News of the World staff shocked at closure

Staff at the News of the World have reacted with shock to news that it will be closed after this Sunday's edition.

Its political editor, David Wooding, said the closure came as a "bombshell".
The 168-year-old tabloid is accused of hacking into phones of crime victims, celebrities and politicians. Police have identified 4,000 possible targets.
The Guardian reports that Andy Coulson, formerly David Cameron's director of communications and a former NoW editor, will be arrested later.
It says Mr Coulson will be arrested on suspicion that he knew about, or had direct involvement in, the hacking of mobile phones during his time as editor, between 2003 and 2007.
He has insisted he knew nothing about the practice.
Staff said they were stunned after News International chairman James Murdoch announced on Thursday the NoW would shut, after days of increasingly damaging allegations.
The paper's editor Colin Myler said the news was "the saddest day of my professional career".
Mr Wooding, who joined the NoW 18 months ago, said the paper was "fantastic" and "decent, hard-working, distinguished journalists were all carrying the can for the sins of a previous regime".
He told BBC Breakfast: "There are 200 people there, I think there are three who were there during the hacking time.
"A lot of this happened 10-11 years ago, with a different editor and different staff. We weren't there, we were brought in to clean up this newspaper, with a new editor who is beyond reproach, but the mud was sticking on us."
Columnist Carole Malone added: "What's really tragic is that everyone in that room had nothing to do with what went on in the past."

James Murdoch: "These allegations are shocking and hugely regrettable"

But Labour MP Chris Bryant, who believes his phone was hacked, said the decision to close was "a really cynical move".
He told the BBC: "What the Murdochs have been doing in the last few weeks is chucking people over the side in a desperate attempt to keep the ship afloat.
"But it's really unfair that [it is] the staff at the newspaper who are losing their jobs rather than the people at the top...if Rebekah Brooks had a single shred of decency in her, if only because Milly Dowler's phone was hacked on her watch, she should resign."
In a statement made to staff, Mr Murdoch said the good things the paper did "have been sullied by behaviour that was wrong - indeed, if recent allegations are true, it was inhuman and has no place in our company".
"The News of the World is in the business of holding others to account. But it failed when it came to itself."
He said no advertisements would run in this weekend's paper - instead any advertising space, and the proceeds from sales, would be donated to good causes.
Mr Murdoch reiterated that the company was fully co-operating with the two ongoing police investigations.
Downing Street has said it had no role or involvement in the decision to close.
News International has declined to comment on reports that the Sun could now become a seven-day-a-week operation.

Suicide rates in Europe 'linked' to financial crisis

The financial crisis "almost certainly" led to an increase in suicides across Europe, health experts say.

The analysis by US and UK researchers found a rise in suicides was recorded among working age people from 2007 to 2009 in nine of the 10 nations studied.
The increases varied between 5% and 17% for under 65s after a period of falling suicide rates, The Lancet reported.
Researchers said investment in welfare systems was the key to keeping rates down.
In particular, they argued supporting people back into work or having programmes to stop them losing their jobs in the first place was more important than giving them benefits.
The team used World Health Organization data to compare rates in the 10 countries, including the UK.
'Complete turnaround'
During the period, there was a rise in unemployment by a third.
Only Austria saw suicide rates fall. This was put down to the country being less exposed to the financial crisis than the others.
Of the risers, Finland fared best while Greece had the worst record. The UK saw a rise of 10% to 6.75 suicides per 100,000 people.
Dr David Stuckler, one of the researchers, said: "There was a complete turnaround. Suicides were falling before the recession, then started rising in nearly all European countries studied. Almost certainly these rises are linked to the financial crisis."
And he added it was also possible there would be other health consequences from the economic problems as the impact on heart disease and cancer rates was not likely to be seen for many years.
'Major risk factors'
However, the researchers also found that road deaths fell during the period - a trend which was put down to the falls in vehicle use that tend to be seen during difficult economic times.
The report comes after a BBC investigation earlier this year found there had been a rise in anti-depressant prescribing during the financial crisis.
Prescriptions for drugs such as Prozac rose by more than 40% over the past four years with GPs saying more and more people were coming to them with money worries.
Andy Bell, deputy chief executive of the Centre for Mental Health, said: "We know that unemployment and the fear of unemployment are major risk factors for poor mental health.
"This research shows how important it is that we treat the mental health of people who are not just out of work but also in work but fear losing their jobs as a major public health issue".
BBC News

Adm Mullen: Pakistan 'sanctioned Saleem Shahzad murder'

Pakistan "sanctioned" the killing of journalist Saleem Shahzad, the highest-ranking officer in the US military, Admiral Mike Mullen, has said.

But he said he could not confirm if the country's powerful intelligence agency, the ISI, was involved.
A government spokesman called the statement "extremely irresponsible". The ISI has denied any involvement.
Mr Shahzad was kidnapped near his home in Islamabad in May. His body was found two days later in Punjab province.
At the time, many in the Pakistani media blamed the Pakistani intelligence agency for the murder, despite its denial.
An inquiry set up by the government to investigate the killing began work last month.
"I have not seen anything that would disabuse that report that the government knew about this," Adm Mullen told journalists in Washington on Thursday.
"It was sanctioned by the government, yeah," he said.
Adm Mullen added that he did not have a "string of evidence" linking the death to the ISI.
A Pakistani government spokesman said Pakistan had set up an independent commission to probe the killing and that Adm Mullen's statement would not help the investigation.
Correspondents say the remarks will further worsen ties between Washington and its ally, Islamabad.
The relationship has been on a downward spiral for many months only exacerbated by the killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden by US commandos in a midnight raid in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad.
Mr Shahzad had made a career writing about various Islamist militant networks operating in Pakistan and had recently written an article about al-Qaeda infiltration in Pakistan's navy.
BBC News

Harry Potter premiere: Stars and fans bid tearful goodbye

A tearful JK Rowling said "thank you" to thousands of Harry Potter fans who packed London's Trafalgar Square on Thursday at the world premiere of the final film.

Despite torrential rain earlier, the sun shone down as stars of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II spent more than three hours signing autographs.
Daniel Radcliffe, who has played the boy wizard since he was 11, told fans the films would be with them "for the rest of their lives".
Speaking from a stage next to Nelson's column, Potter creator Rowling thanked the actors for "the amazing things they did for my favourite characters".
Turning to the fans, she said: "Thank you for queuing up for the books for all those years, for camping out in a wet Trafalgar Square."
Fans back chanted "Thank you!" and Rowling said: "No, no, I'm already crying."
Radcliffe, who had earlier flown in from New York, said that Harry's story would never end.
"Each and every person, not just here in this square but around the world who have watched these films for the last 10 years, they will always carry the films with them for the rest of their lives," he told fans.
Michael Gambon, who plays wizard Dumbledore, told the BBC he was sad that it was all over and expressed "astonishment" at the reception.

The premiere took over the whole of Trafalgar Square

Rupert Grint, who plays Ron Weasley, thanked the screaming fans saying making the films had been "the best part of my life".
Grint and co-star Emma Watson spent hours on the red carpet signing autographs.
And Clemence Poesy, who plays Fleur Delacour, said: "I'm overwhelmed by it all."
Critical praise
Fans from across the UK, and as far as China and Argentina, were in Trafalgar Square to see the cast. Many had been been staking out their spot beside the enormous red carpet since Monday.

Hollywood's role in South Sudan's independence

Its independence on Saturday will be celebrated in the United States by Republicans and by Democrats alike, and by Christian conservatives alongside Hollywood liberals.
All have been vocal advocates in the US for an end to war in Sudan that has taken millions of lives and resulted in accusations of genocide.
These advocates include actors Don Cheadle and George Clooney, known to some in the US as "Mr Sudan".
Mr Clooney, convinced by activist friends to use his star power to draw attention to the crisis in Sudan, led a rally in Washington and delivered a speech on Sudan at the United Nations in 2006.
"Everyone feels like this is one issue they can all be on the same side on, and there aren't many of those," Mr Clooney said in an interview.
On the other side, are evangelical Christians determined to stop what they claimed was the persecution and killing of Christians by Muslims from northern Sudan.
Evangelical churches began building hospitals, schools and churches in the mostly animist and Christian south in the 1990s.
Under pressure
In 2004, evangelical groups pressed then-President George W Bush - himself a born-again Christian - to send troops to Sudan.
The president did not go that far but he did impose tough economic sanctions on Sudan and press the Khartoum government to negotiate a peace deal with rebels in the south that was signed in 2005.

George Clooney was in South Sudan for January's independence referendum

But did the lobbying and campaigning by evangelicals and Hollywood celebrities make a difference?
A member of the Bush administration, the former ambassador to Nigeria, John Campbell, thinks so.
"South Sudan captured the public's imagination more than has happened elsewhere in Africa because Christians in Sudan used their grapevine to let Christians in America know that Muslims were persecuting them."
It reminded people, says Mr Campbell, "of the persecution of the Jews in the Soviet Union and elsewhere." Mr Campbell says the role celebrities played was important, too.
"Celebrities made all of this known, in their way, to ordinary people and made it part of the conversation to people who would otherwise not pay much attention to what was happening overseas."
Enoch Awejok, an official at South Sudan's embassy in Washington, also believes the lobbying and campaigning made a difference.
"Without George Clooney and the churches, the CPA [Comprehensive Peace Agreement] would not have occurred," he says.
"And they still have an effective role to play in resolving the outstanding issues in Sudan."
Cool cause

Sudanese expatriates in the United States have campaigned for their country, too.

Facebook adds Skype video chat feature

Facebook has announced a partnership with Skype to add video chat to the social networking site.

The move is likely to be seen as a shot across the bow of Google, which recently launched a Facebook rival, Google+, also featuring video calling.
This is not the first time Facebook and Skype have teamed up - they already share some instant messaging tools.
Skype is in the process of being bought by Microsoft, which is a major shareholder in Facebook.
The new video-call service was launched by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who also revealed that the site now had more than 750 million users.
However, he said that the total number of active users was no longer a useful measure of the site's success.
Instead, the amount of sharing - of photographs, videos and web links - was a better indication of how people engaged with the site, explained Mr Zuckerberg.
One to one
At launch, Facebook's video chat service will only be able to connect two users face-to-face, whereas Google's system allows group video calls, known as Hangouts.

Mr Zuckerberg said that it was likely that other "premium" Skype functions would be added in future.

He also appeared to offer a back-handed compliment to Google+, saying that its creation was a vindication of Facebook's vision for the social web.
Industry analysts welcomed the announcement.
"Advertisers love anything that keeps users on Facebook for longer and that is something Facebook has been brilliant at - keeping people engaged with the platform for increasingly longer periods of time," Susan Etlinger of the Altimeter Group told BBC News.
"It stands to reason that the longer you are on Facebook, the happier advertisers will be."
In California, Skype chief executive Tony Bates welcomed the partnership, calling it a "long-term relationship" that could benefit both companies.
At one point he had to correct Mr Zuckerberg on the subject of Skype's ownership, reminding him that the Microsoft deal was not yet complete and still had to be cleared by regulators.
The tie-in was announced a week after Google announced its own social networking service, Google+.
"The two companies built these products separately and independently over a number of months but they will be compared directly," said Ben Parr, editor-at-large of social media blog Mashable.com.
"They are going to be in more heated competition in the next year or so and you are going to hear a lot about who is going to win the social networking war - how does Google catch up, how does Facebook respond. This story isn't going away."
BBC News

Warren Buffett donates another $1.78bn to charity

Billionaire US investor Warren Buffett has donated another $1.78bn (£1.1bn) to several charities, with most going to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Mr Buffett has given the charity run by the co-founder of Microsoft 23.31 million shares in his investment company Berkshire Hathaway.
The shares were passed to the foundation on Wednesday, when they closed trading at $76.52.
Mr Buffett, 80, plans to give away 99% of his wealth.
He first announced this in 2006, and this week's giant donation is his sixth since then.
Other shares transferred on Wednesday have gone to four charities run by his family.
These include the Susan Thompson Buffet Foundation, which was named after Mr Buffett's late first wife, and charities run by their children, Howard, Peter and Susan.
Mr Buffet has now donated more than $11bn of shares in Berkshire Hathaway.
Described as the "Sage of Omaha" because of his investment acumen, Mr Buffet is the world's third-richest person, worth an estimated $50bn.
BBC News

Surgeons carry out first synthetic windpipe transplant

Surgeons in Sweden have carried out the world's first synthetic organ transplant.

Scientists in London created an artificial windpipe which was then coated in stem cells from the patient.
Crucially, the technique does not need a donor, and there is no risk of the organ being rejected. The surgeons stress a windpipe can also be made within days.
The 36-year-old cancer patient is doing well a month after the operation.
Professor Paolo Macchiarini from Italy led the pioneering surgery, which took place at the Karolinska University Hospital.
In an interview with the BBC, he said he now hopes to use the technique to treat a nine-month-old child in Korea who was born with a malformed windpipe or trachea.
Professor Macchiarini already has 10 other windpipe transplants under his belt - most notably the world's first tissue-engineered tracheal transplant in 2008 on 30-year-old Spanish woman Claudia Costillo - but all required a donor.
Indistinguishable
The key to the latest technique is modelling a structure or scaffold that is an exact replica of the patient's own windpipe, removing the need for a donor organ.
To do this he enlisted the help of UK experts were given 3D scans of the 36-year-old African patient, Andemariam Teklesenbet Beyene. The geology student currently lives in Iceland where he is studying for a PhD.
Using these images, the scientists at University College London were able to craft a perfect copy of Mr Beyene's trachea and two main bronchi out of glass.
This was then flown to Sweden and soaked in a solution of stem cells taken from the patient's bone marrow.
After two days, the millions of holes in the porous windpipe had been seeded with the patient' own tissue.
Dr Alex Seifalian and his team used this fragile structure to create a replacement for the patient, whose own windpipe was ravaged by an inoperable tumour.
Despite aggressive chemotherapy and radiotherapy, the cancer had grown to the size of a golf ball and was blocking his breathing. Without a transplant he would have died.
During a 12-hour operation Professor Macchiarini removed all of the tumour and the diseased windpipe and replaced it with the tailor-made replica.
The bone marrow cells and lining cells taken from his nose, which were also implanted during the operation, are able to divide and grow, turning the inert windpipe scaffold into an organ indistinguishable from a normal healthy one.
And, importantly, Mr Beyene's body will accept it as its own, meaning he will not need to take the strong anti-rejection drugs that other transplant patients have to.
Professor Macchiarini said this was the real breakthrough.
"Thanks to nanotechnology, this new branch of regenerative medicine, we are now able to produce a custom-made windpipe within two days or one week.
"This is a synthetic windpipe. The beauty of this is you can have it immediately. There is no delay. This technique does not rely on a human donation."
He said many other organs could be repaired or replaced in the same way.
A month on from his operation, Mr Beyene is still looking weak, but well.
Sitting up in his hospital bed, he said: "I was very scared, very scared about the operation. But it was live or die."
He says he is looking forward to getting back to Iceland to finish his studies and then returning to his home in Eritrea where he will be reunited with his wife and young family, and meet his new three-month-old child.
He says he is eternally grateful to the medical team that has saved his life. +
BBC News

Illegal UK film downloads up 30%

The number of illegally downloaded films in the UK has gone up nearly 30% in five years, new figures suggest.

That research, from internet consultancy firm Envisional, indicates that the top five box office movies were illegally downloaded in the UK a total of 1.4 million times last year.
Film industry bosses say it is costing £170m every year and putting thousands of jobs at risk.
The research also shows a big rise in TV shows being pirated online.
Dr David Price led the the team which conducted the research and said there are four main reasons for the increase.

"We've seen increases in technology like faster broadband," he said.
"The methods of piracy have become easier, with quicker downloads and easier to find content.
"We have a generation online now who aren't really bothered about downloading things illegally.
"Finally it's an issue of availability - there's a lot of American content which a lot of people are desperate to download that they can't get hold of legitimately."
It's people like Steve, who's 25 and from Essex, that the film industry says are the biggest threat to its future survival and success.
He illegally downloads and uploads around 10 films per week.
"I think in comparison to the money they make it's a drop in the ocean," he said.
'Creating jobs'
"Also, what I'm actually doing is providing people with new jobs.
"With all these ISPs that are producing super fast broadband we [illegal downloaders] are actually helping create those jobs," he added.

Dr Price on why piracy is rising

• Broadband speeds have increased
• Technology has made piracy faster and easier
• A new generation doesn't think piracy is wrong
• People illegally download top US shows to see them before they're out in the UK

But movie industry bosses rubbish such claims.
Kieron Sharp works for the Federation Against Copyright Theft or FACT.
"Research for the government has shown that film piracy costs the industry about half a billion pounds a year," he said.
"About a third of that is due to illegal downloading of film and TV content.
"Clearly that is unacceptable."
'Big demand'
But it's not just illegal film downloading that's on the rise - research suggests people are illegally downloading more TV shows too.
The top five most popular shows were illegally downloaded a total of 1.24 million times in the UK last year.
That's a 33% increase from 2006 figures.
"We have a big demand in this country for north American TV shows in particular," Dr Price said.
"Shows like Glee and House are heavily illegally downloaded in the UK.
"We're very eager to get the television shows as soon as they get broadcast in the US.
"But we often have to wait for one month or two months for those shows to be shown legitimately in the UK.
"So people naturally turn to the internet to get that content as soon as they possibly can."
As for a solution, Dr Price says one of the best ideas available to content producers is a controversial one.
"They need to compete with piracy and get their content out there themselves as easily and as quickly and as cheaply as possible," he said.
BBC News

Dorset pliosaur: ‘Most fearsome predator’ unveiled

A skull belonging to one of the largest "sea monsters" ever unearthed is being unveiled to the public.

The beast, which is called a pliosaur, has been described as the most fearsome predator the Earth has seen.
The fossil was found in Dorset, but it has taken 18 months to remove the skull from its rocky casing, revealing the monster in remarkable detail.
Scientists suspect the creature, which is on show at the Dorset County Museum, may be a new species or even genus.

Richard Edmonds, Dorset County Council's earth science manager for the Jurassic Coast, said: "This is amazing. We saw this fossil initially as a pile of bones - and slowly, after a lot of hard work, it has come together.

"We are now told this skull is 95% complete, and probably one of the largest and certainly one of the most well-preserved and complete pliosaurs ever found anywhere in the world."
The 155-million-year-old fossil was discovered by local collector Kevan Sheehan between 2003 and 2008 as it gradually tumbled out of the cliffs near Weymouth.
He told BBC News: "It was sheer luck - I was sitting on the beach, and saw three pieces. I had no idea what they were, but I proceeded to drag them back. Then over several years, I'd go back every year and find a new piece. I'm a beach magpie."

Pliosaurs were the top predators of the oceans

At first it more closely resembled huge lumps of rock than a marine monster, but a lengthy preparation process that has been carried out by fossil expert Scott Moore-Faye has revealed the fine details of the fossil.
Looking somewhat like a crocodile on steroids, it is now easy to see the power of this "biting machine": pliosaurs, which lived during the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods were the top predators of the oceans.
On show now are its eye sockets, perched upon the top of its head, revealing how it would have fixed its stare on any passing prey; the openings that held its it immensely powerful jaw muscles, allowing it to crunch down on anything that crossed its path; and the huge holes, running all the way down its snout, that contained its giant, razor-sharp teeth to help finish the meal off.

When the fossil was first found, it was covered in rocky debris

Palaeontologist Richard Forrest said: "This is an iconic specimen - one of the most exciting we have seen in years.
"It was probably the most fearsome predator that ever lived. Standing in front of the skull you can imagine this enormous beast staring straight back at you, fixing you with its binocular vision, and attacking. Just thinking about it raises the hairs on the back of your neck."
Its bulky body, which would have been powered through the water with four paddle-like limbs, has never been found - and may not even have fossilised.
But new estimates from scientists, based on the 2.4m-long skull, suggest that the predator would have measured between 15-18m from tip to tail.
Biggest beast?
Currently, the owner of the title of world's biggest sea monster is tricky to ascertain, as it is rare to find a complete fossil.

Pyeongchang will host the 2018 Winter Olympics

Pyeongchang has been chosen to host the 2018 Winter Olympics.

The South Korean candidate was selected by the International Olympic Committee in the first round of voting ahead of Munich in Germany and Annecy in France.
Pyeongchang received 63 of the Committee's 95 votes, well ahead of Munich's 25 and Annecy's seven.
It is a case of third time lucky for Pyeongchang, which lost to Vancouver and Sochi respectively for the right to host the 2010 and 2014 Winter Games.
"This is one of the happiest days for our country, our people and millions of youth[s] dreaming of winter sport," said Pyeongchang bid chief Cho Yang-ho.
Pyeongchang, which has a population of 47,000 and is situated near South Korea's east coast, says it can spread the Olympics to a lucrative new market in Asia and become a hub for winter sports in the region.
The Winter Games have twice before been held in Asia, both times in Japan - Sapporo in 1972 and Nagano in 1998.
The result is a personal success for South Korean president Lee Myung-Bak, who was a key figure in Wednesday's final presentation to the IOC and had declared it "his duty and his mission to deliver the Games to Asia".
When IOC President Jacques Rogge delivered the decision, Lee celebrated with his fellow delegates, including reigning Olympic figure skating champion Kim Yu-na.
"I will make a good Olympics," declared 69-year-old Lee. "This is a victory for the Koreans, thank you to them."
In a statement, the British Olympic Association offered their congratulations to Pyeongchang.
"As the first Asian city outside of Japan to host the winter Games, Pyeongchang will bring the excitement of the winter Olympics to a new audience. We look forward to what we are sure will be excellently organised Games that make Asia and the Olympic Movement proud," said BOA chairman Colin Moynihan.
In an emotional presentation on Wednesday, Pyeongchang hammered home the message that South Korea has shown its determination time and again after twice missing out and had improved after listening to the advice of the IOC.

2018 WINTER GAMES VOTE RESULT Pyeongchang: 63 Munich: 25 Annecy: 7

Munich sought to counter Pyeongchang's emotional pull, with Thomas Bach, an IOC vice president and a senior leader of Munich's bid, noting that Germany was making its fourth Winter or Summer Olympics bid in recent years and that it has been more than 70 years since the country hosted the Winter Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 1936.
Outsiders Annecy were never able to gain enough momentum to mount a serious challenge, despite their calls for an "authentic" ecologically-friendly games in the heart of the French Alps.
This was the first time an Olympic bid race with more than two finalists was decided in the first round since 1995, when Salt Lake City defeated three others to secure the 2002 Winter Games.
IOC president Jacques Rogge admitted he was surprised that the vote was concluded in the first round, but said: "the best one [bid] has won convincingly".
"I think that there is maybe a lesson in the achievement of Pyeongchang. It's that patience and perseverance have prevailed," he added.

BBC News

Growth constraints in Islamic financial sector

THE Islamic financial sector has emerged as the fastest growing segment of the global financial system — 15-20 per cent per annum — over the last decade.
Presently, more than 1100 institutions offering Islamic financial services (IIFS) operate across the globe, which coupled with a number of dedicated academic, legal, regulatory and supervisor institutions, provide a solid platform for their future growth. The IIFS are becoming increasingly dynamic and diversified.
The assets of the top 500 Islamic banks expanded 28.6 per cent to $822 billion at year-end 2009.
Standard & Poor’s estimates current worldwide Shariah-compliant assets at about $1 trillion. The Islamic fund industry has also played a role in the exponential growth; the number of Islamic funds has reached a total of 517, more than double the 207 funds in January 2005.
Owing to the prevailing economic crisis, security remains an important priority for the investors and Islamic funds.
Of the 517 Islamic funds across the world, 274 are equity funds, 84 mixed assets, 75 money market or commodity murabaha,
67 Sukuk funds and 17, capital funds.
Major global banks and law firms have participated in the structuring and offering of a large number of sukuks issued so far.
Access to western economies has given the Islamic financial institutions entry into large and diversified economies with a
wide array of asset classes for investment, and in the case of most developed countries, strong legal frameworks.
In Pakistan, the birth of Islamic finance can be traced way back to 1948 when founder of the nation, Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah at the inauguration of State Bank of Pakistan, said:
“I shall watch with keenness the work of your research organisation in evolving banking practices compatible with Islamic idea of social and economic life.
The economic system of West has created almost insoluble problems for humanity and, to many of us, it appears that only a miracle can save it from disaster that is now facing the world.
It has failed to do justice between man and man and to eradicate friction from the international field. On the contrary, it was largely responsible for the two world wars in the last half century. The western world, in spite of its advantages of
mechanisation and industrial efficiency is today in a worse mess than ever before in history.
The adoption of western economic theory and practice will not help us in achieving our goal of creating a happy and contended people.”
Efforts for elimination of Riba (interest) started during 1970s but most of the significant and practical steps were taken in 1980s. The initiative to re-introduce Islamic banking was launched in 2001 when the government decided to promote it in a gradual manner and as a parallel and compatible system that is in line with the best international practices.
Following the decision to shift to interest-free economy in a phased manner without causing any disruptions, the effort was envisaged to be based on a market-driven and flexible approach.
And it aimed at building a broad-based financial system to enable all segments of the population to access financial services.
Growth of Islamic banking has been impressive. Currently, it is operating with five full-fledged banks having 416 branches and 13 conventional banks, operating with 183 SAIBB and 68 sub-branches.
But there are several factors that are likely to constrain the development of Islamic finance listed as follows:
*    The current Islamic banking is based on replication of conventional banking products. This is insufficient to achieve the overall objectives of Islamic financial system which is based on equitable distribution of economic gains and makes Islamic finance less efficient than their conventional counterparts.
*    Not all the conventional products have an Islamic equivalent like treasury and liquidity management tools.
*    Necessary changes are required in the legal, regulatory and tax environment to accommodate Islamic finance without incurring additional costs to the customers.
*    The different interpretations of Shariah rulings have resulted in the lack of standardisation. Common understanding is needed to integrate local market with global market.
*    Lack of necessary instruments for liquidity management.
*    Limited availability for access to Lender of Last Resort facility by the central bank due to lack of Shariah compatible mode.
*    While the Islamic markets have remained resilient to the financial crisis, Islamic secondary market has remained
inconsistent due to its infancy e.g dearth of regular issuances of Sukuk.
*    Human resource and expertise in Islamic finance are scarce.

Dawn News

News Corp. sells Myspace to ad firm Specific Media

WASHINGTON: News Corp. on Wednesday sold Myspace to digital ad-targeting company Specific Media for a reported $35 million, six years after buying the social network for $580 million.
Specific Media said Rupert Murdoch’s News. Corp. will take a minority equity stake in Specific Media as part of the deal.
Financial terms were not disclosed but the News Corp.-owned technology blog All Things Digital put the purchase price at $35 million.
All Things Digital also said the deal includes slashing about half of Myspace’s staff of between 400 and 500 people.
“Myspace is a recognized leader that has pioneered the social media space,” Specific Media chief executive Tim Vanderhook said in a statement. “The company has transformed the ways in which audiences discover, consume and engage with content online.”
“There are many synergies between our companies as we are both focused on enhancing digital media experiences by fueling connections with relevance and interest,” Vanderhook said. “We look forward to combining our platforms to drive the next generation of digital innovation.”
Specific Media was founded in 1999 by three brothers – Tim, Chris and Russell Vanderhook – and is based in Irvine, California.
Myspace was the leading social networking site when it was bought by News Corp. six years ago but it has since been eclipsed by Facebook.
News Corp. chief operating officer Chase Carey put Myspace on notice in November, saying the losses at the social network were “unsustainable.”
News Corp. does not break out results for Myspace in its earnings but the “other” segment, which includes the social network, reported a second quarter operating loss of $156 million, $31 million wider than a year earlier.
Dawn News

Is power import from Central Asia viable?

Pakistan’s electricity demand is projected to more than double in 10 years to 42,000mw but enough investment is not expected for timely corresponding addition of domestic generation capacity. This has led a World Bank sponsored study to conclude that import of 1300mw of electricity from Central Asian countries is viable and beneficial, despite associated risks.
“The recommended project configuration provides flexibility without constraining future options and is economically viable under very conservative assumptions. Sensitivity studies show that even under adverse assumptions, the project remains viable”, said a final report of the Montreal-based SNC-Lavalin – one of the world’s 10 largest engineering firms.
The study has, however, not touched upon the Turkmenistan’s opposition to the project which has raised questions over its lower riparian river water rights and environmental issues, because the subject was outside its terms of reference and to be discussed at political level.
As one of the lead sponsors, the World Bank had commissioned SNC-Lavalin in 2006 to prepare a feasibility study for the Central Asia-South Asia Regional Electricity Market (CASAREM). The final report submitted to the lenders and participating countries last week was prepared in two phases – in December 2007 and January 2009 – and updated last month.
Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan have been pursuing the development of electricity trading arrangements and the establishment of CASAREM, starting with supply of 1300mw to Pakistan in five years (2016) and going up to 2800mw in the subsequent years. The economic analysis of the project suggests that the levelised cost of transmission would be about 4.97 US cents per unit (kwh) for a period up to 2035.
However, an additional transmission line would be required if more than 1300mw electricity is to be supplied.
In Pakistan, the price that the state-owned utility (NTDC) is paying for the recent long-term power purchase agreements with private producers is about 13.2 cents per unit for firm supply and 9.2 cents per unit for non-firm, while generation cost in Afghanistan is about six cents per unit. Afghanistan has to get 300mw from the project.
The project cost, excluding interest during construction (IDC) is estimated at $873 million based on market conditions which may change overtime in response to market volatility. The IDC is estimated at another $80 million. The project is economically viable based on a 10 per cent discount rate with a benefit-cost ratio of 1.3 per cent and an expected internal rate of return (EIRR) of 15.6 per cent.
This cost includes laying of 500kv, 750 kilometer high voltage direct current (HNDC) interconnection link with conversion capacity of 1300mw at Sangtuda in Tajikistan, 300mw at Kabul and 1300mw at Peshawar besides the relocation of existing 220kv lines, cost of ground electrodes at Sangtuda, Kabul and Peshawar and 500kv 477kilomter interconnection between Kyrgyz republic and Tajikistan and costs of environmental and social mitigation measures, security, technical and operational/routing issues.
“The biggest risk to the project viability is delays in the completion of the project, since most of the benefits are linked to the available surplus power” in Tajikistan and the Kyrgyz Republic. Given that there are many active stakeholders, agreements need to be in place to facilitate the process of moving forward in an efficient manner, the final report said.
In addition, there will be challenges in coming to an agreement on operational and contractual issues. Some of the operational and contractual issues that need to be addressed in subsequent studies include risk of non-payment, accounting of energy transfers and dispatch services, tariff and transit fees in addition to finance of the project, according to the study.
Security is a key issue for the project, both during construction and operations. The primary security issues are related to landmines, sabotage and theft of equipment, which may be addressed with proper contingency but never eliminated. Construction of line will have to take place on land cleared of landmines. However, during the construction of the 220 kV line, it was found that not all landmines were properly cleared, even though they were officially certified as clear. For quick supply restoration in case of sabotage, the O&M costs have been put at three per cent of the capital cost to ensure huge inventory. These costs are normally taken at two per cent.
The underlying driver for the project is that both Tajikistan and Kyrgyz Republic have surplus energy from their hydropower plants that could be used to  offset severe shortages in Pakistan. The key criteria for determining the viability of the project is based on the export of surplus power without new generation. The study was conducted for a scenario where no new generation will be added during the study period in Tajikistan and Kyrgyz republic. “Thus, if the project is economically viable for this most pessimistic condition, it will be viable for all other scenarios as well”.
The study said, the two countries – Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan – have close to 6,000 Gwh of surplus, almost entirely available in summer months, which reduces to less than 900 Gwh by 2035. With no generation expansion and increasing demand, the Kyrgyz surplus is expected to drop from 2,150Gwh of annual surplus in 2010 to less than 400 Gwh by 2035. Similarly, the Tajik surplus is expected to drop from 3,750 Gwh now to about 500Gwh in 2035.
The historical water flows show that over the years there were a number of months of severe water shortages. During these dry months, the historical data show that even with minimal flows, most of the demand at peak hours can be supplied even if the full energy is not available on a 24-hour basis. During the initial years of the project, 1000mw can be guaranteed with 95 per cent probability for the peak hours during summer, even in a dry year.
The proposed route for the transmission line originating in Sangtuda in Tajikistan has to pass through highly insecure region of Salang pass to Kabul and terminate at Peshawar. This has, nevertheless, been found most suitable given security considerations as de-mining, and operation and maintenance requirements around access to the line for repair and maintenance.
The consultants understand that in view of huge capital requirement and institutional issues, it might be difficult to build all the generation capacity as planned. In particular, for the large capacity coal-fired and hydro plants a significant investment will be needed which will be difficult to obtain.
Dawn News

Energy crisis leaves Pakistan textiles in tatters

FAISALABAD: Spinning yarn into cloth used to be a path to fortune in Pakistan, but a story of decline encapsulates how far a crippling energy crisis and rocketing inflation are suffocating the economy.
Power cuts sometimes lasting more than 12 hours a day have forced factory owners in the country’s cloth capital Faisalabad to switch off the lights and sell their looms for scrap, leaving tens of thousands of workers jobless.
The country is the world’s fourth-largest producer of cloth and the industry accounts for 60 per cent of export revenue according to official data.
But the shortages are heaping pressure on Pakistan’s crippled and debt-ridden economy.
Malik Ammanullah Mani, 31, used to be a leading light on the party circuit.
As manager of his family’s textile factory, he belonged to a small, rich cabal that regularly graced private members’ clubs and dined at five-star hotels.
But in the three years since Pakistan returned to elected rule, the energy crisis has steadily worsened amid poor investment and rampant theft from the grid, causing daily cuts and a sharp rise in the cost of power.
Inflation has also hit the price of thread — leaving Mani no option but to sell most of his family’s weaving looms.
“Electricity and yarn prices have become unaffordable, for most of the time there is no power to run our looms, so we had to sell half of them to a scrap dealer,” Mani told AFP as other workers sat idle in his closed factory.
The former rich kid now works a loom in his father’s factory and says he gets by on pocket money of just 500 rupees ($6) a week.
“In good times, I was manager and distributing wages among my workers. Now I myself work on the looms we have left because I have nothing to pay workers,” said Mani, kitted out in a black t-shirt and jeans covered in chemical marks.
Faisalabad’s textile district has now become a haven for metal dealers who buy looms from closing factories and sell them as scrap.
Those dealers’ warehouses are filled with broken machinery while workers wait idle in weaving factories, plunged into darkness until the power resumes.
Industry leaders in Faisalabad, which is situated in Pakistan’s most populous province of Punjab, say the shortage of electricity and gas has forced hundreds of units to shut down, with unknown numbers more in line to fall.
“Almost 800 units of a total of around 2,000 factories in Punjab province have closed down and many more are likely to be shut,” said Sheikh Abdul Qayyum, former head of the city’s chamber of commerce and a factory owner.
“Around 500,000 workers lost their jobs in the province — about 100,000 in Faisalabad alone due to the closure of the factories,” he said.
The country faced a total shortfall of 7,739 megawatts of electricity in the peak summer month of June, before monsoon season, while the overall shortfall in the gas supply to industry is around 400 million cubic feet per day.
The authorities manage the shortages by cutting supply for hours at a time to industrial and domestic users.
Towns and cities across Pakistan are rocked by daily summer protests against the crisis and the government’s perceived inaction, sometimes leading to violent clashes with riot police.
Despite a wealth of natural resources, Pakistan produces only 80 percent of its electricity needs and even some of that comes from imported fuel.
“Lack of political will, bad governance and administrative inabilities pushed us into the crisis. If the situation stays the same, I have no hope things will improve,” said Fazlullah Qureshi, former top bureaucrat at the country’s planning commission.
Punjab’s industrialists blame politicians for exacerbating the crisis, accusing the government of giving preferential treatment to the textile industry in southern province of Sindh, the home of President Asif Ali Zardari.
A constitutional clause approved by parliament last year gives each province first right to use the natural resources they produce, putting Sindh ahead of Punjab in the queue for gas, which in turns fuels electricity generation.
“We want a uniform policy in the country as everybody should share the burden and opportunities,” said Shabbir Ahmed, a senior member of Faisalabad’s chamber of commerce.
But the prospect of respite is so remote the Water and Power Development Authority acknowledged last week that power cuts would continue for at least another seven years.

A Pakistani man prepares threads at a textile factory in Gujrat late on April 9, 2009. – AFP Photo

Dawn News

Safeguards for the poor

When public policy and actions do not put the issue of inequity and poverty at the centre of the development strategy, a majority of people are deprived of the basic entitlements of food, education and health.
The scale and depth of this ‘loss of entitlement’ affecting the poor do not depend on availability of food in the market. It is a misperception to assume that reasonably good crop production and high commodity prices this year will bring any substantial change in the overall food deficit and chronic malnutrition experienced by 38 per cent of households classified as ‘poor’, and 56 per cent of the population classified as ‘vulnerable’.
The structural framework in which our economy operates ensures that maximum benefits of return from agriculture are appropriated by one per cent of landholders, owning more than 50 acres, rather than distributing it among those 67 per cent of total households who do not possess land at all. This majority of landless poor are net buyers of food and support large families with low income.
They mostly earn their livelihood as crop sharers, daily wage labourers and temporary workers employed in the informal sector. A natural disaster, man-made emergency or little surge in food prices that exceeds their paying capacity induces them to cut back on one or two meals.
In 2007-08, the food price inflation hit this majority so severely that Pakistan was included in the list of 36 countries facing the risk of ‘food riots’. In order to avert the situation, the government spent around Rs55 billion on wheat imports and distribution of subsidised flour to poor people through the Utility Stores Corporation outlets. In the same year, the total outlays for the Baitul Mal scheme and the Punjab Provincial Food Support Programme were about $100 million and 350 million, respectively.
In the following years, the combined effects of economic recession and flood devastation exacerbated both, the scale and depth of the deprivation. The incidence of poverty went up to 38 per cent as a significant number of households living at the threshold could not cope with the situation and fell below the poverty line.
In critical times, women and children of such households tend to be the worst victim. Owing to their precarious position in intra-family entitlement pattern, they get less share of food than what they need and, are exposed to the vicious cycle of malnutrition and infectious diseases leading ultimately to high mortality and morbidity. Even before the floods struck in late July 2010, a survey conducted by Unicef of the worst-affected region showed that ‘almost a quarter of children under the age of five, suffered from acute malnutrition.’
These children belong to families that are in persistent state of endemic under-nutrition. Growth as such is not a dependable strategy for enhancing their elementary wellbeing and capability. If it is to serve as a solid basis for improving living conditions, Jean Dreze, the renowned economist says, ‘it must take a participatory form and substantial part of resources made available by economic growth has to be devoted to the expansion of public provisioning’.
The current phase of fiscal consolidation envisaged under the IMF guidelines narrows down the scope and size of public provisions by slashing development expenditures. Beside, extraordinarily high cost of security continues to drain resources away from the development sector.
As a result, capability of poor to secure minimum sustenance has been severely eroded. It is imperative to create and institutionalise economic and social safeguards to reduce economic deprivation.
Pakistan has implemented a number of programmes aimed at providing safeguards and targeted subsidies to the poor. Some of those with substantial scale include the Food Support Programme commonly called Bait-ul-Mal scheme covering 1.8 million households at Rs3,000 per household per year; the Punjab Provincial Food Support Programme covering 1.8 million households with cash transfers of Rs1,000 per household per month; and the Zakat and Ushr schemes.

‘Kayani has real power in Pakistan’

Sixty-eight year old Bob Woodward, an associate editor at the Washington Post, is considered one of America’s most informed investigative journalists. In 1972, his disclosure and consistent reporting with Carl Bernstein of the Watergate Scandal led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.
Woodward, a Pulitzer Prize winning author of 12 bestselling non-fictions, published his book Obama’s Wars in 2010 which focuses on the war in Afghanistan and the internal debates in Washington, Islamabad and Kabul about the war.
In an exclusive interview with Dawn.com, Bob Woodward talks about the future of Afghanistan and Pakistan in the midst of America’s gradual withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Q: Washington has now confirmed contacts with Taliban for brokering peace in Afghanistan. Had the Americans already contemplated embarking upon a negotiation process with the Taliban or is this a decision made as a last resort because mere military action has not worked?
A: Oh yes, that is the way you end a conflict, isn’t it? In my book, Obama’s War, the Americans say that they won’t defeat the Taliban but will make them a part of the fabric of Afghanistan. A political settlement eventually has to be the end of the conflict.
Q: What is the feeling like in the Obama administration as it prepares to pull out of Afghanistan? Is there a sense of achievement or is it marked with a feeling of regret for not achieving the objectives set earlier in 2001?
A: It is, as the phrase goes, fragile and reversible.
Q: Does that mean al Qaeda will regroup and reemerge in Afghanistan in the future?
A: No, I don’t think so. They will be crazy to return with the deployments and the capabilities the US has in Afghanistan. In my book, I talk of CIA’s 300-man army in Afghanistan, the Counter Terrorism Pursuit Teams (CTPTs). If the United States had these CTPTs prior to 9/11, it would have perhaps easily driven bin Laden and al Qaeda out of Afghanistan in spite of the protection provided to them by the then ruling Taliban regime.
My assessment maybe wrong as it is based on an “if-question” but the point is you don’t necessarily need a lot of force to keep al Qaeda out of Afghanistan.
Q: In your book, there is a continued fear of another 9/11-like attack on the United States? Do you think that is a genuine concern?
A: Yes, it is.
Q: And you also argue that the Afghan war has actually shifted to Pakistan. How much as the war trickled down to Pakistan?
A: In my book, I quote President Obama saying that the “poison” (war) is in Pakistan. The killing of Osama bin Laden inside Pakistan is the proof of that. The Pakistani military and the intelligence officials continued to say that that bin Laden and al Qaeda leaders were not in Pakistan. It was their official position.
Q: So how upset is Washington with Pakistan after the killing of bin Laden on the Pakistani soil?
A: The US is very upset with Pakistan but it is one of those things that both the countries can’t do much about because they need each other. I think both the countries are being very naïve. They are thinking that when they are working together then there will be a total overlap of national interest. This does not happen in international politics. They have to live with this reality.
Q: Do the Americans hold the Pakistani intelligence services responsible for harbouring bin Laden?

Sexual harassment laws not being complied with: NIWC

ISLAMABAD: The members of National Implementation Watch Committee (NIWC) have shown concern over the lack of compliance reports from the public and private sector on complaints pertaining to sexual harassment at work place.
“We have sent several letters to the Army, judiciary and media houses but no compliance reports were submitted despite several requests. We also asked them to establish committees which would address the complaints filed by women harassed at workplaces,” Dr Fauiza Saeed said while talking to Dawn.com here on Tuesday.
NIWC is a committee formed on the directives of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani to oversee the implementation process of the anti-sexual harassment legislation passed in March 2010.
Dr Fauzia, member of National Commission on Status of Women, was moderating a briefing related to the 6th meeting held here on Tuesday.
“Our efforts are on…we want every department working in the private and government sector to form committees which could probe cases related to sexual harassment at workplace and maintain a safe work environment for all workers,” maintained Dr Fauzia –a social activist and writer of a book titled – Taboo: The Hidden Culture of a Red Light Area.
Although the Committee asked these bodies to keep a tab on how many organisations within their thematic parameter complied and how many did not, it still remains a challenge to get the information flowing back to it in order to monitor and assess the situation. “We only have the information we have because of our intense engagement with our partners and individual organisations,” a statement read.
The NIWC has evolved a web based mechanism where organisations will generate
the information about compliance together and thus, will help each other and
their own employees to get the current information. “This we believe will be an important step towards proper monitoring and accountability of the organisation in view of effective implementation of the legislation and will be a useful tool for women and men at all levels to help use the provisions required to make our society a better and safe
place,” the statement added.
The three demands of NIWC – grievance committee, instruction and announcements related to the sexual harassment bill and training of the staff members of institutions, were followed in letter and spirit by the federal and provincial government however; few institutions have submitted the compliance report.
“There is cold response from the media houses. We did receive compliance from a newspaper and only from three broadcast houses while most chose to ignore us. We have sent letters with the help of Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority to all the media houses,” she maintained.
Dr Fauzia insisted that government institutions like PIA did form the committee for the said matter, adding, “However, the committees are formed in a different manner [supportive to the management].”
Dr Fauzia also briefed the media persons regarding the launch of website [http://www.sexualharassmentwatch.org/]. The database provides a list of private and public institutions that have formed committees to address complaints of women.
Meanwhile, sharing the progress from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Director Social Welfare and Women Development, Mohammad Ayub said that his institution has constituted committees in all departments headed by additional secretaries. “The code of conduct has been printed and displayed within the departments to ensure that everybody is aware of the mechanism in place,” he said.
The report from Women’s Development Department Sindh was more efficient. Their representative Musarrat Jabeen, Deputy Secretary Women Development departments Sindh, while providing an update pointed out that harassment committees have been formed in 10 departments and in four districts.
“The Services General Administration and Coordination department has issued letters to all the departments concern to comply with the law and coordinate with the women development department,” she informed.
Maliha Hussain, social activist, also shared information about a few major cases that AASHA was pursuing. AASHA is an Alliance Against Sexual Harassment comprising different non-governmental bodies. “Politicians and bureaucrats should not disrupt the mechanism that we trying to put in place. They should support our initiatives rather than saving their friends who are accused of harassment,” she said.
Dawn News

Let us build ourselves a nation

My last blog gathered a tad bit too many opinions from the other side of the border. There was a lot of smoke, albeit less fire. It did not offer solutions, it was not supposed to – it was a catharsis. However, lets face it, we have a lot of problems and they will not go away until we take the bull by its horns.
So, how do we build a nation that is fighting cancerous cells of terrorism; a nation rebuilding itself after being drowned by a deluge, and just how do we rise out of the ashes of a decade of confusion, chaos and catastrophe? The super structure of social development in Pakistan can only be built on the solid foundations of education. At a mere 2.1 per cent of GDP public sector spending on education, it is not only an embarrassment among the developing countries of the world, forget the developed; it is a fragile foundation for the bulging youth population of the country to stand upon.
Some days ago I came across a list of countries ranked by literacy rate. Naturally I was inclined and interested in spotting Pakistan. It wasn’t much surprise to where we ranked in the world (somewhere in the 150s), but it took a lot of pride-swallowing when I found half of the so called “Dark Continent” listed above us. The bereaved, war-torn, and forgotten brethren from the Democratic Republic of Congo seem to be more literate; Burundi, Sudan and Madagascar have done more to educate their people than us. Lesotho has done considerably well, while by the standards of Namibia we are probably stone-age hunters from the 7th Century B.C.
To top it, we shot ourselves in the foot by even attempting the devolution of the Higher Education Commission. However, all is not lost. Anatol Lieven in his recent book “Pakistan: A Hard Country” has very intricately shown that despite the weakness of the state machinery, the Pakistani society remains strong. But what will strength make us without education? More so, what have we become without education? These are questions that we need to collectively answer. Do we really need bombs more than books?
Education, rather the lack of it, feeds most of our problems today. Dynastic politics thrives on uninformed public opinion, correlation between illiteracy and unemployment has time and again been backed up by statistical evidence, while a misguided youth blows up in a tranquil gathering hoping to achieve eternal blessings of his God. To add fuel to the fire, we have the so-called educated liberals propagating gay-rights and that too in the name of Quran. Between the Priest and the Pantheon we have a docile nation that is unconcerned and indifferent to developments around it.
Only 56 per cent of the population is capable of reading the newspaper and writing a simple letter in any language. UNESCO surveyed that out of the 18 million youth in the age group of 17-23; only 2.6 per cent are enrolled in higher education. What is the rest of 97.4 per cent of 18 million up to? Such a populace is not only gullible but an easy recruitment pool for extremist forces in and outside the country.
It has long been time that we focus on educating our nation because the road to a prosperous Pakistan can only be made among the meadows of intellectual understanding and discourse. Elementary education must be backed up by vocational training of adult men and women who have been denied the right to education as a child. This will not only greatly enhance the ability of our workforce but raise community awareness and political maturity in Pakistan.
We have a Damocles’ Sword hanging over our nation in the words of the famed American educator, Abraham Flexner and I quote:
“Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education. Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.”
The author is a policy analyst and a social worker from Islamabad who believes that the glass is half full. He can be reached at siddique.humayun@gmail.com and http://www.weekend.pk/
The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.

Communication & radical thought

THE holding of a game-changing national seminar on de-radicalisation by the Pakistan Army in Swat this month is an important development.
It aims at shifting the existing strategy of confronting violence in Swat with military force to finding long-term solutions for eradicating the causes of extremism and radical thought.
Swat was regained after painful sacrifices. In this war, as one speaker commented during the seminar, Pakistan’s total number of military losses is one and a half army divisions as a result of deaths and injuries. In addition, there have been substantial civilian losses.
Casualties suffered by the Pakistan military are higher than the cumulative losses of all the 46 nations fighting in Afghanistan.
Even if Pakistan has not risen to the unrealistic expectations of others, its sacrifices for global peace cannot be trivialised.
One of the best antidotes against extremism and radicalisation is the effective use of strategic communication where the mindset of the population is positively influenced. Communication is made through speech, writing or the electronic medium.
The US Defence Science Board 2004 Summer Study on ‘Transition to and from Hostilities’, concluded that strategic communication in conflict-ridden countries is as important, if not more, than military operations. Thus any sum of money spent on strategic communication has more value than expenditure on other elements in a counter-radicalisation strategy.
Unfortunately, in Pakistan not much emphasis has been paid to this aspect of countering radicalisation.
One of the main reasons for Mullah Fazlullah’s success during the Swat conflict was the clever and effective use of FM broadcasting through an illicit transmitter. He not only won new adherents through threats but even earned the sympathies of Swat’s women through this medium. They were ultimately induced to contribute to his cause by providing him with voluntary donations and convincing their menfolk to join the ranks of the radicals.
The Swat militants executed civilians and police personnel and also beheaded more than 17 females. After these tragic events, the army was asked in May 2009 for its assistance in crushing the insurgency in Swat. This forced 750,000 persons to leave their homes and seek refuge in other places to avoid injury due to fighting. The terrorist rule had also destroyed Swat’s economy.
In a 2010 survey conducted across 384 randomly selected households in Swat, 78 per cent of the respondents believed that FM broadcasts by Fazlullah and his group were effective in enlarging support for the Taliban; 67 per cent of the households were of the view that face-to-face communications in the form of sermons preached in mosques created support for the Swat Taliban.In this connection it may be noted that those Afghans who had come to Pakistan in the 1980s as refugees, grew up in camps and remained there. Their children received religious education and most were able to find employment as imams in the local mosques. A prominent social change in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Fata since the 1990s has been the transfer of the control of mosques to Afghan refugees.
Since the parents of these imams were aligned to jihadi organisations of Afghanistan, many children inherited their extreme views. Today, many of Swat’s mosques are managed by prayer leaders of Afghan descent. Many became associated with the Pakistani alumni of other madressahs run by religious parties.
These links played a prominent role in providing protection to the extremists in Swat, when the MMA religious alliance government ruled the then NWFP after the 2002 elections. In the same survey, 75 per cent of the households thought that the MMA government supported the Swat militants. It could not be otherwise.
However, one of the most pernicious effects of electronic communications was its impact on the women of Swat. As soon as the Taliban took control they forbade women to be seen in open spaces; thus women were confined to their homes.
Then the Taliban banned other competing media like the TV and the usual radio channels terming them un-Islamic. Television was outlawed for showing images and the radio for broadcasting music.
Thus women became prisoners in their homes, where they had no sources of information and no pastime other than listening to Mullah Radio. A bizarre situation ensued. Many women participating in their survey said that listening to the radio and calling Fazlullah on the phone imparted a sense of ‘empowerment’. They could phone the leader of the Swat Taliban and lodge complaints against their menfolk many of whom received warnings and had to give rights to their womenfolk; something that the state has failed to do.
Thus many women in Swat became captives of the Taliban and supplied them with finances and manpower. Even with the military operation removing the terrorist Taliban network from Swat some women still yearn for the good old days when Mullah Radio could be heard and they could feel empowered.
There are many lessons here that are useful for transforming the mindset of the people through modern means of communication. This could be a winner in the effort to confront extremism and counter radicalism; it is an instrument that must be used effectively in the new national strategy against de-radicalisation.
Obviously, if the tide is to be turned then Pakistan must invest heavily in communication in its different forms. It is a truism amongst experts that the value of mind transformation is a higher virtue than economic development in the war against extremism.
The writer is chairman of the Regional Institute of Policy Research in Peshawar.
azizkhalid@gmail.com
Dawn News

Of socialism and Islam

IS Islam compatible with socialism? The question is asked because to many ‘socialism’ means an atheistic philosophy, and at the very core of Islamic teachings is the belief in one God. How can then Islam and socialism go together?
However, this is not the correct view. Many noted ulema had accepted socialism as an essential part of Islamic teachings. In India, Maulana Hasrat Mohani and Maulana Ubaidullah Sindhi enthusiastically supported the communist movement. Maulana Mohani was one of the founders of the Communist Party of India.
Maulana Ubaidullah Sindhi, who had migrated to Afghanistan during the Khilafat movement and had formed a transition government there along with Mahendra Pratap Singh, left for Russia when the king of Afghanistan came under pressure from the British to expel the members of this government. In Moscow they met Lenin and discussed with him the strategies to fight British colonialism. Maulana Sindhi returned to India only in the early 1940s.
Allama Iqbal also paid rich tribute to socialism in his Khizar-i-Rah which he wrote after the decline of Usmani power in Turkey and on the eve of the Russian revolution. He also paid rich tribute to Marx and called him ‘a man with a book’ without being a prophet (peghambar neest wali dar baghal darad kitab).
He also wrote an interesting poem, Lenin Khuda Ke Huzur Mein (Lenin in the presence of God). W.C. Smith, a noted scholar of Islam and a left-leaning Christian priest who taught in Government College, Lahore in the 1930s, writes in his book, Islam in the Modern World, that Islam was the first organised socialist movement in the world.
Islam showed not only deep sympathy for the poor and downtrodden but also condemned strongly the concentration of wealth in a number of Makkan surahs. Makkah, as an important centre of international trade, was home to the very rich (tribal chiefs) and the extremely poor. Thus, in surahs 104 and 107, we find such condemnations. In one of the Madinese verses, 9:34, we find condemnation for concentration of wealth: “…And those who hoard up gold and silver and spend it not in Allah’s way — announce to them a painful chastisement.”
Abu Dharr Ghaffari, one of the eminent companions of the Prophet (PBUH), used to recite this verse before those who would accumulate wealth; he would refuse to shake hands with such people. Thus, those whom Abu Dharr shook hands with would consider themselves proud and even boast about it. Abu Dharr was an uncompromising man when it came to principles, and because of that he died a lonely death in the desert of Rabza where he was exiled. His wife did not even have the money to buy a shroud for him and he was buried in his clothes.
The Quran even goes to the extent of advising the believers to spend all that which is more than one needs in Allah’s way. The word used by the Quran is ‘afw’, i.e. whatever is left after meeting one’s basic needs. Thus, this verse, 2:219, says, “They ask you as to what they should spend. Say what is surplus with you”.
The instruction comes very close to the socialist formulation ‘To each according to his need’. The Quran’s basic emphasis is on justice (adl), and in fact one of Allah’s name is Aadil, i.e. Just. Thus an unjust society cannot be an Islamic society.
Unfortunately, none of the Islamic countries today fulfill these Quranic criteria.
In the Quran, justice is so important that it says “Do justice, it is closest to being pious” (5:8). It also says that justice must be done even if it goes against you and in favour of your enemy. Thus the Quran says, “O you who believe, be maintainers of justice, bearers of witness for Allah, even though it be against your own selves or (your) parents or near relatives — whether he be rich or poor (4:135). And what is socialism but justice in a very comprehensive sense, including distributive justice. If these verses are read in conjunction with chapters 104 and 107 of the Quran, distributive justice cannot be excluded.The Quran also uses other terms to make its intention clear: ‘mustakbirun’ and ‘mustadifun’, i.e. the powerful and exploiters and the weak and exploited. These are really key terms in this respect. All of Allah’s prophets belonged to weaker sections of society, including Abraham, Moses and others, who fought against the powerful exploiters like Nimrod and the pharaoh.
According to the Quran, the struggle between mustakbirun and mustadifun will go on, and in the end it is the mustadifun who will triumph and will inherit this earth (28:5).
Thus the Quran is unmistakably in favour of the weaker section of society and predicts leadership (not dictatorship) of the proletariat. It is interesting to note that it was Imam Khomeini who drew our attention to this verse (28:5), and he also established Bonyaad-i-Mustazefeen (Foundation for the Weak) from the wealth of the rich, which he ordered to be confiscated.
But unfortunately, like other revolutions, the Iranian revolution was also hijacked by those with vested interests.
As soon as a political establishment comes into existence, vested interests develop around it and hijack it more often than not. Thus, a revolution needs constant vigilance by the weaker sections of society. The revolution that Islam had brought met the same fate within years of the death of the Prophet of Islam.
The writer is an Islamic scholar who also heads the Centre for Study of Society & Secularism, Mumbai.
Dawn News

Iran sends more weapons to militants in Iraq: US

WASHINGTON: Iran is stepping up its support for Shiite militants in Iraq, supplying them with more sophisticated weapons, the top US military officer said Thursday.
Admiral Mike Mullen said Iran had made a decision to curtail its support for Shiite factions in 2008 but has now increased its activity in Iraq, sending in lethal arms that were being used against American forces.
“Iran is very directly supporting extremist troops which are killing our troops,” Mullen told reporters at a Pentagon Press Association luncheon.
The Iranian shipments are “significant and improved,” said the admiral, including a makeshift rocket launching system, known as an improvised rocket assisted mortar (IRAM), and armor-piercing shaped charges, or explosively formed projectile (EFP).
“They are shipping high-tech weapons in there, IRAMs, EFPs, which are killing our people. And the forensics prove that,” he said.
As the United States and Iraq negotiate a possible follow-on US force that would stay beyond a December 31 deadline, Mullen said any future security deal with Baghdad would have to take into account the threat posed by neighboring Iran.
“If we reach an agreement (on US troops remaining in Iraq)… it has to be done in conjunction with control of Iran in that regard,” he said.
Mullen also said the arms were flowing into Iraq with the full knowledge of Iran’s leadership.
“I would say they know about it,” he said.
Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said there was no question that Iran was trying to exert influence in Iraq, especially in the country’s south.
His comments echoed the US ambassador in Baghdad, James Jeffrey, who said last week that insurgent Shiite groups beholden to Iran posed a threat to Iraq’s stability.
US forces last month suffered their worst casualties in three years with 14 soldiers killed, most in rocket attacks.
Dawn News

Afridi will no longer captain Pakistan: Butt

ISLAMABAD: World Cup captain Shahid Afridi will not lead Pakistan in future, Pakistan Cricket Board chief Ijaz Butt said on Thursday.
Butt reiterated to a sports television channel that it was his constitutional right to appoint the captain before every single series, even though last week the ICC recommended to the PCB that Butt lose the privilege to improve the team.
”As far as I am concerned he is not a captain material for the PCB anymore,” Butt said. ”(As a player) he has done well in the past, he’s been a good cricketer for Pakistan, there’s no doubt about it.”
Afridi, one of Pakistan’s greatest limited-overs players, was dumped as captain by Butt in May after beating West Indies in the Caribbean.
That prompted his international retirement and an outburst against Butt and the PCB for making captaincy an issue this year.
Afridi took the PCB to court to reissue his clearance to play overseas, and dropped the case after agreeing to meet Butt, plead guilty to misconduct and a fine of 4.5 million rupees ($52,000).
Afridi got his clearance and is representing Hampshire in the English county Twenty20 championship.
Butt said a former provincial governor and former prime minister rang him to urge clearance be given to Afridi, but he said he did not feel pressured.
”Governor Sindh rang up, talked to me for one hour … Nawaz Sharif rang me,” Butt said.
Butt said he told Sharif that if Afridi wanted to become a politician like 1992 World Cup-winning captain Imran Khan, he should go into politics.
”I told him (Sharif), ‘Have a heart, this is not a political issue, this is something different.’ We are not part of politics.”
Butt said at least 15 to 20 other politicians contacted him, but he told everyone that if Afridi wanted to get clearance he had to follow the process. ”If this is not followed I will definitely not budge whatever the pressure might be,” Butt said.
Afridi has said he will reconsider retirement from Pakistan only if the present setup of the PCB is changed.
However, Butt said the PCB has not received Afridi’s resignation from international cricket.
”He has not given us his retirement decision,” Butt said. ”As per the code of conduct he has to send a resignation to the PCB.
”He is no more on our contract … after the completion of the tour (of West Indies) he is no more the captain (and) that he knows.”
Team manager Intikhab Alam and coach Waqar Younis criticized Afridi in their tour report of West Indies, in which Pakistan won the one-day series 3-2, losing the last two ODIs. Butt also blamed Afridi for losing the last two games.
”I will only say that in my opinion, which may be considered by some people wrong, he (Afridi) is responsible for losses in the fourth and fifth one-dayers,” Butt said.
Dawn News

Merkel under fire over secret Saudi tank deal

German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Photo: Reuters

BERLIN: The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, is facing growing criticism after news of a multibillion-dollar deal for the secret sale of 200 tanks to Saudi Arabia leaked from the national security council that approved it.
The German government has responded with what the media has called an ''iron silence'', which has fuelled rather than dampened the furore over a sale that experts estimate will be worth roughly $US2.5 billion ($2.3 billion)
Germany strained ties with its NATO allies when it abstained in the UN Security Council on the resolution authorising military action to protect Libyan civilians.

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Now the government has approved the shipment of the 68-ton tanks to Saudi Arabia, even as the image of Saudi tanks rolling into Bahrain to help suppress the protests there remains fresh in the public mind.
According to the website of Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, which along with Rheinmetall, produces the tank, the latest version, the Leopard 2A7+, includes ''non-lethal capabilities.''
''A perfect tank to drive into Bahrain and crack down on any uprising,'' Jan Grebe, a researcher at the Bonn International Center for Conversion, a non-profit research institute that deals with security and development issues, said. ''It's also a good tank to fight any demonstrations in Riyadh.''
Members of Dr Merkel's own party have criticised the sale on human rights grounds.
The deal reveals the shifting Israeli attitude towards the Saudis. Israel has notably not complained about the arms deal, and government sources said it was cleared with the Americans and the Israelis.
Once viewed as a potential threat by Jerusalem, the regime in Saudi Arabia is increasingly viewed as a guarantor of stability in a region in upheaval, as revolutionary fervour sweeps through the Middle East.
''Every step that we take in the region, we take with the condition that it promotes the security and the right to exist of Israel,'' Philipp Missfelder, a foreign policy spokesman for Dr Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats, said.
The sale could also be seen as an effort to placate the Saudis, who were infuriated this year when the US President, Barack Obama, sided with protesters in Egypt and helped to usher Hosni Mubarak from power and when NATO began its air campaign against Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.
The New York Times


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The tricks of the hacking trade

LONDON: The term ''phone hacking'' refers broadly to a variety of methods journalists at the News of the World and other British newspapers could have used to listen to thousands of voice-mail messages until the scandal came to light.
A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police, the force investigating the matter, said it was defining the practice as ''the illegal interception of messages relayed by telecommunications that were not intended for the person who has intercepted them'' but gave no specifics.
In practice, as court documents and interviews with those involved have demonstrated, the hacking involved a number of techniques.

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They took advantage of default codes - such as 1111 or 4444 - that mobile phone providers in Britain gave users to retrieve their voicemail. Many customers did not change this standard number to a more secure code, allowing hackers to use it in one of two ways.
In the first way, according to current and former tabloid journalists interviewed for an investigation by The New York Times Magazine into the practice, one reporter would call the intended victim's phone, engaging the line. A second reporter would call simultaneously and would be directed to the voice-mail system. There the default codes could be entered, potentially allowing access to messages (which were then often deleted to prevent other rival newspapers from hearing them).
The second method was detailed on a recording obtained by The New York Times as part of the same investigation. In the recording, Glenn Mulcaire, a private detective jailed for six months in 2007 for phone hacking, described a method of calling into a voicemail system by dialling an external number provided for checking messages from other telephones, such as land lines. It, too, required the default code to be entered.
If any of the intended victims had changed their codes, the hackers would resort to what they called ''blagging'' - calling mobile phone companies, pretending to be authorised users or company insiders, and requesting that the access code be reset to the default.
Britain's main phone companies - Orange, Vodafone, O2, Three and T-Mobile - said in interviews on Wednesday that their voicemail access procedures had become more stringent since the early 2000s, the heyday for phone hacking.
The New York Times


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Terror tactic to put bomb under skin

LONDON: Terrorists could use surgically implanted explosives to carry out attacks on aircraft, the US government has warned.
Intelligence suggests terrorists are planning to use high explosives hidden under the skin which could be detonated when injected with another chemical. There are no details about a specific plot, but US officials have picked up suggestions that the method could be used against the West.
One senior Department of Homeland Security official said the intelligence surfaced about a month ago and appeared to be linked to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. ''The new intelligence indicated at least a fresh look at this possible tactic'' by the group, the official said.

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The "underpants bomber" .... Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab used PETN, an explosive US intelligence suggests terrorists may be planning to inject.

The US Transportation Security Administration called for airports to be more vigilant to detect home-made explosives hidden under the skin such as pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN), which Richard Reid, the ''shoe bomber'', tried to use in 2001.
''These measures are designed to be unpredictable, so passengers should not expect to see the same activity at every international airport,'' said Nick Kimball, a spokesman for the TSA.
The White House press secretary, Jay Carney, said security officials had been in contact with airlines and foreign transport authorities. ''Terrorists have been looking for other ways to circumvent security measures in order to target aircraft. It's not at all surprising,'' he said.
British officials believe that a man who tried to kill the Saudi deputy interior minister in August 2009, was carrying a bomb using PETN injected with lead azide. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a former student at University College London, used a similar device when he tried to blow up a plane approaching Detroit on Christmas Day, 2009.
Britain and the US have been on high alert for revenge attacks after US special forces killed Osama bin Laden in May.
Telegraph, London; The New York Times


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Somali militants lift food aid ban amid starvation

Serious malnutrition ... scores of Somali children are dying.

WASHINGTON: The Somali Islamist group al-Shabab has announced it will allow aid organisations to resume operations in areas of the drought-stricken country it controls.
The announcement came as the UN's refugee agency warned that parts of Somalia and Kenya were experiencing ''pre-famine'' conditions. Scores of Somali children were dying on the journey or within a day of arrival at refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia, as they fled the region's worst drought in decades, the agency said.
An al-Shabab spokesman, Mohamoud Raghe, said in Mogadishu that the aid groups were going to be allowed to work in order to help bring relief to areas hard-hit by the severe drought.

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Al-Shabab said its drought committee would work with aid organisations, which they have accused in the past of acting as spies and of being anti-Muslim.
The drought is being compared with the drought of the early 1990s, when famine claimed more than 300,000 lives.
At the time, large amounts of international aid were commandeered by Somali warlords to help fuel the country's civil war and there is concern among Western governments and aid groups that al-Shabab, which is battling Somalia's Transitional Federal Government, might do the same.
High levels of malnutrition, combined with violence in the war-torn nation on the Horn of Africa, were threatening ''a human tragedy of unimaginable proportions'', the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said.
After several seasons of failed rains and rising global food prices, drought has affected more than 12 million people across Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya.
Thousands of Somali refugees are making perilous journeys of hundreds of kilometres to seek assistance: 54,000 people crossed into Ethiopia and Kenya in June alone. Levels of serious malnutrition among newly-arrived children in Ethiopia are exceeding 50 per cent, while in Kenya levels are reaching 30 to 40 per cent.
The UN's World Food Program pulled out of northern Somalia last year because of threats and extortion demands by al-Shabab. But a UN spokesman in Nairobi said the organisation was prepared to co-operate with anyone who could work to ease the crisis and save lives.
The US said on Wednesday that it was prepared to ''test'' the willingness of al-Shabab to allow Western food aid to reach the millions of Somalis threatened by drought.
The US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has ordered a co-ordinated response to try to prevent another famine in the Horn of Africa like the one that struck two decades ago.
Al-Shabab, which controls most of Somalia's territory and is listed by the US as a terrorist organisation, has until now barred outside humanitarian aid groups from areas it dominates.
A senior State Department official said now that al-Shabab was ''making noises about being a co-operative player'', it was incumbent on the US and other donor countries to test whether the group was ready to let starving people receive humanitarian aid.
A State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, said the drought might have displaced 1.5 million people in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, and that the US has begun positioning relief supplies to respond to the crisis.
''We have already delivered some 19,000 metric tonnes of food to the World Food Program, and a lot of that has already been staged in warehouses to insure rapid delivery a to insure rapid delivery into the area,'' she said.
Agencies


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