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British Humanitarian Aid Worker Found Beheaded in Quetta

Khalil Rasjed Dale (Credit: tribune.com.pk)

Islamabad, April 29: The beheaded corpse of a British aid worker has been discovered in the Pakistani city of Quetta, almost four months after he was kidnapped.

The body of Khalil Rasjed Dale was left on a road outside the city, in southern Baluchistan province, with a note attached which said he had been killed because a ransom had not been paid to his captors.

Dale, who had been working for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), was kidnapped in January while driving near the organisation’s Quetta office.

He was abducted by gunmen as he made his way home in a clearly-marked ICRC vehicle on 5 January. His assailants are said to have bundled him into a car about 200m from an ICRC residence.

At the time, police in Quetta said Dale was abducted by unknown assailants driving a Landcruiser following a visit to a local school. He was travelling with a Pakistani doctor and a driver, who were not seized.

Quetta police chief Ahsan Mahboob said the killers’ note read: “This is the body of Khalil who we have slaughtered for not paying a ransom amount.”

Dale had been a Muslim convert for more than 30 years.

William Hague, the foreign secretary, said “tireless efforts” had been made to secure Dale’s release and the British government had worked closely with the Red Cross.

“I utterly condemn the kidnapping and killing of Mr Dale and send my deepest condolences to his family and loved ones as they come to terms with their tragic and distressing loss,” he said.

“We are devastated,” said ICRC director general Yves Daccord. “Khalil was a trusted and very experienced Red Cross staff member who significantly contributed to the humanitarian cause.

“All of us at the ICRC and at the British Red Cross share the grief and outrage of Khalil’s family and friends.”

Separatist militants and the Taliban are extremely active in Quetta, which is just a couple of hours’ drive to the border with Afghanistan’s Kandahar province, where the Taliban is battling US forces.

The ICRC has working relations with movements such as the Taliban, but its staff remain vulnerable to criminals and kidnappers.

Retired nurse Sheila Howat, a former colleague of Dale’s at Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary, said: “It’s dreadful what has happened to him, really awful. The world has lost someone who really cared for others.”

 

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Where have Washington’s Pakistan Experts Gone?

Something is missing in Washington, and I’m not referring to bipartisanship. I’m talking about Pakistan expertise.

Last year, Shuja Nawaz, head of The Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center, lamented the exodus of Pakistan experts from Washington policy-making jobs. Yet this only represents the tip of the iceberg.
Scan the speaker rosters of the city’s think-tank symposia, study the bylines of policy briefs and commentaries, and scrutinise the talking heads on DC talk shows.

What do you see? The same set of names, drawn from Washington’s small group of esteemed Pakistan-watchers.

Numbering about two dozen, they include diplomats (Teresita Schaffer), scholars (Stephen Cohen, Christine Fair), and those who have engaged both public service and academia (Daniel Markey, Lisa Curtis, Marvin Weinbaum). In more recent years, this fraternity has also taken in transplanted Pakistanis (such as Nawaz).
Yet beyond this venerable group, there is little else. In a city that constantly refers to the immense strategic significance of Pakistan, this deficit of expertise is striking — yet also unsurprising.

Americans, after all, are notoriously uninformed about foreign affairs — and even about a nation that their government insists is so important (my countrymen have been known to confuse Pakistanis with Palestinians).

Also, US public opinion toward Pakistan is strongly negative — a February 2012 Gallup poll found that only 15 per cent of Americans regard Pakistan positively (in the last 10-plus years, only once has this figure exceeded 30 per cent). Such a climate does not exactly encourage Americans to gravitate toward Pakistan.

Even those who wish to become students of Pakistan face obstacles. This is because US higher education doesn’t emphasise Pakistan like it does other nations and regions. A range of universities — the University of Washington, University of California at Berkeley, and SAIS/Johns Hopkins, to name just a few — boast programs specifically dedicated to the study of China. Yet Pakistan Studies programs are rare.
By no means does this signify a paucity of Pakistan-oriented scholarship in the United States — consider, just for starters, Anita Weiss’s work on gender, Sarah Halvorson’s on geography, and Ayesha Jalal’s on history — yet it does suggest that America’s higher education system refuses to place a high premium on Pakistan.

Little wonder many recent graduates flock to careers as China hands or Middle East specialists — yet few vow to become part of the next generation of Pakistan experts. My own experience is illustrative; during the early months of the Iraq War, I decided to pursue a master’s degree in Middle East studies. I entered the South Asia field only later on, through a combination of luck and happenstance (and I’m glad I did).

Wait, you may say: What about that cottage industry of Pakistan experts that has sprouted in Washington in recent years? “Only in DC can you be a Pakistan expert without ever visiting the region,” grumbled Washington-based journalist Huma Imtiaz last year. “Yet your average Pakistan expert, fresh out of college or mid-career, claims to possess a deep understanding of how Pakistan’s politics, military, and society work.”
Alas, this is not a cottage industry of Pakistan specialists — it is one of Af-Pak experts. In Washington, Pakistan is inextricably tied to Afghanistan and to the war that the US is embroiled in there. Little wonder two of the most popular (and best) information portals consulted by Washington Pakistan-watchers — the AfPak Channel and Colin Cookman’s Pakistan/Afghanistan/Terrorism News brief — focus on Afghanistan as much as (if not more than) Pakistan.

Predictably, those representing this new wave of “Pakistan experts” are mostly security specialists fixated on the Afghanistan War; few nurture an abiding interest in Pakistan’s public health woes, its burgeoning IT sector, or Lollywood; they are more concerned about the threat posed to US forces in Afghanistan by militant sanctuaries in North Waziristan, and about Islamabad’s role in the Afghan endgame.

With Washington’s Pakistan-followers effectively proxies for Afghanistan War- watchers, what will happen in 2014, when US combat forces have left Afghanistan? Will a reduced US military footprint in Afghanistan spell an end to Pakistan-heavy policy papers, panels and punditry in Washington? Will there still be ample experts on hand to contemplate Pakistan’s natural resource shortages, economic malaise, and education crisis — long-term challenges having little to do with Afghanistan?

Here is where the narrative grows less gloomy. Washington boasts a promising organisation, the Young Professionals Working Group on Pakistan, which comprises aspiring analysts of the country. Some of the capital’s most insightful Pakistan analysis in recent years has come from new and younger faces — Shamila Chaudhary, Moeed Yusuf, Joshua White, Stephen Tankel.

Further afield, a cultural engagement program, Caravanserai, has barnstormed across America, hosting performances and film screenings by Pakistani artists — and hoping to pique schoolchildren’s interest in Pakistan.

Bipartisanship may be a lost cause in Washington. Yet there is still hope for strengthening and expanding the city’s ranks of Pakistan experts.

Michael Kugelman is the program associate for South Asia at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. He can be reached at michael.kugelman@wilsoncenter.org and on Twitter @michaelkugelman

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Probe Launched on Links between Pak Jail Break and Afghanistan Attacks

Bannu jail break (Credit: tribune.com)

PESHAWAR, April 16: Authorities on Monday removed four senior officials over a jail break in the restive northwest and launched a probe into whether it had any link to multiple attacks in Afghanistan.

The provincial government said a “total failure” of intelligence was to blame for the break-out, in which dozens of inmates including Taliban militants and death row prisoners fled a prison after armed militants attacked before dawn on Sunday.

More than 150 heavily-armed militants stormed the jail outside the town of Bannu, near the lawless tribal region where Taliban and al Qaeda linked militants have carved out their stronghold.

“It was a total failure of intelligence agencies,” Mian Iftikhar Hussain, information minister of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, told a news conference.

The militants came in dozens of vehicles, continued to operate for more than two hours and went back undetected, he said.

“We have removed the deputy superintendent of Bannu Jail, the city commissioner and two other senior police officers,” he said, adding that a five-member committee had been set up to investigate the matter.

The provincial government has also taken note that the jail break in Pakistan coincided with multiple attacks by Taliban insurgents across the border in Afghanistan on Sunday.

Some 36 insurgents were killed nationwide as Afghan forces regained control of Kabul on Monday 18-hour after the Taliban assault, which left 11 members of the security forces and four civilians dead.

Hussain said “the committee will try to find out whether the jail break in Pakistan, claimed by local Taliban, had any link to coordinated attacks in Afghanistan.” Senior Bannu police official Iftikhar Khan earlier told AFP that a total of 384 inmates had escaped the jail, of whom 53 returned voluntarily while 11 others were arrested.

Most of those who escaped were militants, including 34 prisoners on death row.

Ehsanullah Ehsan, spokesman for the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militant group, claimed responsibility for the attack which he said was launched to free some of their key members.

The attack began around 1:00 am (2000 GMT Saturday) and continued for two hours, with militants in cars and pick-up trucks shooting and throwing grenades to force their way into the prison, which held 944 prisoners.

A former member of the air force sentenced to death for an attack on former president Pervez Musharraf was among the escaped militants, according to officials.

Adnan Rasheed was convicted after a bomb planted under a bridge in Rawalpindi near Islamabad in December 2003 exploded moments after Musharraf’s motorcade passed. His appeal is pending before the Supreme Court.

 

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Zardari Yatra Eggs on Indo-Pak Peace Process

Pak President Zardari Meets Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (Credit: ft.com)

One of the more unheralded achievements of the PPP government has been the way it has repaired relations from the nadir of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, when war seemed a very realistic possibility. Rather than try to be overly ambitious, the government has cautiously taken small steps towards lasting peace, with trade and regular high-level meetings inching the process forward.

President Asif Ali Zardari’s trip to the shrine of Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti in Ajmer, which allowed him to hold talks with Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, was yet another indicator that the two countries are moving firmly towards setting up a lasting peace between them. By all accounts the talks were cordial and Dr Singh accepted Zardari’s offer of a return visit to Pakistan. This was also the first time a Pakistani head of state had visited India since Musharraf in 2005, marking another landmark in the slow return to normalcy.

The two countries are fortunate that they both have leaders who are committed to the peace process but that does not mean that danger is not lurking around every corner. The army could easily scuttle whatever progress has been made by working around the elected government and embarking on yet another military adventure along the lines of the Kargil conflict.

In India, too, the hawks (of which significant sections of the media is a part) remains resolutely anti-Pakistan. Issues like Hafiz Saeed, who had a bounty placed on him by the US for actionable information leading to his conviction, are still unsolved. The two have so far decided to at least go ahead with lowering trade barriers with Pakistan set to grant India Most-Favoured Nation status by the end of the year. However, the rigid visa regime between the two, which makes it next to impossible for the citizens of either to visit, must be relaxed as well.

Also, as the recent landslide tragedy at Siachen has showed, both countries need to realise that perhaps the time has come to demilitarise the glacier.

Far more lives on either side have been lost to the ravages of weather than to actual combat and the cost of maintaining troops for both countries on the world’s highest battlefield should be enough to necessitate a final push for a bilateral drawdown.

 

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Pakistan Third Largest Arms Importer in Asia – SIPRI

STOCKHOLM, March 19: Asia tops other regions when it comes to weapon imports, according to a study released Monday by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

Over the past five years, Asia and Oceania accounted for 44 percent in volume of conventional arm imports, the institute said.

That compared with 19 percent for Europe, 17 percent for the Middle East, 11 percent for North and South America, and 9 percent for Africa, said the report.

India was the first world importer over the period, accounting for 10 percent in weapons volume.

It was followed by South Korea (6 percent), China and Pakistan (both 5 percent), and Singapore (4 percent), according to the independent institute which specialises in arms control and disarmament matters.

These five countries accounted for 30 percent of the volume of international arms imports, said SIPRI.

“India’s imports of major weapons increased by 38 percent between 2002-2006 and 2007-11,” SIPRI said.

“Notable deliveries of combat aircraft during 2007-11 included 120 Su-30MKs and 16 MiG-29Ks from Russia and 20 Jaguar Ss from the United Kingdom,” it said.

While India was the world’s largest importer, its neighbour and sometime foe Pakistan was the third largest.

Pakistan took delivery of “a significant quantity of combat aircraft during this period: 50 JF-17s from China and 30 F-16s,” the report added.

Both countries “have taken and will continue to take delivery of large quantities of tanks,” it also noted.

“Major Asian importing states are seeking to develop their own arms industries and decrease their reliance on external sources of supply,” said Pieter Wezeman, senior researcher with the SIPRI Arms Transfers Programme.

China, which in 2006 and 2007 was the world’s top arms importer, has now dropped to fourth place.

“The decline in the volume of Chinese imports coincides with the improvements in China’s arms industry and rising arms exports,” according to the report.

But “while the volume of China’s arms exports is increasing, this is largely a result of Pakistan importing more arms from China,” it added.

“China has not yet achieved a major breakthrough in any other significant market.”

China is however the sixth largest world exporter of weapons behind, the United States, Russia, Germany, France, and Britain.

In Europe, Greece was the largest importer between 2007 and 2011, the institute said.

Between 2002 and 2011, Syria increased its imports of weapons by 580 percent, while Venezuela boosted its imports over the same period by 555 percent, it reported.

Morocco saw its own imports increase by 443 percent, it added.

The volume of international transfers of major conventional weapons was 24 percent higher in the period 2007-11 compared to the 2002-2006 period. (AFP)

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Karzai Calls on U.S. to Pull Back as Taliban Cancel Talks

Afghan Grief after Massacre by US Soldier - (Credit: pressirtv)
KABUL, Afghanistan, March 15 — Prospects for an orderly withdrawal of NATO forces from Afghanistan suffered two blows on Thursday as President Hamid Karzai demanded that the United States confine troops to major bases by next year, and the Taliban announced that they were suspending peace talks with the Americans.

Getting talks started with the Taliban has been a major goal of the United States and its NATO allies for the past two years, and only in recent months was there concrete evidence of progress.

And the declaration by President Karzai, if carried out, would greatly accelerate the pace of transition from NATO to Afghan control, which previously was envisioned to be complete by 2014. Defense officials admitted there was a major divide between Mr. Karzai’s declaration and the American goals of training the Afghan security forces and conducting counterinsurgency operations. Successful counterinsurgency requires close working relationships with rural Afghans to help build schools, roads and bring about other improvements.

Asked if it was possible to take all American forces out of villages by 2013 and still train Afghan security forces and conduct counterinsurgency operations, a senior American defense official replied, “It’s not clear that we would be able to.”

Mr. Karzai declaration came in reaction to widespread Afghan anger over the massacre by an American soldier of 16 civilians in Kandahar on Sunday, and the decision of the military authorities to remove the soldier from Afghanistan, which was reported on Wednesday.

The Taliban statement, issued in English and Pashto on an insurgent Web site, said talks with an American representative had commenced over the release of some Taliban members from the Guantánamo Bay prison, but accused the American representative of changing the preconditions for the talks.

The statement did not make clear what preconditions were objectionable, but the statement emphasized that the Taliban were only interested in talking with the Americans, and criticized “propaganda” about the talks that American officials had issued. Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban reached by cellphone at an undisclosed location, said the statement suspending the talks was genuine but declined to discuss it further.

It was unclear if the two developments might have been related. But both came to light just as Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta had left Afghanistan after a tense two-day visit that included talks with Mr. Karzai, and the Afghanistan president’s announcement in particular appeared to be a surprise. On Wednesday, President Obama said in Washington that the timetable for an Afghanistan withdrawal would not change.

Defense officials traveling with Mr. Panetta in Abu Dhabi said that the tone of the meeting between Mr. Karzai and Mr. Panetta was more positive than Mr. Karzai’s statement would indicate, and that he made no demands of the defense secretary — suggesting that the statement was in part aimed at a domestic audience enraged not only by the massacre but also by recent Koran burnings.

The officials acknowledged that Mr. Karzai told Mr. Panetta during their meeting that American troops should be confined to major bases by next year, but the officials sought to publicly tamp down the differences and portray the two countries as working together. “Secretary Panetta said, ‘We’re on the same page here,’ ” the Pentagon press secretary, George Little, quoted Mr. Panetta as telling Mr. Karzai.

Mr. Panetta, speaking to reporters after the meeting, said he had told Mr. Karzai that the military pledged a full investigation of the massacre and would bring the gunman to justice. He said that Mr. Karzai had not brought up the transfer of the suspect, an Army staff sergeant, to Kuwait.

Although the move was likely to further anger Afghans, who had called for him to be tried in their country, Lieutenant Gen. Curtis M. Scaparrotti, the No. 2 American commander in Afghanistan, told reporters that the Afghans had been informed of the move ahead of time, and he said that “their response is that they understood.”

General Scaparrotti said that the American military would likely not make the suspect’s name public until and if he was formally charged. He did not say when that might happen. “We are conscious of due process,” he said.

American officials said in recent weeks that there had been no talks of any substance since January, when Ambassador Marc Grossman, the United States special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and his team last visited the region. Even the meetings held then did little to move the process beyond the “talks about talks” stage, and the Afghan government had not yet begun to play any significant role in the effort, despite statements from Mr. Karzai to the contrary, the officials said.

The main obstacle appeared to be executing the first set of confidence-building measures: A prisoner swap that would transfer five senior Taliban leaders held at Guantánamo to house arrest in Qatar in exchange for a Westerner being held by the insurgents.

The plan faced a series of difficulties, notably uncertainty about what conditions the five Taliban would be living under in Qatar, and American lawmakers on both sides of the political divide expressed deep skepticism about the release of the insurgents.

Faced with substantial political opposition, the Obama administration wanted to wait to release the men until it could get a direct exchange for the Westerner, the American officials said. But it appeared Thursday that the Taliban had grown tired of waiting for the Americans to begin the process, and that the insurgents feared the conditions under which their compatriots would be housed in Qatar would be too restrictive.

“Acknowledging their involvement in Qatar talks was a significant move for the Taliban. They expected that the U.S. would move quickly with confidence-building measures,” said Michael Semple, a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School. “The transfer of Taliban leaders to Qatar was top on the list. The Taliban announcement of suspending engagement in Qatar is a response to their frustration at the U.S.’s slowness to deliver.”

Mr. Semple said a series of crises to beset the Americans in the Afghanistan conflict since the start of the year had added another layer of uncertainty to the talks, emboldening Taliban hardliners to press back against the peace effort. “The Taliban also believe that the U.S. mission in Afghanistan is in disarray and their hardliners want to take advantage of that by launching a new fighting season.”

Still, the Taliban statement appeared to leave open the door to a resumption of the process, terming their move a “suspension.”

Angry over its exclusion from the first round of talks, which involved the Taliban opening a political office in Qatar as well as the proposed prisoner releases, Mr. Karzai’s government has tried to establish its own track for peace talks, saying Saudi Arabia should be an intermediary, and sending its own envoy to Guantánamo to talk to Taliban prisoners.

The Taliban statement repeated previous declarations by the insurgents that they viewed Afghan government officials as puppets of the Americans and would not hold talks with them. “Hamid Karzai, who cannot even make a single political decision without the prior consent of the Americans, falsely proclaimed that the Kabul administration and the Americans have jointly started peace talks with the Taliban,” the statement said.

The Taliban were only at the stage of discussing prisoners and the Qatar office, the statement said, adding, “neither have we accepted any other condition with any other side nor have we conducted any talks with Karzai administration.”

On the withdrawal of American forces to major bases by 2013, Mr. Karzai said that Afghan authorities were capable of taking charge of security in rural areas. The massacre Sunday took place in a rural part of Panjwai District, in southern Kandahar Province.

The shooting suspect has been described by sources as a 38-year-old staff sergeant in the Second Battalion, Third Infantry Regiment, Third Stryker Brigade, Second Infantry Division based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State.

Elisabeth Bumiller contributed reporting from Abu Dhabi, U.A.E.

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International Crisis Group Weighs in on Balochistan

Balochistan on Map (Credit: news.bb.co.uk.)
India hasn’t done it; neither has America nor Israel. I am behind the crisis; I created it and I am responsible as well as answerable. Yes, India and America, both opportunists par excellence, are now taking advantage of our weaknesses but no one can break Balochistan away from me but me.

Baloch demands have always been political in nature-political empowerment and economic freedom. Balochistan as a whole has never demanded secession and whatever the large majority has been asking for has always been within their constitutional rights. A large majority of Balochistan has always wanted-and continues to want-to remain within Pakistan’s constitutional and democratic confines.

Over the years, there have been three major Baloch demands: effective political representation, administrative control and an end to exploitation of indigenous resources. Over the years, Rawalpindi has always responded with a military solution. But, pure political problems have no military solutions. Baloch opposition has been-and is being-pushed from being political in nature to militancy and insurgency. The Baloch, in that sense, have been forced to pick up the gun.

The Army has always responded with three of its most favourite tools: an indiscriminate military operation, a divide-and-rule policy plus bribing the Sardars, the Mirs and the Nawabs. Imagine; dividing up your own population, using Pashtun religious elements against Balochs and strategizing that this would bring Balochistan under centralized control. Imagine; appeasing the Sardars but leaving the other seven and a half million Baloch residents marginalized both economically and politically. It never has worked nor will it ever work.

GHQ has no solution. What then is the way out? How can we keep Indian and American wolves at bay? As a first step, here’s a set of six recommendations from the International Crisis Group (ICG) that makes lot of sense: An immediate end to all military operations; release all political prisoners; no political role for any intelligence agency; produce all detainees before the courts; give provincial jurisdiction over policing and ensure local stakes over each and every provincial resource.

In the next phase, bring about a new Balochistan run by a representative political as well as administrative structure-and no more cantonments please. Why is Gwadar Port Authority’s head office in Karachi?

Why is the wellhead price in Sind and Punjab up to four times higher than for wells in Balochistan? How many Baloch residents sit on the Boards of PPL, OGDC or Sui Southern? To be certain, America is not going to determine the future of Balochistan. Neither will India or Israel. What I do in the following 360 days is what will determine the future.

One out of every two residents of Balochistan is below the poverty line. Only one out of every two residents of Balochistan has access to clean drinking water. Only one out of every two children goes to primary school. Only one out of every three children is immunised. Balochistan’s crisis is surely heading in the wrong direction and there is no military solution.

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Cultural Ignorance behind the Koran Burning in Afghanistan

Koran burning in Afghanistan newkuwaititimes.net

The Koran burning incident, which has raged in Afghanistan since the last couple of weeks, is symptomatic of the mutual misunderstanding with which the US and regional players have bumbled on for the last 10 1/2 years – with no clear goal in sight.

If the US goal in Afghanistan was to train the security forces to handle their own defenses, the incident of US soldiers burning the Koran outside Bagram prison – allegedly to thwart planning by Taliban soldiers against them – indicates that the decade long war has not taught American soldiers basic cultural norms of Muslim societies.

The Afghans have refused to buy the argument by US soldiers that the notes written on the Korans by Taliban prisoners may have been code words for an insurgency. Instead, the issue has touched a far deeper chord than the video of US soldiers humiliating the corpses of Taliban soldiers…which was repeatedly played in the US media.

The Koran burning incident has thrown world leaders into a bind. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, knowing that his fate will be decided by the Afghans after his US patrons leave, has turned to the Ulema (religious clergy) to defuse the crisis.

On the other hand, US President Barak Obama – with his multi-cultural upbringing – has apologized, but failed to contain the violence that has infiltrated into the Afghan security forces.

If the US had taken a leaf from history, it would found the need for greater sensitivity in a cultural milieu where tribal Afghans have fought off Western influences like the plague.

For example, the former Soviet Union was forced to end its modernity campaign in Afghanistan shortly after its invasion in 1979, after Russian literacy workers were murdered by conservative Afghans. Millions of Afghans migrated to Pakistan, where they coalesced into the Mujahidin. These “holy warriors” were subsequently funded and armed by the US against the Soviets in Afghanistan… in a movement that has fathered the Taliban.

Today, with history come a full circle, Afghan conservatism raises new challenges for the Obama administration.
The Koran burning issue has already spilled into Pakistan where the religious parties (who served as the mid-wives for the Taliban during the 1990s) have used it to capitalize on anti-US sentiment.

In Pakistan, the victimization of religious minorities and even Muslims suspected of sacrilegious acts mushroomed after 1984, when the Gen. Zia ul Haq’s military coup was followed by passage of the Blasphemy Laws to award the death penalty for insulting the Prophet of Islam and the Koran.

In 1994, I visited Gujranwala town in the Punjab to see how a Muslim who had even memorized the Koran, suffered the ultimate penalty for alleged blasphemy. The unfortunate Muslim, Hafiz Farooq Sajjad whose Koran caught fire…it is impossible to verify how it happened… was spotted by his neighbor while the Holy Book was burning, and reported he had burnt it on purpose.

As the news of the Koran burning spread through the town, the clerics announced it from the mosque. An angry mob descended on Sajjad’s home, tied him to the back of his motor bike and dragged him till he died of his wounds.

The most virulent Muslim sects have since emerged from the small towns of the Punjab – groups like the Anjuman Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan and the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi – who have singled out Shias, Christians, Ahmediyas and even Muslims for extermination.

Only last week the anti Iranian group, Jundullah took responsibility for singling out Shias traveling in a passenger bus in Pakistan’s northern areas – whence they were forced to disembark and shot on account of their sect.

In this complex scenario, where nations use religious and ethnic groups to fight proxy wars in the Pak-Afghan region, the dangers of religious extremism rise in proportion to incidents like Koran burning.

Indeed, as the Taliban claims military successes in Afghanistan… the religious extremists moving across the porous borders to Pakistan carry the seeds of intolerance that threaten to destabilize the nation still further.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience. – George Bernard Shaw

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When is Journalism Really Independent?

Islamabad, Pakistan: Two Pakistani journalists filing reports home from Washington are quietly drawing their salaries from US State Department funding through a nonprofit intermediary, highlighting the sophisticated nature of America’s efforts to shape its image abroad.

Neither of the two media organizations, Express News and Dunya News, discloses that their reporters are paid by the nonprofit America Abroad Media (AAM) on their websites or in the reports filed by their correspondents. Though the journalists have worked under the auspices of AAM since February, AAM only made their links to the news organizations known on their website Wednesday, after being contacted by the Monitor.

The lack of transparency by the Pakistani organizations involved could heighten Pakistani mistrust of the US government, which is seen as having an undue level of influence in their country’s affairs.

“If an American journalist working as a foreign correspondent in Pakistan was paid in a similar manner, would it be morally or professionally acceptable for his news organization or audience?” asks Badar Alam, editor of Pakistan’s prestigious English-language Herald magazine.

The amount currently allocated for the project is some $2 million over two years from the public diplomacy funds allocated by the State Department, according to State Department officials in Washington familiar with the project. That includes salaries for the two correspondents – Huma Imtiaz of Express News and Awais Saleem of Dunya News – and a bureau for both TV channels.

Aaron Lobel, president of AAM, says his organization receives donations from a number of private funders, too, which it mainly spends on its programs on international affairs that run on Public Radio International in the United States.

The timing of AAM’s website disclosure – after contact from the Monitor – was a coincidence and the update had been planned for “several months,” he says. “We are a small organization with two web guys. They are really working hard on the new site – not just about the Pakistan project but on everything we do. Yes, it would have been better to have a lot of information [before]. We have been preparing this site for a long time to provide that information.”

“The content production is done first and foremost [by] Pakistanis who are here and work with their channels back home to produce content,” says Lobel.

Sometimes the Pakistani journalists and editors at home come up with stories. But AAM also holds production meetings where the group’s managing director, Aliya Salahuddin, suggests stories, says Lobel.
“I understand the fears that define the joint ventures that comprise the US-Pakistan relationship. [But] we are very proud we have a good relationship with Dunya and Express. It allows Pakistani journalists to cover the US with a Pakistani perspective. I haven’t encountered any Pakistani channel that doesn’t want to work with us,” he says, adding that AAM is hopeful of partnering with more Pakistani channels in the future.

Both reporters cover a wide variety of stories, some related to the US government and others not.

In her work for the English-language newspaper the Express Tribune, a respected national Pakistani daily that is a part of the Express Media Group, Huma Imtiaz regularly quotes unnamed US officials, at times from the State Department and at times from the Department of Defense.

In a story published Aug. 16, “Strings attached: Talk of US scorecard rubbished,” Imtiaz interviews a Department of Defense official who contradicts an earlier Wall Street Journal report that the US government was making decisions on aid based on Pakistani performance and cooperation.

She has also written for The New York Times, though not since drawing a salary from AAM, and published one essay for the Indian Express on being a Pakistani journalist in America when Osama bin Laden was captured. She also writes for Foreign Policy’s website, where she is credited only as the correspondent for Express News in Washington.

Awais Saleem’s reports include stories on cricket in Chicago and Pakistani fashion in the United States.

Neither reporter was willing to comment on the story.

Making a clear connection

AAM’s ombudsman, Jeffery Dvorkin, insists there is no US government involvement with content production.

“My role as ombudsman is to help AAM ensure there is no effort by its funders, including the government, to interfere with any of the content produced. Thus far, there have been no efforts of this kind. Secondly, AAM continues to make it clear to the government and to all funders that in order for AAM to proceed with this initiative, the government could have no involvement in content production or selection,” he says.

Mr. Dvorkin says his only misgiving was about Lobel’s ability to be the AAM’s chief fundraiser and remain involved editorially at the same time – an issue that has since been resolved with the imminent hire of new managing editor.

But the lack of transparency, particularly by the Pakistani news organizations, raises ethical issues for all parties involved, says Richard Wald, a journalism ethics professor at Columbia University in New York City.

“The essential question here is not who pays, but who knows who pays,” says Professor Wald. “In a correct world, if there were such a situation, people should make the connection clear – not simply to the editors and management of the Pakistani papers – but to the receivers of the information so they can judge it on their own.”

He adds there can be a place for government-funded access to reporting for things like equipment and travel so long as it is clear where the funding is coming from.

The State Department official counters that both the US government and AAM “encourage” the channels to make their ties clear. “We’re very proud of this program,” the official says. But eight months into the program, officials from AAM had not reached out to the channels regarding disclosure.

The official notes that this is part of a broader effort to reach out, including bringing Pakistani journalists to the US for short visits under the International Visitor Leadership Program.

Defending his newspaper’s decision not to disclose the source of Imtiaz’s funding, Express Tribune editor Mohammad Ziauddin told the Monitor: “The lady reports in conjunction with the [nongovernmental organization AAM]. The lady has been recruited by us in consultation with the NGO in a way we do not need to mention this. By putting that line we would be putting this into perspective but since we already edit [her stories] according to our thinking we do not need to. Editorially we sensitize it to a great extent.”

He adds that the process of building links with government officials is commonplace the world over. “I know a number of instances where a correspondent has landed in Pakistan and has been won over by our own information departments and briefed by our government agencies. Obviously they would like to keep his sources intact and at times he or she obliges [the government].”

Ziauddin adds that the partnership was conducted “as an experiment” and in the future the newspaper intends to pay for its own correspondent in Washington, just as they do in London.

Countering environment of misinformation

Christine Fair, a Pakistan expert and assistant professor at Georgetown University in Washington, says it is important to remember that the US government is operating in an environment of misinformation, where anti-US stories in Pakistan seeded by the Pakistani security establishment are commonplace.

“Is anyone calling them out on this? The Pakistani press is the freest press that money can buy,” she says, adding: “The larger story is the Pakistani media is up for sale to as many people want to buy it. This fiction is that the country is really benefiting from some independent media. The US government wants to get into this game to counter this ISI [Inter Services Intelligence] propaganda.”

Naveed Kashif, chief operating officer of Dunya News, also stated that since final control resided with the channel, they did not feel the need to declare the partnership with AAM to their viewers.

(Editor’s note: the original version of this story gave the incorrect name for the chief operating officer of Dunya News.)

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Taliban linked Jundallah Owns Sectarian Killings in Pakistan’s North

Shias protest killings in Kohistan (Credit: nation.com.pk)
Gunmen have killed at least 18 Shia Muslim bus passengers in a sectarian attack in the northern Pakistani district of Kohistan, officials say.

The attackers are reported to have checked the identity cards of all the passengers before removing the Shias and shooting them.

About 27 other passengers on the bus were spared.

Meanwhile, a Chinese woman was shot dead with a Pakistani male companion in the city of Peshawar, police say.

Bus attack

Kohistan is not known for militancy, but it borders the Swat valley, which has had a Taliban presence in the past.

The attack took place close to the remote and mountainous area of Harban Nala, approximately 130 miles (208 km) north of the capital, Islamabad.

Four buses were travelling in a convoy from the city of Rawalpindi to the northern town of Gilgit.

“Armed men hiding on both sides of the road attacked,” local police chief Mohammad Ilyas told the Agence France-Presse news agency. Local officials say that the men who ambushed the bus were wearing military fatigues.

It happened in an area dominated by Sunni tribes, Reuters quotes a policeman as saying.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has condemned the attack, insisting that such incidents would not deter the government in its resolve to fight “the menace of terror”.

Correspondents say that more than two-thirds of Kohistan’s 500,000 people live a nomadic life and move up and down the country in search of pastures.

Kohistan is 7,400 sq km of sheer mountains, rising from 2,400m (7,874 ft) to 3,700m (12,139 ft) with virtually no plains.

Sunni extremists allied to or inspired by al-Qaeda and the Taliban routinely attack government and security targets in north-west Pakistan, in addition to religious minorities and other Muslim sects they consider to be infidels.

The BBC’s Aleem Maqbool in Islamabad reports that there are frequently complaints from Shias that the Pakistani state does little to stop the attacks and has even released from custody notorious militants accused of carrying them out.

Last month more than 30 Shias were killed in an attack on a mosque in north-west Pakistan.

Chinese targets

The Chinese woman, 40, and her Pakistani companion, 22, were killed by gunmen on motorbikes while walking in the Kohati bazaar area in the historic centre of Peshawar, police said.

It was the fifth shooting or bomb attack in north-western Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province since Thursday, raising concerns that violence is worsening following a relative lull in recent months.

The father of the dead Pakistani said that his son had been working as a translator for the Chinese woman while he was on holiday from studying English literature at university.

The BBC’s M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad says that while a motive for the attack is unclear, it is not unusual for Chinese people to be targeted in Pakistan.

  • In 2009 a Chinese engineer was kidnapped in the Dir region of north-west Pakistan. He was released after five months
  • A Chinese beautician kidnapped during the Red Mosque siege of 2007 was released several months after being abducted
  • One of two Chinese engineers kidnapped by militants loyal to Taliban commander Abdullah Mehsud in 2004 was killed during a rescue bid by Pakistani forces.