Was Qatar responsible for bloody revolt and innocent deaths in Libya’s?

Tacstart

Qatar has admitted for the first time that it sent hundreds of troops to support the Libyan rebels who overthrew Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.

The Gulf state had previously acknowledged only that its air force took part in Nato-led attacks.

The revelation came as Qatar hosted a conference on the post-Gaddafi era that was attended by the leader of Libya’s ruling National Transitional Council, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, who described the Qataris as having planned the battles that paved the way for victory.

Abdel-Jalil also said he was asking Nato to extend its mission beyond the end of the month, when it had been due to end, until the end of the year. Help was needed because regime loyalists posed a threat from neighbouring countries, he said.

Gaddafi relatives and other key figures have fled to Algeria and Niger, amid speculation about the whereabouts of the deposed leader’s son Saif al-Islam.

A Libyan military official with the NTC told Reuters that Saif and the former intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi are proposing to hand themselves in to the international criminal court. A spokesman for the ICC, however, said it had received no confirmation of the claim.

The Associated Press meanwhile reported an adviser to Niger’s president, Mahamadou Issoufou, as saying Senussi was in their country.

It also has emerged that now the fighting is over, Qatar is to lead international efforts to train the Libyan military, collect weapons and integrate often autonomous rebel units into newly established military and security institutions – seen by the UN and western governments as the key challenge facing the NTC.

Qatar played a key role in galvanising Arab support for the UN security council resolution that mandated Nato to defend Libyan civilians in March. It also delivered weapons and ammunition on a large scale – without any clear legal basis.

There were repeated rumours about and occasional sightings of Qatari special forces in Libya during the war. Until now, however, there had been no official confirmation of actions that were not explicitly authorised by the UN.

The Qatari chief-of-staff, Major-General Hamad bin Ali al-Atiya, said: “We were among them and the numbers of Qataris on the ground were hundreds in every region. Training and communications had been in Qatari hands. Qatar … supervised the rebels’ plans because they are civilians and did not have enough military experience,” AFP quoted him as saying. “We acted as the link between the rebels and Nato forces.”

Qatar, whose gas reserves and tiny population make it one of the richest countries in the world, has long pursued an activist foreign policy, promoted by al-Jazeera, the Doha-based satellite TV channel.

But there was still surprise when it sent most of its air force to join Nato’s operation and delivered large quantities of what were described as defensive weapons but which included Milan anti-tank missiles to the rebels.

Qatari special forces are reported to have provided infantry training to Libyan fighters in the western Nafusa mountains and in eastern Libya. Qatar’s military even brought Libyan rebels back to Doha for exercises. And in the final assault on Gaddafi’s Bab al-Aziziya compound in Tripoli in late August, Qatari special forces were seen on the frontline. Qatar also gave $400m to the rebels, helped them export oil from Benghazi and set up a TV station in Doha.

Libyan gratitude is clear. The maroon and white flag of Qatar is often flown at celebrations and Algeria Square in central Tripoli has been renamed Qatar Square in honour of the country’s support in toppling Gaddafi. Some, however, express concern at the emirate’s support for Islamist elements such as the 17 February Martyrs Brigade, one of the most influential rebel formations, led by Abdel-Hakim Belhaj.

Ali Salabi, an influential Libyan Islamist cleric, lived in exile in Qatar for years before this year’s revolution. For some analysts the emir’s strategy is to support democratic forces selectively in the Arab world, partly to improve the country’s international standing while diverting attention from the Gulf, where anti-regime protests have been crushed in Bahrain and bought off in Saudi Arabia.

Two-thirds Americans believe money & wealth is unfairly distributed

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CBS/New York Times poll shows two-thirds of Americans believe money and wealth is unfairly distributed and almost half support Occupy Wall Street.

Same poll shows ninety per cent of Americans have no faith in the political system to make the right decisions.

Herman Cain and Rick Perry propose giving the rich yet more tax cuts.

Wharton M.B.A. students chant “Get a job” to O.W.S. protesters.

Is this how the American class war begins?

Probably not, but Moises Naim surely has it right when he says: “The long, peaceful coexistence with income and wealth inequality is ending.”
The New Yorker

Diwali Celebrated in Pakistan, Prayers & Festivities

ZoneAsia-Pk

After sunset on Wednesday, Hindus lit up their homes with earthen lamps and decorated their doorsteps with colourful Rangolis and set thaalis for pooja.

Smoke billowed out of the Shri Swaminarayan Temple on MA Jinnah Road. Inside, it was lit up with firecrackers, dias and incense. Children lit firecrackers and threw them down at the feet of the horde of people walking in and out of the temple. Vendors, taking advantage of the occasion, thronged the temple to sell the firecrackers, sweets and incense. Women decked out in red saris and gold jewellery told their young daughters to keep their heads covered by dupattas.

It was time for the festival of lights, Diwali, to begin, to mark the beginning of a new year for the followers of the Hindu faith. The word diwali derives from a sanskrit word “deepavali” which means a row of lamps.

The five-day festival commemorates the triumph of good over evil of Ram over Ravana, as described in the Ramayan. Ram returned to his home in Ayodha after 1,400 years of exile and defeated the demon Ravana.

The people believe that the goddess of wealth and prosperity, Lakshmi, visits the home of every follower. Thus, they set up poojas, with thaalis decorated with sweets coloured by yellow sandoor, flowers and a clay lamp, and do aartis in her honour.

The pooja usually begins after sundown and with respect to Ganesh – the lord of beginnings and obstacles.

People come to the temple to be blessed by the gods, according to Vijay Kumar, the Maharaj at Darya Lal temple in Kharadar. While celebrating they did not forget their countrymen and held a special prayer for dengue patients and flood survivors at the temple, he said.

How many times will world respond to USA’s cry wolf?

Tacstrat

The fact that President Barack Obama on Thursday found himself insisting that the facts support his Administration’s efforts to hold Tehran accountable for a plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington suggests that the world is not yet rushing to fall in line with his call for “the toughest sanctions” on Iran.

The “toughest sanctions”, of course, would mean an oil embargo and blockade preventing Iran from importing gasoline, although such moves are so unlikely to win support that the Administration may not press for it. A more plausible goal might be to target Iran’s central bank, in the hope of choking off the country’s ability to trade on international markets. Even that move — which some in Tehran say would be treated as an “act of war” — would require the support of other countries, and would likely be opposed by those such as Russia, China and Turkey which conduct significant trade with Iran, and which have opposed the U.S. efforts to escalate sanctions over the nuclear issue.

The plot allegations, in short, are unlikely to be a game changer in the long-running effort by the U.S. and its closest allies to isolate and pressure Iran over its nuclear program: Those already on board with that effort — such as Britain and France — are backing U.S. calls for action on the embassy plot; those skeptical or opposed to that effort appear less certain of just what the evidence presented thus far by the Administration actually means.

It should come as no surprise that a scheme whose spectacular hokeyness is difficult to square with everything that is known about Iran’s well-established methods for staging terror attacks — and for which it’s hard to provide a rational motive even in the context of Iran’s intense regional power struggle with Saudi Arabia — is proving difficult to pin on the Iranian government’s decision makers.

Apparently acknowledging that problem, President Obama said Thursday, “We believe that even if at the highest levels there was not detailed operational knowledge, there has to be accountability with respect to anybody in the Iranian government engaging in this kind of activity.” That seemed to leave open an adjustment in the narrative to one in which the scheme could be blamed on a rogue element within the power structure.

Still, Obama’s rhetoric was tough, insisting that Iran be made to “pay a price” the plot and warning that “no option would be taken off the table” in responding, which is code for the threat of military action. Washington certainly seems to be scooping up everything it can find on alleged Iranian malfeasance to throw into the p.r. battle. U.S. and Saudi intelligence officials told the Washington Post that they believe that Iran was behind the May 16 killing of a Saudi diplomat in the Pakistani city of Karachi. Saudi officials are even taking the opportunity to blame Iran’s Quds force for instigating the Bahrain democratic uprising — a claim that is more likely to undermine the credibility of the p.r. effort than it is to enhance it, with the Saudi-led crackdown in Bahrain enjoying limited sympathy beyond those who support Riyadh’s role as sectarian pugilist and enforcer of Arab autocracy.

U.S. military officials also told the New York Times that Quds-forced trained and funded militants had fired rockets at an American position in Iraq, Wednesday, wounding three G.I.s. Perhaps that’s just coincidence, but a case seems to be being made that Iran is on the offensive, requiring a response.

One bit of speculation that the Times reported was under consideration by U.S. officials as an explanation for why Iran’s leaders might undertake the Washington plot was that it might have been conceived as retaliation for a series of assassinations of scientists in Iran, believed to have been undertaken by Israel with tacit U.S. support. Nobody’s standing firm behind that one, of course, but even putting that out there could be double-edged when it comes to winning support for an escalation of pressure on Tehran: Many of the governments that would be appalled by the assassination of a diplomat are unlikely to be all that much more forgiving of the assassination of scientists as a strategy for dealing with Iran.

The revelation of the assassination plot has, from the outset, been closely tied to the main strategic confrontation, over Iran’s nuclear program and its regional role. It’s been seized upon as an opportunity to strengthen the U.S. hand in the existing sanctions effort, although it also appears to signal a rapprochement with Saudi Arabia, which had been antagonized by the Obama Administration’s ambivalent reaction to the rebellions against autocracy in Tunisia and Egypt. Now, however, the Administration appears to be once again getting strongly behind Riyadh’s regional cold war with Tehran. But while the Arab Spring has set back Iran’s direct regional influence, that hasn’t translated into strengthening Saudi influence — while it may be managing the counterrevolution quite effectively in Bahrain and Yemen, the Saudis are hardly likely to win the support of newly empowered Arab publics, or regimes — such as Egypt’s — more responsive to their citizenry. Iran remains more influential than the U.S. or Saudi Arabia is in post-Saddam Iraq, and on its northwestern border, Turkey has challenged U.S. policy toward Tehran even as it competes with Iran for regional influence. Even if it were convinced of Obama’s claims on the assassination DC plot, it’s hard to see that being sufficient to change Ankara’s orientation.

The one new development as a result of the assassination plot, however, is that the U.S. and Iran appear to have opened up a new channel of communication. CBS is reporting that Obama’s UN Ambassador, Susan Rice, took the highly unusual step on Thursday of meeting with Iranian counterparts in New York. If they haven’t been talking, they are now, although the contents of that conversation remain unknown.

Regardless of the details of the authorship of the assassination plot, its revelation has put President Obama in a difficult position. He’s under growing pressure from Capitol Hill to take a tougher stand against Iran — legislation making its way through Congress, for example, would tie his hands on sanctions, imposing measures against foreign firms that do business with Iran’s energy sector that would antagonize U.S. partners and threaten the consensus around existing sanctions, potentially giving Iran a win.

Still, the tough talk about making Iran “pay a price”, keeping “all options” open and imposing the “toughest sanctions” paints Obama into a tricky corner, particularly if there’s no shift in Iran’s stance or demonstrable price paid. After all, if this was, in fact, a plot authorized by the Iranian leadership, then it was plainly meant to be discovered as such, and to provoke the U.S. into retaliation. That would mean its authors were not afraid of a confrontation between the U.S. and Iran, but were actually courting one.

India’s Cry Wolf App?

By Deepika Jaitley
Area 14/8

‘Rape Capital’ Delhi, sprawling metropolis and epicenter of the Government of India, is also victim to elements of endemic sexual violence. Earlier this year an English local newspaper published statistics under the headline: Shame on Delhi Men. “The dazzling streets of Delhi hide a dark truth,” it said, publishing the results of a poll revealing that 66% of the capital’s women were molested between two and five times last year and that 70% of men “looked the other way” when it happened. What happens when they don’t was amply demonstrated earlier this year when a 55-year-old rickshaw driver in West Delhi was beaten to death for “defending his daughter’s modesty” from a group of drunks.

Cracking down on sexual predators, in what is the most dangerous city for women in India, hasn’t borne much fruit considering Delhi’s stereotypical policeman is a figure of legend, renowned for sloth, corruption, brutality and casual misogyny. To counter pandemic violence charities of all sorts have come to the fore one of which is Whypoll a local charity which has devised a smart phone app “Fight Back” that is to be launched in November this year. Whypoll will function as an SOS alert device — sending out a text message with a GPS location to up to five people, including police, and as a post on Facebook and Twitter. This app will be available to download from the Whypoll website for a small fee and will be supported by a range of smart phones such as Nokia and BlackBerry.

Read Complete Article Here: http://www.area148.com/cms/?p=8148#more-8148

Who Turned Karachi Into A City of Death

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Karachi’s astonishing violence is generally ascribed to political and ethnic rivalry. While this may be true to an extent, its roots run deep into the incredibly complex structure of this city of 18 million people, where politicians, criminals, terrorists and migrants from nearby warzones compete for power and survival

As waves of diplaced people and refugees stream from nearby warzones, the southern Pakistani city of Karachi has become one the world’s fastest growing cities, and also one of its most turbulent and violent. In July and August, 2011, it was once again engulfed by a ferocious spree of killing that, according to conservative estimates, left more than 300 people dead.

The spike in violence is largely attributed to a political struggle that has spun out of control. But the microcosm of Karachi’s urban strife rests on layers of tensions and rivalries that go far deeper than inter-party conflict. The political component is compounded by extreme ethnic rivalries, contributing to the indiscriminate escalation of violence. Behind it all is a vast substratum of illegality, fuelled by migration and displacement, that has thrived on the political-ethnic confrontation and has put to work its own agents of violence.

On this most recent occasion, the trigger for unrest was deemed to be the exit from the provincial and national coalitions, on June 27, of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), the political party that until recently was in full control of the city.

The MQM claims to represent the 45 per cent Urdu-speaking Mohajir community in Karachi. It took the drastic step of withdrawing because of political squabbling with the dominant party in both the city and national coalitions – the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) of President Asif Ali Zardari. It was not the first time these tensions have surfaced. At the end of 2010, the MQM also quit the federal government because of allegations from a PPP minister that the party and its Mohajir constituency, descendants of those who migrated from India to Pakistan after partition in 1947, was behind the latest waves of targeted killings in Karachi.

In May 2011, the MQM decided to rejoin the federal government, most likely because of fears that it could be sidelined from the national political game. But the truce lasted for just a few months. Sensing itself marginalized in Pakistan’s National Assembly, the MQM was reportedly forced to accept decisions foisted upon it by the ruling party. This unusual state of political subjection was too much to accept, and the MQM broke the bond that had been created with the formation of the national coalition government in 2008.

A descent into strife

Once the undisputed dominant party in Karachi, in recent years the MQM has faced increasing competition from the Awami National Party (ANP), which claims to represent the city’s 25 per cent Pashtun population who have migrated from the northwest of the country.

As these migration flows have sharply increased in recent years, with an estimated 300,000 displaced Pashtuns pushing into Karachi as a result of counter-insurgency operations in their home region, so has the political weight of the ANP. This trend was confirmed during the 2008 general elections, when the ANP secured two seats in the Sindh Provincial Assembly for the first time in its history. The violence that once again spiralled in Karachi in 2009, with targeted killings taking centre stage, may be regarded as a last-ditch effort by the MQM to retain its status within the capital of Sindh and at the national level.

According to this argument, the MQM opted for a violent strategy of brinkmanship in order to warn both its political allies and its enemies that it will not relinquish power without a fight, and to underline that the maintenance of law and order in Pakistan’s massive commercial capital would depend on its consent.

In fact, within its short life-time, the party has been marred from the start by violence and rifts. One year after becoming the third largest party in the national legislature, in 1989, a faction of the MQM broke away and formed a new party called the MQM Haqiqi (H). The rift was caused by accusations that the original party was abandoning its commitment to defend the Mohajir community in favour of a more pragmatic mainstream appeal. True or not, the resulting conflict was extremely bloody. The original MQM accused the rebel faction of receiving arms from the Pakistani military, and of serving as the puppet of the national political establishment with the goal of denting the MQM’s popularity in urban Sindh.

Karachi was affected by growing unrest and spreading illegality. And in one way or another, the MQM was frequently involved. Besides its ‘traditional’ role in hostile activities against other ethnic groups living in the city (mainly Pashtuns), the establishment of the MQM (H) initiated a long process of infighting within the Mohajir community.

When an army operation was launched in 1992 with the aim of restoring law and order to Karachi, the initial focus was on armed robbers, kidnappers and drug peddlers. This quickly shifted to the MQM, as many of its members were perceived as threats to public order. The military operation continued for over two years, spanning the terms of two governments, and taking on the form of urban guerrilla warfare, with atrocities committed on both sides and with MQM members confronting soldiers and police. State institutions and security forces were routinely targeted by rocket launchers and other sophisticated weaponry.

In November 1994, the army formally withdrew, and para-military troops took over the maintenance of law and order. The violence, however, intensified: 1995 and 1996 are cited as the years in which the casualties of street violence peaked, with a reported 2,095 people killed in Karachi in 1995, and 1,113 in 1996.

The Taliban nexus

As recently as July 2011, both the MQM and the ANP were still refraining from blaming each other for the most recent waves of killings, preferring instead to direct the blame at the Pakistani Taliban. According to a prominent MQM leader, domestic extremists were intent on dividing Karachi along linguistic and ethnic lines as part of their grand plan to bring anarchy to the country.

Two months later, however, the parties were trading accusations of fuelling violence, and demanding the prohibition of their rival from national political life. The MQM even termed the ANP the biggest terrorist organization in Pakistan, and accused it of carrying out attacks on behalf of India and Afghanistan.

The MQM first made explicit accusations of a direct link between the ANP and the Taliban two years beforehand, claiming that the ANP had fostered the “Talibanization” of Karachi and protected Taliban groups such as the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), in addition to other criminal elements belonging to the city’s drug and land mafias.

These allegations are difficult to substantiate, as the ANP itself, a secular and socially-oriented party, has been a regular target of the Taliban in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where it took over the reins of the provincial government from an alliance composed of four religious parties after elections in February 2008. Following this success, a campaign of deadly attacks was unleashed against ANP members by religious extremists, making it nearly impossible for the party to perform its legislative tasks.

The MQM has also been involved in violent confrontation with sectarian organizations. Many of the ethno-religious and political incidents that caused the killing of 143 people in Karachi in 2008 were pinned on clashes between the MQM and Sunni Tehrik (ST). Founded in Karachi in 1990 with the specific objective of protecting the interests of the Barelvi sect against competing religious organizations, the ST welcomed many former MQM activists within its ranks following the 1992 military crackdown. The two groups, however, later came to loggerheads after the ST decided to transform itself into a political party.

Regardless of whether the MQM’s allegations of linkages between the ANP and the Taliban are true, the fact is that Karachi has become a major source of income for Taliban groups. They are believed to profit from criminal activities such as bank robberies, thefts, car snatchings, and kidnappings for ransom. And where they do not carry out such activities by themselves, they are allegedly turning to criminal gangs for their cooperation, or recruiting members of these groups directly into their ranks. They have also profited from the flows of Pashtun migrants who have poured into Karachi in recent years by blending into their communities and using them as a recruitment base.

Many of the dozens of militant and sectarian groups present in Karachi, including the Taliban, are also involved in violent disputes between majority Sunni and minority Shia Muslims. This sectarian violence is often connected to the overall ethno-political tensions that run through the city. Sunni groups such as Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Sunni Tehrik are often opposed to Shia factions such as Sipah-e-Muhammad, Jafria Alliance and Tehrik-e-Jafria, some of which entertain relationships with the MQM.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is probably the most known of the Sunni sectarian groups active in Karachi. Composed of more than six factions, it initially started its operations by targeting the Pakistani Shia Muslim community. Subsequently, it also turned against western and domestic high profile political targets. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi was held responsible for the kidnapping and killing, in 2002, of US journalist Daniel Pearl, and one of its men is thought to be the suicide bomber that killed Benazir Bhutto in 2007.

A teeming underworld

The incredible growing pace of Karachi’s population, with between 200,000 and 500,000 new migrants arriving in the city every year from within and outside the country, has placed huge constraints on the municipal planning and development authorities’ capacity to organize necessary infrastructure and services.

Large squatter settlements and slums have arisen throughout the city, currently housing about five million people in conditions of illegality. This institutional vacuum has been filled by some of the 200 criminal gangs operating in Karachi and by the numerous special interest groups, whether political, ethnic or sectarian, to which individuals look for protection. Faced with a lack of basic services, the squatters turn to criminal syndicates to get a plot of land allocated, and subsequently to receive the utilities for their households. A booming land-grabbing business has emerged, accompanied by lucrative and illegal delivery of essential services. Competition for control of these areas and of their businesses triggers turf wars between rival mafias, while law enforcers and administrators are silenced through corruption.

In the final analysis, it is difficult to determine precisely where Karachi’s latest violence has come from. Much of it is linked to ethno-political competition between various parties and organizations. But its roots run much deeper, and involve actors and forces that normally would never be associated. The boundaries between political activism, terrorism, assassination squads, land grabbing mafia, and drug-driven criminality have become blurred, and at times intersect. What is left behind is the sad landscape of a once flourishing city now pervaded by fear and death, with about 2,000 people killed since 2009. Karachi, a frantic metropolis of about 18 million inhabitants, resembles a giant black hole, ready to swallow and conceal all kinds of criminal elements, from the smallest drug peddler to the highest Al-Qaeda executive.

Religion & Ethnicity based politics destroying Pakistan

Area 14/8

Pakistan-Pakistani political parties are violent and criminal-minded. They are a glaring failure of Pakistani democracy. And yet they get a soft treatment from our civil society and media.

Three parties in power and several others in opposition have turned Pakistan’s largest city and economic hub into Beirut. Karachi is a strategic port and a rich city. It has been home to Pakistani innovation in business, culture and arts. But today it’s best and brightest are moving to Dubai, Malaysia and even Bangladesh as the city’s control, indeed the country’s control, passes from the hands of innovative Pakistanis to a bunch of violent, criminal-minded mediocre politicians.

Instead of introducing democracy to the country, our political parties want to control the city’s riches and its multiple revenue streams running into billions of rupees. They want to use the city to smuggle contraband into and outside the country. And to do so they are ready to kill Pakistanis by the thousands and pitch them along fake and manufactured linguistic divides. They are ready to bypass the Pakistani state and talk directly to foreign governments. For the right price, some of them are willing to guarantee safe passage to NATO and US military supplies from Karachi to Afghanistan. Stunningly, we have parties now that demand international intervention when their interests are threatened by other criminal parties.

Who gave any political party the right to represent all Pakistanis who speak Pashto? Who gave a single political party the right to represent all Pakistanis who speak Urdu [national language spoken by nearly all Pakistanis]? Who says PPPP is supposed to represent Pakistanis who speak Sindhi or PMLN should be representative of Punjabi language? Last, who gave fugitive terrorists like Brahamdagh Bugti the right to represent all Pakistani Baloch?

Like a war zone, neighborhood streets in Karachi have ugly ‘security gates’ that help political parties control and repel competitors. An ugly culture of identifying people by what Pakistani language they speak has been firmly put in place. If not stopped, these failed parties will poison the entire country at a time when the nation suffers from an acute leadership deficit. What European country has this kind of democracy? If we can’t tailor our own political system, we better be good at aping someone else’s.

The verdict of the Supreme Court over the weekend on the criminal activities of Pakistani political parties, though welcome, is severely constrained and only scratches the surface. While successfully identifying the criminal parties, the verdict fails to diagnose the full extent of the problem. Karachi does not suffer from any ethnic problems. It is wrong to use the word ‘ethnic’ in the Pakistani context, where the nation is deeply intermixed in all respects. On the night of 14 August, our Independence Day, over five thousand of the city’s young and old residents, representing all stripes of Pakistanis, gathered in open air to recite the National Anthem and create a world record. Do these Pakistanis look linguistically-divided to you? Nearly seven decades after independence, Pakistanis are more intermarried and intermixed today than ever before. Many of them speak or understand several different Pakistani languages.

Pakistanis are not divided on language. Failed political parties are dividing them. These parties have nothing to offer so they divide and kill. Our problems – establishing a prosperous country with good governance and basic services – have nothing to do with language or sect, except when these parties play up divisions over real issues. Except that these divisions, and the parties advocating them, will destroy the country faster than any enemy.

This is why Karachi and Pakistan are not beyond hope provided that the Pakistani State moves in swiftly to restrict these parties and ban those that rebel.

Who gave any political party the right to represent all Pakistanis who speak Pashto? Who gave a single political party the right to represent all Pakistanis who speak Urdu [national language spoken by nearly all Pakistanis]? Who says PPPP is supposed to represent Pakistanis who speak Sindhi or PMLN should be representative of Punjabi language? Last, who gave fugitive terrorists like Brahamdagh Bugti the right to represent all Pakistani Baloch?

The Pakistani State must seize back the right to represent all of its citizens. Educated Pakistanis, regardless of their spoken language at home, have been sidelined by failed and violent parties. Those are the people that should be brought forward by the State at the expense of failed parties and politicians.

Political parties are supposed to be incubators of leadership and produce a steady supply of capable new blood. The Supreme Court verdict has to reestablish this fact. Merely asking these parties to disband their terror wings is not enough.

No political party should be allowed to operate if its sole agenda is dividing Pakistanis on language or sect. Only national parties should exist with a clear mission statement. Parties should not be free to block streets and create public disorder. In March, during city government elections in one of Switzerland’s richest cities, Geneva, parties and candidates were only allowed to establish few neat and clean kiosks manned by a single volunteer. Swiss citizens interested in picking up pamphlets bearing candidates’ pictures and manifestos could so. Few were interested. You could have mistaken these kiosks for a cell phone ad campaign. No messy street demonstrations. No wild party flags and posters. And no direct contacts between our parties and foreign governments. Local TV channels relegated local political news to the third or fourth slots. Sports, cultural events and news relevant to improving people’s lives took precedence in TV coverage.

In short, banning terror wings is not enough. To stabilize Pakistan, correct the failed political parties first.

Terrorists, grenades captured in Islamabad, Pakistan

The city police on Monday claimed to have arrested a suspected terrorist from sector G-6/1 and seized four hand grenades from his possession.

Qari Inayat was arrested, near Mobeen Mosque, in a raid which was jointly conducted by Islamabad Police and Crime Investigation Department (CID) personnel.

Police said that Inayat was wanted in different cases and two First Information Reports had already been registered against him.

“One was registered on August 26, 2011 at the Aabpara Police Station and the other one was registered with the Secretariat police,” said an official.

A police source said that Inayat has close links with Sardar Ali Khan Khattak, the man accused of planning an attack on the occasion of Youm-ul-Quds in federal capital.

The official further said, “On Monday, Inayat was going to meet with the wife of Sardar Khattak in G-6/1 and on a tip off, police raided the place and arrested him.” He was shifted to an undisclosed location for further investigations.

Khattak was earlier arrested from the capital on August 31 and police had recovered a suicide jacket from his house. He was serving as a naib qasid (clerk) in the Finance Division and had been on leave for the last two years.

“Khattak is the ring leader of the terrorist cell that had allegedly planned to target a high-profile government installation in the city,” said the official.

Islamabad assures Kabul of help

Pakistan is set to extend all-out assistance to Afghan government in investigations into mysterious assassination of Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani, sources said on Monday.

According to the informed sources Islamabad has assured Kabul of every possible help in probing the assassination of the former Afghan President. The sources said that Islamabad has already sought detailed information from Kabul to help the Afghan government in this connection. The sources further said that a team of Afghan inquiry commission investigating assassination of Chief Afghan peace negotiator is due to visit Pakistan on Wednesday to share details of its investigation with Pakistani authorities.

“We are expecting the Afghan delegation will come up with credible evidence to share with Pakistan,” a senior official said, denying that relations between Islamabad and Kabul had been stalled following the assassination.

of the head of the Afghan High Peace Council.

Rabbani was killed by a turban bomber at his residence in the upscale Wazir Akbar Khan neighbourhood of Kabul on September 20. Defence Minister General Abdul Rahim Wardak heads Afghan Inquiry Commission; which includes the interior minister, heads of the National Directorate of Security (NDS) and National Security Council and the country’s attorney general as its members.

4 Years before Pakistan Becomes A Desert

ZoneAsia-Pk

Indus Basin Water Council Pakistan Chairman Hafiz Zahoorul Hassan Dahir said on Monday that the governments in the past handed the river system to India and Jewish lobby just to prolong their rule.

“Pakistan will convert into a desert in the coming four years,if an emergency plan is not prepared to counter the Indian water aggression,” he said while addressing a press briefing.

According to the Barcelona Convention 1921,to which India is also a signatory,no country has the right to seize the river water and change its direction,Dahir said,adding that India through water terrorism had destroyed Pakistan’s economy. He also came down hard on the government for its failure to rescue the Pakistani citizens from the water aggression of India. He said the Indian Planning Commission had allocated $120 billion for dropping a “water bomb” on Pakistan and now this amount has been raised to $380 billion. Under this plan,India plans to divert the water of Indus,Chenab and Jhelum rivers from north to south,he said. To store all the water in its territory,he said,India has completed 62 big and small dams,31 dams are near completion and construction work is being carried out on 190 other dams.

He said it will be the biggest water robbery of the world when India will completely block all the water coming to Pakistan by diverting it to Bangalore,Rajasthan and Laddakh in India.

He warned that if an emergency plan was not prepared to foil the Indian plan,Pakistan would convert into a desert in the coming four years.

Ambassador Haqqani’s Delicate Balancing Act

Tacstrat

“What we have are two competing narratives, both simplistic and one-sided,”Husain Haqqani says. “The Pakistani narrative is American betrayals. The American narrative is Pakistan’s untrustworthiness.”

As Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S., Haqqani is caught between the two. After a trio of recent headline-grabbing attacks in and around Kabul, Adm. Mike Mullen, departing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, charged that the insurgent group responsible for them “acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency.” Haqqani was berated at the White House for Pakistan’s failure to crack down on insurgents operating from inside its territory. Yet he remains disconcertingly calm. “One has to see what one can do to reconcile the narratives,” he says. In Washington, Haqqani explains Pakistan’s priorities to the Americans, while he urges Islamabad to understand U.S. concerns. After a United Nations speech by Pakistan’s new foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, warning the U.S. to “respect Pakistan’s red lines,” Haqqani’s cool response was: “We must also remember America’s red lines.”

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On Motives and Objectives

Spearhead Research

‘What country can do more for your peace?’ implored Gillani’s 9/11 condolence to the US in Wall Street Journal.

Ever since Obama’s intermittent resolution to withdraw 33000 troops from Afghanistan and launch operation end game, we witnessed feverish attempts to ‘right’ the war narrative. It began with Bin Laden’s assassination, which was viewed as a stab in the back by Pakistan and set the stage for an eventual future disconnect for the US vis-à-vis Pakistan. Attacks in Kabul: on the hospital in May, the hotel in June and recently the US embassy and NATO’s headquarters in September, carried out swiftly and adroitly right inside ‘the ring of steel’ put all that victory propaganda effort in jeopardy. Small but significant tactical ‘wins’ for Taliban thus created the need for a new narrative to the salvage the chipping of America’s tenuous sense of security.

The US top brass once again found itself making headlines by accusing Pakistan’s Intelligence agency of aiding, protecting and facilitating the Haqqani Network. While Pakistan has strongly denied such allegations, the United States is bent on defaming the agency by implicating its complicity with the Quetta Shura Taliban and the Haqqani Network. Admiral Mullen’s caustic remarks about ISI’s involvement in the attacks and claims about the Haqqani Network functioning as a ‘veritable arm of ISI’, birthed America’s new bogeyman- Pakistan.

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Sindh, Islam & Pakistan

It is believed that Sindh, since it’s always been ‘the land of Sufis’, has shown the most resilience to the advent of various events over the decades that have turned Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa into becoming hotbeds of radical, exhibitionistic Islam. This is a very convincing thesis and if one travels across this province one cannot but help notice rather earthly, folk strains of liberalism among the majority of its people.

Yes, but whereas we are told that this is due to Sindh’s tolerant, Sufi past, very few remember that this historical narrative (about Sindhi history and culture) was not exactly constructed hundreds of years ago. Instead, this narrative, that today has kept much of Sindh at bay from puritan forms of the faith, was actually built by a controversial man who was also labelled by the establishment and the religious parties as a ‘traitor’. His name was G M Syed.

In the late 1950s, Syed was a leading part of the left-wing National Awami Party (NAP), a political expression of Sindhi, Baloch, Pashtun and Bengali nationalists opposed to the conservative West Pakistan dominated ruling elite. NAP was banned by the Ayub Khan dictatorship in 1959, and till its revival in 1962, Syed decided to lead a cultural Sindhi nationalist movement. In 1966 when he was released from jail, he did not rejoin NAP and instead formed a cultural organisation called Bazm-i-Sufia-i-Sindh.

The Bazm also boasted some other famous Sindhi scholars, who set out to create an elaborate historical, intellectual and political narrative of Sindhi culture and history, presenting it as distinct, yet based on pluralistic values. This definition ran counter to what had officially been propagated by Pakistan’s military-civilian elite as ‘Pakistani culture’.

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The Bazm also tried to prove that the Islam practised by Sindhis was very different from the version that was being ‘enforced by the Pakistani state and the ruling elite’. Bazm scholars maintained that Sindh had always been the land of mystics (Sufis) and Sindhis have had a history of being extremely tolerant of Hindus and other faiths. The Bazm and Syed were clearly proposing that Sindh and the Sindhis could not be integrated by the state of Pakistan due to the stark cultural differences that they had with what became known as ‘Pakistan ideology’ (a term first used by the Jamat-i-Islami in 1967).

The Bazm went a step further when it published a controversial study in late 1966 which stated that Raja Dahir (the 8th century Hindu ruler of pre-Islamic Sindh) was actually a hero to many Sindhis and that Muhammad bin Qasim (the Arab Muslim commander who defeated Dahir and conquered Sindh) was regarded as a usurper. The ruling establishment (being dominated at the time by the Ayub led military regime) and the religious parties at once denounced Syed and the Bazm as traitors.

But this did not stop Syed. He asked the Bazm to create a student wing, the Sindhi Students Cultural Council, that held seminars and lectures across Sindh and imparted the Bazm’s radically revisionist history of Sindh amongst young Sindhis. At the start of the students and workers movement against the Ayub dictatorship in late 1967, the Bazm become part of the Sindh United Front (SUF) – an organisation of Sindhi nationalists that wanted to step in and play their role in the movement. Syed wanted to use the chaos resulting from the movement to bid for Sindh’s separation from Pakistan.

But since by 1968 the movement was revolving around Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (a Sindhi) and his Pakistan People’s Party, G M Syed advised the SUF to incorporate in its ranks those who were not only against Ayub but also against Bhutto. Syed feared that Bhutto would become the biggest hindrance to Sindhi separatism. He was right. Though the Bazm withered away in the early 1970s, its works and ideas have continued to inspire various Sindhi nationalist organisations and the youth.

It is ironic that from 1972 under Bhutto’s rule, his regime heavily borrowed the more moderate aspects of Syed and the Bazm’s Sindhi nationalist thesis and it was during Bhutto’s regime (1972-77) that Sindh began being (officially) called the ‘land of Sufis.’

In another twist of irony, not only is it still called that in Pakistan’s history text books, but is accepted as that by none other than Altaf Hussain’s Mohajir-centric, Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and many Punjabi politicians. Also, it is this (once denounced) narrative and its widespread proliferation across the decades in Sindh that has kept the province relatively safe from the kind of puritan radicalisation that Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkha have been witnessing ever since the Zia dictatorship, from the 1980s onwards.

One is not sure what the Sindhis thought about Dahir or Qasim before the 1960s, but it is true that ever since the 1970s, Muhammad Bin Qasim is not so hot as a historical entity in Sindh as he is elsewhere in Pakistan – a fact that, for example, greatly tormented the pro-Jamat-i-Islami ‘historical novelist’ Naseem Hijazi, who had spend a good part of his career turning various Arab commanders into pious supermen.

Panetta Pans & Ponders ME Crisis to Help Israel

Tacstrat

U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said Sunday en route to the Middle East that he plans to offer American assistance so that Israel can “improve relations with … neighboring countries,” some of which have been caught up in the Arab Spring.

Besides Israel, Panetta’s trip — his first to the region since being appointed defense secretary — will take him to Egypt as well as Belgium.

He said that, at his first stop, he plans to press both Israeli and Palestinian leaders to engage in talks, according to a story from the official U.S. military press service. Meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, among others, are on his schedule.

Tensions in that region are high in part over the Palestinian Authority’s push for recognition by the United Nations and Israel’s plans to build 1,100 new homes in disputed territory in south Jerusalem.

Israel announced Sunday that it supports the Middle East Quartet’s call for direct talks with Palestinian leaders to resume within a month.

Israel supports call for direct talks with Palestinians

Abbas has said repeatedly that the Palestinians would not return to negotiations until Israel halts all settlement construction and agrees to redraw borders so they mirror those in place before the 1967 war. And top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat reiterated Sunday that Palestinians “want to hear from” Israel, but only if these conditions — which he claims the Quartet backs — were first met.

In his discussions with Israeli leaders, Panetta said Sunday that he will reaffirm “our strong security relationship” and “make clear that we will protect their qualitative military edge … that, as they take risks for peace, that we will be able to provide the security they need.”

He also offered U.S. help to Israel to improve its recently deteriorating relationships with some neighbors, “particularly … Turkey and Egypt.”

Turkey and Israel continue to be at odds in the aftermath of an Israeli commando raid on the SS Mavi Marmara heading to the blockaded Gaza Strip that resulted in the deaths of nine Turkish activists. Last month, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan expelled Israel’s ambassador over that nation’s refusal to apologize for the incident.

Public opposition in Egypt, meanwhile, against its peace treaty with Israel appears to be growing, while protesters last month attacked Israel’s embassy.

That still unsettled nation, where a peaceful revolution culminated in the February ouster of longtime President Hosni Mubarak, will be Panetta’s next stop.

Frustrations with Egypt’s military rulers grow

A military-led council then took over, promising reforms and a new government. But frustrations have continued to simmer, and a coalition of 60 political parties and groups — including the powerful Muslim Brotherhood — last week threatened to boycott November’s parliamentary elections unless the military rulers meet specific demands.

Panetta will meet with Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, as well as Prime Minister Essam Sharaf, according to the U.S. military press service. He said Sunday that he intends to reaffirm the U.S. commitment to a strong, long-term military relationship with Egypt. The U.S. secretary thanked Tantawi for his quick response in September, after the Israeli embassy attack.

Later, Panetta will head to Brussels, Belgium, for a meeting of NATO defense ministers. The coalition has been involved in a number of ongoing military campaigns, including over Libya and in Afghanistan.

Eight NATO troops die in Afghanistan

Besides optimizing success and learning from such missions, he acknowledged that nations’ tight budgets might affect how the alliance goes about its mission.

“It’s very important now, as we face those budget constraints, to try to develop approaches that allow us to share capabilities, allow us to share technologies and allow us to work together closely in order to ensure that NATO can fulfill its role of providing security,” Panetta said Sunday, according to the U.S. military account.

Dengue epidemic and political subjugation

Very few people in Pakistan know the history of the dengue epidemic in Pakistan. It dates back to the era when we decided to give free hand to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to use our land for its nefarious activities.

We received many “gifts” from the Americans in post Afghan war that dismantled the USSR – dengue and drugs, arms and terrorism, religious bigotry and militarism. During the engagement in Afghanistan through the mujahideen, CIA started a “project” (sic) in Lahore under the name of the ‘Malaria Eradication Centre’ – headed by one David Nalin – to wage biological warfare against the USSR troops. The Centre hired some poor residents of Green Town as guinea pigs. They were infected with the dengue virus and were later on exposed to the Aedes mosquitoes in netted beds. In this way, David Nalin created virus-carrier species – A. aegypti A. albopictus, A. polynesiensis and A. scutellaris – capable of transmitting the deadly epidemic disease commonly known as dengue or yellow fever amongst the Red Army occupying Afghanistan.

The story of CIA’s plans for developing biological weapons in Pakistan through its undercover David Nalin was published in weekly Viewpoint of Lahore in its edition of 1st June 1980 revealing as under:

“Doctors in Lahore are investigating the tragic effects of a drug administered to some poor patients of Green Town. Four of such patients have developed serious psychiatric disorders. It is alleged that they have been given an anti-malaria drug which is still in the experimental stage. The experiment is reported to be part of a research programme; a local institution is carrying out in association with an American University. Until those responsible for the experiment are made to disclose the nature of the drug, it is not possible to say as exactly what has happened to the four unfortunate patients – aged between 15 and 25 years. But, as Viewpoint has repeatedly maintained in these columns, the employment of humans as guinea pigs for drug research is a practice no civilised society, however poor and dependent it may be can countenance. An immediate inquiry is called for.”

In the wake of this publication, the issue was further investigated by Pravda providing full details of the dirty project of the CIA in Lahore of developing biological weapons under the garb of a malaria eradication programme. The matter was taken up by the USSR with the USA and Pakistan at the highest level. The Russians threatened to take the matter to the United Nations exposing CIA connections in the Afghan War and the unlawful use of biological weapons. The Pakistan government was left with no choice but to close down the Centre and expel David Nalin from Pakistan declaring him persona non grata. A journalist translated in Urdu the stories published in Viewpoint and Pravda that exposed the activities of the CIA using the so-called Malaria Eradication Centre. He was arrested and taken to the Lahore Fort by the agencies. He was brutally tortured by the investigative agencies. They accused him of being an agent of the KGB in Pakistan but failed to prove it. Later on, he was released but forced to go into exile.

This bizarre episode reveals how Pakistan became the victim of all kinds of devastating repercussions of the Great Game of the superpowers of that time in this region. The USSR and USA engaged in conventional war also resorted to horrific biological warfare, killing thousands of innocent people. Unfortunately, dictators like Zia not only sided with the US but also allowed the CIA to operate from Pakistan for all kinds of dirty operations imaginable. The wages are before us: the dengue epidemic, violence, arms, drugs and above all political subjugation.

A great intellectual of our time, Edward W Said, in his books exposed these so-called champions of a free world and faith. In Pakistan, we are still faced with the challenge of undoing Zia’s legacy, which was later reinforced by the Sharifs, Musharraf and others. Professor Said rightly argues that in a world where might is right, the powerful in global politics ensure the perpetuation of their control through handpicked cronies and lackeys in different countries.

Not only Zia and his remnants inflicted this country with deadly diseases like corruption, violence, politics of fascism and drug addiction, but they also pushed the common people to the wall. After deposing and managing the judicial killing of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Zia paved the way for foreign intervention and the physical presence of CIA agents in Pakistan, playing havoc with our security. The activities of the CIA operative in Lahore way back in 1980 mentioned above are just the tip of the iceberg. It needs thorough investigation to unearth the activities of the CIA and other intelligence agencies in Pakistan since 1979, when in the name of jihad against the Russians they started laying the foundation for their permanent stay in Pakistan – the beginning of the political subjugation that continues till today. Even for a genuine democratic government it would be difficult to undo the legacy of dictators like Zia and Musharraf. Those possessing gun power always strive to dispossess the masses of their rights through cronies. The Neo-Colonists create and support the cronies as it would not be possible for them to exploit the world’s resources without their support.

The US State Department claims that all political parties in Pakistan (including religious fundamentalists) are ready to toe its line. It is extremely unfortunate that we have cronies all around who are ready to follow the US agenda, which is detrimental to the interests of Pakistan and ultimately for the entire Muslim World. The so-called advocates of “changing the system” (MQM, Tehreek-e-Insaf and Jamaat-i-Islami et al) have also allegedly pledged before the USA [www.wikileaks.org] that if given a chance to rule they would willingly fulfil their agenda most efficiently and faithfully. This clearly establishes that we lack leadership capable of educating and mobilising the masses to come out of political subjugation by making Pakistan economically a self-reliant State. The existing parties are controlled by a few “power hungry” individuals. But then there is no easy solution as popular support is not manna from heaven to be bestowed on an unwilling people, it has to be generated, organised and mobilised.