Aboard The Democracy Train – Page 106

December 28, 2012

Five years after Benazir’s murder, son Bilawal makes political debut

President Zardari with son Bilawal (Credit: bbc.co.uk)

He stood yards from the tomb of his mother, a two-time prime minister killed by Islamic militants exactly five years before, and that of his grandfather, a prime minister and president ousted in a military coup and hanged by a dictator, and told the huge crowd filling the open ground in front of the white domed mausoleum that there were “two powers” in his homeland, “those on the right path and those on the path of lies”.

On Thursday Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the 24-year-old only son of Benazir Bhutto and the heir to one of the most powerful, famous and controversial political dynasties in the world, made his formal debut in the turbulent and often lethal world of Pakistani politics at an emotional rally in a small village which is his family’s ancestral home in the south of the country.

“Bilawal has arrived. This was a huge step. It was make or break for him,” said Nadeem F Paracha, a well-known columnist with Dawn newspaper after the speech.

Less than three years ago, Bhutto junior was studying history and politics at Christ Church college, Oxford, a target for tabloid journalists but few others. Now he is probably the most high-profile target in a country hit by wave after wave of extremist violence.

Bhutto spoke of the sacrifices made by members of his family, workers of the Pakistan People’s party (PPP), and others such as Shia Muslims shot dead in ongoing sectarian violence and Malala Yusafzai, the 15-year-old schoolgirl and activist for girls’ education who was shot and badly injured by militants in October and is now recovering in a British hospital.

“How long you will go on killing innocent people? … if one Malala will be killed, thousands will replace her. One Benazir was killed; thousands have replaced her,” Bhutto told the crowds.

Observers noted that Bhutto’s Urdu, the national language which he has had to hastily learn since his return to Pakistan to take up his political heritage, was, if still accented, much improved.

“He does not believe in being the anointed prince. He wants to earn the respect of the party workers and of the people of Pakistan,” said Farnahaz Ispahani, a former PPP member of parliament and a confidant of the Bhutto family.

More than 5,000 police had been deployed to protect the event. Helicopters hovered overhead.

Parliamentary elections due this spring are likely to test the ruling PPP-led coalition, hit by an ailing economy, rising prices for basic foodstuffs, continuing violence, anger at endemic graft and an ongoing power crisis that brings daily electricity cuts.

Bhutto’s father, Asif Ali Zardari, has been the president of Pakistan since 2008. A controversial figure who was jailed on corruption charges that he has said were politically motivated from 1996 to 2000 but who has proved a skilful tactical politician, Zardari has been described as a “transitional leader” for the PPP.

Though only able to contest elections in September after his 25th birthday, Bhutto’s presence will nonetheless be a powerful boost in campaigning over the coming months.

“Bilawal grew up with his mother as his father was in jail for a long time. He went with her to rallies and was with her in top-level meetings. His beliefs – in pluralism, democracy, human rights – mirror hers,” said Ispahani.

However, doubts remain over Bhutto’s appeal to new, younger, urbanised and often more religiously minded voters. Osama Siddique, a professor at Lahore University of Management Science, said it was hard to “visualise Bilawal” in a key position in the immediate future.

“Putting Benazir’s son on a stage makes political sense. It’s a very poignant and emotional moment still for many people,” he said.

Cyril Almeida, analyst and editorialist in the southern city of Karachi, said that though Bhutto’s personal courage was unquestionable it was less certain that a political novice could “solve the problems faced by the country … whatever his last name”.

Benazir Bhutto died when leaving a political rally in the northern city of Rawalpindi while campaigning for elections in 2007 after nearly 10 years in exile. Her killers have never been conclusively identified, though most experts and intelligence services believe Islamic extremists were responsible. The PPP won the postponed polls held after her assassination to gain power.

Party officials told the Guardian on Thursday that Bilawal, who was educated at private English-medium schools in Pakistan and in Dubai after his mother went into self-imposed exile in 1999, would contest his mother’s parliamentary seat when he was old enough.

Last year Fauzia Wahab, a presidential aide and Bhutto family friend, said Bilawal carried “a heavy burden” as he “had the Bhutto genes”.

Benazir Bhutto’s father, Zulfiqar, rode to power on an anti-poverty platform before being deposed and eventually executed in prison by the military dictator Muhammed Zia-ul-Haq in 1979. Both he and his daughter are routinely referred to as “shaheed” or “martyred” in Pakistan.

Bhutto told the crowd on Thursday that the PPP stood for “food, clothes and shelter” for the common man, purposefully using a slogan from his grandfather’s campaigns. Bhutto, who friends say reads history avidly, also appeared well aware of the potential cost of his new role.

“The PPP is not just a political party. This is our life,” he said.

Dynastic politics

In an uncertain south Asia, it is always nice to have something you can rely on. In Pakistan it is that a Bhutto will be either in power or leading the opposition. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto dominated the early 1970s with his brand of populist, leftwing, nationalist and increasingly autocratic politics. His daughter was prime minister twice. Now it’s her son’s turn to enter the fray.

In India, the great local democracy, the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty is as dominant as it has ever been with Rahul Gandhi, 42, hoping to become a fourth-generation prime minister, or at least principal candidate, and his mother, Sonia, currently the president of the ruling Congress party.

In Bangladesh, the decades-old rivalry between Begum Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina Wajed for control of the country continues that between the late husband of one and the father of the other. Bhutan is still a monarchy.

In Burma, the Nobel-prize-winning democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi, the daughter of the assassinated nationalist leader and effective founder of the modern country Aung San, is leader of the opposition and spoken of as a potential president in the future.

In Sri Lanka, the son of the president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, himself the son of a prominent politician, has won a seat in the family fief of Hambantota and significant numbers of family members fill posts across the country’s administration.

At state or provincial level in all these countries, similar dynamics are at work. Why are dynastic politics so tenacious on the subcontinent? In an often mercenary world, there is the obvious need for any successful politician to bolster his or her hold on power by recruiting loyal retainers who will not defect for material gain. This means family first. Then there is simple inheritance of power, influence, money and, especially in India and Pakistan, land. A key factor is the importance of personalities in contests largely stripped of ideological content. Finally there are the high levels of illiteracy, which make a famous name a determining factor for tens of millions of voters.

One common strand uniting the dynasties is that most of them speak English as a first language. Along with railways and a swollen bureaucracy, it may be that British rule bequeathed something else too: a taste for hereditary power and deference. There are one or two exceptions to the rule. The Maldives has all sorts of political woes but dynastic rule is not one of them. Nepal has recently done away with its kings, though it is hardly a model of stability either. As for Afghanistan, a relative replacing the president, Hamid Karzai, as a candidate, possibly a successful one too, in coming polls is far from impossible. After all, in south Asia, politics is a family affair.

December 28, 2012December 28, 2012

‘One Pound Fish’ singer welcomed back to Pakistan

Muhammad Shahid Nazir (Credit: dailymail.co.uk)

Pakistan, Dec 25 – Even in an age of instant Internet singing sensations, Muhammad Shahid Nazir’s tale might seem fishy.

After all, it’s not every day that an unsung immigrant from Pakistan makes a respectable challenge to the top of Britain’s Christmas pop chart with a ditty about the “very, very good” fish he hawks on the streets of London. But the millions who have heard Nazir crooning on YouTube can understand: It’s easy to get hooked on his song “One Pound Fish,” named not after the weight of the day’s catch but its cost in British currency.

“I never thought my song would become famous,” the 31-year-old newly minted recording artist said. “My real name is Muhammad Shahid, but the people call me the ‘One Pound Fish Man,’ and I’m so happy.”

Nazir, a father of four who hails from the little-known Punjab town of Pattoki, set out for Britain on a student visa a year and a half ago, hopeful, like many Pakistanis, of forging a better future for his family. He landed a job as a fish monger but says he soon knew he would not be a very competitive salesman. He didn’t like to shout about his wares, as many fish sellers do to attract customers.

But through a stroke of divine intervention, a new approach to advertising his fish came into being. “On the spot, God put the song in my mind,” he said.

The simple sales ditty goes: “Come on ladies, come on ladies! One pound fish. . . . Very, very good and very, very cheap. One pound fish!”

That’s pretty much it. But a large part of Nazir’s charm lies in the sheer earnestness with which he belts out the tune to the female shoppers within earshot at Queens Market in London, entreating them to “have a, have a look” at his wares.

Soon enough, somebody made an amateur video of his jingle and posted it on YouTube. As the views mounted to 6 million, Nazir joined the likes of Rebecca Black of hyper-annoying “Friday” fame and Psy, the South Korean pop star whose “Gangnam Style” video had millions around the world dancing as if they were riding imaginary horses.

An enterprising producer decided to polish and expand “One Pound Fish.” The latest rendition took on added zest in a music video that features sexy dancers in Bollywood-inspired outfits, flying fish and, of course, a splash of Autotune. That version had nearly 7 million views as of Monday.

Nazir’s song made it into the U.K. Top 40 after just two weeks on the charts. That gave it a shot at joining the ranks of fabled No. 1 Christmas singles — those songs that top the charts in the week that the holiday falls.

Past Christmas singles have included the predictable and improbable. The Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was No. 1 in 1963 (one of the group’s four Christmas chart-toppers); Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” succeeded twice, in 1975 and 1991; Band Aid’s “Do They Know it’s Christmas,” also twice, in 1984 and 2004. Then there are only-in-England novelties like comedian Benny Hill’s 1971 “Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West)” and Mr. Blobby’s “Mr. Blobby” in 1993.

This year, Nazir’s novelty number faced tough competition against stars such as Rihanna and Justin Bieber. The top tune was announced Sunday: A version of the Hollies’ “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” by the Justice Collective, a group of stars who recorded the charity single for victims of a 1989 soccer-stadium stampede that claimed 96 lives.

“One Pound Fish” remained in the wallows, reaching just 29 on the chart, but not bad for a singer who got booted off of television talent show “The X Factor.”

This week Nazir returns home to Pattoki with his visa status in question, but in triumph: He is most certainly Pakistan’s first viral video singing sensation. Everyone in the town an hour’s drive southwest of Lahore has heard of his fame and fortune.

“You can go to any street or market of this town and will see small children singing this ‘One Pound Fish’ song,” said one of Nazir’s brothers, Saith Khalid Nazir, a lawyer. “Almost everybody has seen it on the Internet, and they are crazy about it.”

As a child, Muhammad Shahid Nazir was known for singing religious songs as a member of a devout family that prayed at the mosque five times a day. Sometimes other congregations requested his vocal talents.

“Nevertheless, the entire family had never thought or imagined that he would become a singer,” his brother said.

Muhammad Shahid Nazir said he will spend the Christmas holiday with his family. He described his town as a tolerant one where Christians are welcomed and their religious practices respected. After the holiday, he will apply for a visa to work as an entertainer in Britain.

It’s pretty clear that he’s become a better self-promoter than fishmonger.

“Now my song is available on iTunes in the U.K.,” he said in an interview from London. “My song is becoming famous in France, in Germany, in Canada, in America.”

Then, unprompted, he burst into a joyful rendition of his signature tune

December 28, 2012

Ancient Buddha, Modern Peril

Mes Aynek site in Afghanistan (Credit: penn.museum)

Kabul, Dec 22: WHEN the Taliban blasted the famous Bamiyan Buddhas with artillery and dynamite in March 2001, leaders of many faiths and countries denounced the destruction as an act of cultural terrorism. But today, with the encouragement of the American government, Chinese engineers are preparing a similar act of desecration in Afghanistan: the demolition of a vast complex of richly decorated ancient Buddhist monasteries.

The offense of this Afghan monument is not idolatry. Its sin is to sit atop one of the world’s largest copper deposits.

The copper at the Mes Aynak mine, just an hour’s drive south of Kabul, is to be extracted under a roughly $3 billion deal signed in 2007 between Afghanistan and China’s Metallurgical Group Corporation. The Afghan finance minister, Omar Zakhilwal, recently said the project could pump $300 million a year into government coffers by 2016. But the project has been plagued by rumors of corruption; there was widespread talk of a $30 million kickback involving the former minister of mines, who resigned.

In 2009, archaeologists were given a three-year deadline to salvage what they could at Mes Aynak, but raising money, securing equipment and finding experienced excavators took up more than half of that time. So the focus now is solely on rescuing objects. An international team of archaeologists is scrambling to save what it can before the end of this month, when it must vacate the central mining zone, at the heart of the Buddhist complex.

The task is herculean: more than 1,000 statues have been identified, along with innumerable wall paintings, fragile texts and rare wooden ornamentation. And the excavators can only guess at what may lie in older layers. There is no time to dig deeper.

From about the third century until the ninth century, Afghanistan served as a bridge between India and China and played a key role in shaping the Buddhism that swept across Central Asia. At Mes Aynak, monks and artisans built an astonishing array of temples, courtyards and stupas, as well as whole towns of workshops and homes for miners. (Even then, Mes Aynak was exploited for its copper.)

Afghanistan was home to an extraordinary mix of Nestorian Christians, Persian Zoroastrians, Hindus, Jews and, eventually, Muslims. New scholarship based on finds at ancient sites like Mes Aynak suggests that Islam arrived here not with sudden fire and sword, but as a slowly rising tide. This was an Afghanistan of cosmopolitan wealth and industry, and of religious innovation, devotion and tolerance, at a time when Europe was mired in the Dark Ages.

Many statues and paintings will be saved for museum exhibitions, but the potential for understanding a key piece of Afghan history — and for drawing future tourists — will soon be lost. Deborah Klimburg-Salter, a scholar of art and archaeology who recently visited the site, told me that Mes Aynak “would be of great historical value not only for the history of Afghanistan but the whole region — if they could slow down, excavate and document properly.”

It’s ironic: a company based in China, which received Buddhism via Afghanistan, will destroy a key locus of that transmission. Washington, which condemned the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, is standing by as Kabul sacrifices its cultural heritage for short-term revenue.

The destruction is not just a cultural travesty. It may not even result in the advertised economic benefits for some time to come. World Bank experts told me that large-scale mining is not likely to take place at Mes Aynak for years. For one thing, there is no smelter to process the ore and no railroad to carry the material to China. An August rocket attack by Taliban militants on the mining camp prompted the Chinese workers to evacuate the heavily guarded site. The tenacious archaeologists, mostly Afghans, stayed behind.

There is still hope that the Afghan government might allow archaeologists to remain at the central complex past Dec. 31. “We’re hoping we get more time,” Philippe Marquis, the director of the French archaeological mission in Afghanistan and a lead scientist on the project, told me. There is no reason archaeology and mining operations can’t coexist at the site. But archaeologists fear the government wants to close the site to researchers and reporters to avoid embarrassing images of dynamited monasteries.

The looming deadline is not Mr. Marquis’s only worry. New Taliban attacks might prompt the Chinese to abandon the site and stop paying for the security forces that protect the area. That could invite looting by desperately poor Afghans. An ancient Buddhist statue can sell for tens of thousands of dollars in the dark, unregulated corners of the international art market.

Last month, Buddhist protesters marched in Bangkok, denouncing the planned demolition of Mes Aynak. An American filmmaker has raised $35,200 on Kickstarter to document the controversy. Afghanistan’s ambassador to Pakistan recently said it was “the duty of all” Afghans to preserve what remains of the country’s Buddhist heritage.

But there are few scholars with the political pull to bring the matter into the international spotlight, and the United Nations has all but ignored the matter. A Unesco official told me he hoped that “some accommodation could be made for the parallel activities of archaeology and mining,” but the organization hasn’t held the government and company accountable.

The looming devastation at Mes Aynak is but the latest example of threats to cultural treasures. Recently, the Egyptian Islamist leader Murgan Salem al-Gohary caused an international stir when he mused that the Sphinx and the pyramids at Giza should be flattened. And this summer, Islamist rebels smashed Sufi tombs in Timbuktu, Mali, an act some have called a war crime.

Whether for economic gain or ideological purity, destroying humanity’s common heritage limits our understanding of one another, as well as of our past — something we can ill afford in today’s fractious world. “We are only breaking stones,” the Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar said dismissively in 2001, when he heard the international outcry over the statues’ destruction. Even given Afghanistan’s dire financial plight, it’s not a position to accept, much less emulate.

Andrew Lawler is a freelance journalist and regular contributor to the magazines Science and Archaeology.

December 21, 2012

Gun Control Debate Simmers After Sandy Hook Massacre

Evacuation from Sandy Hook (Credit: tikkun.org)

WASHINGTON, Dec 17 — Democrats say meaningful action in the wake of the school shootings in Connecticut must include a ban on military-style assault weapons and a look at how the nation deals with individuals suffering from serious mental illness.

Several Democratic lawmakers and Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman said it was time to take a deeper look into the recent spate of mass shootings and what can be done to prevent them. Gun control was a hot topic in the early 1990s, when Congress enacted a 10-year ban on assault weapons. But since that ban expired in 2004, few Americans have wanted stricter laws and politicians say they don’t want to become targets of a powerful gun-rights lobby.

Gun-rights advocates said that might all change after the latest shooting that killed 20 children aged 6 or 7. Police say the gunman, Adam Lanza, was carrying an arsenal of ammunition and used a high-powered rifle similar to the military’s M-16.

On Monday, Sen. Joe Manchin, a lifelong member of the National Rifle Association, said it was time to discuss gun policy and move toward action on gun regulation. The conservative West Virginia Democrat said Monday he agrees with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has advocated banning the sale of assault weapons.

Manchin is the most prominent gun rights advocate to speak after the shooting, telling MSNBC that he is a “proud outdoorsman and hunter, but this doesn’t make sense.”

At a Sunday night service in Newtown, Conn., the site of Friday’s massacre, President Barack Obama did not specifically address gun control. But he vowed, “In the coming weeks I’ll use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens, from law enforcement to mental health professionals to parents and educators in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this.”

He added: “Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?”

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the nation “could be at a tipping point … a tipping point where we might actually get something done” on gun control. He and other Democrats, as well as Lieberman, said they want to ban the sale of new assault weapons and make it harder for mentally ill individuals to obtain weapons. Lieberman said a new commission should be created to look at gun laws and the mental health system, as well as violence in movies and video games.

“Assault weapons were developed for the U.S. military, not commercial gun manufacturers,” Lieberman said before the Newtown vigil Sunday night.

“This is a moment to start a very serious national conversation about violence in our society, particularly about these acts of mass violence,” said the Connecticut senator, who is retiring at the end of the year.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said she will introduce legislation next year to ban new assault weapons, as well as big clips, drums and strips of more than 10 bullets.

“It can be done,” Feinstein told NBC’s “Meet the Press” of reinstating the ban despite deep opposition by the powerful National Rifle Association and similar groups.

Bloomberg said Obama could use executive powers to enforce existing gun laws, as well as throw his weight behind legislation like Feinstein’s.

“It’s time for the president, I think, to stand up and lead and tell this country what we should do – not go to Congress and say, `What do you guys want to do?'” Bloomberg said.”

Gun-rights activists had remained largely quiet on the issue since Friday’s shooting, all but one declining to appear on the Sunday talk shows.

David Gregory, the host of “Meet the Press,” said NBC invited all 31 “pro-gun” senators to appear on Sunday’s show, and all 31 declined. All eight Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee were unavailable or unwilling to appear on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” host Bob Schieffer said.

Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, was the sole representative of gun rights’ activists on the various Sunday talk shows. In an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” Gohmert defended the sale of assault weapons and said that the principal at Sandy Hook Elementary School, who authorities say died trying to overtake the shooter, should herself have been armed.

“I wish to God she had had an M-4 in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out and she didn’t have to lunge heroically with nothing in her hands. But she takes him (the shooter) out, takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids,” Gohmert said.

Gohmert also argued that violence is lower in cities with lax gun laws, and higher in cities with stricter laws.

“The facts are that every time guns have been allowed – conceal-carry (gun laws) have been allowed – the crime rate has gone down,” Gohmert said.

Gun-control advocates say that isn’t true. A study by the California-based Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence determined that 7 of the 10 states with the strongest gun laws – including Connecticut, Massachusetts and California – are also among the 10 states with the lowest gun death rates.

“If you look at the states with the strongest gun laws in the country, they have some of the lowest gun death rates, and some of the states with the weakest gun laws have some of the highest gun death rates,” said Brian Malte of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

December 21, 2012

From Newtown, USA to the Killing Fields of Karachi

Guns & Bullets Seized in Pakistan (Credit: tribune.com.pk)

While it is normal practice for Pashtuns to bear arms, the Cold War gave them unprecedented access to the weapons that transited from Karachi to their native Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which borders Afghanistan. It was a time when the former Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 had forced three million Afghans to cross the porous borders into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, formerly known as the North West Frontier Province. These were Pashtun Afghans who lived on both sides of the border and who followed their relatives in Karachi to look for work.

In Karachi, the Afghan refugees had congregated in Sohrab Goth – a tented village erected by the United Nations along the remote dusty wastelands of the city’s Super Highway. In those Cold War days, I reported from the tented village after it became notorious as a drugs and weapons hotspot. The turbaned Afghan Mujahideen, who toured the camps, hunted for young recruits for the US-funded jihad against the former Soviet Union. Sohrab Goth was a home for Afghan refugees and a depot for heroin. The army’s National Logistics Cell (NLC) trucks, which carried US arms and ammunition to the Mujahideen in the north, were widely rumored to return carrying heroin to be sold in Karachi.

By December 1986, Karachi’s Pashtuns – ﬂush with drug money – had stocked a sizeable cache of weapons in a desolate area north of Karachi called Orangi Town. The Pashtuns lived here in brick and stone homes atop the rugged cliffs, much as they did in the hilly tribal regions that border Afghanistan. Their homes jutted menacingly over a sea of Mohajirs – including almost a million Biharis who had settled here after 1971, when Pakistan’s eastern wing, “East Pakistan,” seceded and became Bangladesh.

My early recollections of Orangi Town go back to 1972, when as a schoolgirl I was brought by my father to work with humanitarian organizations in order to help the Biharis resettle in Karachi. The Bengali nationalists accused the Biharis of collaborating with the Pakistani army during the 1971 war. In fact in 1947 many Muslim Biharis had opted to migrate from India’s Bihar state to what was then East Pakistan. They ended up making a double migration in 1971 when they opted to join the Urdu speaking community in Karachi. Subsequently, 1 million Biharis were resettled in Orangi town by Zulﬁkar Ali Bhutto’s government.

As a teenager, I made trips with my father to the deserted area in the north of Karachi to help an exhausted paramedic serve the poor, malnourished Bihari patients. Hundreds of refugees queued outside our makeshift clinics for cough and cold medicines. As the overworked dispenser dished out the medicines that I handed to him, his fantastic claim sparked my imagination: “I’m so busy I don’t even have the time to die!”

Fifteen years later, these poor Biharis – who had left war- ravaged Bangladesh to become Karachi’s newest Mohajirs – faced the wrath of angry Pashtuns. It was mid-December in 1986 and well past our newspaper deadline when an army of Pashtuns equipped with machine guns charged down the Orangi hills. They made use of the mud walls erected on the hills, shooting and ducking for cover. As the aggressors rained ﬁreballs from their fortresses, the Mohajir areas below them – the Aligarh and Qasbah colonies – went up in ﬂames.

The violence continued into the wee hours as both ethnic groups displayed the worst of human nature. It was reported that Mohajir babies were snatched and thrown into burning oil while Pashtuns were tied up and sliced to pieces in revenge killings. The cycle of violence raged for the next few days and cut off Orangi from the rest of Karachi.

Late at night, as the ﬁres raged in Orangi Town, I got a phone call from a national public radio station in the US asking for the news. I ﬁled my report, thousands of miles from America. It ﬁlled me with awe that Orangi Town – which I knew as acres of hilly desert with mud homes and little access to clean drinking water and sewerage – had made international headlines.

It was no less amazing that Orangi had become the scene of clashes between two very different refugee groups – the Biharis from South Asia and the Afghans from Central Asia – separated by thousands of miles of territory. Their peoples had migrated to Karachi to ﬁnd peace because of the wars that had uprooted them from their respective countries. And now once again their lives were being turned around by bloody ethnic warfare.

December 21, 2012

Three more anti-polio campaigners shot dead in Pakistan

Polio staff killings mourned (Credit: news.kuwaitimes.net)

Dec 19, 2012: Three more health workers vaccinating children against polio have been shot dead in Pakistan in attacks blamed on Islamic militants, bringing the total killed this week to eight.

Wednesday’s attacks all took place in the restive western frontier province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa – one just outside the city of Peshawar and two others in the town of Charsadda. Two men and a woman have been killed.

The volunteers were taking part in a three-day government-led drive, supported by the World Health Organisation and Unicef, to vaccinate tens of millions of children at risk from polio in Pakistan.

After a decades-long struggle by multilateral organisations, governments and NGOs worldwide, the disease is now endemic only in three countries: Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

On Tuesday, a teenage volunteer was killed in Peshawar and four others were killed in the southern city of Karachi.

It was not clear who was behind the shootings but Taliban insurgents have repeatedly denounced the anti-polio campaign as a western plot. Relatives of those shot earlier this week said several of the victims had received death threats in recent days.

Some confusion has emerged about whether and to what extent the anti-polio drive has been halted after a security meeting between officials in the hours following Tuesday’s killings.

The United Nations in Pakistan has pulled all staff involved in the campaign off the streets, Michael Coleman, a spokesman, said. However, the Pakistani government said immunisation had continued in some areas without UN support, although many workers refused to go out.

Women health workers held protests in Karachi and the capital, Islamabad. “We go out and risk our lives to save other people’s children from being permanently handicapped, for what? So that our own children become orphans?” Ambreen Bibi, a health worker, said at the Islamabad protest.

Government officials admit they have been caught off guard by the violence, saying they had not foreseen attacks in areas far from the Taliban strongholds in the north-west of the country. “We didn’t expect such attacks in Karachi,” said Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar, minister for human rights, who oversees the polio campaign.

Some Islamists and Muslim preachers in Pakistan say the polio vaccine is a western plot to sterilise Muslims to stop population growth. Other religious leaders have tried to counter that myth.

However there has been a severe backlash against immunisation for polio and other diseases in Pakistan since the CIA used a local doctor to set up a fake vaccination programme as the agency closed in on Osama bin Laden in his hiding place in the northern town of Abbottabad last year.

In July, a Ghanaian doctor was shot in Karachi, a day after leaders of factions of the Pakistani Taliban reaffirmed a ban on immunisation in the country’s restive tribal areas.

Statistics released in October showed an improvement in the polio situation in Pakistan, with 47 children paralysed in 27 districts compared with 154 in 48 districts in 2011. However, in 2005 only 28 new cases were registered.

Officials and campaigners say there is reason to be optimistic that polio can be eradicated in Pakistan if a “final push” can be made. In neighbouring India, a mass vaccination campaign involving more than a million volunteers reduced cases nationally from 741 to 42 between 2009 and 2010, and down to a single case last year.

December 14, 2012

Taliban release helps Afghan-Pakistani ties and raises hopes for peace deal

Ankara summit with heads of Turkey, Pakistan and Afghanistan (Credit: afpak.jpg)

Kabul/Islamabad, Dec 13: Afghan officials say Pakistan has released a new batch of Taliban prisoners, in the latest of a series of concessions to Kabul that could signal greater Pakistani support for a peace deal in Afghanistan.

According to sources in Kabul, Pakistan released nine middle-ranking Taliban commanders, making a total of 18 such prisoners let out of Pakistani jails since last month. Afghan and western officials said most of the Taliban prisoners had been arrested because they had shown interest in making peace, without the permission of the Pakistani military, which has long seen its backing for the insurgents as a strategic bargaining chip.

The prisoner releases come amid a flurry of bilateral meetings and a significant warming in the Afghan-Pakistan relationship, which is almost universally seen as critical to hopes of peaceful settlement in the 11-year Afghan conflict.

Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai and his Pakistani counterpart, Asif Ali Zardari, met in Ankara on Wednesday. The outcome of the meeting has not been revealed other than an agreement to conduct a joint investigation into an assassination attempt last week against Asadullah Khalid, the head of Afghan intelligence.

A hotline has also been established between the leaders of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkey. The Ankara summit followed a meeting of security officials in London on 5 December, and a visit to Pakistan by Afghanistan’s high peace council last month.

The head of the council’s executive, Masoom Stanekzai, said: “You can see two things. One is there is a change of language. Second is they are taking some practical steps.”

He added that the prisoner releases “sent a positive message in terms of building confidence both among the public and with the Taliban”.

Another Afghan official, speaking off the record, said: “If Pakistan co-operates, there could be a major breakthrough in 2013, and that means a sustained period of face-to-face negotiations, and a ceasefire leading to Taliban participation in the [2014] election.”

However, there is still significant scepticism about Pakistan’s motives in Kabul and western capitals, which for years have accused it of stoking the insurgency while paying lip service to peace. “We don’t yet know if this is a tactical or strategic shift,” an Afghan official said.

Pakistan has still not released its most senior Taliban prisoners, most importantly the former second in command, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who Kabul believes could be a key participant in any future peace talks. The Pakistani foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, said on Wednesday that it was still too early to discuss Baradar’s release but that Pakistan would continue to release Taliban inmates.

Afghan officials would also prefer to have had a chance to talk to the Taliban prisoners on their release, but they were instead allowed to disperse. Most are thought to have gone back to their families in Pakistan, though one mid-level official is said to have gone to Saudi Arabia, where he has family, and there were unconfirmed reports that at least one had returned to the fight in Afghanistan and another had been re-arrested.

“The litmus test is the insurgency and that has continued unabated,” said one doubtful western expert on the Taliban. “There is no sign that they have reined in these guys because they still think they are their best asset to get the government in Kabul that they want.”

Optimists inside the Karzai government insist that such views do not take into account the dramatically different atmosphere in the most recent talks. They believe there that is now substantial evidence that Pakistan is taking a new view of its long-term interests and preparing for the possibility of the success of an Afghan settlement rather than its failure. They say the Pakistani leadership appears less preoccupied by the longstanding fear that Afghanistan could become an Indian client state that would contribute to Pakistan’s encirclement.

“That is a real change. They didn’t even mention India,” said a participant in recent talks. “They didn’t ask for India to close its consulates. They didn’t talk about their need for a ‘friendly’ Afghanistan. They said they needed a stable Afghanistan.”

He said Pakistan had made further concessions, agreeing to guarantee safe passage to a Taliban delegation to forthcoming informal talks in Chantilly, outside Paris. The Afghan and Pakistani leadership have also discussed deepening military co-ordination. Stanekzai said that there was agreement to organise a joint meeting of Afghan and Pakistani Islamic clerics early in the new year, focused on “how to change the narrative of violence to a narrative of peace”.

Stanekzai would not comment on reports that Afghan officials had visited Baradar in jail in Pakistan, but US officials said that at least one such meeting took place. It is also believed that senior Taliban inmates in Pakistan have been placed under a more liberal regime, such as being allowed to make telephone calls under supervision.

In light of Pakistan’s more positive approach, Stanekzai said, Kabul was determined that last week’s assassination attempt against its national security director would not derail the improvement in the bilateral relationship, although Afghanistan had evidence that the would-be killer – who hid explosives in his underpants – came from Quetta in Pakistan.

“No doubt there are enemies of the peace [process] everywhere and they don’t want this reconciliation to move forward, people who benefit from the continuation of conflict and war,” he said. “They will always create obstacles in order to prevent it, and every time we make some progress there is an incident that happens”

He also called on the Obama administration to release Taliban commanders from Guantánamo Bay, so they could take part in a peace process that began and then stalled in Qatar earlier this year. The release of five Taliban inmates has been delayed because of a lack of agreement between the US and the insurgent leadership on guarantees that they would not re-enter the conflict.

“We do hope that issue is resolved quickly, as this can be a step forward,” Stanekzai said, adding that in return, the Taliban would have to commit to direct peace talks and a ceasefire. He said: “In negotiation and peace talks, you have to give something and you have to get something.”

December 14, 2012

Facebook removes Pakistani Taliban recruitment page

TTP Facebook Page (Credit: haveeru.com.mv)

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec 12 : Facebook has taken down a page used by the Pakistani Taliban to recruit new fighters, a spokesman for the US-based social network site told AFP on Wednesday.

Earlier, the US-based SITE Intelligence Group said the Umar Media TTP page used Facebook as “a recruitment” tool.

This month, 270 users clicked a link to say they “like” the page. The account appeared to have been created in September and has just a handful of messages, written in English.

“At Facebook, we have rules that bar direct statements of hate, attacks on private individuals and groups, and the promotion of terrorism,” a Facebook statement said.

“We have a large team of professional investigators both in the US and abroad who enforce these rules. Where abusive content is posted and reported, Facebook removes it and disables accounts of those responsible.

“Whenever we become aware of possible violations of our terms, we will investigate these instances and take action if violations of our Statements of Rights and Responsibilities take place.”

In Pakistan, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told AFP this month that the faction was “temporarily” using the page “to fulfill its requirements” before launching its own website.

The TTP mainly operates in Pakistan’s tribal areas along the porous border with Afghanistan, where it has links with the better-known Afghan Taliban, and during a five-year insurgency has carried out many attacks inside Pakistan.

Last month, the TTP claimed responsibility for planting a bomb under the car of a prominent Pakistani journalist and TV anchorman, Hamid Mir.

In October, members of the group shot and wounded 15-year-old schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai in a failed bid to silence her campaign for girls’ education.

December 14, 2012

Karachi – A Former Business Hub of the Indo Subcontinent

Ellphinstone St, Karachi (Credit: defence.pk)

Karachi, the first Capital of Pakistan and its financial hub, is a leading Industrial centre and great Seaport. Karachi accounts for a lion’s share in the GDP and generates 65% of Pakistan’s total revenue.

According to legend, Karachi was named after ‘Mai-Kolachi’, a Sindhi – Baloch fisher-woman. Initially it was a small village named ‘Kolachi jo goth’ (The village of Kolachi). Soon it grew into a bigger village and the short name Kolachi remained to mark its identity. It was only in 19th Century, it got its present name, Karachi.

The British had their sights set upon Karachi when they opened up a factory in 1795. The factory was soon shut down due to differences with the then rulers, the Talpurs. However, this village lying by the mouth of the Indus river had caught the attention of the British East India Company, who, after sending a couple of exploratory missions to the area, conquered the town on February 3, 1839. In 1840, it was made capital of Sindh and was added to Bombay Presidency.

Soon after the arrival of British, Karachi was connected to rest of India by rail. Many public projects were launched like ‘The Empress Market’, ‘Frere Hall’ etc. A large number of Hindu Sindhis, Parsis, Gujaratis and Kutchis settled in the city when the British embarked upon a large-scale modernization of the city, and it was made the business hub of the subcontinent. In 1914, Karachi became the largest grain exporting port of the British Empire.

A little fort was constructed for protection and it had two main gateways: one facing the sea, known as Kharo Dar(Brackish Gate) and the other facing the adjoining Lyari river, known as the Mitho Dar (Sweet Gate). These places are now known as Kharadar and Meethadar.

In the 1941 census, Karachi had 51% Hindus, 43% Muslims and rest of the 6% were Parsis, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, Jews, Jains, and Bahais. 73% of the Karachites stated their mother tongue as Sindhi, 6.2% stated Urdu/Hindi. Gujarati and Balochi were the two other major languages spoken in Karachi. This was a city where people from all religions, languages, colors, races lived very peacefully and made it one of the most prominent and prosperous cities in Asia.

Sindhi Hindus and Parsis constructed the finest schools, colleges, libraries, hospitals, public and elite clubs during British rule. Historical places like Dayaram Jethmal College (DJ Science College), Narayan Jagannath Vaidya School (NJV High school), Hindu gymkhana etc were constructed by Sindhi Hindus and Jahanghir Kothari Parade, Edulji Dinshaw dispensaries were constructed by Parsis.

The partition of India and formation of Pakistan changed the fate of Karachi and transformed it totally. Despite partition, the non-Muslims (Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Jews & Sikhs) living in the city did not want to leave for India, and preferred to stay back. However the situation became so adverse that they were forced to flee their livelihood and homes. Majority of the Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs and Jains left for India in Feb-March 1948, when the city witnessed Hindu-Muslim riots.

Soon the effect of the partition was showing on Karachi, names of many historical places were changed, like ‘Ram Bagh’ to ‘Aaram bagh’, ‘Gandhi garden’ to ‘Karachi zoological garden’, ‘Victoria Road’ to ‘Abdullah Haroon Road’, ‘Hindu gymkhana’ to ‘National Academy of Performing arts’, ‘Bunder road’ to ‘MA Jinnah Road’. Laloo Khet, which was the farm of a Hindu landlord named Lalchand, was renamed Liaquatabad.

I fail to understand what message Pakistan was trying to give the world by changing the names of such historical places. This act of insanity in renaming places reminds me of what Hassan Nisar, Pakistan’s renowned analyst had to say, “Jo qoumein apni tareekh ko mashq karti hai tarekh un ko mashq kar deti hai” (Those nations which distort their history; are vandalized by history itself).

History was distorted, non-Muslims were forced to leave city for India, and the people who took pride in their City were no longer there and were replaced by new immigrants who started influencing the very culture of the City. Despite this initial set back, Karachi limped back to normal and it remained peaceful to a large extent till the 1970s. The city had clubs, pubs, and discos. Shopping areas used to remain open the whole night (especially Tariq road).

However, this city had to face much tougher times during Bhutto’s and later Zia’s regimes, when forced Islamization was thrust upon the citizens of Karachi. All the above mentioned establishments were closed, and instead, we were only left with selected liquor shops which were supposed to cater to only non-Muslims.

The once peaceful Karachi is today amongst the most dangerous and unsafe metropolitan cities in the world. A Metro, where a person can’t flaunt an expensive cell phone. A city which is becoming popular and infamous for target killings. Statistics show that the number of people, who have lost their lives in incidents of target killing, during the last 3 years, outnumber those who have been killed due to terrorism. This is an alarming trend. This is also a city where you can carry an AK47 without any license, and no one would dare question you if you belong to any political party.

As a final word, I would like to make an appeal, “Save my Karachi from the mobsters, pseudo nationalists and religious bigots, who are bent upon ruining the very fabric of this great city”.

December 7, 2012

DIA sending hundreds more spies overseas

Pentagon (Credit: fromthetrenchesworldreport.com)

Washington, Dec 1: The Pentagon will send hundreds of additional spies overseas as part of an ambitious plan to assemble an espionage network that rivals the CIA in size, U.S. officials said.

The project is aimed at transforming the Defense Intelligence Agency, which has been dominated for the past decade by the demands of two wars, into a spy service focused on emerging threats and more closely aligned with the CIA and elite military commando units.

When the expansion is complete, the DIA is expected to have as many as 1,600 “collectors” in positions around the world, an unprecedented total for an agency whose presence abroad numbered in the triple digits in recent years.

The total includes military attachés and others who do not work undercover. But U.S. officials said the growth will be driven over a five-year period by the deployment of a new generation of clandestine operatives. They will be trained by the CIA and often work with the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command, but they will get their spying assignments from the Department of Defense.

Among the Pentagon’s top intelligence priorities, officials said, are Islamist militant groups in Africa, weapons transfers by North Korea and Iran, and military modernization underway in China.

“This is not a marginal adjustment for DIA,” the agency’s director, Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, said at a recent conference, during which he outlined the changes but did not describe them in detail. “This is a major adjustment for national security.”

The sharp increase in DIA undercover operatives is part of a far-reaching trend: a convergence of the military and intelligence agencies that has blurred their once-distinct missions, capabilities and even their leadership ranks.

Through its drone program, the CIA now accounts for a majority of lethal U.S. operations outside the Afghan war zone. At the same time, the Pentagon’s plan to create what it calls the Defense Clandestine Service, or DCS, reflects the military’s latest and largest foray into secret intelligence work.

The DIA overhaul — combined with the growth of the CIA since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks — will create a spy network of unprecedented size. The plan reflects the Obama administration’s affinity for espionage and covert action over conventional force. It also fits in with the administration’s efforts to codify its counterterrorism policies for a sustained conflict and assemble the pieces abroad necessary to carry it out.

Unlike the CIA, the Pentagon’s spy agency is not authorized to conduct covert operations that go beyond intelligence gathering, such as drone strikes, political sabotage or arming militants.

But the DIA has long played a major role in assessing and identifying targets for the U.S. military, which in recent years has assembled a constellation of drone bases stretching from Afghanistan to East Africa.

The expansion of the agency’s clandestine role is likely to heighten concerns that it will be accompanied by an escalation in lethal strikes and other operations outside public view. Because of differences in legal authorities, the military isn’t subject to the same congressional notification requirements as the CIA, leading to potential oversight gaps.

U.S. officials said that the DIA’s realignment won’t hamper congressional scrutiny. “We have to keep congressional staffs and members in the loop,” Flynn said in October, adding that he believes the changes will help the United States anticipate threats and avoid being drawn more directly into what he predicted will be an “era of persistent conflict.”

U.S. officials said the changes for the DIA were enabled by a rare syncing of personalities and interests among top officials at the Pentagon and CIA, many of whom switched from one organization to the other to take their current jobs.

“The stars have been aligning on this for a while,” said a former senior U.S. military official involved in planning the DIA transformation. Like most others interviewed for this article, the former official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the program.

The DIA project has been spearheaded by Michael G. Vickers, the top intelligence official at the Pentagon and a veteran of the CIA.

Agreements on coordination were approved by Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, a former CIA director, and retired Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, who resigned abruptly as CIA chief last month over an extramarital affair.

The Pentagon announced the DCS plan in April but details have been kept secret. Former senior Defense Department officials said that the DIA now has about 500 “case officers,” the term for clandestine Pentagon and CIA operatives, and that the number is expected to reach between 800 and 1,000 by 2018.

Pentagon and DIA officials declined to discuss specifics. A senior U.S. defense official said the changes will affect thousands of DIA employees, as analysts, logistics specialists and others are reassigned to support additional spies.

The plan still faces some hurdles, including the challenge of creating “cover” arrangements for hundreds of additional spies. U.S. embassies typically have a set number of slots for intelligence operatives posing as diplomats, most of which are taken by the CIA.

The project has also encountered opposition from policymakers on Capitol Hill, who see the terms of the new arrangement as overly generous to the CIA.

The DIA operatives “for the most part are going to be working for CIA station chiefs,” needing their approval to enter a particular country and clearance on which informants they intend to recruit, said a senior congressional official briefed on the plan. “If CIA needs more people working for them, they should be footing the bill.”

Pentagon officials said that sending more DIA operatives overseas will shore up intelligence on subjects that the CIA is not able or willing to pursue. “We are in a position to contribute to defense priorities that frankly CIA is not,” the senior Defense Department official said.

The project was triggered by a classified study by the director of national intelligence last year that concluded that key Pentagon intelligence priorities were falling into gaps created by the DIA’s heavy focus on battlefield issues and CIA’s extensive workload. U.S. officials said the DIA needed to be repositioned as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan give way to what many expect will be a period of sporadic conflicts and simmering threats requiring close-in intelligence work.

“It’s the nature of the world we’re in,” said the senior defense official, who is involved in overseeing the changes at the DIA. “We just see a long-term era of change before things settle.”

The CIA is increasingly overstretched. Obama administration officials have said they expect the agency’s drone campaign against al-Qaeda to continue for at least a decade more, even as the agency faces pressure to stay abreast of issues including turmoil across the Middle East. Meanwhile, the CIA hasn’t met ambitious goals set by former president George W. Bush to expand its own clandestine service.

CIA officials including John D. Bennett, director of the National Clandestine Service, have backed the DIA’s plan. It “amplifies the ability of both CIA and DIA to achieve the best results,” said CIA spokesman Preston Golson.

Defense officials stressed that the DIA has not been given any new authorities or permission to expand its total payroll. Instead, the new spy slots will be created by cutting or converting other positions across the DIA workforce, which has doubled in the past decade — largely through absorption of other military intelligence entities — to about 16,500.

Vickers has given the DIA an infusion of about $100 million to kick-start the program, officials said, but the agency’s total budget is expected to remain stagnant or decline amid mounting financial pressures across the government.

The DIA’s overseas presence already includes hundreds of diplomatic posts — mainly defense attachés, who represent the military at U.S. embassies and openly gather information from foreign counterparts. Their roles won’t change, officials said. The attachés are part of the 1,600 target for the DIA, but such “overt” positions will represent a declining share amid the increase in undercover slots, officials said.

The senior Defense official said the DIA has begun filling the first of the new posts.

For decades, the DIA has employed undercover operatives to gather secrets on foreign militaries and other targets. But the Defense Humint Service, as it was previously known, was often regarded as an inferior sibling to its civilian counterpart.

Previous efforts by the Pentagon to expand its intelligence role — particularly during Donald H. Rumsfeld’s time as defense secretary — led to intense turf skirmishes with the CIA.

Those frictions have been reduced, officials said, largely because the CIA sees advantages to the new arrangement, including assurances that its station chiefs overseas will be kept apprised of DIA missions and have authority to reject any that might conflict with CIA efforts. The CIA will also be able to turn over hundreds of Pentagon-driven assignments to newly arrived DIA operatives.

“The CIA doesn’t want to be looking for surface-to-air missiles in Libya” when it’s also under pressure to assess the opposition in Syria, said a former high-ranking U.S. military intelligence officer who worked closely with both spy services. Even in cases where their assignments overlap, the DIA is likely to be more focused than the CIA on military aspects — what U.S. commanders in Africa might ask about al-Qaeda in Mali, for example, rather than the broader questions raised by the White House.

U.S. officials said DIA operatives, because of their military backgrounds, are often better equipped to recruit sources who can answer narrow military questions such as specifications of China’s fifth-generation fighter aircraft and its work on a nuclear aircraft carrier. “The CIA would like to give up that kind of work,” the former officer said.

The CIA has agreed to add new slots to its training classes at its facility in southern Virginia, known as the Farm, to make room for more military spies. The DIA has accounted for about 20 percent of each class in recent years, but that figure will grow.

The two agencies have also agreed to share resources overseas, including technical gear, logistics support, space in facilities and vehicles. The DIA has even adopted aspects of the CIA’s internal structure, creating a group called “Persia House,” for example, to pool resources on Iran.

The CIA’s influence extends across the DIA’s ranks. Flynn, who became director in July, is a three-star Army general who worked closely with the CIA in Afghanistan and Iraq. His deputy, David R. Shedd, spent the bulk of his career at the CIA, much of it overseas as a spy.

Several officials said the main DIA challenge will be finding ways to slip so many spies into position overseas with limited space in embassies. “There are some definite challenges from a cover perspective,” the senior defense official said.

Placing operatives in conventional military units means finding an excuse for them to stay behind when the unit rotates out before the end of the spy’s job.

Having DIA operatives pose as academics or business executives requires painstaking work to create those false identities, and it means they won’t be protected by diplomatic immunity if caught.

Flynn is seeking to reduce turnover in the DIA’s clandestine service by enabling military members to stay with the agency for multiple overseas tours rather than return to their units. But the DIA is increasingly hiring civilians to fill out its spy ranks.

The DIA has also forged a much tighter relationship with JSOC, the military’s elite and highly lethal commando force, which also carries out drone strikes in Yemen and other countries.

Key aspects of the DIA’s plan were developed by then-Director Ronald L. Burgess, a retired three-star general who had served as intelligence chief to JSOC.

The DIA played an extensive and largely hidden role in JSOC operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, sending analysts into war zones and turning a large chunk of its workforce and computer systems in Virginia into an ana-lytic back office for JSOC.

The head of U.S. Special Operations Command, Adm. William H. McRaven, who directed the operation that killed Osama bin Laden, has pledged to create between 100 and 200 slots for undercover DIA operatives to work with Special Forces teams being deployed across North Africa and other trouble spots, officials said.

“Bill McRaven is a very strong proponent of this,” the senior Defense official said.