In an interview? she said that Pakistan Peoples Party government is taking all decisions in consultation with its allies. The Minister said democratic forces are always looking for resolving issues through dialogue and PPP always followed the way of dialogue in all matters. Replying to a question? she said for holding general elections? all the stakeholders will be taken on board. Dr. Firdous Ashiq Awan said the PPP wants to remove political unrest from the country. She said in the history of Pakistan first time smooth transition will take place? adding all the challenges in this regard will be confronted unitedly by all political parties.
Monday, 13 February 2012
Information Minister Dr. Firdous Ashiq Awan says consensus has almost developed on 20th constitutional amendment.
Information Minister Dr. Firdous Ashiq Awan says consensus has almost developed on 20th constitutional amendment.
President Asif Ali Zardari says the government is taking all possible steps for the welfare of the people and to strengthen economy as economically strong and stable Pakistan is our future and the future of our children.
President Asif Ali Zardari says the government is taking all possible steps for the welfare of the people and to strengthen economy as economically strong and stable Pakistan is our future and the future of our children. He was addressing a dinner hosted by him in honour of outgoing Senators in Islamabad. The President said that the government is doing a lot on all fronts but much more needed to be done to face various challenges and put the economy on the fast track of growth and development. He said that credit goes to all political parties for what have been achieved over the last 4 years on various fronts as no single party can do all this on its own. President Zardari said outgoing senators will be remembered in the parliamentary history as proud Members of the Parliament that unanimously removed the traces of dictatorship from the Constitution by passing historic 18th and 19th Constitutional Amendments. He said they will also be remembered for making possible the realization of shared national ideal of restoring democracy by their wisdom and selflessness while being members of the upper House. While commending the role of Senate? the President said that? driven by the spirit of reconciliation and consensus? the outgoing senators have to their credit as members of the senate that passed some very important pieces of legislation unanimously including the recently adopted far reaching pro-women bill. He said that the work of senators and parliamentarians has enhanced the trust of the people not only in politicians? but also in the parliamentary democracy as a guardian of our national aspirations? which is a big achievement. While commenting on the fight against militancy? the President said we have to defeat this mindset so as to leave a peaceful? stable and prosperous Pakistan for our coming generations. He said during his meetings with foreign delegations he has been pointing out that drug trafficking is a major missing element in the war on terror which is a great source of funding for the militants. President Zardari said Pakistan has abundant natural resources of all kinds and we have to work together to build and strengthen our economy for the sake of prosperity of our future generations. While recounting the achievements of the government? he said that peace and development of Balochistan is a pillar of the present government\'s policy. He expressed the hope that a series of initiatives and development projects initiated by the present government will heal the wounds of Baloch people made during the previous regimes.
The United Nations and the Arab League are considering sending a joint observer mission to Syria to try to end crisis there.
The United Nations and the Arab League are considering sending a joint observer mission to Syria to try to end crisis there.
This has been stated by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and Arab League Secretary General Nabil al-Araby after their talks on the Syrian crisis. They also agreed to send a joint special envoy to Damascus for this purpose.
This has been stated by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and Arab League Secretary General Nabil al-Araby after their talks on the Syrian crisis. They also agreed to send a joint special envoy to Damascus for this purpose.
ISI in Pakistan Faces Court Cases
The cases against the agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, have uncertain chances of success, analysts say, and few believe that they can immediately hobble it. But they do represent a rare challenge to a feared institution that is a cornerstone of military supremacy in Pakistan. In the first case, due for a hearing on Wednesday, the Supreme Court has ordered the ISI to produce in court seven suspected militants it has been holding since 2010 — and to explain how four other detainees from the same group died in mysterious circumstances over the past six months. The second challenge, due for a hearing on Feb. 29, revives a long-dormant vote-rigging scandal, which focuses on illegal donations of $6.5 million as part of a covert, and ultimately successful, operation to influence the 1990 election. The cases go to the heart of the powers that have given the ISI such an ominous reputation among Pakistanis: its ability to detain civilians at will, and its freedom to meddle in electoral politics. They come at the end of a difficult 12 months for the spy service, which has faced sharp criticism over the killing of Osama bin Laden by American commandos inside Pakistan and, in recent weeks, its role in a murky political scandal that stoked rumors of a military coup. Now its authority is being challenged from an unexpected quarter: the chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. Only weeks ago, Justice Chaudhry, an idiosyncratic judge, faced accusations of being soft on the military when he inserted the courts into a bruising battle between the government and army. Now Justice Chaudhry seems determined to prove that he can take on the army, too. “This is a reaction to public opinion,” said Ayaz Amir, an opposition politician from Punjab. “The court wants to be seen to represent the popular mood.” The court’s daring move has found broad political support. Last Friday, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, the leader of the opposition in Parliament, compared the military to a “mafia” during a National Assembly debate about the plight of the four detainees who died in ISI custody. On Saturday, Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan’s largest religious party, tabled a proposed law that would curtail the ISI’s powers of detention — a symbolic act, given the party’s limited support base, but nonetheless a significant one. Wednesday’s court hearing could be a significant step for the “disappeared” — hundreds of Pakistanis who have vanished into ISI custody over the past decade, amid allegations from human rights groups of torture and extrajudicial executions. The case concerns the plight of 11 men accused of orchestrating three major suicide attacks against army and ISI bases from November 2007 to January 2008. The men were tried by an antiterrorism court and acquitted in April 2010, only to disappear moments after their release from jail. Months later, the men turned up in ISI custody, and then they started to die. One detainee died last August and two more in December, within 24 hours of each other. Then on Jan. 21 a fourth man, 29-year-old Abdul Saboor, was declared dead. An unidentified ISI official called the detainee’s brother, Abdul Baais, with the news. “I stopped my car and started crying,” Mr. Baais, recalled in an interview in Lahore, the capital of Punjab, where he runs a store that sells Islamic texts. The ISI directed Mr. Baais to a fuel station on the outskirts of Peshawar, the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, formerly North-West Frontier Province, where he found his brother’s body lying in an ambulance. “His body was cold as ice and thin as a crow,” said Mr. Baais, producing a flush of photographs that showed an emaciated corpse with long, scarlet welts across the back.
U.S. Drone Strikes Are Said to Target Rescuers
The report, by the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, found that at least 50 civilians had been killed in follow-up strikes after they rushed to help those hit by a drone-fired missile. The bureau counted more than 20 other civilians killed in strikes on funerals. The findings were published on the bureau’s Web site and in The Sunday Times of London. The bureau’s findings are based on interviews with witnesses to strikes in Pakistan’s rugged tribal area, where reporting is often dangerous and difficult. American officials have questioned the accuracy of such claims, asserting that accounts might be concocted by militants or falsely confirmed by residents who fear retaliation. But most other studies of drone strikes have relied on sketchy and often contradictory news reports from Pakistan. The bureau’s investigation, which began last year with a detailed study of civilian casualties, involved interviews with villagers who said they saw strikes, wounded people and family members of those killed. The bureau counted 260 strikes by Predator and Reaper drones since President Obama took office, and it said that 282 to 535 civilians had been “credibly reported” killed in those attacks, including more than 60 children. American officials said that the number was much too high, though they acknowledged that at least several dozen civilians had been killed inadvertently in strikes aimed at militant suspects. A senior American counterterrorism official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, questioned the report’s findings, saying “targeting decisions are the product of intensive intelligence collection and observation.” The official added: “One must wonder why an effort that has so carefully gone after terrorists who plot to kill civilians has been subjected to so much misinformation. Let’s be under no illusions — there are a number of elements who would like nothing more than to malign these efforts and help Al Qaeda succeed.” Getting a full picture of the drone campaign is difficult. It is classified as top secret, and Obama administration officials have refused to make public even the much-disputed legal opinions underpinning it. But Mr. Obama spoke about the program in an online appearance last week. “I want to make sure that people understand: actually, drones have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties,” he said in the forum on YouTube. “For the most part they have been very precise precision strikes against Al Qaeda and their affiliates.” He called the strikes “a targeted, focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists.” However, American officials familiar with the rules governing the strikes and who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that many missiles had been fired at groups of suspected militants who are not on any list. These so-called signature strikes are based on assessments that men carrying weapons or in a militant compound are legitimate targets.
Sunday, 12 February 2012
Drone Kills Pakistani Militant, Official Says
The militant, Badar Mansoor, who led his own group of fighters, was affiliated with Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan — an umbrella organization representing the many shades of Pakistani militants — and Al Qaeda, the official said. “He was one of the main militant commanders out there,” said the official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. Mr. Mansoor, said to be in his late 20s, was among five people killed after two missiles struck the house in Miram Shah, the capital of the North Waziristan tribal agency. A local official in Miram Shah who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that he also believed Mr. Mansoor had been killed. The strike comes as fraught relations between Pakistan and the United States, which had been virtually frozen since American warplanes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in a disputed border attack in November, have been slowly warming. Mr. Mansoor has been accused of attacks that have killed dozens of Pakistanis, and by midevening Pakistani officials had not spoken out against the strike. A local resident said he was woken by two loud explosions around 4 a.m. on Thursday. Militants rushed to the site immediately after the attack to clear the rubble and retrieve the bodies, he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. It was only the second drone strike in Miram Shah since the campaign started in 2004 — the first occurred last November — suggesting that the C.I.A. has expanded its targeting “box” in the tribal belt to include more densely populated areas, which had been previously avoided. Tehrik-i-Taliban, which controls large areas of North and South Waziristan, issued no statement on the drone strikes, but reports of Mr. Mansoor’s death circulated among local residents. Amir Rana, a militancy expert based in Islamabad, said Mr. Mansoor was an ethnic Punjabi who started his militant activities with Harkat-ul-Mujahedeen, a jihadi group with links to Pakistani intelligence, fighting in Indian-occupied Kashmir in the 1990s. In recent years he moved to North Waziristan, where he headed a faction of Punjabi Taliban fighters who used their base in the tribal area to orchestrate suicide bombings and kidnappings across Pakistan. Mr. Rana said officials believed Mr. Mansoor had been behind an attack on a Sufi shrine in Lahore in 2010. The police in Karachi accused him of kidnappings and bank robberies. It was the second drone strike in two days in North Waziristan. On Wednesday missiles struck a house in the village of Spilga, killing nine people, whom the security official described as Qaeda associates. North Waziristan is home to an array of Pakistani and foreign militant groups including Al Qaeda, but Pakistan has resisted pressure from the United States to undertake a military operation there. Islamabad has closed NATO supply routes into Afghanistan since the Nov. 26 attack on the Pakistani forces. In recent weeks the country’s political and military leaders have been engaged in a review of their relationship with Washington. Recommendations from a parliamentary committee on Pakistan-United States relations are expected to go before Parliament next week, news media reports said.
Ismail Khan reported from Peshawar, and Declan Walsh from Islamabad, Pakistan.
C.I.A. Drone Strikes Resume in Pakistan
Missiles fired from a remotely piloted aircraft struck a house outside of Miram Shah in the North Waziristan tribal area, killing at least three militants, Reuters reported, citing a local intelligence official.
Officials in Washington confirmed the strike but, as is customary with missile attacks from drones operated by the Central Intelligence Agency, they would not provide any details.
The C.I.A. last conducted a drone strike in Pakistan on Nov. 16, 10 days before the attack that killed the Pakistani troops in two remote outposts along the border with Afghanistan.
American officials decided after the cross-border episode to suspend the strikes pending a wide-ranging Pakistani review of its security relationship with the United States.
American officials said over the weekend that any lull in drone strikes did not signal a weakening of the country’s counterterrorism efforts, and suggested that strikes could resume soon.
Pakistan ordered the shutdown of drone operations at its Shamsi air base after the airstrike in November, but C.I.A. drones flying from bases in Afghanistan continued to conduct surveillance over the tribal areas. The drones were cleared to fire on a senior militant leader if there was credible intelligence and minimal risk to civilians, American officials said. But the Predator and Reaper drones had held their fire until now, the longest pause in Pakistan since July 2008.
It was unclear whether the latest attack presaged a fresh round of strikes, which over the past three years have battered Al Qaeda and other militants seeking haven in Pakistan’s rugged, lawless borderlands, but which have also fueled an increasingly virulent anti-American sentiment in the country.
In Pakistan, Truck Bomb Kills Dozens
The latest pressure from the court compounds the problems of the governing Pakistan Peoples Party, already facing a political crisis over a controversial memo that sought United States support in thwarting a feared military coup.
Adding to the government’s troubles is a steep increase in terrorist attacks. Another attack occurred early Tuesday, a truck bombing that the authorities said killed more than 25 people, including women and children, in northwestern Pakistan. A senior government official said the bombing appeared to be in retaliation for the recent killing of a militant leader.
Since December 2009, when the Supreme Court struck down an amnesty that nullified corruption charges against thousands of politicians, the court has insisted that the government reopen corruption cases against Mr. Zardari.
But the government has resisted court orders, and Mr. Zardari said last week that, “come what may,” officials from his party would not reopen the graft cases filed against him and his wife, Benazir Bhutto, in Switzerland. Ms. Bhutto was assassinated in 2007.
On Tuesday, a five-member panel of the Supreme Court, led by Justice Asif Saeed Khosa, ruled that the government was guilty of “willful disobedience” and said that Mr. Gilani was “dishonest” for failing to carry out the earlier court orders.
The judges laid out six options — including initiating contempt of court charges, dismissing the prime minister, forming a judicial commission and taking action against the president for violating his constitutional oath — and ordered the attorney general to explain the government’s position in court on Monday.
A three-member judicial commission that is investigating the controversial memo is scheduled to resume its hearing the same day. Apart from having an acrimonious relationship with the judiciary, the government has an uneasy relationship with the country’s top generals.
Mr. Zardari, who spent 11 years in prison on unproved corruption charges, says the corruption cases against him and Ms. Bhutto that date to the 1990s were politically motivated.
In an interview last week with GEO TV, a news network, Mr. Zardari said reopening those cases would be tantamount to “a trial of the grave” of his wife.
Mr. Zardari also claims immunity as president, but the judiciary, led by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, has resisted that claim and has aggressively pursued cases against Mr. Zardari’s party, leading many government officials to speculate that the judiciary was being used by the country’s powerful military to dismiss the government before the March elections for the Senate, in which the Pakistan Peoples Party is expected to win a majority.
Political analysts said the fate of Mr. Gilani, the prime minister, was in peril.
Mr. Zardari called a meeting of his party officials and coalition partners on Tuesday evening to chart strategy, and he was expected to get a statement of support from his allies.
“The situation is fast moving towards a head-on confrontation,” said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a political and military analyst based in Lahore. “It depends on what options are exercised by the Supreme Court.”
According to the Pakistani Constitution, a prime minister can be removed only by the Parliament, and the Supreme Court can disqualify the prime minister only indirectly, Mr. Rizvi said.
“If the court disqualifies the prime minister and the prime minister continues to enjoy the support of the Parliament, then the stage is set for a very dangerous confrontation,” he said.
The legal standoff is forcing the government to defer issues of greater importance, like rescuing a failing economy and fighting Taliban insurgents, as it focuses on its political survival, Mr. Rizvi said.
“The court, the military and the executive are trying to assert themselves,” he said. “It has become a free-for-all.”
There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the bombing on Tuesday, but it appeared to have been carried out by Tehrik-i-Taliban, an umbrella organization of Pakistani militant groups, against the Zakhakhel tribe, which has formed a militia in support of the government, said Mutahir Zeb, administrator for the Khyber tribal region.
Mr. Zeb said the Tehrik-i-Taliban sought to avenge the killing of Qari Kamran, a local Taliban commander, by security forces last week in an area occupied by the Zakhakhel.
Mr. Zeb said a pickup truck exploded in the middle of a bus terminal used by the Zakhakhel in the town of Jamrud.
The bomb destroyed several vehicles, damaged a nearby gasoline pump and shattered windows in the area. In addition to those killed, 27 people were reported wounded in the bombing and were taken to hospitals in Peshawar.
“I was on duty at the nearby checkpoint when I heard a big bang,” said Mir Gul, a security guard. “I rushed toward the spot and saw bodies lying around while the injured cried for help. It was devastating. There was blood everywhere.”
Salman Masood reported from Islamabad, and Ismail Khan from Peshawar, Pakistan.
U.S. Sending General to Repair Ties With Pakistan
Gen. James N. Mattis, the head of the military’s Central Command, will meet Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the Pakistani Army chief of staff, to discuss the investigations of an exchange of fire at the Afghan border that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, as well as new border coordination procedures to prevent a recurrence of the episode. General Mattis’s visit, the first by a high-ranking American official since the cross-border confrontation in November, was to have begun Thursday, but has been postponed by at least a week pending what is expected to be a spirited debate in the Pakistani Parliament over a new security policy toward the United States. Pakistani and American officials are quietly optimistic that both events will trigger a chain of public engagement and private negotiations that will reboot the two nations’ frayed strategic relationship, although along more narrowly defined lines than before. Pakistani officials say they will probably reopen NATO supply lines running through their territory, which have been closed for more than two months. The State Department is supporting a proposal circulating in the administration for the United States to issue a formal apology for the deaths of the Pakistani soldiers in the Nov. 26 airstrike by American gunships. “We’ve felt an apology would be helpful in creating some space,” said an American official who has been briefed on the State Department’s view and who spoke on the condition of anonymity as internal discussions continued. Soon after the lethal airstrike, the White House decided that President Obama would not offer formal condolences to Pakistan, overruling State Department officials who argued for such a show of remorse to help salvage relations. Pentagon officials had balked, saying the statements from other American officials had been sufficient. Some administration aides said at the time that they worried that if Mr. Obama decided to overrule the military and apologize to Pakistan, it could become ammunition for his Republican opponents in the presidential campaign. A State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, would not comment on the proposal on Monday. American election politics are also on the mind of Pakistani strategists. A senior security official in Islamabad, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak publicly on the issue, said the military was cognizant of Mr. Obama’s domestic political constraints, and noted that Pakistan may also have elections this year, probably in the fall. “Unfortunately there is election fever on both sides of the divide this year,” the official said. “That limits the room for maneuver.” The director of the State Department’s policy planning office, Jake Sullivan, signaled last month that relations could improve soon. Speaking to foreign journalists in Washington on Jan. 25, Mr. Sullivan said, “We will see over the course of the next several weeks an intensive period of work to deal with the very real issues that continue to exist between the United States and Pakistan in our relationship.” American officials in Washington said the thaw had already started, unofficially. Relations between the C.I.A. and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISI, had slowly improved since the nadir after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden last May, they said. Intelligence officials from the two countries have resumed discussions about “joint targeting,” officials here added — probably a reference to C.I.A.-directed drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal belt. On the military side, Pakistan’s generals had started discussions over border coordination and the resumption of Coalition Support Funds, the main United States subsidy to Pakistani military operations. A senior Pakistani security official also struck a cautiously positive note. “We have to meet, we have to talk, we have to bring this relationship back on track,” he said. “Both of us need each other. But from now on there will be no free rides, no carte blanche — things need to be institutionalized.”
Eric Schmitt reported from Washington, and Declan Walsh from Islamabad, Pakistan.
Saturday, 11 February 2012
Drone Strike Said to Kill 10 Militants in Pakistan
It was the fifth such strike this year. In Wednesday’s attack, a drone fired two missiles at a house suspected of being a militant hideout in the village of Thapi, about 10 miles east of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan. “Almost all the men were burnt beyond recognition,” said a villager said after visiting the house, which was destroyed. “Dozens of militants arrived later and took over rescue work. They pulled out nine bodies,” he said, speaking only on the condition that he not be identified publicly. Several militant groups, including the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda, have a presence in Pakistan’s northwestern ethnic Pashtun regions, where they take advantage of the porous border with Afghanistan to conduct cross-border attacks or plot violence elsewhere. North Waziristan is also an important base area for the Haqqani network, an Afghan militant faction allied with the Taliban. American officials have called the Haqqani one of its deadliest adversaries in Afghanistan. A Pashtun tribal elder said that militants usually avoided gathering, limiting groups to three or four people to minimize losses in the event of a drone attack, but that they recently had dropped their guard. “It has been freezing cold in the last few days and then there were no drones for some time,” said the elder who declined to be identified. “That’s why the militants started living together and suffered heavy losses,” The United States stopped the drone program, a major element of its anti-terrorism efforts, after a NATO air attack last November from across the Afghan border killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, enraging Pakistani officials and the public, who view the attacks as violations of sovereignty that produce unacceptable civilian casualties. The United States resumed attacks with the missile-firing drones in northwest Pakistan on Jan. 10.
Can Egypt Avoid Pakistan’s Fate?
ONE year after the revolution that ousted President Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian military is closing down civil society organizations and trying to manipulate the constitution-writing process to serve its narrow interests. Meanwhile, in Pakistan, where the military has also held sway for more than half the country’s existence — for much of that time, with America’s blessing — a new civil-military crisis is brewing. For the United States, the parallels are clear and painful. Egypt and Pakistan are populous Muslim-majority nations in conflict-ridden regions, and both have long been allies and recipients of extensive military and economic aid. Historically, American aid tapers off in Pakistan whenever civilians come to power. And in Egypt, Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama both resisted pressure from Congress to cut aid to Mr. Mubarak despite his repression of peaceful dissidents. It is no wonder that both Egyptians and Pakistanis express more anger than appreciation toward the United States. They have seen Washington turn a blind eye to human-rights abuses and antidemocratic practices because of a desire to pursue regional objectives — Israeli security in the case of Egypt, and fighting Al Qaeda in the case of Pakistan. The question now is whether the United States will, a year after the Egyptian revolution, stand by and allow the Pakistani model of military dominance and a hobbled civilian government to be replicated on the Nile. Pakistan and Egypt each have powerful intelligence and internal security agencies that have acquired extra-legal powers they will not relinquish easily. Pakistan’s history of fomenting insurgencies in neighboring countries has caused serious problems for the United States. And Egypt’s internal security forces have been accused of involvement in domestic terrorist attacks and sectarian violence. (However, Washington has long seen Egypt’s military as a stabilizing force that keeps the peace with Israel.) The danger is that in the future, without accountability to elected civilian authorities, the Egyptian military and security services will seek to increase their power by manipulating Islamic extremist organizations in volatile and strategically sensitive areas like the Sinai Peninsula. Despite the security forces’ constant meddling in politics, Pakistan at least has a Constitution that establishes civilian supremacy over the military. Alarmingly, Egypt’s army is seeking even greater influence than what Pakistan’s top brass now enjoys: an explicit political role, and freedom from civilian oversight enshrined in law. Egypt’s army was once considered heroic for siding with peaceful demonstrators against Mr. Mubarak, but it has badly mishandled the country in the past year. The riot at a soccer match on Wednesday that killed around 70 people underscored the leadership’s failure to undertake badly needed police reform and restore security. The economy is teetering, peaceful demonstrators have been tried in military courts, anti-Christian violence has spiked and ministers appointed by the military have hounded civil society groups that advocate government accountability, budget transparency, human rights and free elections. A dismayed Congress has attached conditions to future military assistance to Egypt (now $1.3 billion a year), requiring the Obama administration to certify that the military government is maintaining peace with Israel, allowing a transition to civilian rule and protecting basic freedoms — or to waive the conditions on national security grounds — if it wants to keep aid flowing. The Egyptian military is clearly not meeting at least two of those three conditions right now. Consequently, the Obama administration should not certify compliance, nor should it invoke the national security waiver by arguing that Egyptian-Israeli peace is paramount and that Egypt’s military is the only bulwark against Islamist domination of the country — because both of these arguments are deeply flawed. First, hardly anyone in Egypt favors war with Israel, and a freeze or suspension of American aid would not change that. Second, continuing support to an Egyptian military that is bent on hobbling a liberal civil society would only strengthen Islamist domination. Islamist groups won some 70 percent of seats in the recent parliamentary elections, but they will now face tremendous pressure to solve the deep economic and political problems that caused the revolution. In Egypt, as in Pakistan, the ultimate solution is a peaceful transfer of power to elected, accountable civilians and the removal of the military’s overt and covert influence from the political scene. At a minimum, Egypt should establish the clear supremacy of the civilian government over the military and allow an unfettered civil society to flourish. Washington should suspend military assistance to Egypt until those conditions are met. Taking that difficult step now could help Egypt avoid decades of the violence, terrorism and cloak-and-dagger politics that continue to plague Pakistan.
Michele Dunne, a former White House and State Department official, and Shuja Nawaz, the author of “Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army, and the Wars Within,” are the directors of the Middle East and South Asia centers, respectively, at The Atlantic Council.
Despite All the Turmoil, Pakistan’s Cricket Team Is Flying High
LONDON — Having three players sent to jail while your team is on an indefinite road trip is usually not a promising path to success, but Pakistan cricket has always done things differently. Unable to play international matches at home because of security worries, it has adopted the United Arab Emirates as a refuge and its home away from home. On Friday in Dubai, it goes into the final five-day test match of a three-match series against England, up 2-0 on the top-ranked team in the world. Pakistan is not an overnight success. Though it could not play at home and spent much of last year waiting for three players to be tried on spot-fixing charges, Pakistan could claim to be the most successful international cricket team of 2011. It was the only country with a winning record in all three formats of the game. “We are desperate to see a three-nil margin, but no test victory comes easy and nobody has a given right to win any test match,” Pakistan’s coach, Mohsin Khan, told the PakPassion Web site. Pakistan dominated the first match against England from the start in Dubai. But in the second in Abu Dhabi, it trailed on first innings and left England only a small target to tie the series in the final innings, but then bowled it out for 72 runs. “It’s very important to give a lot of credit to Pakistan. They were outstanding. They’ve been a good close-knit unit,” England captain Andrew Strauss said after the second match. “They’ve got some very good spin bowlers.” The star among those has been Saeed Ajmal, who did not play international cricket until after age 30. Now 34, he has made up for lost time by becoming the fastest Pakistani to 100 test wickets, achieving it in only 19 matches. He epitomizes a team very different from the norm for Pakistan. It has a long history of picking young players, but this squad is one of the oldest in its 60 years as a test-playing nation. Pakistan teams were prone to be volatile and aggressive, but this one, taking its cue from captain Misbah-ul-Haq, is calm, controlled and patient. The Australian Geoff Lawson, who coached Pakistan from 2007 to 2008, says Misbah has the sharpest brain on the team when it comes to cricket. Not long ago, Misbah looked washed up. He was a player whose age — he will be 38 in June — comfortably exceeded his batting average in 20 test appearances. He was recalled in late 2010 because Pakistan needed a new leader untainted by the disastrous tour of England that culminated in the convictions of Salman Butt, the previous captain, and a teammate, Mohammad Asif, in a spot-fixing trail. Another teammate, Mohammad Amir, pleaded guilty, and on Wednesday, he became the first to be released from jail. In 14 matches since becoming captain, Misbah has been one of the most prolific batsmen in the world, averaging more than 70 runs per dismissal, and he has shown himself a capable leader. “He is a very good captain,” Mohsin told the ESPN Cricinfo Web site, “and I have a wonderful rapport with him.” Misbah’s patience as a player rubbed off on two young batsmen, Asad Shafiq and Azhar Ali. Their partnership of 88 runs from 42 six-ball overs in Pakistan’s second innings in Abu Dhabi put its bowlers in a position to win after the team faced an almost certain defeat. Mohsin is the interim coach while Pakistan seeks a permanent appointment. Stopgaps, though, can often be long-term successes. Pakistan needs only to look at England coach Andy Flower, an emergency appointee who has taken his team to No. 1 in the test rankings. It is an example Mohsin would like to follow. “I think this team has the capacity to become the world’s best,” he said. Pakistan is currently ranked fifth, but a 3-0 sweep would take it close to India and Australia, ranked third and fourth, below South Africa. But most of all, Pakistan wants once more to play a test on its home soil. It has not been allowed to do so for nearly three years, since the Sri Lanka team was attacked by gunmen in Lahore in March 2009. “It’s up to the international community to make up their minds and assess the situation themselves, which they haven’t done,” Majid Khan, a former Pakistan captain, said last month. “They have to decide when they want to play in Pakistan.”
Afghan Leader, Karzai, Warily Accepts U.S.-Taliban Talks
But the fact that it took Mr. Karzai almost a full day to respond to the Taliban’s announcement — the most unequivocal signal to date that the insurgents are ready to talk — left lingering doubts about his willingness to play a secondary role in a reconciliation effort that is being propelled, at least for now, by the United States and its allies. Both Washington and Kabul have stressed that negotiations should be led by Afghans.
Adding to the concerns was Mr. Karzai’s use of language portraying “foreigners and their agents” as responsible for driving the violence in Afghanistan. This sentiment has become habitual for the Karzai government, and it plays well domestically, but it is often seen by Mr. Karzai’s foreign backers as petulant and unhelpful at a time when the American-led coalition and the Afghan government should be presenting a united front.
“Afghanistan agrees with the negotiations between the United States and the Taliban that would result in opening an office for the Taliban in Qatar, rescuing Afghanistan from war and conspiracies that are killing our innocent people,” read Mr. Karzai’s statement. “Negotiations are the only way to reach peace and get out of the war and trouble imposed on our people.”
The Taliban’s announcement on Tuesday, after years of denials, that they were ready to press forward with talks offered the prospect of reviving the reconciliation process, and Mr. Karzai’s response on Wednesday gave it more impetus. He had largely shut the process down in September after a man who claimed to be a negotiator representing the Taliban detonated a bomb in his turban, killing Burhanuddin Rabbani, the chief of the Afghan government’s High Peace Council. It remains unclear how much ground the Taliban would be willing to give in the talks, or whether the group simply plans to temporize until NATO ends its combat operations in 2014.
The Taliban made clear on Tuesday that they were interested in talking to the United States and its allies, not to the Afghan government, which the insurgents pointedly did not mention in their announcement.
That reflects the reality of the situation more closely than the statements from Washington and Kabul about Afghan-led talks. The only substantial talks that took place in the year before Mr. Rabbani’s assassination were between American and German officials on the one hand and a former secretary to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s reclusive leader, on the other. Those talks led directly to the deal for a Taliban office in Qatar.
An American official also met over the summer with a representative of the Haqqani network, a Taliban ally that is believed to have been behind the most audacious attacks in Kabul over the past few years. The Haqqanis are also seen as the insurgent faction most closely aligned with Al Qaeda and Pakistan’s spy service, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence.
The Afghan government played no role in any of those talks, although Mr. Karzai and his top advisers were continually briefed on them, Afghan and American officials have said. When reports surfaced last month that Qatar was willing to be the site for the Taliban office, the Karzai government at first rejected the idea and recalled its ambassador from Qatar. Only under American pressure did the Afghan government grudgingly agree last week to Qatar as the site for the office.
How much progress the talks can make without a vigorous Afghan role is uncertain. American and European officials say they do not think a truly comprehensive peace settlement can be reached unless the Afghan government takes the lead. The aim at the moment is to build up enough momentum to hand the talks over to the Afghans.
The Afghans say they share that goal. “We want the talks to be Afghan-led and Afghan-owned, which is not yet the case,” Aimal Faizi, a spokesman for Mr. Karzai, said on Wednesday by telephone.
“The talks will not be successful, or will not have a positive outcome, if Afghanistan is not leading,” Mr. Faizi said. He complained about other countries’ wielding influence in the talks. He did not say which countries, but he appeared to be referring to Pakistan, which has long sought to dominate events in Afghanistan, in large part to counter the influence of India, its rival.
Afghan officials have voiced concern that Pakistan, where much of the Taliban leadership resides, will use the insurgents as a stalking-horse to strike a deal with Washington, and in the process secure its place in postwar Afghanistan.
American officials see the Qatar office as a way of reducing Pakistan’s influence over the talks. But that strategy appears to have limits: the bulk of the Taliban leadership and their families still rely on safe haven in Pakistan, where they are believed to live and work under the close watch of Inter-Services Intelligence. Pakistan has in the past arrested insurgent leaders who sought to open talks without its blessing.
A former American official said on Wednesday that it appeared that Pakistan had accepted the idea of the Qatar office and was willing to let talks move forward, despite the recent deterioration in relations between the United States and Pakistan. “We’d be foolish to think this was being done independently, that Pakistan wasn’t playing any role in this,” said the former official, who is being briefed by current officials and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
In Kabul on Wednesday, many Afghans were skeptical about the talks. Juma Khan, 35, who sells corn in the shadow of an old mosque on the banks of the Kabul River, said he found it hard to trust the Taliban. “I don’t think they are serious,” he said.
Sharifullah Sahak contributed reporting.
Friday, 10 February 2012
Pakistan Reveals Prime Minister Gilani Was Sent Anthrax
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan’s prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, received a postal package containing anthrax spores four months ago, his spokesman said Wednesday, adding a new dimension to the security threats faced by the country’s political and military leadership. The package was intercepted by the prime minister’s security staff in October, according to the spokesman, Akram Shaheedi. The Pakistan Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, a government laboratory, established that the suspicious white powder it contained was anthrax spores, he said. A criminal case was filed on Tuesday, according to an Islamabad police officer, The Associated Press reported. Government officials gave contradictory accounts of the identity of the sender, and they offered little sense of motive. While Islamist militants have repeatedly targeted senior government officials in suicide and bomb attacks, an assassination attempt using biological weapons would be an anomaly. Mr. Shaheedi said that law enforcement authorities had identified the sender as an associate professor at Jamshoro University in the southern province of Sindh. But he could not say whether the professor, a Ms. Zulekha, had been arrested or detained. A senior police officer in charge of presidential security, Hakim Khan, gave a different account. He denied any knowledge of the suspect Mr. Shaheedi named, but he confirmed that a police team had been sent to Jamshoro to investigate. The packet had been sent from a small post office on the Jamshoro University campus, he said. Mr. Khan said the case had been registered under a provision of Pakistan’s penal code that deals with the act of sending poison with the intention of causing harm. In November 2001, suspicious letters containing anthrax spores were sent to three private businesses, including the country’s largest Urdu-language daily, Jang, in the southern port city of Karachi. No motive was ever determined. Thursday, 9 February 2012
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