Category: Foreign Affairs

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Pakistan Fails to Persuade Taliban to End Polio Threat

Child receives polio drops (Credit: photoblog.msnbc.msn)
Last month, militants in North Waziristan, led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur, announced a ban of anti-polio campaign until the US put a stop to the drone war.

“On the one hand they are killing innocent women, children and old people in drone attacks and on the other, they are spending millions on vaccination campaign,” said a leaflet distributed in the region’s main town of Miramshah.

Following the ban in North Waziristan, similar pamphlets were distributed by a militant faction in the adjoining South Waziristan a week later, warning health workers to stop their campaigns or face the consequences.

“Polio and other foreign-funded vaccination drives in Wana sub-division would not be allowed until US drone operations in the agency are stopped,” stated the pamphlet issued by Taliban commander Mullah Nazir. This is the third time the Taliban have banned polio vaccinations in areas under their control.

Since the Nato conference in Chicago this May, and when Pakistan decided not to re-open its supply route to Afghanistan, drone strikes have intensified and the brunt of attacks has been felt in both the North and South Waziristan agencies.

If the Taliban mean business there could be “an increase in polio cases, and even disability and death among the children of these areas” according to Dr Janbaz Afridi, deputy director of the Expanded Programme for Immunization (EPI) for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

“For us, even one child left out is one too many,” says Mazhar Nisar, the Health Education Advisor at the Prime Minister’s Polio Monitoring Cell, referring to the children missed from being administered the oral polio vaccine (OPV) caused by the ban.

These announcements by Taliban are indeed a blow to eradication of polio in Pakistan. Despite two decades of mass vaccination drives, Pakistan has failed to control the crippling paediatric disease. Today, being among the last three countries (others being Afghanistan and Nigeria) where polio is endemic, it is under excessive international pressure to eradicate it as the presence of the virus means a major set-back to global plans.

The last decade saw Pakistan taking massive strides to reduce the polio incidence. In 2005, the number of cases went down to just 28, but since then there have been signs of the OPV drive losing momentum.

Since 1988, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative – spearheaded by WHO, Rotary International, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and Unicef – has achieved a 99 per cent reduction in polio incidence worldwide.

This was possible through the mass administration of OPV simultaneously to all children below the age of five, to induce ‘herd immunity’ in entire regions and replace the wild polio virus with a cultured, attenuated strain.

Since early this year, there have been 22 confirmed polio cases, compared to 52 in the same period last year. Of these, 11 have been reported from Fata, with nine alone from Khyber agency.

Political analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi views the Taliban policy of linking the entry of health workers to stopping drone attacks as show of “confidence and control of the area”.

“That they can implement anything if they become determined and the Pakistani authorities are left with no option but to negotiate with them shows the Taliban disregard for the future of children and this fits in well with their policy of destroying schools. The desire to establish their control and create their domain of authority by whatever means is the objective. They represent an authority alternate to Pakistani authority,” Askari told Dawn.com.

Afridi of the EPI agrees. He says the fear of “torture and kidnapping” from the militant groups is quite palpable and spread across the adjoining agencies as well as parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

“There is every effort to assuage these fears and the field teams will be provided complete security by the police, with support from the provincial administration.” So far, he said, there have been no cases of health workers pulling out of the immunisation work due to the threats issued by the local militants.

Meanwhile, Nisar, is quite hopeful that the situation will be resolved. “The federal government is aware of the situation and the government of KPK, the political agents, members of the peace committee and tribal elders are intervening to find a solution,” he told Dawn.com, adding: “After all, they are putting their kids at risk too.”

“I think it’s a step in the right direction,” says Afridi.

Mariam Bibi, who heads Khwendo Kor – a KP-based non-government organisation working for women of the area, too concedes persuasion the only way out. “Nobody wants to endanger the lives of their children, but this message needs to be emphasised.”

However, she warns it should not be limited to getting the militants to agree on administration of the polio vaccine.

“Today it is polio, tomorrow the militants will come up with another issue to arm-twist the government; a more holistic approach is needed where the confidence of the local people has to be won.

“You give them water and I swear half your problem will be resolved,” Bibi said.

She said there were “layers upon layers” of problems that needed to be addressed. “Give them a complete healthcare package, not just polio drops; when you promise education, ensure and negotiate that it is not just for boys but be firm that girls will have to be educated as well.” According to Bibi, the government needed to strategise and build its capacity.

“And they need more women in the field.”

The latest announcement by the militants has once again revived the case of Dr Shakil Afridi, a local doctor convicted by a tribal court to 33 years in prison for assisting American spy agence CIA in finding the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden through a fake hepatitis campaign.

Bibi said after Dr Afridi was found to be spying, there is a growing suspicion among the locals that there could be several others among the health workers spying for the US This suspicion is compounded by the statement made by Bahadur who alluded to the “strong possibility of spying” on mujahideen for the US during the polio vaccination campaign. “In the garb of these vaccination campaigns, the US and its allies are running their spying networks in Fata…” the leaflets distributed in South Waziristan says.

With anti-American sentiment at an all time low, this has further hampered the vaccination driver.

However, Mazhar is quite convinced the Pakhtun people “would never use children” as a ploy. Moreover, the health workers were all local people and “well aware of the situation on the ground” in these security compromised areas.

“Taliban use such tactics like burning girls schools to gain world’s attention,” agreed Ibrash Pasha, working for Khwendo Kor in Dir.

Therefore, there are never any fixed dates set for holding vaccination drives and “opportunistic campaigns” take place whenever the situation becomes favourable. For now, the only other step taken by the polio cell is to immunise anyone entering or leaving these tribal agencies and the province. “Vaccinators are present at all entry and exit points,” said Mazhar.

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Stampede by Pakistanis to Wed to Fit into New British Laws

Couple Weds Ahead of Change in British Law (Credit: thenews.com.pk)
MIRPUR, July 14: New British immigration laws have unleashed a stampede to wed and a frenzy of English lessons for Pakistanis desperate to migrate as new restrictions come into effect.

The boom was particularly marked in Mirpur, where Islamabad estimates 200,000 of Britain’s 1.2 million Pakistanis have their family origins.

Almost all the town’s 403,000 residents have relatives in the former colonial power, after a huge surge of migration from the area in the 1960s when a major dam was built, costing thousands of farmers their livelihoods.

At the time Britain needed more workers for its factories in the industrial cities of central and northern England, and granted immigration permits to many of them and their families.

Now with immigration an increasingly controversial issue in Britain, Mirpuris rushed to secure residency rights before the door was pushed tighter.

Wedding planners were rushed off their feet, English teachers overwhelmed and immigration consultants buried under mounds of paperwork as brides and grooms queued to file immigration papers by July 6, the last working day before the deadline.

Faisal Mehmood, a self-styled immigration consultant, said business was several times higher than the six to eight cases he normally processes a week.

“I consulted on and helped fill in immigration papers for 53 couples in the first week of July,” he told AFP in his office in Mirpur, the wealthiest town in Pakistani-administered Kashmir, 83 kilometres east of Islamabad.

From July 9, new restrictions made it impossible for anyone who earns less than GBP 18,600 ($29,000) a year to move a foreign spouse to Britain, or less than GBP 22,400 if that spouse has a child.

To acquire British nationality, foreign spouses now have to wait five rather than two years to test whether a relationship is genuine, must be proficient in English and once in Britain, pass a Life in the UK test.

For Britons of Pakistani descent, April is by tradition the peak month for holidays and weddings in their parents’ homeland, before the summer heat becomes unbearable for those accustomed to northern climes.

But wedding planners say they saw record business from Britons in June and the first week of July, with nuptials up 20 per cent in Mirpur so far this year.

Arshad Hussein Shah, the manager of eight marriage halls, said his company organised weddings for 15 Britons from June 1 to July 6.

“There was a sudden surge because the UK government changed the immigration laws for spouses and everybody rushed to marry and file papers before the deadline,” he said.

It was a similar tale for Ali Raza, managing director of the UK College of English Language, who says 35 students enrolled in June—50 per cent more than usual.

“There were more girls than boys. Everybody wanted to complete a quick English course and obtain certificates to file immigration papers,” said Raza.

“Nobody was expecting this sudden implementation of the new laws. It created panic among the candidates,” he added.
Batool Bukhari, 25, married her cousin in April and raced through an English course as quickly as possible.

“I applied for immigration in the second week of June. I had to rush my application when I found out that the new laws are being implemented soon. It was very tense,” said Bukhari.

In Islamabad, the British High Commission said there had been a “significant increase” in the number of applications to join a spouse and live permanently in Britain ahead of the new rules coming into force.

The surge has caused delays in processing applications, the commission said, with some taking up to six months to be resolved.

For those who missed the deadline, the new rules mean new uncertainty.

Naeem Lodhi, 32, who has dreamt of moving to Britain since childhood, married on June 22 but was unable to file the necessary paperwork in time.

“My wife, who came here to marry me, is leaving for the UK in a month. I’m worried about my immigration because her salary is much lower than the amount required,” he said.

Similarly, a hairdresser in London who gave her name only as Irum married her cousin on July 1 after a seven-year engagement, but was depressed about their chances of married life in Britain.

“I don’t know when will I be able to live with my husband in the UK,” she said, adding she would have to find a better paid job.

“It may take weeks, months or years. I don’t know, I am really not sure about my future.”

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Karzai’s Village Lives on Karz (Aid)

Karz farmers harvest grapes (Credit: Washingtonpost.com)
KARZ, July 16 — In this mud-brick village, the United Nations put up the rock retaining wall along the riverbed to keep the road from washing out in floods. The United States paid to fertilize the wheat fields. Hashmat Karzai, a cousin of the president, paid about $70,000 from his own pocket to string up power lines.

As for the Afghan government, it remains all but invisible, even though Karz is the ancestral home of President Hamid Karzai. “The government itself has not done anything,” said Abdul Ali, a village elder.

The United States and its allies have devoted years of effort and billions of dollars to improve the delivery of basic services in rural Afghanistan. If Afghan leadership were to have taken hold anywhere, it might well have been in Karz, a farming area on the outskirts of Kandahar city still populated by relatives and tribesmen of the man who has ruled Afghanistan through a decade of war.

Instead, what is emerging in ever starker relief is a governance vacuum as U.S. forces begin to draw down. As the Americans leave, taking with them a main source of economic stimulus, U.S. officials and residents say what worries them most is the weakness of the local and provincial governments being left behind, which command virtually no resources and almost no authority.

That lack of government progress is apparent every day in Karz with the line of villagers beating a path to Hashmat Karzai’s door.

Karzai holds no official post; his prominence in the village stems from his status as a prosperous and powerful tribal elder and his relationship with the president. He is the former owner of a private security company, Asia Security Group, which sent men to guard U.S. bases, and he currently rents out land for a hotel near NATO’s Kandahar Airfield.

And yet each day the villagers of Karz file into Karzai’s courtyard with a fresh list of problems they say they can find no audience for in the offices of government. One by one they plead for electricity for their irrigation pumps, a clinic for their sick children, or information on the whereabouts of a relative detained by American troops.

“Where should he go? Which door should he knock?” Hashmat Karzai said as he motioned to one of his supplicants. “This is what’s killing the people of Kandahar. You go try to see the governor, it’s impossible to see him. The police chief? The mayor? It would take a month to see them.”

“There’s a distance between locals and the government. There’s a big gap,” Karzai said. “How are you going to cover that gap? I haven’t figured it out yet.”

‘Not delivering the services’
By September, the number of U.S. troops in Kandahar and other, nearby provinces will drop to 13,500, down from a high in April 2011 of nearly 20,000. The bloody battles with the Taliban of the past few years — in Kandahar city and the nearby Arghandab Valley — have shifted farther west, into the rural minefields of Zhari and Panjwai districts.

While the locus of violence has changed, the overall strength of the insurgency has stayed about the same, according to Maj. Gen. James L. Huggins Jr., the top American commander in Kandahar province. He says he is confident that the Afghan soldiers and police can prevail in a fight with the Taliban.

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Clinton’s ‘Sorry’ to Pakistan Ends Barrier to NATO

NATO tankers at Torkham border (Credit: nation.com.pk)
WASHINGTON, July 3 — Pakistan told the United States that it would reopen NATO’s supply routes into neighboring Afghanistan after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she was sorry for the deaths of two dozen Pakistani soldiers in American airstrikes in November, officials from the two countries said Tuesday.

The agreement ended a bitter seven-month stalemate that threatened to jeopardize counterterrorism cooperation, complicated the American troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and cost the United States more than $1 billion in extra shipping fees as a result of having to use an alternative route through Central Asia.

Mrs. Clinton said that in a telephone call on Tuesday morning to Pakistan’s foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, they had agreed that both sides made mistakes that led to the fatal airstrikes.

“We are sorry for the losses suffered by the Pakistani military,” Mrs. Clinton said in a statement that the State Department issued but that officials said had been coordinated with her Pakistani counterpart. “We are committed to working closely with Pakistan and Afghanistan to prevent this from ever happening again.”

The accord came together on Monday in Islamabad after weeks of behind-the-scenes phone calls, e-mails and meetings between one of Mrs. Clinton’s deputies, Thomas R. Nides, and a top Pakistani diplomat, American and Pakistani officials said. The agreement reflected a growing realization by Pakistani officials that they had overplayed their hand, misjudging NATO’s resolve, and a recognition on both sides that the impasse risked transforming an often rocky relationship into a permanently toxic one at a critically inopportune time.

Mrs. Clinton and her top aides, working closely with senior White House and Pentagon officials, carefully calibrated what she would say in her phone call to Ms. Khar to avoid an explicit mention of what one top State Department official called “the A-word” — “apology.” Instead, Mrs. Clinton opted for the softer “sorry” to meet Pakistan’s longstanding demand for a more formal apology for the airstrikes.

Still, the deal carries risks for both governments. Critics of Pakistan’s weak civilian leadership assailed the accord as a sellout to the United States, and it offers potential fodder for Republicans who contend that President Obama says “sorry” too readily.

“The apology will lower the temperature on U.S.-Pakistan relations,” said Shamila N. Chaudhary, a South Asia analyst at the Eurasia Group who served as the director for Pakistan and Afghanistan at the National Security Council. “However, relations are not on the mend. They remain very much broken and will remain so unless the two countries resolve broader policy differences on Afghanistan.”

As part of the agreement, Pakistan dropped its insistence on a higher transit fee for each truck carrying NATO’s nonlethal supplies from Pakistan into Afghanistan, after initially demanding as much as $5,000 for each truck.

In the end, Pakistan agreed to keep the fee at the current rate, $250. In return, the administration will ask Congress to reimburse Pakistan about $1.2 billion for costs incurred by 150,000 Pakistani troops carrying out counterinsurgency operations along the border with Afghanistan, a senior American official said.

The November airstrikes, which hit in Pakistani territory in response to reports of militant activity in the area, killed 24 soldiers. In response, Pakistan closed the supply lines and worsened relations already badly frayed by the shooting death of two Pakistanis by a Central Intelligence Agency security contractor and by the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Soon after the strikes, the White House decided that Mr. 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 also balked, saying that the statements of regrets and condolences from other American officials had been sufficient and that an apology would absolve Pakistan’s military of any blame in the accident.

Even those in the administration who advocated apologizing did so almost exclusively for practical reasons, such as getting Pakistan on board with the stalled Afghan peace process, officials familiar with the discussions said.

Pakistan, at times, seemingly undermined its own effort to obtain an expression of contrition. The administration was seriously weighing an apology when Afghan insurgents hit multiple targets in simultaneous attacks on Kabul in April, officials said. American military officials quickly linked the attacks to the Haqqani network, a Taliban faction that operates out of Pakistan’s tribal areas on the Afghan border. The apology would wait.

In May, days before a NATO summit meeting in Chicago, President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan earned a last-minute invitation to the talks when it looked as if a deal to reopen the supply lines might be at hand. But no deal materialized.

After that failure, Mr. Nides and Pakistan’s finance minister, Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, were designated by their governments to begin negotiating. Mr. Nides, a former executive at Morgan Stanley, and Mr. Shaikh hit it off, and began swapping e-mails and phone calls to work out a political deal.

At the same time, according to officials, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the Pakistani army chief of staff, was pressing his government to resolve the issue, which had put Pakistan at odds with the more than 40 countries with troops in Afghanistan whose supplies were affected.

Pakistani officials said they had misjudged NATO’s ability to adapt to the closing and use an alternative route through Central Asia. That rerouting carried a high price: Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said it was costing up to an extra $100 million a month.

Last weekend, Mrs. Clinton telephoned her congratulations to Pakistan’s new prime minister, Raja Pervez Ashraf. But it was Mrs. Clinton’s increasingly cordial relationship with the young Pakistani foreign minister, Ms. Khar, 34, that paid dividends in resolving the dispute, American officials said.

Several weeks ago, Mrs. Clinton began working on drafts of the statement she released on Tuesday, and at one point began discussing the language with Ms. Khar, a person with knowledge about the process said. “This was jointly done,” said the person, who, like half a dozen other officials from both countries, spoke on condition of anonymity because of diplomatic protocols.

Also over the weekend, Mr. Nides arrived in Islamabad, joined by Gen. John R. Allen, the American commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, and James N. Miller, the Pentagon’s top policy official, for meetings with their Pakistani counterparts. On Monday, they put the finishing touches on the agreement. “The Nides visit this past weekend pushed it over the line,” one senior American official said.

In Pakistan on Tuesday, the decision to reopen the supply routes was met with a general sense of befuddlement and muted criticism that the government had given up a much-trumpeted increase in transit fees for NATO trucks.

But government officials were at pains to claim that the accord had never hinged on higher fees. “I am glad that this breakthrough is not part of any transaction,” said Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States. “We are playing our role as responsible global partner in stabilizing the region.”

Still, opposition politicians criticized the move and demanded more of an explanation from the Pakistani government and military.

“Now government should let the people know about the terms and conditions for reopening the NATO supply lines. What were the demands?” said Shah Mehmood Qureshi, a former foreign minister and leader of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, a popular opposition political party led by the former cricket star Imran Khan.

Enver Baig, an opposition politician belonging to the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, referring to the Americans, complained: “They did not apologize. They said ‘sorry.’ ”

Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan, and Matthew Rosenberg from Kabul, Afghanistan.

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Swat Taliban use Afghan bases to Avenge Pak Military

Taliban bases in Afghanistan (Credit: longwarjournal.com)

PESHAWAR, June 25 — A relatively rare cross-border raid into Pakistan by Afghan-based Taliban militants killed at least 13 Pakistani soldiers, the military said Monday.

Pakistani officials have long faced criticism from the Americans and Afghans for failing to stop similar militant assaults in the opposite direction, and they lashed out against their neighbors over this attack, which was in the northwestern border district of Dir.

In Islamabad, the Foreign Ministry said it had called in a senior Afghan diplomat to protest “the intrusion of militants from the Afghan side.” And the new prime minister, Raja Pervez Ashraf, said he would raise the matter with President Hamid Karzai.

A senior Pakistani military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that more than 100 Taliban militants armed with heavy weapons had crossed the border in the attack. After initially reporting six soldiers killed and 11 missing, the official later said that seven of the missing had been “reportedly killed and then beheaded.”

A Pakistani Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the attack and said the militants had killed 18 soldiers. “We have bodies of 17 of them,” said the spokesman, Sirajuddin, who uses only one name, speaking by phone from an undisclosed location.

Pakistani Taliban fighters fled into Afghanistan starting in the summer of 2009 after a major assault by the Pakistani military on the Swat Valley in northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province.

Across the border, the militants took refuge in Kunar and Nuristan Provinces; they have since strengthened their presence in those areas as American forces have withdrawn. Pakistani officials say that two senior Taliban commanders — Maulana Fazlullah from Swat and Faqir Muhammad from Bajaur — are sheltering there, while their fighters use Afghan territory to mount attacks in Pakistan.

The most violent attack occurred in August last year when Taliban fighters killed at least 30 Pakistani soldiers along the border in the Chitral district, north of Dir. The Pakistani military has since deployed a large contingent to the area.

The situation in Dir and Chitral is the mirror opposite of that of the Waziristan tribal agency, farther west along the border, where large numbers of Pakistani, Afghan and foreign fighters train and plot attacks inside Afghanistan.

American military officials are particularly angry that the Haqqani network, which has carried out some of the most spectacular attacks in Kabul and other major cities, has an apparently free hand to operate in North Waziristan. Obama administration officials say they are unsure whether Pakistan’s powerful intelligence services are assisting such cross-border attacks, tacitly acquiescing to them or incapable of stopping them.

The Pakistani Taliban, on the other hand, are intent on attacking Pakistani forces. Sunday’s attack in Dir, the third this month, shows that, as NATO troops leave Afghanistan, the militants are using that territory to mount attacks.

Residents of Dir said the militants were operating from a base just over three miles from the border, where there is no visible Afghan or NATO presence.

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From the Frying Pan into the Fire

Asylum seekers in capsized boat (Credit: expresspakistan.net)

PESHAWAR, June 27: Dozens of Shia tribesmen fleeing sectarian unrest in the Kurram tribal agency were on board a boat that capsized off the coast of Australia earlier this month, officials and tribesmen told The Express Tribune on Tuesday.

The ferry carrying asylum-seekers from Pakistan and Afghanistan sank some 200 kilometres off Christmas Island, according to Australian authorities. At least 16 of them have been confirmed dead.

At Christmas Island, the Australian government has set up case processing and detention facilities for illegal immigrants and asylum-seekers.

Australia’s Maritime Safety Authority said 110 persons had been rescued, 90 were missing and 16 bodies had been retrieved by rescue teams and taken to the island.

“Families have told me that 125 of the asylum-seekers on board the vessel were from Kurram Agency,” Kohat Division Commissioner Sahibzada Anees confirmed to The Express Tribune.

“Of them, 76 have been traced while the rest are missing,” Anees said and added that he has directed the tribal administration to prepare a list of the victims.

Residents said that 125 of the 140 Pakistani asylum-seekers on board the boat belonged to the Shia community from Parachinar, the main town of Kurram Agency, where sectarian tension has been running high for the last four years. The rest belonged to the Hazara community of Quetta who are also Shias by sect.

“One of my cousins, Gul Hussain, has been rescued, but he is seriously injured,” said Ali Turi, a Shia tribesman from Parachinar who works at a Peshawar-based NGO. “My friend, Imdad Hussain, is among those missing and believed to have drowned.

According to Ali, 175 people from Kurram Agency have gone abroad on student visas, while another 90, mostly young men, have taken refuge in Australia. About 250 are in Indonesia trying to sneak into Australia.

Another resident of Kurram, Shahid Kazmi told The Express Tribune that the asylum-seekers included his friend Mujahid Hussain who is also believed to have died.

He said that Parachinar Students in Australia, a student body, had informed the families about the tragedy. (With additional input from News Desk)

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Divided Families Urge India, Pakistan to Leave Kashmir

Divided Kashmiri Families Across Neelum River (credit: tribune.com.pk)

KERAN, June 10: Hundreds of Kashmiris on Sunday staged an emotional demonstration on the banks of a fast-flowing river to urge India and Pakistan to withdraw troops from the disputed Himalayan region.

On the Pakistani side, tearful relatives waved across the gushing Neelum – which separates the two countries – to their family on the Indian side, using loudspeakers to try to speak to them, an AFP photographer said.

But the deafening roar of the river – about 200 feet wide at the village of Keran – was too loud for the cries to carry across to the Indian side.

About 600 men and women gathered by the river in Keran, about 90 kilometres northeast of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Many migrated to Muzaffarabad in 1990 to escape violence.

The gathering, called by nationalists, was a rare occasion – the authorities do not normally allow such events on the river.

For Ashraf Jan, who left her mother and father to come to Muzaffarabad with her aunt in 1947, it was almost too much.

Overwhelmed with emotion, the 70-year-old had to be stopped by relatives from jumping in the furious river to try to reach her ageing parents on the Indian side.

“Let me go. I just want to see my parents and after that if I die, I will be in peace,” she said.

Indian police and military did not allow Kashmiris on the other side to come near the river bank and they were left to wave from a distance.

Kashmir was split in the aftermath of independence on the subcontinent when British rule ended in 1947. Both India and Pakistan claim the entire territory, which is divided by a heavily militarised Line of Control (LoC).

The LoC is heavily guarded on both sides and strictly off-limits.

Though Kashmiris can cross the border via a special bus service started in 2005, it requires lengthy clearance procedures at both sides, meaning few go.

Arif Shahid, president of the pro-independence Jammu Kashmir National Liberation Conference, urged India and Pakistan to divert their military spending to help poor people in both countries.

“India and Pakistan are wasting money on arms when millions of people have to sleep without any meal every night. They should withdraw troops from Kashmir and liberate us so that they are able to work for the welfare of their citizens,” Shahid said.

There are nearly a dozen Kashmir militant groups fighting for the divided Muslim-majority region to become part of Pakistan and over 47,000 people have been killed since the outbreak of a separatist insurgency in 1989.

But militant violence has dropped sharply in Kashmir since India and Pakistan started a peace process in 2004.

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Intrigue in Karzai Family as an Afghan Era Closes

Karzai family (caption: rawa.org)

WASHINGTON — With the end in sight for Hamid Karzai’s days in office as Afghanistan’s president, members of his family are trying to protect their status, weighing how to hold on to power while secretly fighting among themselves for control of the fortune they have amassed in the last decade.

One brother, Qayum Karzai, is mulling a run for the presidency when his brother steps down in 2014. Other brothers have been battling over the crown jewel in the family empire — the largest private residential development in Afghanistan. The conflict over the project, known as Aino Mena, has provoked accusations of theft and extortion, even reports of an assassination plot.

“It’s family,” Qayum Karzai said. “They get upset, and over time they get over it. I hope they get over it.”

One Karzai brother is also said to have imprisoned a longtime Karzai aide in an effort to make him disclose the whereabouts of money and assets that relatives suspect were hidden by Ahmed Wali Karzai, another of President Karzai’s brothers and the political boss of southern Afghanistan who was assassinated last year. He was often accused of benefiting from the Afghan opium trade and an array of corrupt deals, though he denied such claims.

The looming withdrawal of American and NATO troops by 2014 from the still unresolved war, along with President Karzai’s coming exit, is causing anxiety among the Afghan elite who have been among the war’s biggest beneficiaries, enriching themselves from American military contracts, insider business deals with foreign companies, government corruption and narcotics trafficking.

“If you are one of the Afghan oligarchs, where you put your money and where you live is an open question now,” Seth Jones, an analyst at the RAND Corporation, said. “That means you are thinking about moving your money and finding a backup option about where to live.”

The president’s family — many of whom are American citizens who returned to Afghanistan after an American-led coalition toppled the Taliban in 2001 and brought Mr. Karzai to power — are among those who have prospered the most, by the accounts of many Afghan businessmen and government insiders.

Several political observers in Kabul said any candidacy by Qayum Karzai, a longtime Maryland resident who has served in the Afghan Parliament, would be a long shot because of the nation’s fatigue with Hamid Karzai and widespread resentment over the rampant corruption that has tainted his government.

Even some of the Karzai family’s own business partners are among the critics.

“We have an illegitimate and irresponsible government because of Karzai and his family,” said Abdullah Nadi, an Afghan-American developer from Virginia who is a partner in the Aino Mena housing development, but who is trying to get out of the venture.

While exploiting their opportunities in Afghanistan, the extended Karzai family has for years simmered with tensions, jealousies, business rivalries, blood feuds and even accusations of murder. With the often-fractious family, it can be difficult to discern the truth, but everyone agrees that the conflict over control of its empire can be traced back to the death in July 2011 of Ahmed Wali Karzai, who had risen from working as a waiter in Chicago to become one of the most powerful men in Afghanistan, serving as the chairman of the Kandahar Provincial Council.

His murder, by an Afghan thought to be a loyal supporter, left a power vacuum in Kandahar — and in the Karzai family.

President Karzai appointed another brother, Shah Wali Karzai, to take on their slain brother’s role as head of the Populzai, the Karzai’s family tribe.

No one expected much from him. Quiet and reserved, he was largely overshadowed by Ahmed Wali Karzai, and even lived in his more powerful brother’s compound in Kandahar.

But Shah Wali Karzai has been transformed in the past year. In addition to his role as tribal chief, he serves as project manager of Aino Mena, the sprawling residential development on the outskirts of Kandahar being developed by AFCO, a corporation owned by another brother, Mahmoud Karzai, and his four partners.

They have built 3,000 homes, with plans for a total of 14,700. The developers are building on 10,000 acres, land that Afghan military officials have claimed was illegally seized from the Ministry of Defense.

Emboldened after Ahmed Wali Karzai’s death, Shah Wali Karzai appeared no longer satisfied to serve just as an employee at Aino Mena. At some point in the past few months, he created his own corporation in Kandahar and then secretly moved all of the cash from the housing development’s bank accounts to those of his new business.

According to several AFCO partners, Shah Wali Karzai had transferred about $55 million. “He simply opened another company, and put the money in that company,” Mahmoud Karzai said in an interview.

Mr. Nadi, one of the partners in Aino Mena, accused Shah Wali Karzai of forging his signature on documents to make it appear as if he had approved the creation of Shah Wali Karzai’s company as the new corporate parent of Aino Mena. “I had no clue what the hell was going on,” Mr. Nadi said in an interview.

When Mahmoud Karzai discovered what his brother had done, he demanded that Shah Wali return the money. But Shah Wali refused, and instead insisted that he be made a partner in Aino Mena. Mahmoud and his partners refused, and the two sides settled into a bitter stalemate.

Shah Wali Karzai does not deny transferring the money to his corporation. But he justified his actions by saying that he is protecting the money for the sake of the people of Kandahar. He has told others in Kandahar that if he had not taken the money, Mahmoud Karzai could have moved it to secret bank accounts in Dubai. Aino Mena would then have risked failure just like Kabul Bank, another of Mahmoud Karzai’s business ventures, he argued.

Mahmoud Karzai was a key figure in the scandal surrounding the near-collapse of the bank, which was Afghanistan’s largest, in 2010. It lost about $900 million in insider deals, much of which is believed to have ended up in secret bank accounts in Dubai. Last year, a federal grand jury in New York began a criminal investigation into Mahmoud Karzai’s business activities in Afghanistan, pursuing accusations of tax evasion, racketeering and extortion. No charges have been brought against Mahmoud Karzai, who is a United States citizen.

“The money belongs to the people of Kandahar,” Shah Wali Karzai said in a statement in response to questions about transferring the housing development funds. “They paid much of that money for the infrastructure at Aino Mena.”

He added, “When I became project manager, they owed money to the bank and local contractors, and all the money was paid off as I turned around that company from an almost bankrupt one to a successful one.”

Mahmoud Karzai said he and his partners have filed complaints with the Afghan attorney general, accusing Shah Wali Karzai of stealing their money and using extortion to gain a partnership stake in Aino Mena. The attorney general has refused to move against Shah Wali Karzai, apparently unwilling to get involved in what he sees as a family battle.

Qayum Karzai said he attempted to negotiate a settlement, but has backed off. “Tempers were flaring up,” he said in an interview. “I tried to mediate, but I failed.”

President Karzai has been reluctant to take sides in the family dispute, though his government has been drawn into the matter. The Afghan Central Bank has finally intervened, freezing the bank accounts of Shah Wali Karzai’s company. Mahmoud Karzai said a deal was in the works, but other partners said the dispute had not been resolved.

In the midst of the conflict, Afghan security officials uncovered a plot to kill Mahmoud Karzai. About two months ago, the National Directorate of Security, the Afghan domestic intelligence agency, identified at least three Afghans, including two former employees of the Aino Mena development, who had been involved in a plot to kill Mahmoud Karzai and possibly others. One man was arrested and later released. The two former Aino Mena employees implicated in the plot had both been fired by Mahmoud Karzai.

Afghan security officials have not accused Shah Wali Karzai of any involvement in the scheme. He denies any involvement in it, and Mahmoud Karzai said in an interview, “I refuse to believe that my brother had anything to do with it.”

Family members said that Shah Wali Karzai had also been trying to unlock the secrets of his dead brother’s fortune.

After Ahmed Wali Karzai was killed, his most trusted aide, Zamarai — like many Afghans, he uses only one name — moved to Dubai. Reports of his lavish lifestyle there fed suspicions within the family that Zamarai had access to riches hidden by Ahmed Wali Karzai, perhaps through accounts and properties that had been placed in Zamarai’s name.

When Zamarai returned recently to Kandahar — some family members claim he was lured back by Aziz Karzai, Afghanistan’s ambassador to Russia and President Karzai’s uncle, an account the envoy flatly denies — he was detained by security personnel working for Shah Wali Karzai, according to relatives.

Mahmoud Karzai says he believes that Zamarai knows the whereabouts of “one or two million dollars.” Others familiar with the matter say that Shah Wali Karzai suspects that Zamarai knows about hundreds of millions of dollars more hidden in Dubai and elsewhere, including assets in Afghan businesses and real estate.

Zamarai is being held at Sarposa Prison in Kandahar, where he is guarded by Shah Wali Karzai’s security personnel rather than the regular prison guards, according to several people familiar with the matter but who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution from the Karzai family.

He has not been charged with any crime.

When asked through Gerald Posner, a Karzai family lawyer, about Zamarai and whether he is holding him, Shah Wali Karzai declined to comment.

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Pakistani Inquiry Says Former Envoy Sought Help From U.S.

Ex Envoy to the U.S. Hussain Haqqani (Credit: nation.com.pk)
Islamabad, June 12 — A controversial judicial commission has ruled that Pakistan’s former ambassador to the United States secretly approached the Obama administration last year requesting help to stave off a possible military coup.

After five months of politically charged hearings that centered on the former diplomat, Husain Haqqani, the commission submitted its findings to the Supreme Court on Tuesday. The court then issued an order for Mr. Haqqani, to return to Pakistan from the United States, where he is teaching at Boston University. Legal experts said Mr. Haqqani could face treason charges.

The commission’s findings, in what has become known here as the “Memogate” scandal, are likely to reignite long-running tensions between Pakistan’s top civilian leaders and army generals that only last January led to rumors of a possible military coup. And it is certain to lead to more trouble for President Asif Ali Zardari, who is seen as close to Mr. Haqqani. Mr. Zardari is already engaged in several legal battles of his own with the court and stands accused of ultimately approving the supposed covert approach to the Obama administration.

State media said the commission had determined that Mr. Haqqani was responsible for a secret memo sent in May 2011 to Adm. Mike Mullen, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, seeking American help to avert a possible military takeover in Pakistan.

In the unsigned document, Mr. Haqqani is accused of offering to help make Pakistan’s military leadership more amenable to American priorities in return for President Obama’s assistance in preventing a coup.

Mr. Haqqani, who resigned his post in November, did not testify before the commission. Speaking by phone from the United States, he rejected the commission’s findings as “political and one-sided.”

“I am being hounded for the perception that I was pro-American,” he said. “The inquiry commission is not a court, and those claiming it has determined guilt or innocence are wrong.”

The accusations, which infuriated Pakistan’s military leadership, stemmed from an article published in the Financial Times last October by Mansoor Ijaz, an American businessman of Pakistani origin who claims to have the delivered the unsigned memo to the Pentagon on Mr. Haqqani’s instructions.

Mr. Ijaz’s claims led to Mr. Haqqani’s resignation. The army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, and Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, who was then head of the Pakistani spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, sent affidavits to the Supreme Court expressing alarm at the accusations. Weeks later, following a petition from the opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, the Supreme Court established a three-judge panel to investigate the claims.

The initial hearings, in January, were framed by intense intrigue outside the courtroom. The prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, accused General Kayani and General Pasha of acting “illegally” and “unconstitutionally.” The army hit back with a trenchant statement warning that Mr. Gilani’s words could have “very serious ramifications with potentially grievous consequences” — prompting fevered speculation of a military coup.

Those tensions eventually calmed after a series of meetings between General Kayani and President Zardari, and the Memogate hearings gradually receded from the media spotlight as other crises took prominence.

As the commission hearings dragged on for months, they offered little clarity on either the authorship of the memo or the motivations behind the episode.

Mr. Ijaz refused to come to Pakistan to testify before the commission, citing security threats, instead testifying by video link from London. Controversy briefly flared after it emerged that he had participated in a music video that featured topless women.

Ultimately, though, Mr. Ijaz failed to produce definitive proof in public to back his claims. And Mr. Haqqani did not appear before the commission at all. He insisted that, like Mr. Ijaz, he should be allowed to testify via video link from abroad. But the judges refused his request.

As the hearings wore on, criticism grew in the Pakistani press, where many commentators said the commission was pursuing an openly partisan political agenda that would have been better dealt with in Parliament.

“The memo controversy was artificially manufactured and based on dubious evidence — basically one man’s accusations,” the newspaper Dawn wrote in April. It said that Mr. Ijaz’s accusations had “created a mountain out of a molehill.” Others accused the court of taking a side in long-bubbling arguments between the country’s top generals, politicians and elements of the news media.

The inquiry has become one of several controversies involving the Supreme Court this year. The court has endeared itself to some Pakistanis by taking a robust approach to human rights abuses committed by the military. It has also clashed with the government by pursuing a corruption case that led to Mr. Gilani’s conviction on contempt charges.

Mr. Haqqani said on Tuesday that the commission’s findings were intended to distract attention from recent corruption accusations against the son of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

Mr. Haqqani also offered a veiled attack on the judiciary, which historically has sided with Pakistan’s generals rather than its civilian leaders, saying that he “refuses to let his patriotism be judged by those who had endorsed martial law regimes and had even given the right to military dictators to amend the Constitution.”

Salman Masood contributed reporting

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Onset of Civilian Govt Helped Baloch Militants Reorganize – FC chief

FC chief Maj. Gen. Obaidullah Khan (Credit: tribune.com.pk)

QUETTA, June 3: Balochistan Frontier Corps (FC) Inspector General (IG) Major-General Ubaidullah Khan Khattak has claimed that around 121 camps of the banned Baloch groups are operating in Balochistan and they are responsible for nationalist movement and deteriorating law and order situation in the province, while another 30 camps, sponsored by foreign powers, are functional in Afghanistan.

Speaking to media at FC headquarters on Saturday, Khattak said the rebel camps were being provided support from Afghanistan, while the Afghan government is neglecting their presence. He said these included 40 camps of Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), 26 of Baloch Republican Army (BRA), 19 of Baloch Liberation Front (BLF) and two camps belonged to Lashkar-e-Balochistan.

To a query, the FC IG said foreign hands were involved in deteriorating law and order situation in Balochistan and also supporting the militants financially.

“Teachers, doctors and many civilians have fallen prey to targeted killings,” said Khattak, adding that over 100,000 people had migrated from the province due to the poor law and order situation.

The FC chief insisted that the Balochistan issue was purely a political one and it should be resolved in a political manner. But at the same time, he issued a warning, saying, “Tit-for-tat action would be taken against those elements which are bent to disintegrate Pakistan and making propaganda against the country’s institutions.”

Khattak claimed that the number of terror acts had been reduced to a great extent in Balochistan as compared with the terror acts of last couple of years. However, he regretted that through a well-planned propaganda was being carried out against the law enforcement agencies personnel who had been sacrificing their lives for the security of people. “Through propaganda campaign and targeted attacks, the FC is being demoralised,” he added.

Khattak said 575 subversive incidents had occurred so far in the province during the current, year in which 254 people – including 57 FC personnel, two army men and 20 policemen – had been killed, while 258 of these incidents had been owned by the Baloch militant outfits.

“Attacks on FC have been increased during past several months which are aimed at to demoralize it physically and psychologically,” he added.

He further said the Levies Force was incapable and needed training to handle the criminals and the matter had been brought to the notice of provincial government. Situation in the ‘B Area’, which came under the Levies Force’s jurisdiction, was very serious and the FC was imparting training Levies Force so that it could be made affective, he added.

Referring to a recent interview of Baloch exiled leader Nawabzada Brahmdagh Bugti, Khattak said, “Nobody would be allowed to disintegrate Pakistan and we will continue fighting against those who talk about the breakup of the country.”

He said the FC wanted the support of Baloch people because no force could achieve the targets without their support.

To a query, Khattak dispelled the impression that the FC was not obeying the orders of provincial government. “FC is a federal force and deployed at borders; however, it was deployed in different parts of Balochistan following a request of the provincial government and is discharging its duties in accordance with the law”.

He stressed the need for unity amongst the people of the country, saying billions of dollars were being spent to destabilise the country. “Besides the security forces, it is also a responsibility of the citizens to play their role and foil the nefarious designs of anti-state elements”, he added.

The FC chief regretted that the accused persons involved in subversive activities always went unpunished by the courts. “121 accused persons involved in different incidents were arrested in 2011 but only 4 of them had been sentenced,” he added.

Referring to the hearings of missing persons case the Supreme Court, Khattak said he had appeared before the bench four times and always tried to uphold the rule of law. However, he said the way he was reported in the media was regrettable. “I had gone to Iran on an official visit and an official of FC had appeared before the bench during recent hearing behalf of me. But the media reported that IGFC is not appearing before the court,” he said, and adding that he (Khattak) was just an employee of the state. Khattak said the FC respected courts and political institutions. “There is no motive of FC but to maintain law and order and protect borders,” he added. Responding to a question, he said limited force was being used in Balochistan to eliminate the militant camps of militants; therefore, these camps still existed.

He said in the military operation of 2006-07, militants camps had been almost finished, however, following the elections of 2008, a political government came in power and the army was withdrawn and some cantonments were dismantled that helped militants to reorganize.