'Is this real?': tapes reveal 9/11 horror

"Did you just say somethin' hit the World Trade Centre?" an incredulous military official asked shortly after the beginning of America's terrorism nightmare on September 11, 2001.
Minutes later, with air traffic authorities warning that another commercial jet was off course and just 10km from the White House, Washington ground control sounded in denial, saying it was "probably just a rumour".

Bird's eye view ... The towers, mid-collapse. Photo: NYC Police Aviation Unit

Pakistan Railways

The National Assembly Standing Committee on Railways has made several recommendations to steer the department out of its financial troubles, proposing among other measures, that the Rs 4 billion State Bank overdraft be waived or converted into equity, and that the government should take over the liability of foreign loans (worth Rs 26.6 billion) and pensions funds (Rs 6.50 billion annually). The committee also expressed concern that the government decision to cut developmental programme allocations has badly affected Pakistan Railways (PR), and that its budget has been reduced from Rs 13.6 billion to Rs 7.3 billion.

It goes without saying that the PR is an essential service and hence needs to be saved from the mess it has gotten itself into. Towards that end the government ought to take at least four steps. First, it must restore the previous system of a separate budget for the railways that is presented in parliament and approved by it; second it must clean the railways balance sheet of its losses and for doing this one possible option could be issuance of bonds as done in the case of Wapda and third, it is imperative for the government to undertake a restructuring exercise. The department must be run by a professional hand rather than political appointees who tend to use it to distribute jobs to party supporters and sympathizers, thereby overburdening it with people who have little to contribute but a lot to take out in the form of salaries and pensions. The NA committee while recommending restructuring has proposed transparent procedure for the selection of executive officers. More importantly, it said that the Railway Board should be reconstituted so as to include professional experts as its members. Fourth, there ought to be a substantial increase in the goods to passenger trains ratio. Since train is the common man's mode of transportation, fares are generally kept at a low level. The real source of revenue for the railways the world over are freight trains since they are the cheapest mode of land transportation and an efficient one, too. We have the example of India before us, where increase in freight trains has proven to be a major factor in making its railways a profit making entity. Considering that at present PR faces a severe shortage of locomotives leading to discontinuation of passenger services on many traditional routes, it would be advisable at this point to add, as far as possible, freight carriages to passenger trains. The best hope for the PR's turnaround is maximising goods transportation. The proposed restructuring effort must pay due attention to this aspect of the operations.

Source: Business Recorder

Pakistan battles against hidden HIV-Aids menace

For a long time perceptions of Pakistan as a conservative Muslim country encouraged a belief that HIV-Aids incidence would be non-existent or very low. With the number of HIV cases rising the government finally included it in its 2009 national health policy, but as the BBC's Nosheen Abbas reports, its full extent is still not widely acknowledged.

A report on HIV by the UN last year said that 2003 was a key date in the battle against the disease in Pakistan.
At that time there was an outbreak of the epidemic when it was discovered that 10% of people among a random sample tested in the city of Larkana city in the province of Sindh were infected.
The findings moved Pakistan up from "low prevalence - high risk" category to a "concentrated epidemic".
The epidemic is concentrated in pockets of high risk groups - including injecting drug users (IDUs), and male, female and hijra (transvestite) sex workers.
'Attitude of apartheid' A large number of HIV and Aids cases are also detected among migrants returning from Gulf states.

 

Drug addicts are a group especially at risk from HIV

The UN report says that while the prevalence of HIV is low - only 0.1% among the general population - the growing commercial sex industry's overlap with high risk groups is likely to cause the epidemic to spread to the general population.
But experts say the epidemic is not being properly tackled.
Asim Ashraf found out that he was infected with HIV when he was 18.
The mandatory medical test for Haj pilgrimage applicants showed his medical status, but he recalls the doctor being hesitant to break the news.
"I didn't know anything about it, all the ads used to state that Aids was not curable and it's a death sentence - I thought I would die in a couple of days or hours," he says.
After a couple of tests Asim was lucky finally to find a doctor who explained HIV to him and helped him focus on living life as normally as possible.
But when Asim returned to his day job he was ostracised by his fellow workers, who would not sit and eat with him in what he describes as an "attitude of apartheid".
He says his isolation worsened his health.
'Strong stigma' After studying the illness he is now the HIV-Aids co-ordinator at Rehnuma Family Planning Association. He is married and has a baby daughter - neither she nor his wife is infected with the virus.
Awareness campaigns regarding the epidemic are almost non-existent in Pakistan.

Patients are made to sit outside on the lawn far away from the office itself - the reason is the fear of suicide attacks”

End Quote Palvasha HIV counselor

Jamshed is HIV-positive and a UNAIDS employee. He argues that "people avoid going to HIV and Aids clinics because there is such a strong stigma around the epidemic".

"They don't get themselves registered, least of all get themselves tested for HIV because many argue that we are an Islamic country and we do not have this problem," he says.
The belief that HIV and Aids is an epidemic caused by "immoral activities" remains a popular misconception among the general public.
The efforts of those fighting against the illness have been hampered by the deteriorating security situation in many parts of the country and by this cultural mindset.
'Walking on eggshells' Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working to fight HIV and Aids in the region have received threats and have either changed the location of their offices or only function by telephone.
Palvasha, a 30-year-old Pashtun woman who is HIV-positive, counsels others with the illness in the country's tribal areas where militants have a strong presence.
"Patients are made to sit outside on the lawn far away from the office itself - the reason is the fear of suicide attacks," Palvasha says.
She describes the difficulties of providing counselling to HIV-positive people in the region as "akin to walking on eggshells".
"You need to imply a lot and not talk about things in a direct manner - using one wrong word could send you out of people's houses.
"We are afraid to hold awareness campaigns because we get accused of spreading wrong and sinful things - so we have to be very tactful."
The UN says that the country's anti-Aids programme is short of cash and bedevilled by bureaucracy - especially when it comes to the release of funds that have been committed.
But female Pakistani parliamentarian Donya Aziz argues that the government has been forward-thinking about the crisis, handling it in a pragmatic way.
"Despite being an Islamic republic, many programmes have been designed for high risk groups," she says.
"The penal code states sodomy as a crime for example, yet we have programmes geared towards male partners... But we do need to spend the money in a cost-effective way."
Source: BBC News

India pilot daughter accepts Pakistan pilot's 'remorse'

 

The daughter of a dead Indian pilot has thanked a Pakistani fighter pilot for apologising after shooting down the aircraft that her father was commanding more than four decades ago.

Farida Singh said the incident happened in the "confusion of a tragic war".
Her father Jahangir Engineer was flying the plane which had apparently drifted off course along the border.
Qais Hussain, who was a Pakistani pilot during the 1965 war with India, shot down the eight-seater plane.
Earlier, he wrote to Mrs Singh saying he was sorry for the loss of precious lives during the incident and was acting under orders from his superiors.
The Pakistanis suspected the craft of being on a reconnaissance mission to open a new war front.
Mr Hussain was ordered to shoot it down, despite pleas for mercy by Mr Engineer.
The former fighter pilot said that when he landed back at an air base at Karachi, he felt highly elated for having completed the mission.
'Overwhelmed' But the mood changed later that evening when All India Radio announced that the plane had been a civilian Indian aircraft with eight people on board.
In a letter to Farida Singh, Mr Hussain said that everyone connected with the incident felt sorry and dejected.

The fact that this all happened in the confusion of a tragic war was never lost to us ”

End Quote Farida Singh Daughter of dead pilot

Mrs Singh replied that she was "somewhat overwhelmed" at receiving the letter. She said the death of her father had "defined our lives".

"But in all the struggles that followed, we never, not for one moment, bore bitterness or hatred for the person who actually pulled the trigger and caused my father's death," she wrote.
"The fact that this all happened in the confusion of a tragic war was never lost to us. We are all pawns in this terrible game of war and peace."
Describing her father as an "ace pilot, a great leader of men [and] a willing team player", Mrs Singh said he was also generous of spirit.
"Hence it is now easy for me to reach out my hand to receive your message. This incident is indeed a prime example of what damage strife and mindless battles can drive even good men to do," she said.
Mr Hussain said he decided to write to the family after all these years when an opportunity arose through his contacts in India, who put him in touch with the pilot's daughter.
"I feel sorry for you, your family and the other seven families who lost their dearest ones," his letter stated.
Source: BBC News

America’s capacity for self-harm

THE first week of August, according to some commentators, will go down in history as signifying a tipping point in terms of the loss of American hegemony.
This conclusion is based primarily on the downgrading of the United States’ credit rating by Standard & Poor’s (S&P), in the wake of a Capitol Hill compromise over raising the nation’s debt ceiling that was advertised, inter alia, as a means of pre-empting this very outcome.
The subsequent precipitous decline in international stock markets could be construed as substantiating this thesis, although it also underlines America’s continuing key status in the global economy. The significance of the fact that China — and, too a lesser extent, India — deemed it necessary to berate the US for its fiscal imprudence has not been lost on observers, though.
As America’s largest creditor, China’s concern is not surprising; and it is widely assumed that China’s economy, powering along at a growth rate of about 10 per cent, will in due course overtake that of the US. The tone of the dressing-down, however, was as unprecedented as the ratings downgrade.
Within the US, there has been a degree of outrage over S&P’s chutzpah — it was, after all, among those agencies that, far from raising any flags of warning, continued to award an AAA rating to culpable financial institutions in the run-up to the subprime mortgages crisis. Which is not entirely remarkable, given that the agencies derive their income from these very institutions, hence they can hardly be considered independent. Their appalling judgment entailed no penalties.
It is intriguing, meanwhile, that half of the Democrats in the House of Representatives voted against the last-minute deal hammered out between the White House and leading Republicans, which broadly entails huge spending cuts in the decades ahead, without any commensurate increase in taxation.
Last year, President Barack Obama agreed to extend his predecessor George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the very rich — which have cumulatively cost the US Treasury more than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has suggested that he has not given up on the idea of imposing new taxes on the wealthy, but his record of caving in to the Tea Party types does not bode well.
During his presidential campaign, Obama harboured some illusions about a post-partisan America. Given that ideological distinctions between the Democrats and the Republicans have grown fuzzy over the decades, the idea may not have seemed completely fantastical to some. He ought to have known, though, that a rightwards shift in the so-called liberal centre invariably encourages conservatives to drift towards extremes.
What made such a process even more likely was the fact that a substantial proportion of American citizens were discomfited by the very idea of an African-American head of state. Small wonder, then, that the nonsense about Obama’s birth certificate gained so much traction.
What’s more worrying, though, is the fact that the president has managed to alienate to such an extent the constituency that elevated him to the White House three years ago. It is beginning to seem increasingly unlikely that Obama will be re-elected next year. He may just squeeze in if the Republican candidate is too polarising, but it certainly won’t be easy — not least given the tendency of American voters to simply abstain if they are not too pushed about the results.
The 61 per cent turnout in 2008 was extraordinarily high by US standards; last year’s Republican landslide in the midterm elections was based on a turnout of about 40 per cent — which, albeit not unusual, is pathetic for a nation supposedly dedicated to ‘spreading democracy’ in various parts of the world.
One of the most pertinent critiques of the debt deal has been that it will exacerbate America’s biggest socio-economic problem, namely the appalling level of unemployment. The leading Republican negotiators have been accused of behaving like terrorists. That’s hardly a complimentary assessment, particularly in the run-up to the 10th anniversary of the Sept 11 terrorist attacks. It barely needs to be pointed out that those who wish America ill will be heartened by recent intimations of its capacity for self-harm.
Obama, meanwhile, might do well to soak up some ancient wisdom. There is, for instance, a fable attributed to Aesop about a man and his son taking their donkey (which coincidentally happens to be the Democratic Party’s symbol) to market.
They are berated first of all for not riding the beast, so the man puts his son on the animal’s back. Soon thereafter, the son is accused by other passersby of being lazy, so the father replaces his son as the rider. Inevitably, this action too is criticised, so he seats his son in front of him. Whereupon the two of them are accused of overburdening the animal.
After a bit of pondering, they tie the donkey’s feet to a pole and decide to carry the animal instead, which leads to much jeering. As they are crossing a bridge to get to the market, the donkey disentangles one of his legs and kicks out. In the fracas that ensues, the animal falls over the bridge and is drowned because its forelegs are still tied.
The moral of the story? Those who seek to please everybody will please nobody.
To which one might add: those who please nobody cannot seriously aspire to a two-term presidency. Yet the prospect of Obama losing in 2012 is an unpleasant one — not on account of his (lack of) achievements, but because of the likelihood that his successor could be someone as crazy as Michele Bachman. The idea of a representative of the loony right presiding over the possible end of empire hardly bears contemplation.
Eventually someone will have to start wondering whether free-market capitalism, which entails the supremacy of the profit motive, is such a good idea after all. But it would be silly to hold one’s breath.
mahir.dawn@gmail.com
Source: Dawn News

Mr Nice & Miss Magic

In symbolic irony, the July 27 visit to India of Hina Rabbani Khar, Pakistan’s personable and photogenic new foreign minister, was separated by only one day from the annual remembrance services of Kargil Vijay Diwas by the Indian Armed Forces (on July 26) and by a little over a week of the Kupwara intrusion (on August 5) in which three Indian soldiers were killed.
However, the compulsions of the “peace process” with Pakistan required that both be downplayed.
New Delhi audiences were much taken in by the charm and haute couture of Ms Khar, though many conservatives in the Pakistani establishment had vehemently opposed the appointment of a woman as the public face of Pakistan’s foreign policy. For its part, the Indian establishment optimistically highlighted the meeting as another milestone in India’s almost unilateral quest for peace with Pakistan, though it was sometimes difficult, particularly for the media, to correlate a personality as chic as Ms Khar with the seamy realities of Indo-Pak geopolitics.
However, the lady herself left no doubt that she was on a mission, and that the mission would remain unchanged, commencing with a brusque dismissal of Indian objections to meeting Kashmiri separatists at the Pakistan high commission almost immediately on arrival, followed by a broadside that India’s perception of Mumbai 26/11 was “dated”. It was quite apparent that Pakistan’s traditional approach remained unchanged, but India had no option but to wince and bear it. India’s customary diffidence about expressing its views, which has become ingrained after Sharm el-Sheikh and Thimpu, was on display here as well, as reflected in the bland joint communiqué where India agreed to express satisfaction with the progress of Pakistan’s investigation on 26/11. In addition, since India wished to avoid giving offence to Pakistan at all cost, Kargil Vijay Diwas was kept in low focus, and the Kupwara incident was shrugged off.
Kargil Vijay Diwas is a fixture on the national calendar. On July 26 each year, a grateful nation remembers its 527 dead and 1,363 wounded in repelling the major Pakistani intrusion at Kargil in May-July 1999. Kargil Vijay 1999 has passed into India’s folklore but what seems to have slipped into public oblivion are the other battles around Kargil, four of which have been fought in the same areas and often at almost the same locations as the three Indo-Pak wars in 1947, 1965 (twice), and 1971.
Kargil Vijay Diwas is the appropriate occasion to remember the first battles fought around Kargil in 1947 which were, perhaps, strategically most critical for the new republic of India whose post-Partition boundaries were still under challenge in both Jammu and Kashmir and former princely states like Hyderabad and Junagadh. Though Kargil itself did not constitute any centre of operational gravity in the First Kashmir War, it was nevertheless the first time the region featured in the India-Pakistan wars. Without going into the detailed history and background of the entire Kashmir issue, it would be relevant to remember that Pakistan initially intruded into Jammu and Kashmir immediately after Independence in 1947, sending a large number of tribal “lashkars” — of 1,000 men each — led by Pakistan Army officers and junior commissioned officers, in civilian clothes, reinforced by additional ex-servicemen from the tribal areas, demobilised after the Second World War, along with deserters from the Jammu and Kashmir state forces as well as members of the Frontier Constabulary. These had been raised and recruited from the tribesmen in the North West Frontier Province and the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas by district collectors and political officers with promises of loot and rapine of the Indian “kafirs”. The entire clandestine project was designated “Operation Gulmarg” under the overall command of Maj. Gen. Akbar Khan (later involved in the Rawalpindi Conspiracy case), and planned under direct instructions from the highest levels of the Pakistan government.
The bulk of tribal lashkars were inducted into Jammu and Kashmir regions of the state, while others were assigned to overrun Kargil, Ladakh and the Northern Territories. The latter were organised around the Gilgit Scouts whose British commandant, Maj. Brown, had proclaimed the loyalty of his force, as also his own personal loyalty, to Pakistan.
Had Pakistan’s designs in these remote and inaccessible Himalayan regions succeeded, it would have overrun the entire Buddhist region of Ladakh and the Shia region of Kargil, leaving them to the tender mercies of the tribal lashkars. In hindsight, it is even possible to visualise a worst-case scenario, where the ultimate ceasefire line between India and Pakistan might well have touched the Amarnath cave itself. The turbulent political circumstances prevailing immediately after Independence greatly delayed entry of Indian troops into Jammu and Kashmir and the situation on the ground which confronted them on arrival was extremely adverse, particularly in the remote and inaccessible northern regions around Ladakh and the Northern Territories. The bulk of these had already been overrun, except for isolated state forces’ garrisons still holding out, like Skardu under Brig. Sher Jung Thapa. The advancing tribesmen were reaching Leh and all linkages with Srinagar had been interdicted at the defile of the 11,480-ft Zojila Pass onwards. To secure Ladakh, it was imperative that the Zojila Pass was forced at all costs. This was achieved at the hard-fought battle of Zojila Pass in November 1948 by tanks of the 7th Light Cavalry and the 1st Patiala Infantry operating at hitherto unprecedented heights, under an extreme combination of high-altitude terrain and the approaching Ladakhi winter. Indian forces thereafter broke out and raced through the Dras-Kargil region, sweeping aside the enemy and linking up with a sortie from Leh.
The New Delhi meeting of the foreign ministers and India’s annual remembrance of Kargil Vijay represent the options of negotiation and armed conflict. India has selected negotiations under all circumstances as its sole option. Pakistan, on the other hand, has opted for both as a calculated choice, alternating peace talks in New Delhi with 26/11 and trans-LoC raids in Kupwara. India has no answers.
Gen. Shankar Roychowdhury is a former Chief of Army Staff and a former Member of Parliament
Source: The Asian Age

Telangana’s Pak cousin

Bahawalpur state in Pakistan and Hyderabad state in India have interesting parallels. Both states were founded in the early 18th century — Hyderabad in 1724 and Bahawalpur in 1727 — by Muslim dynasties.
Hyderabad’s population was, of course, largely Hindu (85 per cent) while Bahawalpur’s, largely Muslim (83 per cent). Both states were annexed by the new nation-states of India and Pakistan — Hyderabad in 1948 and Bahawalpur in 1951.
Each of these feudal states, while resisting democratic forces, managed to build schools, colleges and even a university. Railways were laid and irrigation encouraged. They had their own administrative and judicial system. They had their high court, Legislative Assembly, accountant general’s office and public service commission.
In Hyderabad’s case, it even had its own currency and Army. Both states stood out as financially sound. Like Hyderabad, Bahawalpur had surpluses of `19.17 crore in 1954-1955, more than those of East Pakistan (`3.27 crore) and North-West Frontier Province (`1.19 crore) and Sindh (`0.54 crore) and, of course, Punjab which had a deficit of `0.88 crore. The Telangana region of Hyderabad alone generated surpluses of `51 lakhs before it was merged with Andhra Pradesh.
When Bahawalpur was merged with other western provinces to make one unit — West Pakistan in 1954 — its surpluses helped stabilise West Pakistan and maintain financial comparability with East Pakistan. However, Bahawalpur does not seem to have gained much from the merger — which is no surprise. Much of the government land seems to have been allotted to officers of the armed forces and bureaucrats from outside Bahawalpur.
Considerable passions arose in Bahawalpur over lack of consideration on irrigation matters. The Sutlej, which borders the former state, is reportedly dry, and much blame is placed on upper-riverine Punjab for this state of affairs. When it comes to allocating the waters of the Indus — it is usually divided between North Punjab and Sindh and South Punjab (of which Bahawalpur is a part) gets step-motherly treatment.
Another grouse is of language. Seraiki, the language of south Punjab and Bahawalpur, is not quite Punjabi and there seems to be a feeling of disrespect for Seraiki as a result of the dominant Punjabi media and culture. All the ingredients of trouble were present at the time of the merger. These were aggravated when the West Pakistan unit was dissolved in 1970 and all the old provinces were restored — but Bahawalpur was not. In the elections of 1970, the Bahawalpur movement (Mahaz) got five of the 12 national parliamentary seats and 10 seats in the Punjab Assembly. The candidates supporting a separate province got 80 per cent of the votes cast. But what with the separation of Bangladesh, this movement died down in the interest of preservation of Pakistan’s shaky residual state. About the same time, the Telangana agitation of 1969-70 also resulted in electoral majorities for the Telangana Praja Samithi in the general election of 1971 but again the movement was suppressed by a combination of betrayal by local leaders, the Congress Party considerations and assurances of future fair play.
Now again as the Telangana movement gains ground here, the Bahawalpur one has got going over the last two years. With the leadership of Mohamed Ali Durrani, the former federal information minister, all the four districts in Bahawalpur (Bahawalpur, Bahawalnagar, Lodhran and Rahim Yar Khan) have passed resolutions in favour of a separate Bahawalpur province.
This has triggered a wider movement for a separate Seraiki Province with the politically powerful Punjabi-speaking groups (Gujjars, Cheemas and Dogars) also backing either a revival of Bahawalpur province or a new all-inclusive Seraiki Province of the southern Punjab. The most interesting part is that, unlike in the past, Punjabi settlers’ leaders living in Bahawalpur provinces have supported restoration and also joined hands with the Seraiki speakers in the area.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, a few months ago, spoke favourably of a Seraiki province. Babar Awan, Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP) leader and former law minister, at a press conference recently promised that the party would give “a (piece of) good news to Seraiki-speaking people during Ramzan”. Many interpreted this to mean that the party, but not the government, is going to announce its support for a Seriaki province. However, Mr Durrani objects to Bahawalpur being clubbed with the Seraiki areas and demands a separate state and has no objection to one for Seraiki. In our context this is like trying to club Rayalseema with Telangana. More political machinations are to be expected there also!
The PPP and the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid have an overwhelming presence in the southern districts of Punjab with 36 seats compared to the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s 12. Comprising over a dozen districts, the region has around 50 national Assembly constituencies. What fairness could not achieve, political expediency seems to lend a hand. Obviously, the movement towards smaller political units is alive and kicking both in Pakistan and in India. The parallels with Bahawalpur/Seraiki and Telangana are fascinating. Maybe this Ramzan will herald a gift to Telangana as well!
Gautam Pingle is director of Centre for Public Policy, Governance and Performance, Administrative Staff College of India
Source: The Asian Age

Pakistan floods one year on: Your stories

It's been a year since Pakistan was hit by the worst floods in its history. At least 18 million people were affected, from Swat in the north to Sindh in the south. Across the country there was massive infrastructural damage and individuals struggled simply to find food.

Here BBC News website users speak about how the floods have changed their lives and what more needs to be done.

Ahsan Tajik: 'I think the government is reluctant to help'

Ahsan's house in Nowshera was submerged by flood water in 2010

 

Nowshera in north-west Pakistan was one of the first areas hit by rising waters in 2010

Things have certainly improved but rehabilitation has been very slow.
When the floods came last year, my two-storey house was completely submerged.
We had to move out for a month and we lost everything - furniture, possessions, electronics.
There was no electricity, so when we started to clean up, we had to use generators. The house was knee-deep in mud.
We are back at home now and although there are more monsoon rains at the moment, things are under control.

“Start Quote

The NGOs are working very well at regeneration ”

End Quote Ahsan Tajik

I think the government is reluctant to help. They have issued a debit card (known as a "Watan card") which dispenses 20,000 rupees ($230) to flood victims.

However, not everyone has received one of these. We didn't get one despite having a house 7.5m (24ft) deep in water.
The NGOs are working very well at regeneration and providing homes, food and non-food items to the people who have lost their houses. They have certainly played a major role in Nowshera.
There are still some people living in the camps here but most have been shifted back. It is very difficult living in those conditions - no proper management of food, waste and washing facilities. It would be so good if everyone could be rehoused.
The government has been more organised this year and announced a month ago that the floods were coming.
Last time there was no warning, so at least people are better prepared this time. Some are even leaving their homes in preparation.

Omar Ashan Khan: 'People in remote areas are cold and hungry'

Omar Ashan Khan set up charity Survive International to bring aid to flooded remote communities

 

Omar Khan with Abdul Hamid, who lost 14 family members in a landslide in Shangla

When the flooding started last year, a businessman I knew asked me to help him deliver some aid in Nowshera.
I took leave off work and we went there with 11 trucks full of rations, thinking I'd then go back to my job.
But while I was there, a man rang me from the more remote district of Shangla.
He told me that bodies had been floating down the streams for three days and nobody was coming to help - no NGOs, no government officials, even the military wasn't going there.
So I decided to go and and help.

“Start Quote

I often walk for five or eight hours to reach villages with food”

End Quote Omar Ashan Khan

It was a long and difficult journey, including 11 hours on a tractor, and when I got there, I saw a huge landslide that had destroyed many houses.

Semantics of terrorism

WHEN we discuss issues that have to do with terrorism we often tend to avoid using the correct word or description. Therefore, the first casualty is the truth.
In order to remain in the safe world of non-controversial matters, we avoid discussing the real drivers of terrorism. Instead, we identify hunger, poverty and unemployment as the causes of terrorism. An analysis under this framework does not pay dividends; one must identify the real motivating force that drives terrorism if we are to create the right policies.
We fall into this trap because our minds are hardwired by culture, religion, history and our specific national narrative that forces us to view objects from a preconceived angle. For example, as soon as the recent tragic killings began in Norway, yellow journalism ran amok initially. The western media as well as Al Jazeera called it a jihadist attack; some even accused the
Ansar al-Jihad al-Alami organisation as the instigator.
Police finally charged Breivik, an ‘ethnic Norwegian’, with a history of far-right and anti-Islamic views as the accused. This underscores the point that the media is not neutral. All the current self-praise about being rational and enlightened is imaginary. The East and West have both created the ‘other’ as our Neanderthal forefathers did before us. Similarly, we write evasively when we discuss the causes of terrorism.
The war on terrorism is a phenomenon that prevents clear thinking. The Norwegian tragedy showed that when a society is threatened by any danger the impulsive reaction is to accuse the cultural ‘enemy’. In Western Europe, until the Second World War, the Jew was the accepted scapegoat. The new ‘enemy’ is now the Muslim in Europe and the US.
If western societies come under further economic or security stress then Muslims will be the scapegoats. The recent rubbishing of the Kashmir Action Committee in Washington is another example of a similar turf and cultural war between the ISI and the CIA and FBI. All major intelligence agencies fund lobbies to enlarge their influence within an important country; KAC was apparently doing that for Pakistan. The FBI wants to reduce Pakistan’s footprint in Washington.
In a similar manner, in our attempt to avoid taking controversial positions, some analysts claim that hunger and food shortage leads to terrorism. Clearly, the shortage of food in households is due to the lack of income. Another faulty conclusion is that poverty leads to terrorism. Such statements conceal the real forces driving terrorism. If the causes are denied then solutions cannot be found.
Research conducted in Swat last year provides some important indicators. For instance, it was noted that neither poverty nor the deteriorating provision of social services, nor the concentration of land in the hands of a small elite were sufficient causes by themselves of the rise of terrorism in Swat. What then is the cause?
It was found that the increase in the idea of the threat to Islam from the invasion of Afghanistan by the US in 2001, coupled with the use of Pakistan’s military against tribes in Fata in 2004, convinced the religiously inclined population in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the tribal areas that the invasion of Afghanistan was a prelude to an attack on Pakistan’s identity of which religion is an important component.
The melding of a separate regional Islamic identity anchored in jihad began with the arrival of the formidable Islamic warrior Syed Ahmed Shaheed from Patna in 1826 to what is now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The call for jihad was made after the East India Company won the Battle of Plassey in 1757 and the conservative Muslims concluded (correctly as it turned out) that Britain was planning to displace Muslim rule in India.
The Islamic ramparts in India were strengthened by Shah Waliullah’s family. One of their important contributions in association with other ulema was to dispatch 800 warriors from eastern India to the Pakhtun belt to organise the jihad; first against the Sikhs and later the British who replaced the former as rulers in 1849. In an interesting interregnum in this episode, Peshawar was declared an Islamic emirate in 1829 under Syed Ahmed before the Sikhs wrested it back.
Malakand and the surrounding areas formed the core region of manoeuvre of Syed Ahmed’s jihad that was etched in the collective memory and is revived whenever the people are convinced that their Islamic identity is under threat. In the survey mentioned earlier, 87 per cent of the respondents said that they began to support jihad due to the persuasion of local
religious personalities.
Later, the militants solidified their hold over society in Swat by the use of terror as a control mechanism. The local religious leaders were assisted by the TTP and jihadi outfits from Punjab. Radicalism was fanned and acts of terrorism were committed to prevent the government from falling completely under the sway of US policies.
Secondly, the people in Swat could not be won over by religious rhetoric alone. The militants obtained support for their cause by linking the current events with the past historic, religious and cultural experiences of the region.
Religiously inclined militants explain that the approach followed in Fata and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was the best method of containing the enthusiasm for the West shown by the government and Pakistan’s westernised elite. This then appears to be the foremost driver of terrorism in Swat. It could also be the explanation for the wider terrorism in Pakistan and the unending war in Afghanistan.
The policy recommendation emerging from this discussion clearly is that either the government
should align its policies with national aspirations or expect to face violence.
The writer is chairman of the Regional Institute of Policy Research in Peshawar.
azizkhalid@gmail.com
Source: Dawn News

A shaky dialogue

IT looked good, it sounded good — and in the fraught world of Pak-India relations, that was probably good enough, for now.
The young Pakistani princess outshone her dapper Indian counterpart; the media was agog; and the outside world looked on approvingly. So are the constituencies for peace in India and Pakistan back with a bang? Not quite.
What this week has been about is atmospherics and optics. Make the environment in which talks are conducted more congenial and make all the noises necessary to reassure the other side of interest in talks — without ceding anything meaningful on any front.
Improving atmospherics and optics is nothing to scoff at when you’re talking about a six-decade-old problem to rival any other on the global stage. But Pakistan and India have been down this road many times before. It is reasonable to ask, will this time be any different?
On the Indian side, the peace constituency appears to have been bolstered by at least four things. The Indian PM and his national security adviser are still keen on better ties with Pakistan. The US is pushing for an improvement in Pak-India relations because of the potential regional dividends.
India has realised that the post-Mumbai attempt to diplomatically isolate Pakistan was a bad idea because the rest of the world doesn’t see Pakistan through an Indian lens. And India wants to see the Mumbai perpetrators brought to justice, something unlikely to ever occur if India disengages Pakistan.
But the first real public test for the peace constituency in India will come when it has to push domestically for a deal on some of the mid-level stuff, a deal on Sir Creek perhaps or more improbably, Siachen.
Another significant opportunity will come in private, when the contours of the post-American future of Afghanistan begin to get fleshed out in the months ahead. If India and Pakistan accommodate each other there, or at least refrain from intractable stubbornness, the dialogue between India and Pakistan would get a boost.Sitting here in Pakistan, though, it’s difficult to predict whether the supporters of dialogue on the Indian side will prevail or not.
Not that it’s any easier predicting stuff about the Pakistani side.
Hina Rabbani may bring a touch of soft power, Salman Bashir may talk tough, Shahid Malik may look tough, but the real power lies in the hands of the generals. And it’s hard to say what they are ultimately thinking. At least this much is clear, though: keeping relations with India on the boil at the moment isn’t in the army’s interest.
With so many irons in the fire — fending off the US, salvaging a domestic reputation tattered in recent months, trying to recover internal security, figuring out what’s next in Afghanistan, cash drying up — stoking the fires with India doesn’t really make sense.
But India-centricness remains. The generals’ stripes are too deep to scrub out and a ‘cold peace’ is the most the generals have been able to contemplate in terms of concessions to an opponent they viscerally mistrust and are suspicious of.
Cold peace would amount to conjoined twins staring off in different directions, interacting with the rest of the world on separate terms, ignoring cooperative solutions that would benefit both and each quietly watching for any harm directed its way from the other side.
So, are the generals just buying time and space for themselves by letting the civilians and bureaucrats talk peace but keeping them on a very short leash, hoping ultimately to return to competing strategically or perhaps forcing a cold peace?
History suggests the generals are unlikely to have changed their stripes. And with the civilian government having surrendered the national security and foreign policy domains to the uniformed lot, there’s little pressure on the generals to change their minds, if not mindsets.
Reality, however, can have its own way of intervening.
We threaten India, India threatens us — historically, the spill-over of conflict has been limited. But with the addition of nuclear weapons, the rise of India and the terrorism problem in Pakistan, along with sorting out Afghanistan in the medium term, the relationship has taken on a new dimension.
When the relationship between India and Pakistan was at its lowest ebb following the stand-off over prosecution of the Mumbai plotters in Pakistan, it was the US that was essentially keeping the two sides talking to each other.
And as far as the US is concerned, economic integration of the region, stretching from Central Asia to India with Afghanistan and Pakistan in between could be just the right tonic to reduce strategic tensions in the region.
The generals have always resisted economic integration with India, arguing that political issues have to be resolved before economic opportunities can be tapped.
But as the economy continues to sag and the effects of that continue to spread deeper and wider, business and trade interests may become more vocal in their demands. Economic integration — trade and investment opportunities from roaring India — remains the one element that has the potential of transforming the relationship between India and Pakistan, and undercutting the generals’ view of the relationship.
Interestingly, an attempt within the last year by big business to convince the generals of the merits of trade with India was initially met with a cautious nod of approval. But then, when the plan was ready to be unveiled to the public, the generals pulled the plug.
So as atmospherics and optics are improved in the latest round of dialogue, perhaps there is also an opening for a significant and long-lasting success: more trade and investment between India and Pakistan.
The writer is a member of staff.
cyril.a@gmail.com
Source: Dawn News

Open war?

While Wednesday’s stand-off between the executive and the judiciary had left many expecting charged proceedings on Thursday, there were few fireworks in Courtroom No 1 as the Supreme Court gave the government yet another opportunity to submit the prime minister’s reply regarding the reinstatement of FIA official Hussain Asghar and the removal of Sohail Ahmed from his post of Establishment Secretary. This came after the attorney general assured the court that he had personally spoken to the prime minister and requested the court to grant him time to submit his reply. The day before, as news came in that Sohail Ahmed was made Officer on Special Duty (OSD), the court had said the move was meant to ‘punish’ Ahmed for obeying court orders

In the background to the court’s orders, government circles argue they are being hassled by an acrimonious court and in fact held a federal cabinet meeting on Wednesday to discuss the court’s “interference in the executive domain.” Babar Awan accused the court of being biased against the federal government and alluded that coercive measures were being used to get the court’s decisions implemented. The prime minister himself responded emotionally to the SC decisions and said there was a limit to everything and the court was now encroaching upon, and undermining, his authority as chief executive. This is an unfair charge since the chief justice has explained many times that he respects the discretionary powers of the prime minister; but what the prime minister seems to have forgotten is that under Article 190 of the Constitution he is duty bound to aid the SC in the implementation of its orders. Instead, he has come to be seen as stone-facedly impeding the court’s affairs. Realising the domain of executive authority but keeping in view the peculiar facts and circumstances of the Haj and NICL cases, instead of passing orders itself, the SC has always first sent the issue to the government through the attorney general. It is only when that has repeatedly failed to bear results that the court has examined the administrative orders in exercise of the powers of Judicial Review and passed orders in both cases. The court has given the government countless chances to prove that it is interested in accountability and rule of law but it is now increasingly clear that the federal government has launched an open war not just against the judiciary but also against the very principle and practice of accountability itself.
Source: The News

Fat is more dangerous for South Asians: study

WASHINGTON: Weight gain can be more dangerous for South Asians than for Caucasians because the fat clings to organs like the liver instead of the skin, said a study published Thursday.

The main difference between Caucasians and South Asians comes down to how much space there is to store fat in the body and where it holes up, said Sonia Anand, lead author of the study in the public access journal PLoS One.

"South Asians have less space to store fat below the skin than white Caucasians," said Anand, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at McMaster University.

"Their excess fat, therefore, overflows to ectopic compartments, in the abdomen and liver where it may affect function."

When extra fats clings to the organs, it can cause high glucose and lipid levels, which are risk factors for heart disease.

That means South Asians with a weight and height ratio, or body mass index (BMI), that would be considered in the healthy range for Caucasians may merit screening for conditions like diabetes and coronary artery disease.

The Canada-based study recruited 108 people in all, some first- or second-generation immigrants from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, or Bangladesh and the rest Caucasian subjects whose ancestry could be traced to Europe.

They underwent a series of measurements and tests to assess body fat, cholesterol and sugar levels.

"Young, apparently healthy South Asians have greater metabolic impairment
compared to white Caucasians who tend to develop metabolic changes at higher levels of obesity and at a more advanced age," said the study.

South Asians tended to have lower HDL (or good) cholesterol, higher total body fat but lower levels of abdominal fat, fattier livers and less lean muscle mass than Caucasians of similar age, height and weight.

"This study helps explain why South Asians experience weight-related health problems at lower BMI levels than Caucasians," said Arya Sharma, director of the Canadian Obesity Network and a co-author of the study.

"For the clinician, this also means that individuals of South Asian heritage need to be screened for the presence of heart disease and diabetes at lower BMIs." (AFP)

Source: The News

‘We are as vulnerable as Kabul’

Julio Francis Ribeiro is a retired police officer famous for his courage, integrity and common sense. He was honoured with the Padma Bhushan. Mr Ribeiro has been commissioner of Mumbai (then Bombay) police, and played a key role in tackling the Punjab insurgency in the 1980s. Later he served as India’s ambassador to
Romania. In this email interview with Dippy Vankani, he accords the pivotal role to developing better human intelligence to deal with the issue of terrorism, especially in a city like Mumbai.

Why is Mumbai targeted again and again?
Mumbai is targeted again and again because terrorists only choose places that are internationally known and where they will garner the maximum publicity. Terrorism is sustained on publicity. Publicity is like oxygen for terrorism.

After the 9/11 attacks, there have been no terror attacks in America because of its policing apparatus, but Mumbai continues to face terror strikes time and again. How different are we from Karachi, Kabul or Baghdad?
You cannot compare the situation of Mumbai with that of the United States. We live in a very dangerous part of the world whereas the US is far away from the hub of the Islamic world. We are as vulnerable as Karachi and Kabul since the epicentre of jihad terrorism is now in South Asia.

Is there any mechanism that can make the city immune to such attacks in the future?
Unless terrorism is laid to rest, as happened in Punjab, we will continue to experience such attacks. In Punjab, terrorism ended when the Jat Sikh farmers turned against the terrorists who belonged to their own community. When our Muslim brothers in Mumbai will give information to the police about suspicious movements or suspicious persons in their localities, that would sound the death knell of terrorism of the jihadi variety in our city.

Do you think that the underworld and terror outfits make a lethal combination in the current terror scenario?
The underworld and terror outfits are intrinsically different, though some criminal elements do join the ranks of the terrorists after some time. The underworld flourishes by bribing and corrupting the police and politicians. Terrorists only pump bullets into both. They do not bribe.

How powerful do you think is the Mumbai police commissioner, now with units like the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) going out of the purview of that position? How different is the role of the commissioner now from it was in your time?
I did not know that the ATS has got out of the purview of the Mumbai police commissioner! This is news to me. The ATS has to keep the police commissioner in the loop and keep him informed of their findings at all times. This is happening even at present.
The difference between my time as commissioner and now is that over the years values have changed and politicians have also changed. New parties like the Shiv Sena have emerged and at one stage even formed the government in the state. They had a different — and I may say a totally unconventional — view of governance. It did not do the police force much good. The police in my time was under my control. The control of the commissioner at present cannot be as total because the power centre has shifted to the home department. This is not a good thing for security concerns and for the public in general.

The high court has recently asked officers to refrain from planting theories in the media in sensitive cases. What is your view on this?
I am happy that the high court has asked officers to refrain from planting theories in the media in sensitive cases. The problem is that there is proliferation of electronic media in particular, and everybody is in search of stories and sound bytes. Even junior officers are now being approached and they find it very thrilling to have their faces on TV. This has caused a lot of confusion and speculation about investigations of crime. Also, many anchors have become detectives and are examining witnesses even before they are cross-examined in the court. The high court should come down heavily on them.

Too many agencies are now involved in investigation, including Central agencies like the National Investigation Agency and the National Security Guard. Do you think that too many cooks might spoil the broth?
I agree that the number of Central agencies has increased tremendously over the years. Every time there is a crisis, which the government finds difficult to explain to the people, the only answer is to constitute a new organisation. More people are of course employed, but the results are never apparent. So, too many cooks are spoiling the broth. They are getting into each other’s hair, and egos are clashing all the time. This is not good for the public cause.

The police is now equipped with technological assistance like CCTV footage and mobile phone surveillance. Do you think that the focus is now shifting from human intelligence and the police is relying more on these scientific resources?
Technological intelligence can never substitute human intelligence. Both are required. CCTV and mobile phone surveillance should be left to Central agencies, but police stations should concentrate on human intelligence and should befriend the minority community, in particular by treating them with dignity and respect that is the right of every citizen. When that happens, terrorism will be dealt a death blow.

Do you think recommendations of the Ram Pradhan Commission, set up to review the government’s response to the November 26, 2008, Mumbai attacks, came to grips with the issue and would help foil attacks, if implemented? Could Wednesday’s attacks have been averted in the light of these recommendations?
The Ram Pradhan Commission largely dealt with the issue of sharing of intelligence inputs between various agencies. They had found that the inputs were not shared or, if shared, were not considered important. That was the main problem during the 26/11 attacks. So they made several recommendations on that, which are now followed by the agencies.
They had also made several recommendations on acquiring certain equipment to deal with terror attacks, and most of the equipment has been acquired by the state. Some of the equipment might not have been acquired so far only because of procedural delays like getting quotations etc. But I must point out that the commission’s recommendations would not have helped in averting the attacks on Mumbai. The only way it could have been averted is through human intelligence.

Source: The Asian Age

A halfway house

With the exception of 9/11, American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and Princess Diana’s death, no live TV coverage has so fixated the viewers across the world, or at least in English-speaking countries, as the recent “firestorm” unleashed by the monstrous phone hacking by Rupert Murdoch’s mighty media empire.
A remarkable feature of the whole squalid episode was that though there were street demonstrations against the media mogul, and hatred for him was manifest, these were secondary. Primarily, it was Parliament that grasped the nettle. Prime Minister David Cameron was clearly vulnerable and this showed. For he had not only employed as his director of communication Andy Coulson, a tainted former editor of News of the World, but also attracted odium because of his proximity to Mr Murdoch and his trusted minions. The Opposition, led by Ed Miliband of the Labour Party, had found an opportunity to push the Prime Minister and the government to the wall. Yet, the parliamentary battle on the highly emotive event was fought, broadly though not entirely, with the necessary decorum. No less importantly, it was before a parliamentary committee, and not any other agency, that the most powerful media magnate in the world grovelled, calling it the “most humble day” of his life, though he passed on all blame to others.
In the House of Commons there was barracking only twice — first when Mr Cameron was defending himself spiritedly and later when Mr Miliband was targeting Mr Cameron for offering only “a half-apology”, not a full apology, for his “catastrophic error” of hiring Mr Coulson and “bringing him into the heart of the Downing Street”. On both occasions, the Speaker rose and told the members that each side must listen to the other without creating any disturbance. He was obeyed even as verbal slings and arrows continued to fly across the floor.
Indeed, there was no shouting and screaming even when Mr Cameron, while accepting that he had seen Mr Murdoch and his lieutenants quite often, added delicately: “(But) I can assure the House that I have never held a slumber party or seen Rebekah Brooks (the CEO of News Corp and a close confidante of Mr Murdoch) in her pyjamas.” (This clearly was a hit at his predecessor, Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whose wife had invited Ms Brooks to a “slumber party”.)
Riveted to all this I kept wondering whether honourable members of Indian Parliament were watching the vigorous two-hour session of questions and answers and, if so, were they drawing any lessons from it. Of course, another gnawing thought in my mind was that the Indian media, both print and electronic, is no less crass, craven and compromised than its British counterpart. In fact, it is doubtful if media in any other country is tarred with the brush of such infamy as “paid news”. Therefore, it must also do soul searching.
That, however, will have to be discussed separately and later because, for the present, attention has to be focused on Parliament. It is not only the apex legislature of the country but also the centrepiece of institutions that underpin democracy. The bitter truth is that the Indian Parliament has been debased, systematically, deliberately and persistently to a point where it is perilously close to its nadir.
What an irony it is that this was not always so. Since Independence until the end of the Nehru era, this country’s Parliament earned worldwide admiration. In the mid-1950s, Professor W. Morris-James of Britain wrote a book to say that though India’s Parliament seemed to be a “sounding box” of Nehru, it was also a “Grand National Assembly” where all national issues were discussed “fully and freely”. It should be, he added, a “role model” for the newly emerging nations of the Third World.
On a cold December evening in 1957, our Parliament proved the professor right. Feroze Gandhi, a Congress member and the son-in-law of the Prime Minister, in the course of a special debate demanded by him, had exposed devastatingly the Life Insurance Corporation’s questionable investments, totalling over a crore of rupees, in the dubious firms of an industrialist named Mundhra. Nehru’s response was to applaud the “majesty of Parliament” — how strange these words sound in the present context — and to appoint a commission of inquiry, headed by eminent Justice M.C. Chagla. The judicial report came within two months. As a result of it the then finance minister, T.T. Krishnamachari, had to resign and several distinguished civil servants such as H.M. Patel lost their jobs.
Sadly, the practice of stonewalling any demand for investigation into charges of corruption began in the time of Indira Gandhi, and, as a consequence, so did the pernicious practice of noisy disruption of parliamentary proceedings. On one occasion when Indira Gandhi refused to share with the Opposition the findings of the Central Bureau of Investigation, so tall a leader as Morarji Desai threatened to sit on a dharna inside the House indefinitely. She skilfully worked out a compromise, the like of which was witnessed again. The stonewalling pattern continued, deteriorated over time and has now acquired frighteningly destructive proportions. Over the last decade the almost daily disruption of Parliament on any pretext has become routine.
Let me assert that had Parliament been engaged, in recent months, in a full and unhindered discussion on egregious corruption, the source of nationwide anger, there might never have been the Anna Hazare fast at Jantar Mantar or the less savoury Ramdev drama.
Every single party is equally responsible for the lamentable situation. When in power, all parties, big and small, have one stand that they reverse immediately after losing power. Just look at the BJP’s contradictory approaches to corruption in Delhi and in Bengaluru! The result is the almost complete undermining of Parliament’s dignity, authority and efficacy. If this state of affairs goes on unchecked, something will have to give. Countless were the occasions when, from the Chair in the Lok Sabha, Somnath Chatterjee warned of exactly this. In India’s neighbourhood Parliaments have often been locked by the military. Must the elected “representatives of the people” themselves do so here?
Source: The Asian Age

Delusional liberals

International affairs all too often seems a weighty subject, full of complexity and nuance, laden with portents of tension and conflict. No wonder it lends itself to overly solemn treatment, full of abstract analyses and recondite allusions:
the relations between countries, it is usually assumed, cannot be understood through the recitation of trivial anecdotes.
True enough. And yet sometimes a minor incident, a tempest in a teacup, can illuminate broader foreign policy challenges. Something of this nature happened this week, when Aatish Taseer, the estranged son (by an Indian mother) of the recently-assassinated governor of Pakistani Punjab, Salman Taseer, wrote a searing column in the Wall Street Journal, with the provocative title “Why My Father Hated India”, on the pathologies of hatred that in his view animated Pakistan’s attitude to our country.
“To understand the Pakistani obsession with India, to get a sense of its special edge — its hysteria — it is necessary to understand the rejection of India, its culture and past, that lies at the heart of the idea of Pakistan,” Aatish Taseer averred. “This is not merely an academic question. Pakistan’s animus toward India is the cause of both its unwillingness to fight Islamic extremism and its active complicity in undermining the aims of its ostensible ally, the United States.”
He went on to make his point in language that was both sharp and, at least to this reader, heartfelt and accurate. I do not know Aatish Taseer, nor had I met his colourful father, but I have admired the young man’s writing, particularly his poignant ruminations on Salman Taseer’s murder by his Islamist bodyguard earlier this year. So I was surprised to see the outraged reactions his article provoked from Pakistani liberal journalists. A number of them whose ideas I have appreciated and whom I “follow” on Twitter — the likes of Marvi Sirmed and Mosharraf Zaidi, widely-respected progressive thinkers both — reacted with rage and derision. One of them, the estimable Ejaz Haider, who has penned some courageous pieces in the Pakistani press criticising his own country, went so far as to author an entire column to disparage and deconstruct Aatish Taseer’s.
Young Taseer had, in his piece, put the onus on the Pakistani Army for that country’s problems, and particularly for diverting the vast amounts of American aid it has received (he underestimated it at “$11 billion since 9/11”) to arming itself against India. He added, powerfully, words I would have gladly put my own name to: “In Afghanistan, it has sought neither security nor stability but rather a backyard, which — once the Americans leave — might provide Pakistan with ‘strategic depth’ against India. In order to realise these objectives, the Pakistani Army has led the US in a dance, in which it had to be seen to be fighting the war on terror, but never so much as to actually win it, for its extension meant the continuing flow of American money. All this time the Army kept alive a double game, in which some terror was fought and some — such as Laskhar-e-Tayyaba’s 2008 attack on Mumbai — actively supported.
“The Army’s duplicity was exposed decisively this May,” he went on, “with the killing of Osama bin Laden in the garrison town of Abbottabad. It was only the last and most incriminating charge against an institution whose activities over the years have included the creation of the Taliban, the financing of international terrorism and the running of a lucrative trade in nuclear secrets. This Army, whose might has always been justified by the imaginary threat from India, has been more harmful to Pakistan than to anybody else. It has consumed annually a quarter of the country’s wealth, undermined one civilian government after another and enriched itself through a range of economic interests, from bakeries and shopping malls to huge property holdings.”
It is hard to imagine anyone in India, however sympathetic they might be to Pakistan, dissenting from this view of the malign role of the Pakistani military. In our naïveté, we also tend to assume that Pakistani liberals would agree with us, seeing the salvation of their land lying in greater democracy and development, free of the stranglehold of the world’s most lavishly-funded military (in terms of percentage of national resources and GDP consumed by any Army on the planet). Alas, judging by their reactions to Taseer’s article, this seems not to be the case.
In his rebuttal, Ejaz Haider goes into great detail about the strength and deployment patterns of the Indian Army, as if to justify the Pakistani military’s behaviour. But there is no recognition whatsoever that India’s defence preparedness is prompted entirely by the fact that Pakistan has launched four incursions into our territory, in 1947, 1965, 1971 and 1999; that India is a status quo power that manifestly seeks nothing more than to be allowed to grow and develop in peace, free from the attentions of the Pakistani military and the militants and terrorists it sponsors; and bluntly, that there is not and cannot be an “Indian threat” to Pakistan, simply because there is absolutely nothing Pakistan possesses that India wants. If proof had to be adduced for this no doubt unflattering assessment, it lies in India’s decision at Tashkent in 1966 to give “back” to Pakistan every square inch of territory captured by our brave soldiers in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, including the strategic Haji Pir Pass, all of which is land we claim to be ours. If we do not even insist on retaining what we see as our own territory, held by Pakistan since 1948 but captured fair and square in battle, why on earth would we want anything else from Pakistan?
No, the “Indian threat” is merely a useful device cynically exploited by the Pakistani military to justify their power (and their grossly disproportionate share of Pakistan’s national assets). But Pakistani liberals are particularly prone to the desire to prove themselves true nationalists; it is the best way to ensure that their otherwise heretical opinions are not completely discredited by the men in uniform who hold the reins of power in the state.
As this otherwise minor editorial spat demonstrates, Indians need to put aside their illusions that there are liberal partners for us on the other side of the border who echo our diagnosis of their plight and share our desire to defenestrate their military. Nor should we be surprised: a Pakistani liberal is, after all, a Pakistani before he is a liberal.
The author is a member of Parliament from Kerala’s Thiruvananthapuram constituency
Source: The Asian Age

Another key ally of Afghan Prime Minister murdered

ANOTHER key political ally of Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been murdered, the third killed by insurgent assassins this month.
The mayor of the volatile city of Kandahar, Ghulam Haidar Hamidi, was killed in a suicide bomb attack yesterday.
The mayor - a target of previous assassination attempts - was killed when the bomber detonated his explosives in the courtyard of the city hall, where Mr Hamidi was making an address.

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The bomb was reportedly hidden in the man's turban. The Taliban yesterday claimed responsibility for the killing.
Mr Hamidi was regarded as a loyal ally of the embattled President, describing him as ''a close family friend''.
He was an accountant in suburban Washington for more than 20 years before returning to his native Kandahar, where he won a reputation - and enemies - fighting corruption and the city's drug lords.
Mr Hamidi said he was aware, but unafraid, of the dangers of his office.
''One day you have to die, you will die in the US by cancer, by car accident, by some other reason,'' he said two years ago. ''And you will die in Kandahar by bullet or by bomb. What's the difference?''
Mr Hamidi's murder is widely believed to be part of a broader political campaign by the Taliban to assassinate high-profile and powerful men.
His death follows the murders of Jan Mohammad Khan, a former governor of the southern state of Oruzgan and a key adviser to the President, and Ahmad Wali Karzai, the President's half-brother and the man regarded as the most powerful politician in Afghanistan's south.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/world/another-key-ally-of-afghan-prime-minister-murdered-20110727-1i06t.html#ixzz1TNB2CcMY

Challenges ahead for India reforms

 

Twenty years ago Manmohan Singh, an Oxford trained economist, invoked Victor Hugo to usher in economic reforms in India. "No power on Earth can stop an idea whose time has come," he said. Mr Singh was the finance minister in a wobbly minority government and an unlikely agent to set off seismic economic changes in a country used to an appalling 3.5% "Hindu rate of growth".

But, as with most things in India, Mr Singh's reforms in 1991 were a response to a grave crisis. The country was wilting under a $70m debt, foreign exchange reserves were down to two weeks of imports, and the central bank was pawning gold as collateral for a loan. Earlier in the year Rajiv Gandhi had been assassinated by a Tamil Tiger suicide bomber on the general election campaign. It was also a time, as leading analyst Swaminathan S Anklesaria Iyer writes in a terrific paper, when India was viewed "globally as a bottomless pit for foreign aid, periodically hit by food and exchange crises and hamstrung by an immense web of controls imposed in the holy name of socialism and then used by politicians to line their pockets and build patronage networks". The country was variously described as a caged tiger and a sleeping elephant. China was already a tiger economy.
Mr Singh cut taxes and dismantled tariffs, scrapped business licences and quotas, removed and relaxed controls on imports, technology and foreign exchange, and liberalised the tightly-controlled financial sector.
Twenty years on, most believe that the reforms have done a world of good to India. The economy has quadrupled in size. Per capita income has grown nearly six times. Inflows of foreign investment have risen exponentially. Reserves are upwards of $300bn now, up from a paltry $5.8m. Exports have shot up from $18bn to $245bn. There are more than 800 million telephone subscribers today, up from fewer than a million. India makes nearly 3 million passenger cars, up from less than a million. The number of domestic air passengers has grown six times.

 

What will the future be for hundreds of millions who live in poverty?

The reforms also unleashed the entrepreneurial spirits of the "caged" Indian. The new economy has thrived - software has become a powerhouse industry. Most importantly, a substantial middle class has come into being between what one political scientist called a "small elite and a large impoverished mass". The newly confident middle class have gleefully abandoned Gandhian austerity for hearty consumerism, splurging on goods and services. India has produced the cheapest car, and offers the cheapest telephone calls, as well as heart and eye surgeries. It weathered the recession gamely, clocking nearly 7% growth during the worst of the downturn. Domestic savings remain robust.

Afghan boy's strangling symbolises Helmand challenge

British forces handed over security of Helmand's largest city, Lashkar Gah, to Afghan control last week. For both Afghanistan and Nato it marked an important step.

For Nato it heralded the beginning of the end; the start of the transition process that will eventually see all international combat troops leaving the country by 2015.
For Afghanistan it is the first test of being able to stand up on its own two feet.
In a speech on Tuesday the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, said it showed that Afghan forces were taking responsibility for securing the country for its people. But President Karzai has also warned of hard work and sacrifices ahead.
Recent violence in Helmand underscores the challenges that remain.
Afghan police were engaged in two separate gun battles with insurgents on Monday.
Fighting in Nad Ali district lasted for five hours and ended with six insurgents being killed.

 

British soldiers first deployed to Helmand in March 2006

Another brazen attack on a police checkpoint in Musa Qala left 14 insurgents and two Afghan police officers dead.
Peace does not necessarily follow transition.

The insurgents rang Daoud saying he would have to handover his green police pick-up truck, for the safe return of his son”

British forces too are still targeting a resilient Taliban and wider insurgency in Helmand.

Over the weekend a British army Apache helicopter opened fire with its 30mm cannon on an insurgent travelling on a motorbike in the area of Nahr e Saraj. The bullets also hit five young children working in fields nearby.
The UK's Ministry of Defence has expressed deep regret and ordered an investigation.
But it is by no means the first time innocent civilians have been caught up in the fighting, or mistakenly hit in Apache attacks.
The United Nations in Afghanistan estimates that, so far this year, 79 civilians have been killed in Nato airstrikes, with 44 of those deaths involving Apache helicopters.
'Brutal, cowardly crime' But there has been one incident, more than any other, that illustrates the brutality of this 10-year-old war, and the depths of the violence that still exists in Helmand today, despite the hopes of transition and the continuing presence of international troops.

The Taliban insist they did not kill Ibrahim

Last Friday a boy was kidnapped from his home in Gereshk by a group of insurgents. His name was Ibrahim.
Officials said he was just eight years old, though his family say he had just turned 12. Either way he was an innocent bystander in this conflict.
The insurgents told Ibrahim his father had been injured in a car accident and promised to take him to the local hospital.
In reality they wanted Ibrahim to blackmail his dad, a local police officer called Daoud.
While they held Ibrahim the insurgents rang Daoud saying he would have to handover his green police pick-up truck, for the safe return of his son.
At first Daoud thought it was a joke.
When the voice on his phone started swearing, he simply refused.
The gang of insurgents were deadly serious. Days later Ibrahim's body was found dumped in a ditch. He had been strangled.
The Taliban have denied responsibility, but Daoud is certain they were behind his son's murder. He asks who else would have wanted a truck with police markings?
President Karzai called it "a brutal and cowardly crime", not acceptable in any religion or culture.
For those who have doubts as to whether the violence will ever end, it can only add to the sense of despair over Afghanistan's future.
It will come as no surprise that Daoud now wants to leave Gereshk to move somewhere safer.
But he still wants to carry on serving in the local police, as long as he has the support of his colleagues.
It is the one hope for the future of Afghanistan and Helmand: That those who are the victims of such brutal acts remain unbowed.
Source: BBC News

How to Brand Your Business Online

Social media has taken the Internet market by storm, and in fact, is considered THE way to brand your business online by most experts.  But many don’t realize that when branding a business online, there are strict guidelines to follow.  They assume that because the social media platform is so hip, that anything goes—but those are the people who end up branding their business with a bad name.  If you’re looking to brand your business online in a way that will not only make you memorable to your potential market, but also increase your sales, here are the rules that will ensure your success.

Make a Connection

People today want to do business with those who they are connected to.  Gone are the days when a business would keep a polite distance from their customers, serving only to educate them on their products.  Today’s consumers want to know that you’re interested in the same things they are, that you support their causes, and are vocal about the issues that matter to them.  In short, if you want to brand your business online in the best possible light, you must first understand what drives your potential customers, and then use social media to engage them about their concerns.

Don’t Get Too Casual

There is a right way and a wrong way to make that connection and brand your business.  Many newbie’s to social media assume that anything goes in this fresh environment, and while that may be true for some, it doesn’t apply to businesses or professionals.  Think of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s recent gaff when he thought it was funny to wave around a large knife while telling his constitutes that he would have to cut their government services.  To his target audience, he crossed a line that a professional never should. 
Instead, you should remain professional in your marketing efforts while keeping in mind what matters most to your target audience.  Then present it in a way that will appeal to them, while establishing yourself as an expert on the subject.

Remain Consistent

Another common mistake when branding your business is not establishing a regular pattern that your fans can come to expect.  Many start out with a bang, and dwindle down to a few measly Tweets or Facebook entries a month.  In order to brand your business and become relevant and socially connected, you must be consistent and as loyal to your fans as you want them to be to you.

Admit Your Weaknesses

Not everyone is a marketing Guru, and not everyone can write effective blog posts or even Tweet copy.  There is a whole world out there of freelancer contractors who are experts at the different aspects of branding a business.  For instance, you might hire one person to determine your ideal keywords, another to write your copy, and still another to promote your business on the social media platform.  If you’re interested in building a powerful marketing team like this, check out the sites online that allow you to build such a team for free, such as freelancer.com.
Branding your business should be on your top ten list in 2011.  While it has always been a part of marketing, establishing an identify for your business is now more important than ever.  Today’s consumer is smarter, hipper and wants to do business with people they know care about them and their world.  But if you’re going to get in on the game—and be successful at it—you’ll need to learn the rules of this quickly changing platform, because one wrong move, and you run the risk of being branded negatively in an instant.
source:business.com.au

Nuclear ‘deterrence’ & stability

Surely, no philosophical discourse is needed to understand or agree that nuclear weapons are never meant to be used. They are only a means of ‘deterrence’ and to an extent seem to have served this purpose during the peak Cold War years. But one must also agree that the risk of a nuclear catastrophe will continue to loom over our heads until the universally acclaimed goal of ‘Global Zero’ is accomplished.

The Cold War is over, yet tens of thousands of nuclear weapons developed as a means of ‘deterrence’ remain in arsenals around the world. Together the US and Russia alone possess more than 95 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons. Their command and control systems are still tuned to permit immediate launch. The situation elsewhere is no less alarming.

Beyond rhetoric, there has been no progress towards a nuclear weapon-free world. The current global nuclear order inspires no confidence in the nuclear disarmament or non-proliferation agenda which is being followed in an arbitrary and discriminatory manner with scant commitment to the overarching goal of “general and complete disarmament” as envisaged in Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

If global disarmament is beyond reach today, it is only because the multilateral system is being used to legitimise the strategic interests of only the selected few. Partial efforts at arms reduction and arms limitation do not amount to disarmament. They only take the focus away from the imperative of a nuclear weapon-free world with the major nuclear weapon states telling the world that their nuclear weapons with limited reductions will stay forever while others should do without them – a situation that amounts to telling people not to smoke while you have a cigarette dangling from your own mouth.

Unless a fundamental change comes in this mindset, there is no prospect for a global consensus on disarmament in pursuit of a nuclear weapon-free world. President Obama understands the bleak reality and has admitted that he may not live long enough to see a nuclear-free world, and that “the US will maintain a nuclear arsenal as long as these weapons exist. This sums up the entire disarmament scenario.”

Even the famous ‘Gang of Four’ consisting of four veteran US policymakers, Henry Kissinger, William J Perry, George P Shultz and Senator Sam Nunn as a bipartisan quartet of individuals with impeccable credentials as ‘Cold Warriors,’ while questioning the very concept of nuclear ‘deterrence’ agree that “as long as nuclear weapons exist, America must retain a safe, secure and reliable nuclear stockpile primarily to deter a nuclear attack and to reassure our allies through extended deterrence.”

In an extraordinary series of widely published essays since 2007, the quartet, however, has been pursuing a thoughtful campaign for global attention to the fact that our world today is “on the precipice of a new and dangerous nuclear era.” According to them, the accelerating spread of nuclear weapons, nuclear know-how, and nuclear material has brought us to a tipping point where reliance on nuclear weapons even as a means of deterrence is becoming increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective.

In building their case for non-nuclear deterrence based on conventional weapons, the four former US policy-makers have logically argued that during the Cold War, nuclear deterrence was useful in preventing only the most catastrophic scenarios but did not deter the Soviet moves into Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. Nor did it prevent the numerous crises involving Berlin, including the building of the Wall in 1961, or major wars in Korea and Vietnam, the Cuban Missile Crisis, or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. In the case of the Soviet Union too, its nuclear weapons did not prevent its collapse or regime change.

In their view, the US and Russia were “lucky” that nuclear weapons were not used during the Cold War, and the world today had better not continue to bet its survival on continued good fortune with a growing number of nuclear nations and adversaries globally. The quartet’s broad conclusion outlined in its latest essay this March is that “nations today must move forward together with a series of conceptual and practical steps toward deterrence that do not rely primarily on nuclear weapons or nuclear threats to maintain international peace and security.”

The quartet’s most important, indeed insightfully realistic conclusion is the recognition that for some nations, nuclear weapons may continue to appear relevant to their immediate security. According to them, there are certain undeniable dynamics at play-for example, the emergence of a nuclear-armed neighbour, or the perception of inferiority in conventional forces – that if not addressed could lead to the further proliferation of nuclear weapons and an increased risk that they will be used. In their view, some nations might hesitate to draw or act on the same conclusion unless regional confrontations and conflicts are addressed. This requires redoubled effort to resolve these issues.

Interestingly, this assessment is of direct relevance to the India-Pakistan nuclear equation, the only one to have emerged in history that is totally unrelated to the Cold War and rooted in their legacy of unresolved disputes as underlying causes of their conflicts and confrontations. This aspect together with a number of nuclear and strategic restraint measures mutually applicable to India and Pakistan found adequate reflection in the outcome of the latest round of a track-two process called Ottawa Dialogue held earlier this month at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution in Palo Alto, California.