ISLAMABAD: The Pakistani army said it is investigating reports that Pakistani Taliban leader Hakeemullah Mehsud has died from injuries sustained in a US drone missile strike.
Pakistani army spokesman Gen. Athar Abbas said the army is using its agents in Pakistan’s northwest where the death is reported to have occurred to try to confirm or deny the reports.
Pakistani state TV reported earlier Sunday that Mehsud died in Orakzai tribal area, where he was reportedly being treated for his injuries. It cited ”official sources.”
Pakistani intelligence officials have said that Mehsud was hit in a US drone strike in South Waziristan on Jan. 14, triggering rumors he had been injured or killed. Mehsud issued two audio tapes after the strike denying the rumors. The state run TV also claimed that Mehsud had been buried in Tajaka village in Mamozai area of Orakzai Agency.
After 9 years of maintaining an expensive presence on Afghan soil, thousands of lives and billions wasted in aid and reconstruction efforts, not to forget bribes to warlords and drug barons, the US and its allies have come up with a real gem of an idea – trying to buy themselves a safe exit from the Afghan mess for a cool $500m.
The world leaders gathered at the Afghanistan Conference in London seem to have realised the only hope left is to save face and exit Afghanistan with some dignity intact. Their offer of cash to the Taliban, laughable as it is, is a last ditch effort to save Hamid Karzai’s government by attempting to buy out his only real opposition in Afghanistan.
Taliban today control 33 out of 34 provinces of Afghanistan and are under no pressure to negotiate with the ‘Governor of Kabul’ – as he’s mockingly called in Afghanistan due to his rule being limited to parts of the Afghan capital. The momentum is with the Taliban and they are in a position to dictate terms. Therefore the plan to rope in ‘moderate’ elements of the Taliban by promises of cash and power is a non-starter.
The decision reached at the conference to invite Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to mediate with the Taliban and Kabul’s Government seems to have little point, even though it confirms what Pakistan has been saying for years – that there will not be a solution to the Afghan problem until the Taliban – who represent Afghanistan’s Pashtun majority – are ignored.
Does anyone recall a top American official publicly declaring that Indiawould be justified in attacking Pakistan if terrorists struck Indian targets again?
I don’t. Which is why I believe more attention must be paid to what United States Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last week in India, when asked whether he had counseled restraint to New Delhi in the event of another terror strike.
Gates’ reply, “I told all of the Indian leaders that I met with that I thought that India had responded with great restraint and statesmanship after the first Mumbai attack. The ability of any state to continue that, were it to be attacked again, I think is in question…” Read the rest of this entry ?
NEW DELHI: Finding the US not overly helpful on arming it with drones and drone technology, Pakistan has now made overtures to the Turkish army
During his recent visit to Islamabad, US defence secretary Robert Gates promised the gift of 12 drones for surveillance. But the 12 RQ-7 Shadow drones cannot send in Reaper or Hellfire missiles which would make them truly lethal and would have provoked an immediate outcry from India. However, experts believe this is dangerous stuff anyway, and it will not take much for Pakistan to reverse engineer them or tailor them for needs other than spying on the Taliban, in other words, to target India.
Needless to add, Pakistan was less than overwhelmed by the offer. Therefore, Indian sources said, Pakistan is now approaching their its friends in the Turkish army for this technology. The Turks were given drones, both attack and surveillance ones, by the Israelis as they battle the Kurds. Whether they are persuaded to part with these for the Pakistanis is another matter, and likely to involve a lot of pre-emptive Indian diplomacy.
India is finding less and less to be positive about in the Pakistan-Afghanistan theatre.
ISTANBUL (Turkey): President Asif Ali Zardari urged the international community on Sunday to help Pakistan and Afghanistan overcome problems of the region, observing that Turkish-inspired Trilateral Summit could serve as useful model in this behalf.
The President stated this during a meeting with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan who promised that his country would soon deliver spare parts of Cobra helicopters to Pakistan free of cost, underlining the growing cooperation between the two countries in different fields.
There is only one sentence to describe Bharati (aka Indian) attendance in the London conference on Afghanistan–”Bharat was addded as an afterthought, and after much yelling and screaming by Delhi”.
Islamabad believes India is looking to Afghanistan for destabilising Pakistan
Delhi was reluctantly invited to the London conference, but it might as well have not been invited. All its objections have been overruled. Bharat did not want the Taliban to be included in the Kabul government.
It has been.
Pakistan has repeatedly brought the world’s attention to Bharati Consulates who have been sponsoring terror in Pakistan. Bharat faces a hostile crowd. Pakistan, Turkey, and Afghanistan have already decided on the agenda, and it has been blessed by the US, the UN, Japan, China and the UK. There are leaked copies of the final resolution already published on various internet sites, including the Iranian Press TV site.
WASHINGTON — The White House on Monday was noncommittal but did not rule out Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s plan to ask for Taliban names to be removed from a UN blacklist to spur reconciliation.
Karzai said before heading for a major international conference on Afghanistan in London this week that he would also seek Western support for a plan to offer money and jobs to cajole Taliban fighters into laying down arms.
“I will be making a statement at the conference in London to the effect of removing Taliban names from the UN sanctions list,” Karzai told reporters in Istanbul.
The idea had previously met resistance but “as we are talking today, there is more willingness that this can be reconsidered,” he said.
Two Pakistani employees of an American defense contractor engaged by the US Embassy in Islamabad have been linked to two attacks on Pakistani military and the assassination of a Brigadier. If this is not alarming, then consider that US Ambassador Anne Patterson’s name has come up in an investigation where thousands of dollars were paid in bribes to Interior Ministry to smuggle illegal weapons into Pakistan. Not to mention how Washington is empowering India in Afghanistan at Pakistan’s cost. When Pakistan takes countermeasures, US officials like Mr. Gates and Mr. Holbrooke accuse Pakistan of ‘anti-Americanism’ and harassing US diplomats. Time for some straight talk.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—US Defense Secretary Robert Gates admitted during an interview with a Pakistani TV station that Blackwater [now ‘Xe International’] and DynCorp are operating in Pakistan. Immediately after the statement, Pentagon tried to put a spin on his words.
On Thursday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates confirmed that Blackwater is operating in Pakistan. In an interview on Express TV, Gates, who was visiting Islamabad, said, “They [Blackwater and another private security firm, DynCorp] are operating as individual companies here in Pakistan,” according to a DoD transcript of the interview. “There are rules concerning the contracting companies. If they’re contracting with us or with the State Department here in Pakistan, then there are very clear rules set forth by the State Department and by ourselves.”
Today, the country’s senior minister for the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), Bashir Bilour, also acknowledged that the company is operating in Pakistan’s frontier areas. Bilour told Pakistan’s Express News TV that Blackwater’s activities were taking place with the “consent and permission” of the Pakistani government, saying he had discussed the issue with officials at the US Consulate in Peshawar, who told him that Blackwater was training Pakistani forces.
On the occasion of India’s Republic Day, a powerful joint appeal Tuesday to the international community by key Kashmiri, Naga and Sikh leaders has highlighted the fundamental conflicts and contradictions at the heart of the Indian state, as well as the unwavering intent of their nations to secure freedom in accordance with their right to self-determination as enshrined in international law.
They issued a call to the international community to play a constructive role in dismantling India’s unlawful hold on their territories, which has been maintained purely by military means at the cost of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives since 1947, and to restore fundamental freedoms, democracy and the rule of law in the most volatile region of the world. The leaders included Syed Ali Shah Gilani, Chair of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference in Kashmir, Naga leader Th. Muivah, General Secretary of the NSCN-IM and Kanwarpal Singh of Dal Khalsa in Punjab.
Ahmed Quraishi got the last word on Aljazeera’s Inside Story to calmly mention some facts about what the ‘other India’ is doing in Afghanistan, in a show where a former director of Indian Military Intelligence and an American think-tank type from Washington spent time demonizing Pakistan. Aljazeera’s anchor Imran Jardah was neutral. He admitted the discussion was ‘lopsided’ because AQ couldnt join in the show earlier because of technical reasons.
TIME magazine does a decent job of pointing out that no Pakistani reporters are being allowed in the courtroom, even though she is not charged with terrorism. However, they also continue to misinform the public as shown in the first line of their article:
“Aafia Siddiqui may be a minor light in the constellation of alleged al-Qaeda operatives, but her New York City trial may be a test case for the way justice is meted out to one of the major figures accused of running the terror organization. “
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has successfully mobilised the defunct six-plus-two talks formula to counter the US pressure regarding giving India a “greater role” in warn-torn Afghanistan’s rehabilitation.
Afghanistan’s immediate neighbours – Pakistan, Iran, China, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, as well as the US, are meeting today (Tuesday) in Turkey to discuss the situation in Afghanistan and to take stock of measures for the restoration of peace in the country.
The original “six-plus-two” also included Russia, but in the new set up Moscow representation has been replaced by the United Kingdom.
Bollywood stars Shilpa Shetty and Preity Zinta have added a new twist to the IPL affair by claiming that they were threatened into snubbing Pakistani cricketers at the auction. According to a report by an Australian publication ‘The Age’, Shetty told India’s ‘Mid-Day’ that threats were made against her team and any subsequent Pakistan cricketer picked by her franchise.
“You must look at it pragmatically and see that we have had these people who are constantly threatening,” Rajasthan co-owner Shetty told Indian publication Mid-Day. “It’s not something we hold against the Pakistani players.
“We completely understand the situation but as franchise owners are we willing to take that risk? If something happens to the Pakistani players, the onus lies on us and who is going to take responsibility for a situation like that?
“When we said ‘availability’, we wanted complete assurance that those players would be available in the country and that we were going to be able to provide security for them,” she added.
MIRAMSHAH: A suspected US drone has been shot down in North Waziristan, sources said Sunday. The local tribesmen have claimed that they fired down the unmanned aircraft in Hamzoni area.
The unmanned aircraft came down in Humzoni area of Datta Khel in North Warisitan bordering Afghanistan, where there have been over 14 drone strikes over the past few weeks.
According to state TV, the drone was shot down while the tribesmen have also claimed that they fired down the pilotless aircraft.
Both the Pakistani and US authorities have maintained a silence on this officially, although it is suspected to be a warning to Langley from Pakistan’s Armed Forces to put an immediate halt to US airspace violations and missile attacks inside Pakistani territory. Relations between the two ‘allies’ appear to have taken a nose-dive in recent days.
“Too Little, Too Late, We Already Have Superior UAVs”
Mariana Baabar
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan military sources say they are not impressed by the offer of the United States to supply RQ-7 Shadow Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), as they already have superior quality UAVs, which they have upgraded, and which are in use.
The disappointment is understandable since unlike the drones that fly and take out targets inside Pakistan’s Fata region, the ones being offered to Pakistan are unarmed and commonly used for intelligence gathering.
Later, when DG ISPR Major General Athar Abbas was asked about the overall weapons being provided to Pakistan for counterinsurgency and other military supplies, he remarked, “Too little, too late”.
It was US Defence Secretary Robert Gates who, in a meeting with the media at the residence of the US ambassador, said the US was enhancing Pakistan’s intelligence capabilities. He said the offer comes because Islamabad had requested for them. “We have a lot of information on the Afghan side that we share … we also help Pakistan build its own capacity. We will be providing them with UAVs (Shadow) together with equipment and training,” he said.
The tide has shifted dramatically in recent years. Resurgent Afghan Taliban, better armed, trained, and deadly effective, now have control over 80% of Afghan territory. There has been a significant increase in offensive targetting of US and NATO bases and Afghan government officials and buildings in the last couple of years, with even Kabul coming under increasing pressure.
On the other side of the border, the CIA and Indian supported TTP has been getting a hiding at the hands of Pakistan’s armed forces with even the US and NATO stunned at the efficiency and success of the army operations against TTP militants in Swat and South Waziristan. For the first time in 8 years, Pakistan now has the upper hand and has started to dictate terms to the US, starting last week with the rejection of US request to extend the operation to North Waziristan where Jalaluddin Haqqani’s faction allegedly operates from. Anticipating an imminent turnaround in Pakistan’s Afghan policy and fearing the US supply lines into Afghanistan may come under pressure, the US immediately sought to pacify the Pakistan Armed Forces with promises to deliver 12 ‘unarmed’ shadow drones – which hasn’t worked.
The White House and Pentagon are in shock, as this turnaround by the Pakistan Army couldn’t have come at a worse time for them – with the recent attacks on CIA’s Chapman outpost in Khost, a failed civilian government incharge, an incompetent Afghan army, and with 30,000 US troops on their way to what many now realise is a lost cause.
And now the New York Times reveals an interesting conversation between Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and an unnamed senior Pakistan Army official that took place last week. The biggest sign yet of the reversal of fortunes comes with a simple but symbolic ‘Are you with us or against us?’ from the Pakistan Army to the United States. The NYT article follows:
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Nobody else in the Obama administration has been mired in Pakistan for as long as Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. So on a trip here this past week to try to soothe the country’s growing rancor toward the United States, he served as a punching bag tested over a quarter-century.
“Are you with us or against us?” a senior military officer demanded of Mr. Gates at Pakistan’s National Defense University, according to a Pentagon official who recounted the remark made during a closed-door session after Mr. Gates gave a speech at the school on Friday. Mr. Gates, who could hardly miss that the officer was mimicking former President George W. Bush’s warning to nations harboring militants, simply replied, “Of course we’re with you.”
A US chopper shot down by the Afghan Taliban - who now control over 80% of Afghan territory
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is reaching out to “all levels” of the Afghan Taliban in a bid to encourage reconciliation in its war-torn neighbour, the foreign ministry said on Saturday.
US President Barack Obama has said a political solution is needed to stabilise Afghanistan and emphasised that success would not be possible without the support of Pakistan.
“We are trying to reach out to them (Taliban) at all levels and all of us would like that our efforts should bring some results, but at this point in time it is very difficult to say,” Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit said of Pakistan’s efforts.
WASHINGTON: There’s nothing secret or subtle about it. Uncle Sam is seeking spies, informers, linguists, and analysts from immigrant communities in the US to diversify its intelligence work force and tackle national security challenges.
Undeterred by the Headley-Gilani episode, Washington is sounding out Pakistani-Americans in the first round of recruitment, ostensibly because its intelligence agencies see Pakistan as the epicenter of international terrorism and a clear and present danger to the world community.
In an extraordinarily open and transparent recruitment drive, Dennis Blair, who as director of National Intelligence is the country’s top intelligence czar, held a round-table discussion last week with the Pakistani-American community in Washington to seek their cooperation and offer jobs in US agencies.
What was remarkable about the outreach meeting was the presence there of Pakistani ambassador to the US, Hussain Haqqani, amid strong resentment in Pakistan about the activities of the US intelligence agencies there and the uneasy relationship between the CIA and the ISI in the Af-Pak theatre.
This is the latest in the long list of Anti-state activities Hussain Haqqani has been found guilty in. His role adding the controversial clauses in the Kerry-Lugar bill has already put him on the warpath with Pakistan’s armed forces and Intelligence Agencies – which have been on Hussain Haqqani’s case for some time and are working towards his removal for his role in facilitating anti-state actors, alongwith that of Interior Minister Rehman Malik.
The US embassy on Saturday tried to paper over Defence Secretary Robert Gates’s diplomatic faux pas of confirming Blackwater presence in Pakistan by putting the blame on the media, but it found few takers. Secretary Gates’s impromptu comments in a television interview have renewed the focus on seething rage among Pakistanis about the involvement of private US security companies, particularly Blackwater, in the country.
The embassy, in a statement on Secretary Gates’s remarks, accused the television station and newspapers of inaccurate and dishonest reporting. “The television station and many newspapers chose to inaccurately portray his answer as tacit confirmation on the use of Blackwater in Pakistan instead of as a commentary on use of security contractors in general. At no time did Secretary Gates say that Blackwater is operating in Pakistan,” the statement said.
Project Wake Up PAKISTAN’s Karachi show – held at Bahria Auditorium Karachi, January 17th 2010, organised by PKKH in partnership with WakeUp Pakistan, BrassTacks, and Maria B.
The show will be aired on ARY NEWS on Friday 29th January, 10:00pm PST.
More than half of Indian population defecates in the open. More households have TV than toilets.
Rhys Blakely | Times UK
It is possibly the worst job in the world, a task so disgusting, demeaning and dangerous that it has been illegal for 17 years.
However, at least 340,000 Indians (a conservative government estimate – other experts reckon the figure is close to a million) are forced to scrape a living by cleaning up other people’s excrement.
In 1993, the practice of employing a “manual scavenger” – a job description that masks the rank grossness of the work with an Orwellian flourish – was outlawed in India. So was the building of “dry latrines” – the kind that have no flush, have to be emptied by hand, and breed diseases.
The dirty truth, however, is that three government deadlines to eradicate manual scavenging, the most recent on March 31 2009, have passed. Dry latrines are still being dug all over the country, in both rural and urban areas.
A shortage of water and space and a lack of reliable sewage systems often make them the easiest, cheapest option.
At issue, however, is more than the woeful state of infrastructure in India, a country where 660 million people still defecate in the open and more households have TV sets than have proper toilets. For the persistence of scavenging speaks to the robustness of the centuries-old caste system as much as to a chronic lack of basic sanitation.
