supply convoy. In fact, we met a young Afghan man who was hired by NATO as a convoy driver three years ago and who, earlier this year, while driving with a NATO convoy, drove over an Improvised Explosive Device (IED). The explosion shattered his leg. He received no compensation whatsoever from NATO forces.

Pakistanis also face increased militant and terrorist attacks in their cities as a result of U.S. policy. Continued U.S. interference serves as a recruitment tool for extremists. Militant and religious organizations train others to attack population centers and marginalized minority groups within Pakistani society. Recently, a Taliban group attacked two Ahmadi mosques in Lahore, killing over 80 people. Obviously, this kind of behavior cannot be attributed solely to the United States, but the U.S. government has to face its history of fostering and arming radical Islamic movements in South Asia when it suited U.S. geo-strategic interest. And after increased U.S. operations in the country since 2004, U.S. policy seems to be intensifying rather than decreasing militancy. Since the Pakistani government's military offensives in the spring of 2009, launched under great pressure from the United States, hundreds of Pakistani civilians have been killed by retaliatory terror attacks.

With 60 million people living in poverty and many more living just above the poverty line, the people of Pakistan have priorities that do not include acting as a proxy to fight U.S. wars against purported terrorists. For many people, including those like Muhammad Akbar, a desperate rickshaw driver who committed suicide on Wednesday due to prolonged financial hardships, these priorities may be simply to put food on the table and to provide for their families. For others, including women's and minority groups, fighting for their own political and human rights takes precedence.

People in the United States wishing to show solidarity with Pakistanis struggling to make ends meet should try to dialogue with Pakistani led grassroots movements. These indigenous efforts hold the keys to reducing poverty, ending discrimination and countering extremism in the region. We should also simplify our lifestyles and consumption patterns to require less of a share in the world's resources, so that corrupt institutions like the U.S. government and the IMF do not have a pretext or a supposed mandate to continue interfering in the lives of others in order to serve the so-called U.S. "national interest."

We would do well to heed Dr. Mubashir Hassan's words. "Please leave us to our fate and to our devices," he requested. "We'll mess up, but we'll get there." He added that in spite of anxieties that his country is unraveling, there is still something hopeful. It's this: perhaps people will be shown the result of violence and be prepared to believe that war doesn't solve anything.

Joshua Brollier (Joshua@vcnv.org) and Kathy Kelly (Kathy@vcnv.org) are co-coordinators of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. www.vcnv.org

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Taliban Threatens to Execute Captured Pakistani Soldiers

Group Believed to Hold 33 Soldiers

by Jason Ditz, June 22, 2010
http://news.antiwar.com/2010/06/22/taliban-threatens-to-execute-captured-pakistani-soldiers/


A Taliban spokesman today warned the Pakistani government that they must release a number of detained Taliban members from prison, otherwise they would execute the large number of soldiers captured last week.

Afghan Taliban forces attacked a Pakistani military checkpoint last week in a cross-border raid and were said to have captured around 40 troops. A handful of the soldiers were eventually recovered in Afghanistan, but as many as 33 are believed to still be in insurgent custody.

The troops were members of the paramilitary Frontier Corps and were captured in the Shonkarai district, Mohmand Agency. Some of the captives were reportedly kept inside Pakistan, while the majority were taken across the border into Afghanistan.

Though it has been rare for the Afghan Taliban to clash directly with Pakistani forces, it has happened several times in the past two weeks, reportedly after Pakistani soldiers mistakenly strayed across the border, sparking a gunbattle in Kunar Province.

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Pakistan to go ahead with Iran gas deal

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 06:20:38 GMT
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=131784&sectionid=351020103

   
 
Pakistan has brushed aside the unilateral US sanctions against Iran, saying it will go ahead with the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project as planned.

"We could start the project as soon as possible to meet the energy crisis which the country faces," a Press TV correspondent reported Pakistan's Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit as saying on Wednesday.

Basit added that measures were underway by the Pakistani government to start implementing the multi-billion-dollar contract on the import of natural gas from Iran in 2014.

The comments come days after Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi announced the sealing of a deal between Islamabad and Tehran in view of Pakistan's growing energy needs.

"This agreement is in the interest of Pakistan and it will only see its interests and the international laws…… the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline agreement will not come under the ambit of the sanctions on Tehran," Qureshi said on Monday.

Earlier in the week, the US special envoy to Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, warned Pakistan not to "over-commit" itself to the deal as it comes in violation of new US-adopted sanctions against the Islamic Republic which target the Iranian energy sector.

Iran, however, has completed the construction of more than a third of the 2,600-kilometer gas pipeline, which is estimated to cost $7 billion.

Under the deal, Iran will supply its southeastern neighbor with 760 million cubic feet (21.5 million cubic meters) of gas per day, which amounts to 20 percent of the recipient's demands.

GHN/CS/HRF

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Militants target NATO trucks in Pakistan

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 16:51:33 GMT
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=131986&sectionid=351020401

 
Pro-Taliban militants carry out frequent attacks on NATO trucks


A roadside bomb attack in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP) has destroyed two trucks carrying fuel to neighboring Afghanistan for NATO forces stationed there.

Several other vehicles were badly damaged in the attack that took place outside the northwestern city of Peshawar on Friday.

Police officials told Press TV that NATO fuel tankers caught fire during the attack. There were no immediate reports of casualties or injuries.

The incident comes days after Pro-Taliban militants near Islamabad attacked nearly 50 NATO vehicles carrying supplies for the US-led troops in neighboring Afghanistan.

Trucks carrying supplies for foreign forces in Afghanistan frequently come under attack in Pakistan.

Pakistan's lawless tribal belt on the Afghan border remains a safe haven for militants, who have fled the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

The Pakistani military has recently launched a series of operations in an effort to clear the troubled tribal zone of militants.

The bombing shows that militants are still active in the region despite army offensives aimed at eliminating their hideouts.

A new wave of violence has undermined security in the country. Nearly 4,000 people have been killed in militant attacks throughout Pakistan since July 2007.

JR/MMN

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US delivers new F-16s to Pakistan

Sat, 26 Jun 2010 12:17:50 GMT
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=132071&sectionid=351020401

 
The US has delivered the first batch of eighteen F-16 Fighting Falcon jet fighters, branded new, to Pakistan as the two countries strengthen their military ties.

According to the US Department of Defense, three F-16s were scheduled to arrive in Pakistan on Saturday. Fifteen more will be delivered later in 2010 and 2011.

"This is the most visible part of a strong and growing relationship between the two air forces that will benefit us both near-term and long-term," the department's website quoted as saying Air Force Maj. Todd Robbins, a senior official coordinating military ties between Washington and Islamabad.

Pakistan is paying $1.4 billion for the new aircraft, in addition to $1.3 billion in upgrades to its existing F-16 fleet.

Delivery of F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan was troubled in 1990 when the White House imposed sanctions on the country for its pursuit of nuclear arms. The sanctions failed to stop Islamabad.

Washington was previously opposed to the deal, citing high tensions between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan in the volatile South Asian region.

The US says the aircraft will give the Pakistani Air Force an advantage against militancy. The new fighter is reportedly able to target precisely in all weather conditions, day and night.

The developments come at a time when the Pakistani military says it has launched a series of operations against Pakistani militants.

Pakistan's lawless tribal belt on the Afghan border remains a safe haven for militants, who have fled the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

Pakistan has suffered a wave of violence since the former military ruler Pervez Musharraf joined the US-led war on terror following the 9/11 attacks.

JR/MD

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Monday, June 28, 2010
14:45 Mecca time, 11:45 GMT   
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/06/201062874240783274.html
 
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA 
 
Many dead in Pakistan lorry blast 

 
The blast in the Hala Naka area destroyed around a dozen vehicles and at least 10 shops [Reuters]


At least 18 people have been killed in a lorry blast in the southern Pakistani city of Hyderabad.

But police said Monday's explosion was most likely an accident.

Sources told Al Jazeera a gas cylinder at a nearby shop exploded, which in turn triggered an explosion in the lorry in the Hala Naka area.

Mohammad Ali Baloch, a senior police official, said at least 40 people had been injured when the lorry containing chemicals that was parked near a scrapyard, exploded.

The lorry was parked at a stop on the outskirts of Hyderabad, 160km north of Karachi, Pakistan's commercial capital.

The blast destroyed around a dozen vehicles and at least 10 shops.

Nawaz Abbasi, a medical superintendent at the city's Liaqat University Hospital, said his hospital had received 14 bodies, and at least 30 people wounded.

Fayyaz Leghari, a senior police officer, told the Reuters news agency no evidence suggesting it was a bomb or a suicide attack was found.

Pakistan has been hit hard by sporadic violence in recent months as it fights Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in the northwest.

In the latest clash of its kind, security forces in the northwestern Orakzai region killed 12 fighters after their checkpoint came under attack, a government official said.

Two soldiers were wounded in the gun battle.

No independent verification of official figures of casualties was available.
 
 

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U.S. Un-manned drone attacks killing civilians are extra-judicial killings –UN report

by Daya Gamage

http://uruknet.info/?p=m67392&hd=&size=1&l=e

June 26, 2010

Washington, D.C. 27 June (Asiantribune.com): "Targeted killings pose a rapidly growing challenge to the international rule of law. They are increasingly used in circumstances which violate the relevant rules of international law. The international community needs to be more forceful in demanding accountability," said Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions.

In a 29-page report to the United Nations Human Rights Council presented early June, the official, Philip Alston, the United Nations special representative on extrajudicial executions, called on the United States to exercise greater restraint in its use of drones in places like Pakistan and Yemen, outside the war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"I’m particularly concerned that the United States seems oblivious to this fact when it asserts an ever-expanding entitlement for itself to target individuals across the globe," Mr. Alston said in an accompanying statement. "But this strongly asserted but ill-defined license to kill withoutaccountability is not an entitlement which the United States or other states can have without doing grave damage to the rules designed to protect the right to life and prevent extrajudicial executions."

The report calls on nations like Pakistan to publicly disclose the scope and limits of any permission granted for drone strikes on their territories. It also calls on drone operators like the United States to disclose the legal justification for such killings, the criteria and safeguards used when selecting targets, and the process for investigating attacks that kill civilians.

In an earlier report by Asian Tribune Harold Koh Obama administration’s chief legal counsel in the State Department outlining the administration’s legal rationale said the United States obeyed legal limits on the use of force when selecting targets, and he defended drone killings as lawful because of the armed conflict with Al Qaeda and because of the nation’s right to self-defense.

"A state that is engaged in an armed conflict or in legitimate self-defense is not required to provide targets with legal process before the state may use lethal force," he said. "Our procedures and practices for identifying lawful targets are extremely robust, and advanced technologies have helped to make our targeting even more precise."

The Alston report however said that a targeted killing outside of an armed conflict "is almost never likely to be legal." In particular, it rejected "pre-emptive self-defense" as a justification for killing terrorism suspects far from combat zones.

"This expansive and open-ended interpretation of the right to self-defense goes a long way towards destroying the prohibition on the use of armed force contained in the U.N. Charter," Mr. Alston said. "If invoked by other states, in pursuit of those they deem to be terrorists and to have attacked them, it would cause chaos."

The report also raised concerns that drone operators might not have the same respect for the laws of war as soldiers in the field who have "been subjected to the risks and rigors of battle."

"Because operators are based thousands of miles away from the battlefield, and undertake operations entirely through computer screens and remote audio-feed, there is a risk of developing a 'PlayStation’ mentality to killing," it said.

The report identifies two major problems: the excessively broad circumstances in which targeted killings are alleged to be legal, and the absence of essentialaccountability mechanisms in situations where they are used.

"In terms of the first problem, there are indeed circumstances in which targeted killings may be legal", Alston noted. "They are permitted in armed conflict situations when used against combatants or fighters, or civilians who directly engage in combat-like activities. But they are increasingly being used far from any battle zone. TheUnited States, in particular , has put forward a novel theory that there is a 'law of 9/11’ that enables it to legally use force in the territory of other States as part of its inherent right to self-defense on the basis that it is in an armed conflict with al-Qaeda, the Taliban and 'associated forces’, although the latter group is fluid and undefined. This expansive and open-ended interpretation of the right to self-defense goes a long way towards destroying the prohibition on the use of armed force contained in the UN Charter. If invoked by other States, in pursuit of those they deem to be terrorists and to have attacked them, it would cause chaos."

Alston emphasized that "I do not for a moment question the seriousness of the challenges posed by terrorism. I condemn wholeheartedly the actions of al-Qaeda and all other groups that kill innocent civilians, as well as any groups that increase the danger of attacks on civilians by hiding in their midst. These actions unequivocally violate international law. But the fact that such enemies do not play by the rules does not mean that a Government can cast those rules aside or unilaterally re-interpret them. The credibility of any government’s claim that it is fighting to uphold the rule of law depends on its willingness to disclose how it interprets and applies the law – and the actions it takes when the law is broken."

In terms of the second problem – accountability – Alston observed that "it is an essential requirement of international law that States using targeted killings demonstrate that they are complying with the various rules governing their use in situations of armed conflict. The clearest challenge to this principal today comes from the program operated by the US Central Intelligence Agency in which targeted killings are carried out from unmanned aerial vehicles or drones. It is clear that many hundreds of people have been killed as a result, and that this number includes some innocent civilians. Because this program remains shrouded in official secrecy, the international community does not know when and where the CIA is authorized to kill, the criteria for individuals who may be killed, how it ensures killings are legal, and what follow-up there is when civilians are illegally killed. In a situation in which there is no disclosure of who has been killed, for what reason, and whether innocent civilians have died, the legal principle of internationalaccountability is, by definition, comprehensively violated."

Among the issues addressed in Alston’s report are: the legality of targeted killings under the laws of war, international human rights law, and the law applicable when States invoke their right to self-defence; the definition and scope of armed conflicts in which the laws of war apply; the definition of who may be targeted and killed, when, and by whom, in the context of armed conflict; the rules governing the amount of force that may be used; thelegality of drone killings in particular, and the international law requirements of transparency and accountability.

The report noted: "Reported targeted killings by the CIA have given rise to a debate over whether it is a violation of IHL for such killings to be committed by State agents who are not members of its armed forces. Some commentators have argued that CIA personnel who conduct targeted drone killings are committing war crimes because they, unlike the military, are "unlawful combatants", and unable to participate in hostilities. This argument is not supported by IHL. As a threshold matter, the argument assumes that targeted killings by the CIA are committed in the context of armed conflict, which may not be the case.

Outside of armed conflict, killings by the CIA would constitute extrajudicial executions assuming that they do not comply with human rights law. If so, they must be investigated and prosecuted both by the US and the State in which the wrongful killing occurred."

Philip Alston is John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law and co-Director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University School of Law.

He was appointed UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions in 2004 and reports to the United Nations Human Rights Council and the General Assembly. He has had extensive experience in the human rights field, including eight years as Chairperson of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, principal legal adviser to UNICEF in the drafting of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and Special Adviser to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

- Asian Tribune -




 

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US drone strike kills 6 in Pakistan

Sun, 27 Jun 2010 14:30:51 GMT
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=132253

Another deadly US drone attack has killed at least six people and injured several others in the troubled northwestern Pakistan, officials say.

The pilot-less aircraft fired two missiles in the northwestern tribal areas in North Waziristan.

A local administration official confirmed the attack and said the death toll is expected to rise.

The figure shows an increase in US drone attacks over the past few months.

The attacks were initiated under former US President George W. Bush and have escalated under President Barack Obama.

Washington claims its airstrikes target militant hideouts though most of the attacks have killed civilians. Since August 2008, such strikes have killed nearly a thousand people in tribal areas.

The Long War Journal, a US website tracking the strikes also insisted in January that the assaults have killed mostly civilians and have failed to target top militant leaders.

Islamabad has repeatedly condemned the strikes as violations of Pakistan's sovereignty. The issue of civilian casualties has strained relations between Islamabad and Washington with the Pakistani government objecting to the attacks.

A United Nations report says the US-operated drone strikes in Pakistan pose a growing challenge to the international rule of law.

JR/MB

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South Asia
Jun 30, 2010 
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LF30Df03.html 
 
Explosive mood in Pakistan

By Syed Saleem Shahzad

ISLAMABAD - Pakistani security agencies over the past few days have seized 28,000 kilograms of explosives in the city of Lahore, as well as anti-aircraft guns, rocket-propelled grenades, small arms and ammunition and suicide vests, a well-placed senior security official has told Asia Times Online.

The crackdown in the capital of Punjab province undoubtedly prevented another attack by al-Qaeda - there have been several over the past few years - and the opening up of a battle front in the city. However, the security official warned that al-Qaeda-linked militant attacks were still expected "from the southern port city of Karachi to the tribal areas".

Pakistan is regularly a victim of militant attacks, but the focus of al-Qaeda and its allies until now has primarily been on the supply lines of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that pass through Pakistan and on the Taliban-led insurgency across the border in Afghanistan.

A possible intensification of attacks across Pakistan comes at a critical time for the United States as it struggles to find a breakthrough in the nearly nine-year-old war in Afghanistan, especially ahead of mid-term elections in November in the US, where the war is becoming increasingly unpopular.

Pakistan is a crucial factor in any decision Washington makes over Afghanistan. Any US efforts to engage the Taliban and get them to join a reconciliation process with the Afghan government will require Pakistani assistance. Similarly, the US needs Pakistan to crack down on militant bases that feed into the insurgency, notably in the North Waziristan tribal area that borders Afghanistan, which also serves as the global headquarter of al-Qaeda's operations.

The key figure in Pakistan in terms of the US's war efforts is Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani, who is scheduled to retire this November. To date Pakistan's Washington-backed government has shown no sign of seeking an extension for him. Under Kiani the military apparatus has worked hard to solicit the Afghan Taliban for a basic level of reconciliation. Plans are in place for an operation in North Waziristan, but Kiani has indicated that he will decide when to go ahead, if at all.

Western media have exaggerated apparent relations between Afghan commander Sirajuddin Haqqani and the Pakistan military. For once, however, the military is pleased as this is the kind of influential role that Pakistan wants to play in Afghanistan in the future. Sirajuddin Haqqani is the son of Jalaluddin Haqqani, the famed mujahideen commander who fought against the Soviets. The Haqqani network, which has a base in North Waziristan, is one of the most powerful insurgent groups in Afghanistan.

Sirajuddin Haqqani has acquired huge influence over the past few years in the Afghan provinces of Ghazni, Khost, Paktia and Paktika. He has also fully supported attacks co-ordinated and facilitated by al-Qaeda, such as the ones in Kabul and on Bagram air base this year.

While he travels extensively in Afghanistan, North Waziristan is still his strategic backyard, and here he is completely dependent on al-Qaeda or al-Qaeda-inspired groups. For this reason he contributed to the anti-Shi'ite attacks in Kurram Agency in 2007 and he has sent his men to support local Sunni militias. During the military offensive in 2009 against militants in South Waziristan, Sirajuddin Haqqani provided sanctuary to escaping Mehsud militants.

However, while Sirajuddin Haqqani is al-Qaeda's asset, his ailing father Jalaluddin is somewhat different as he has long-standing friendships with several Pashtu-speaking officers who are now high-ranking.

After September 11, 2001, when Pakistan had joined the US's "war on terror", Jalaluddin was invited a few times to Islamabad to get him to separate from the Taliban. He was not a part of the original Taliban movement but he unconditionally surrendered and supported the Taliban when they emerged in the mid-1990s and then took power in Kabul in 1996. He led his own faction as a "moderate" Taliban.

Pakistani officials assured Jalaluddin that he could become prime minister - or even president - in the new Afghanistan following the Taliban's ouster in late 2001. He refused outright, saying he was still loyal to Taliban leader Mullah Omar. If Jalaluddin were to separate from Mullah Omar, it would jolt the Taliban movement, but it would also cost him his command in several Afghan provinces. Further, he would lose his al-Qaeda-supported base in North Waziristan and within months he would be yesterday's man.
In the year 2010, Jalaluddin's stance remains the same, as does the position of his son Sirajuddin.

As it scrambles for solutions, Washington has encouraged Afghan President Hamid Karzai in his dealings with the Pakistani security apparatus to strike deals with the Taliban in Pashtun-dominated southern Afghanistan.

Karzai has called for the delisting of some Taliban from a United Nations terror list and has released hundreds of Taliban and people linked to the Hezb-e-Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. He also booted out two prominent anti-Pakistan figures, including the head of the National Directorate of Security, Amrullah Saleh. He was a senior figure in the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance that helped the US oust the Taliban regime in 2001. Also sacked was interior minister Hanif Atmar, who as a young man served in Afghanistan's communist-era intelligence agency and fought mujahideen opposed to the Soviet occupation.

"This decision leaves Hamid Karzai under a serious security threat," a former Afghan general who served with the communists as well as with the mujahideen against the Soviets told Asia Times Online on the condition of anonymity. "His overtures with Pakistan are unlikely to bear fruit in terms of a breakthrough with the Taliban, but now he keeps up the hostility level with the northern Afghan militant factions who have encircled him deeply inside Kabul."

In the mean time, a large terror attack could once again change the dynamics of the region, whether it took place in Afghanistan, Pakistan or even India.

Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com

 
 
 

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Intel: Suspected US missiles kill 10 in Pakistan

Officials say suspected US strike kills 10, including possible al-Qaida operative, in Pakistan

HUSSAIN AFZAL
AP News
http://wire.antiwar.com/2010/06/29/intel-suspected-us-missiles-kill-10-in-pakistan/

Jun 29, 2010 06:50 EDT

Suspected U.S. missiles hit a house Tuesday in a Pakistani tribal region along the Afghan border where the army has been battling Taliban fighters, intelligence officials said. At least 10 suspected militants were killed, including a possible al-Qaida operative.

The two missiles struck the house, which was near Wana, the main town in the South Waziristan tribal area. The house was known to be frequented by al-Qaida members, intelligence officials said.

Aside from saying one of the dead was believed to be an al-Qaida operative, the officials would not speculate on the identities of those killed. They added, however, that they included Arabs, Turkmen and Pakistanis.

Four militants also were wounded in the attack, the four officials said on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media on the record.

Pakistan's army has waged a major ground offensive against the Pakistani Taliban in South Waziristan. The operation appears to have cleared much of the rugged region of the militants, though many have simply fled to other parts of the semiautonomous tribal belt. Still, violence continues in South Waziristan itself, indicating the Taliban remain there.

The U.S. has relied heavily on its covert missile campaign to take out al-Qaida and Taliban targets in the tribal areas. The vast majority of the missile strikes have focused on North Waziristan, home to several militant networks bent on attacking U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Pakistan has denounced the missile campaign as a violation of its sovereignty. But it is widely believed to secretly assist in at least some of the strikes.

The U.S. rarely discusses the campaign publicly.

One of the most significant victories in the U.S. missile campaign came last August, when one of the drone-fired missiles that hit South Waziristan killed Baitullah Mehsud, chief of the Pakistani Taliban network.

___

Associated Press Writers Munir Ahmed from Islamabad and Ishtiaq Mahsud from Dera Ismail Khan contributed to this report.

Source: AP News

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11,000 Afghan bound NATO containers with goods worth 220 bln go missing' in Pak 
 
2010-06-29 16:40:00 
http://sify.com/news/11-000-afghan-bound-nato-containers-with-goods-worth-220-bln-go-missing-in-pak-news-international-kg3qEecfiji.html

In what appears to be one of the biggest frauds in Pakistan's history, more than 11,000 containers of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) containing goods worth over a whopping 220 billion rupees have gone 'missing.'

The containers, which were used to transport prohibited and non-prohibited goods for the NATO forces stationed in Afghanistan, have mysteriously disappeared over the past two years owing to the prevalent massive corruption in the Customs department.

According to the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) these containers were imported to provide equipments to the international forces in Afghanistan and contained weapons, liquor, military uniforms and other prohibited and non-prohibited materials, The Nation reports.

"During last two years, around 11,727 containers were imported but the goods were unloaded in Pakistan despite the fact that these were meant for Afghanistan," the FBR said.

Investigations have revealed that goods from these containers were loaded down in Karachi but their fake registration was made at Torkham, Afghanistan.

Following the scam being revealed, authorities have filed a case against the service provider.

However, there has been no official word over the issue so far. (ANI)


 
 
 
 

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Published on Wednesday, June 30, 2010 by Inter Press Service


Unmanned Drones - Targeted Killing vs. "Collateral Murder"

by Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS - When a Pakistani-U.S. national pleaded guilty last week to a failed attempt to detonate explosives packed in a vehicle in the heart of New York City, he admitted that one of the reasons he targeted the busy Times Square neighbourhood was to "injure and kill" as many people as possible.

The presiding judge, Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum, asked the suspect, Faisal Shahzad, 30, whether he was conscious of the fact he would have killed dozens of civilians, including women and children.

"Well, the (U.S.) drone-hits in Afghanistan and Iraq don't see children; they don't see anybody. They kill women, they kill children. They kill everybody. And it's war," he said, at his arraignment last week.

Describing himself as a "Muslim soldier", Shahzad also told the judge one of the reasons for his abortive act of terrorism was his anger at the U.S. military for recklessly using drones, which have claimed the lives of scores of innocent civilians, along with suspected insurgents, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen and in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

The United States calls the inadvertent killing of civilians "collateral damage" while critics describe it as "collateral murder".

A New York Times columnist last week quoted the outgoing U.S. military commander in Kabul, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, as defining the "insurgent math" in Afghanistan: for each innocent you kill, you make 10 enemies.

But whether they needlessly kill civilians or not, the remote-controlled drones, being guided mostly by computers located at the far-away headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Langley, Virginia, are the weapons of the future, say military analysts.

Since they are unmanned, they are weapons that the U.S. military can deploy to kill without any risk to its own forces.

Also known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), drones are being increasingly used to patrol the Texas-Mexico border to prevent drug trafficking and stem the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States.

Siemon Wezeman, a research fellow at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told IPS that more and more countries are acquiring UAVs, either from national sources or imported.

"It has been a market with significant growth in the last decade and that growth is widely expected to remain in the coming years," said Wezeman, who also did research on UAVs for a report to the European Parliament in 2007-2008.

He pointed out that a recently released U.N. report correctly mentions that over 40 countries currently have UAVs in service.

As the report states, the main appeal of using UAVs to carry out targeted killings in hostile territory is the lack of risk to the forces of the state doing the killing - there is no pilot or other personnel anywhere near the hostilities; no dead troops to explain; no dangerous rescues to think of; no embarrassing capture of assassins.

As a secondary appeal - and the report doesn't mention this - one can count plausible deniability, Wezeman said.

In case things go as planned, there is very little evidence of who did the deed - no immigration papers; no fingerprints; and no television footage, (unlike the recent killing of a Hamas leader, Mahmoud al-Mahboub, in a Dubai hotel by a Mossad hit squad that was captured on closed circuit TV).

"And if things go wrong, at worst the 'enemy' can show the remains of a UAV - ownership of which can be denied by the actor that used it (no captured pilot or dead pilot to show)," Wezeman said.

Lastly, there is no need for expensive logistics and training to carry out long-range assassinations in hostile territory, nor does one have to organise and explain (or cover) special forces doing dirty work.

Oxford Analytica, an independent strategic-consulting firm which draws on a network of more than 1,000 scholar-experts at Oxford and other leading educational institutions, says the market for unmanned aircraft systems "has surged over the last decade, driven by proven operational successes in Iraq and Afghanistan and by Israel's extensive usage".

The worldwide market for such systems is expected to be worth about 55 billion dollars through 2020.

The United Nations, which released a report last month criticising the use of drones for "targeted killings" by U.S. military forces, has warned that more than 40 countries either possess UAVs or are armed with the technology to manufacture it.

These include Israel, Russia, Turkey, China, India, Iran, Britain and France.

Authored by the special rapporteur on extra-judicial killings, Philip Alston, the study said the first "credibly reported" CIA drone killing took place in Nov. 2002 when a Predator UAV fired a missile at a car in Yemen. That attack killed Ali Qaed Senyan al-Harithi, an al Qaeda leader allegedly responsible for the bombing of the U.S. warship 'Cole' in Yemeni waters.

Since then, said the study, there have reportedly been over 120 drone strikes, "although it is not possible to verify this number".

According to the U.N. report, drones were originally developed to gather intelligence and conduct surveillance and reconnaissance. But the use of drones for "targeted killings" has generated significant controversy.

"Some have suggested that drones as such are prohibited weapons under international humanitarian law because they cause, or have the effect of causing, necessarily indiscriminate killings of civilians, such as those in the vicinity of the targeted person," the report said.

"The appeal of armed drones is clear: especially in hostile terrain, they permit targeted killings at little to no risk to the state personnel carrying them out, and they can be operated remotely from the home state."

It is also conceivable that non-state armed groups could obtain this technology.

SIPRI's Wezeman told IPS there is a strong possibility that non-state groups could also acquire such systems, noting that Hezbollah, the militant Islamic group in Lebanon, has used UAVs against Israel.

However, the killings by drones are not supposed to lead to increased civilian deaths and/or indiscriminate killings, but rather the opposite. As in all targeted killings, the idea is to get the enemy leadership and to decapitate enemy forces.

He said targeting the enemy's leadership has almost never been a popular policy among states fighting other states or non-state groups - probably including for fear of retaliation and a sense of 'that is not done' - but the merits both for winning a fight and reducing the cost of the fight are obvious. Thus the potential for such attacks on the enemy's leadership may actually be a positive thing, he said.

One alternative is to 'execute' specific persons that are out of reach or hiding in another country.

Until now, Wezeman said, those targets have been labelled 'terrorist' and the actions were part of a 'war', and as such somehow defensible. However, one could imagine similar attacks on drug lords and other 'criminals' who are impossible to get at in another way. The trouble there, of course, is that the order for execution may not be given by a court after proper trial, he added.


© 2010 IPS North America

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