The Agonist - Asia: South-West

Sri Lanka Tamil refugee camps 'to be opened next month'

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:17:17 -0800

Nov 21

BBC - The Sri Lankan government says people living in camps since the conflict with Tamil Tiger rebels will have freedom of movement as of next month.

The camps were set up to house Tamils fleeing the final stages of the 25-year civil war which ended in May.

The special adviser to President Mahinda Rajapaksa also confirmed an earlier promise to close the camps, which still house 130,000 people.

He said all the residents would be resettled by the end of January.

12 men to die for killing Bangladesh's founder

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 01:52:32 -0800

Dhaka | Nov 19

DPA - Bangladesh's Supreme Court on Thursday rejected the appeals of five men convicted in the assassination of the country's founder Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, upholding a previous death verdict against 12 former soldiers convicted for the murder.

A five-judge panel headed by Justice Tafazzul Islam delivered the verdict Thursday, after 29 days of hearings, in a crowded court amid heightened security, state attorney Anisul Haq said.

Five of those convicted are on death row in Dhaka Central Jail while the rest have absconded abroad.

Mujibur, one of Bangladesh's independence heroes, was killed along with most of his family on August 15, 1975 by a group of disgruntled army officers in a military putsch which overthrew the South Asian country's elected government.

The verdict of death by hanging will be carried out in a month unless the convicts file a review petition to the court and seek presidential pardon for their convictions, Haq said.

Rise and fall of the Indian rope trick

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:51:35 -0800

Andrew Buncombe | Nov 19

The Independent - The magician who mesmerised the world has been reduced to performing in a fast-food joint as his country embraces the ways of the West

20 of 50 Greatest Magic Tricks - Indian Rope Trick (Amazing)

Download @ Punjabi Lok Virsa Media Center
By any standard, Ishamuddin Khan is a man of remarkable talents. Back in 1995, this traditional Indian magician or madari, completed the first successful outdoor performance of a trick that had been whispered about for centuries but that no one before had mastered. When, before an amazed audience on the southern edge of Delhi, Ishamuddin managed a convincing rendition of the legendary Indian rope trick, it made headlines around the world that ought to have secured his place in the history of magic and won him lasting recognition at home.

Yet that has not happened. Almost 15 years after he performed a trick that many experts believed to be impossible – in 1934 the Magic Circle in London offered a prize of 500 guineas to anyone who could do it – Ishamuddin is struggling, not only for recognition but simply to get by. While he has toured Britain, Europe and Japan to display his mesmerising skills, he says that India is increasingly turning its back on traditional performers such as himself in its race to become all things modern. To supplement his job devising magic tricks to encourage school children to learn science, he sometimes works as a conjurer at McDonald's.

"Every capital city around the world that I have been in has an area for street performers," said the 42-year-old, who lives in a crowded cluster of tiny homes in west Delhi known as the Kathputli – or puppeteers' – colony: an area rich with the skills of performers, musicians and craftsmen but sorely lacking in facilities. "But rich people in India are offended if you talk about street performing. They are only interested in computers or software. I am poor but I am suffering not so much from poverty as I am from the attitude of the Indian government. I am happy in my poverty but I would like people to respect me as I am. I would like recognition."

For centuries, stories have been told in India and beyond about a magic trick in which an ordinary rope is made to rise upwards before a young boy climbs up and disappears into the sky. The spellbinding story may have been partly inspired by the fairy tales of King Bhoja, who throws a thread into the sky and then ascends. Ibn Battuta, a 14th-century Moroccan explorer and scholar, also wrote of seeing such a trick performed in China, while mention of the deed in India was made by the 17th-century Indian emperor Jahangir, whose memoirs were first translated in 1829.

A Bonapartist in the Indian Ocean

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 03:52:05 -0800

M K Bhadrakumar | Nov 17

Asia Times - When a tea sapling was brought into Ceylon - present-day Sri Lanka - in 1824 from China and planted in the Royal Botanical Gardens, the British had no commercial interests in mind. It took another 40 years before a plucky Scotsman planted the first seedling, which blossomed into the famous Ceylon Tea and became today's unshakeable pillar of Sri Lanka's economy.

The "Emerald Island" has obscure tales to tell. That is why when a swashbuckling army chief by the improbable name of Gardihewa Sarath Chandralal Fonseka abruptly discards his uniform and plunges into the country's steamy politics, it becomes no simple matter. Sri Lankan democracy may never be the same again.

Bonapartism isn't altogether new to the region. Pakistan's Ayub Khan showed the way, back in the 1950s. Bangladesh followed 20 years later. Now Sri Lanka, an entrenched democracy, seems fatally attracted to it. The presidential election is not due until November 2011, but there are signs it may be held as early as January.

There is nothing necessarily fatal if a soldier develops a passion for politics. An Indian commentator pointed out that, after all, there is the precedent of US president Dwight D Eisenhower, a five-star general. But then, the nagging worry remains whether in the South Asian clime, like the sapling brought in from distant China, Fonseka, a US Green Card holder, may blossom and outgrow the botanical garden that Sri Lankan democracy used to be.

Militants change tack in Pakistan

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 03:33:23 -0800

Syed Saleem Shahzad | Islamabad | Nov 17

Asia Times - After a month of operations against militants in the South Waziristan tribal area on the border with Afghanistan, Pakistan's military establishment realizes it is chasing shadows; the adversary has simply melted into the vastness of the inhospitable surrounding territory.

Unlike in previous operations in other troubled tribal areas, though, there is unlikely to be any peace agreement. The militants, headed by the Pakistani Taliban - the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) - are bent on a long-term insurgency against the security apparatus, which they now see as heretic as the United States forces in Afghanistan.

In the past, the militants viewed the military as "firing friendly fire" under duress, mostly from the United States. In a fundamental shift, this is no longer the case and the militants will step up their activities.

The implications for Pakistan are profound. The civilian government headed by President Asif Ali Zardari is under relentless pressure from the US to crack down on militants, which includes al-Qaeda. If the militants carry through with their new attitude towards the military, and if the government steps up its efforts, ever-bloodier and broadening clashes are inevitable.

India's third gender gets own identity in voter rolls

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 01:20:45 -0800

Harmeet Shah Singh | New Delhi | Nov 12

CNN - Indian election authorities Thursday granted what they called an independent identity to intersex and transsexuals in the country's voter lists.Before, members of these groups -- loosely called eunuchs in Indian English -- were referred to as male or female in the voter rolls.

But now, they will have the choice to tick "O" -- for others -- when indicating their gender in voter forms, the Indian election commission said in a statement. "Enumerators and booth-level officers (BLOs) shall be instructed to indicate the sex of eunuchs/transsexuals etc as 'O' if they so desire, while undertaking any house-to-house enumeration/verification of any application," a statement from election authorities said.

A nuclear power's act of proliferation

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:20:07 -0800

R. Jeffrey Smith & Joby Warrick | Urumqi, China | November 13

WaPo - In 1982, a Pakistani military C-130 left the western Chinese city of Urumqi with a highly unusual cargo: enough weapons-grade uranium for two atomic bombs, according to accounts written by the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, and provided to The Washington Post.

The uranium transfer in five stainless-steel boxes was part of a broad-ranging, secret nuclear deal approved years earlier by Mao Zedong and Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto that culminated in an exceptional, deliberate act of proliferation by a nuclear power, according to the accounts by Khan, who is under house arrest in Pakistan.

U.S. officials say they have known about the transfer for decades and once privately confronted the Chinese -- who denied it -- but have never raised the issue in public or sought to impose direct sanctions on China for it. President Obama, who said in April that "the world must stand together to prevent the spread of these weapons," plans to discuss nuclear proliferation issues while visiting Beijing on Tuesday.

According to Khan, the uranium cargo came with a blueprint for a simple weapon that China had already tested, supplying a virtual do-it-yourself kit that significantly speeded Pakistan's bomb effort. The transfer also started a chain of proliferation: U.S. officials worry that Khan later shared related Chinese design information with Iran; in 2003, Libya confirmed obtaining it from Khan's clandestine network.

Report: Pakistani president suspected of graft in submarine sale

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:57:33 -0800

Paris | Nov 10

DPA - Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari is suspected of having received millions of dollars in kickbacks from the 1994 sale of three French submarines to the Pakistani Navy, the daily Liberation reported Tuesday.

In addition, investigators believe that the non-payment of the full amount of the agreed kickbacks may have led to the deaths of 11 French nationals in a 2002 terror attack in the city of Karachi.

In the report, Liberation says it acquired documents that allegedly show that Zardari received 4.3 million dollars in kickbacks from the sale of three Agosta 90 submarines for 825 million euros (currently 1.237 billion dollars).

The documents were sent to the Pakistani National Accountability Bureau (NAB) by British authorities in April 2001 and indicate that Zardari received several large payments into his Swiss bank accounts from a Lebanese businessman, Abdulrahman el-Assir, in 1994 and 1995.

According to a former executive of the French naval defence company DCN, French authorities chose el-Assir to act as intermediary in the deal.

He allegedly deposited a total of 1.3 million dollars in Zardari's bank accounts between August 15 and 30, 1994, one month before the submarine contract was signed, and then 1.2 million dollars and 1.8 million dollars one year later.

According to DCN employees who testified in the terror attack investigation, the kickbacks to Pakistan in the deal totalled 10 per cent of the purchase amount, with 6 per cent, or 49.5 million dollars, going to the military and 4 per cent, or 33 million euros, being funneled to political circles.

In 2001, former Pakistani Navy chief-of-staff Mansour Ul-Haq was arrested for his part in the deal and forced to repay 7 million dollars, the daily says.

Legal proceedings against Zardari were dropped in April 2008, several months before he was elected president. However, the husband of the assassinated former Pakistani president Benazir Bhutto was imprisoned from 1997 to 2004 on corruption charges unrelated to this affair.

The Pakistani president is one of his country's richest men, with a net worth estimated at 1.8 billion dollars.

The ongoing investigation in Paris into the May 8, 2002, terrorist attack that killed 11 DCN employees in Karachi may shed new light on the submarine purchase and his part in it.

The victims were in Karachi to complete work on the three submarines. According to French media, the magistrate looking into the bombing has rejected the theory that it was the work of al-Qaeda.

He is now considering the possibility that it was carried out by Pakistanis, either because only 85 per cent of the agreed kickbacks to politicians had been paid or because of negotiations carried out by French authorities to sell submarines to India, Pakistan's enemy.

In any case, some French parliamentarians are now demanding to be allowed to look into how the submarine contract with Pakistan was negotiated and executed.

Myanmar will no longer dictate ASEAN ties: White House

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:01:40 -0800

Washington | Nov 10

AFP - The United States said on Monday it would no longer allow its row with Myanmar to hold its ties with Southeast Asia hostage, as President Barack Obama geared up for his debut official visit to the region.

Obama is due to hold the first-ever meeting between a US president and leaders of all 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) members, including Myanmar Prime Minister Thein Sein, on Sunday in Singapore.

"One of the frustrations that we've had with policy toward Burma over recent years has been that the inability to have interaction with Burma has prevented certain kinds of interaction with ASEAN as a whole," said Obama's top Asia policy aide Jeffrey Bader.

"The statement we're trying to make here is that we're not going to let the Burmese tail wag the ASEAN dog."

Hersh: In an unstable Pakistan, can nuclear warheads be kept safe?

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:18:54 -0800

Seymour Hersh | Nov 16 Issue | New Yorker

Obama did not say so, but current and former officials said in interviews in Washington and Pakistan that his Administration has been negotiating highly sensitive understandings with the Pakistani military. These would allow specially trained American units to provide added security for the Pakistani arsenal in case of a crisis. At the same time, the Pakistani military would be given money to equip and train Pakistani soldiers and to improve their housing and facilities—goals that General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the chief of the Pakistan Army, has long desired. In June, Congress approved a four-hundred-million-dollar request for what the Administration called the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund, providing immediate assistance to the Pakistan Army for equipment, training, and “renovation and construction.”

The secrecy surrounding the understandings was important because there is growing antipathy toward America in Pakistan, as well as a history of distrust. Many Pakistanis believe that America’s true goal is not to keep their weapons safe but to diminish or destroy the Pakistani nuclear complex. The arsenal is a source of great pride among Pakistanis, who view the weapons as symbols of their nation’s status and as an essential deterrent against an attack by India. (India’s first nuclear test took place in 1974, Pakistan’s in 1998.)

Seymour Hersh | Nov 16 Issue | New Yorker

In the tumultuous days leading up to the Pakistan Army’s ground offensive in the tribal area of South Waziristan, which began on October 17th, the Pakistani Taliban attacked what should have been some of the country’s best-guarded targets. In the most brazen strike, ten gunmen penetrated the Army’s main headquarters, in Rawalpindi, instigating a twenty-two-hour standoff that left twenty-three dead and the military thoroughly embarrassed. The terrorists had been dressed in Army uniforms. There were also attacks on police installations in Peshawar and Lahore, and, once the offensive began, an Army general was shot dead by gunmen on motorcycles on the streets of Islamabad, the capital. The assassins clearly had advance knowledge of the general’s route, indicating that they had contacts and allies inside the security forces.

Pakistan has been a nuclear power for two decades, and has an estimated eighty to a hundred warheads, scattered in facilities around the country. The success of the latest attacks raised an obvious question: Are the bombs safe? Asked this question the day after the Rawalpindi raid, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “We have confidence in the Pakistani government and the military’s control over nuclear weapons.” Clinton—whose own visit to Pakistan, two weeks later, would be disrupted by more terrorist bombs—added that, despite the attacks by the Taliban, “we see no evidence that they are going to take over the state.”

Clinton’s words sounded reassuring, and several current and former officials also said in interviews that the Pakistan Army was in full control of the nuclear arsenal. But the Taliban overrunning Islamabad is not the only, or even the greatest, concern. The principal fear is mutiny—that extremists inside the Pakistani military might stage a coup, take control of some nuclear assets, or even divert a warhead.

On April 29th, President Obama was asked at a news conference whether he could reassure the American people that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal could be kept away from terrorists. Obama’s answer remains the clearest delineation of the Administration’s public posture. He was, he said, “gravely concerned” about the fragility of the civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari. “Their biggest threat right now comes internally,” Obama said. “We have huge . . . national-security interests in making sure that Pakistan is stable and that you don’t end up having a nuclear-armed militant state.” The United States, he said, could “make sure that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is secure—primarily, initially, because the Pakistan Army, I think, recognizes the hazards of those weapons’ falling into the wrong hands.”

The questioner, Chuck Todd, of NBC, began asking whether the American military could, if necessary, move in and secure Pakistan’s bombs. Obama did not let Todd finish. “I’m not going to engage in hypotheticals of that sort,” he said. “I feel confident that the nuclear arsenal will remain out of militant hands. O.K.?”

Obama did not say so, but current and former officials said in interviews in Washington and Pakistan that his Administration has been negotiating highly sensitive understandings with the Pakistani military. These would allow specially trained American units to provide added security for the Pakistani arsenal in case of a crisis. At the same time, the Pakistani military would be given money to equip and train Pakistani soldiers and to improve their housing and facilities—goals that General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the chief of the Pakistan Army, has long desired. In June, Congress approved a four-hundred-million-dollar request for what the Administration called the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund, providing immediate assistance to the Pakistan Army for equipment, training, and “renovation and construction.”

The secrecy surrounding the understandings was important because there is growing antipathy toward America in Pakistan, as well as a history of distrust. Many Pakistanis believe that America’s true goal is not to keep their weapons safe but to diminish or destroy the Pakistani nuclear complex. The arsenal is a source of great pride among Pakistanis, who view the weapons as symbols of their nation’s status and as an essential deterrent against an attack by India. (India’s first nuclear test took place in 1974, Pakistan’s in 1998.)

A senior Pakistani official who has close ties to Zardari exploded with anger during an interview when the subject turned to the American demands for more information about the arsenal. After the September 11th attacks, he said, there had been an understanding between the Bush Administration and then President Pervez Musharraf “over what Pakistan had and did not have.” Today, he said, “you’d like control of our day-to-day deployment. But why should we give it to you? Even if there was a military coup d’état in Pakistan, no one is going to give up total control of our nuclear weapons. Never. Why are you not afraid of India’s nuclear weapons?” the official asked. “Because India is your friend, and the longtime policies of America and India converge. Between you and the Indians, you will fuck us in every way. The truth is that our weapons are less of a problem for the Obama Administration than finding a respectable way out of Afghanistan.”

Cambodia appoints Thailand's Thaksin as economic adviser

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:24:01 -0800

Phnom Penh | Nov 4

AFP - Cambodia said on Wednesday it had appointed fugitive former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra economic adviser to premier Hun Sen in a move that adds to tensions between the countries.

The appointment was announced on state television almost two weeks after Hun Sen first riled Thailand by offering safe haven to Thaksin, who was ousted in a coup in 2006 and is living abroad to avoid a jail term for corruption.

"Thaksin has already been appointed by royal decree... as personal adviser to Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and the adviser to the Cambodian government in charge of economy," said a government statement read on television.

"Allowing Thaksin to stay in Cambodia is virtuous behaviour...good friends need to help each other in difficult circumstances," it added.

The statement went on to call charges against Thaksin "politically motivated" and vowed not to extradite him if he "decides to stay in Cambodia or travels in and out of Cambodia in order to fulfill his duties".

WOW

A Little More On That India Meme, Or The Not-So-Miraculous Indian Economic Miracle

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:34:58 -0800

It's obvious by what I've written in the past (here and here as well.) that I don't think highly of India's economic prowess, writ large and I don't believe any of the hype when it comes to India's economic miracle. But Quax makes a point about Kerala that deserves further comment.

Quax brings up the point about the matrifocal ethnicity in Southern India, namely the state of Kerala. And he's right: Kerala is different from the rest of India. I'm not sure what makes Kerala different: the prevalence of Christianity, the relative freedom of women in the state, years of Communist rule, and the forward looking and commercial character of Muslims there? Perhaps it's a combination of all four. Needless to say, Kerala was the cleanest, least intimidating and most upwardly mobile of Indian states, even more so than the miracle city of Bangalore. And I found the Muslims in Calicut to be the most forward looking of any Muslims I've ever encountered, outside of pockets in Turkey and those in North Tehran.

Their daughters were educated, free to pursue a love match--not an arranged marriage and not relegated to a very real purdah extant in many places in India. It's the sort of place where a young Indian woman can have lunch with a strange foreign man and no one raises an eyebrow. I'm not sure how much of this is due to the fact that the area around Calicut has been integral to the global economy for two thousand years--ships have plied the monsoons from East Africa to the Malabar Coast since very early Roman times, bringing pepper an other spices to the West in exchange for gold, or how much of it is due to the tolerance between Hindus, Christians and Muslims. There is much more history to this area than meets the eye.

More after the jump.

The Communist party has also run the state off and on since the fifties. Literacy rates are the highest in India. And basic health services deliverables are the highest in India, as well. When the state assumes the risk of healthcare and provides a very good basic education people are free to pursue other productive endeavors instead of grinding away in subsistence poverty and farming. The Dalits in the state, as well, have it better than anywhere in India. This makes a huge difference in upward mobility.

But even Kerala is beset by all the huge problems that India has. The infrastructure is crumbling. The rail system is overwhelmed, although the trains in Kerala were the best in India outside of the Delhi-Agra tourist trains. And the pollution wasn't nearly as pervasive as the rest of India. Overpopulation is a serious issue and so is gendercide. And as impressive as the quality of life is for women in the state is, it's still a man's state, run by men, for men. All that being said, were I ever to return to India--which is doubtful--the only place I would visit is Kerala.

Yes, I was a tourist in India. I've never claimed to be anything other than that. But the eyes don't lie. What I saw was a very poor, under-devoloped and socially backwards country--moreso than even Cambodia and in many places as backwards as Africa. What makes it worse is this: it's a horribly underdeveloped country with a very well-educated elite. An elite that sits atop a millenia old social structure. An elite that literally lives off the backs of those below it. And it's the elite that buys the very minimal goods and services that India imports. One of the reasons India weathered the most recent economic crisis is that it's imports are negligible. It relies on an internal market that deals in goods and services at a level of quality from the 50s, if not earlier in some cases.

If that's a choice the Indians want to make, I'm all for it. I'm all about tEh noninterference. There is a queer element of genius to India's social structure--institutionalizing as deviance any form of societal innovation. But let's not build up a fantasy around the country. India has some emergent technology. But it's at the elite level. There are few things that resemble a mall in India, something we Westerners take for granted. And the malls have security guards that prevent lower classes from entering. Seriously, I've seen it with my own eyes. That's not economic freedom for the masses.

India has a problem-set of gargantuan proportions and is one of the most militarized countries I've ever seen--all the Gandhiesque posturing notwithstanding. That's just reality.

If the rest of India could learn from Kerala it would be a vastly more impressive country than it now is. But I don't see that happening any time soon.

India As Rising Power Meme, Needs To Be Squashed

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:46:52 -0800

People love to talk about how India is a rising power in Asia:

Upshot: America is done. Our once-great empire is cooked. Not only is China (and India, fast behind) about to stomp all over everyone in economic power and resource abuse, they already own a huge chunk of our debt, manufacture most of our holidays and build almost everything we like to buy. And that includes the device you are reading this on right now. Oh well. We'll always have football.

I'd submit to any writer who just looks at the raw statistics on Indian growth rates to actually visit the place. Take a look at the crumbling infrastructure. Reality looks a lot different on the ground.

Yes, I realize it is only a throwaway sentence by the writer, but still, it's propagating a meme that doesn't represent reality.

Now, there is a case to be made about China. I've seen a great deal of the country and there is a very real energy to succeed and get ahead there. And while many Chinese are mired in poverty, it isn't the kind of nasty, pervasive, grinding poverty to be found in India. In India if you are born poor there is virtually no chance you can rise in society. Not so in China. (Not to idealize the life of the poor in China, mind you. It's still extremely difficult to find real upward mobility in China. In India on the other? For all intents and purposes, such a concept doesn't even exist.)

Furthermore, culturally speaking the Chinese are much better when it comes to cultural or societal innovations than India is. For example: arranged marriages are still the norm in India. And the place of woman is rotten. In China? Not likely. Especially as the idea of romantic love spreads among young female factory workers with a disposable income. (Again, not to idealize often gruesome working conditions for these young women, and yet.)

India when it comes to culture, is probably the most extremely conservative place I have ever visited. Indians like to think they can compete with the Chinese, but they cannot. And we shouldn't buy the tripe that India is an emerging economic power. The only reason we do business with India is wage-arbitrage. It's cheaper to pay an Indian twenty five cents an hour for something a well-educated American would ask fifteen dollars or more for.

And yes, I realize I am a white, post-Colonial man of European descent making cultural judgments. Having visited both countries multiple times I am quite comfortable doing so.

Maoist Rebels Widen Deadly Reach Across India

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:28:57 -0700

Jim Yardley | Barsur, India | October 31

NYT - At the edge of the Indravati River, hundreds of miles from the nearest international border, India effectively ends. Indian paramilitary officers point machine guns across the water. The dense jungles and mountains on the other side belong to Maoist rebels dedicated to overthrowing the government.

“That is their liberated zone,” said P. Bhojak, one of the officers stationed at the river’s edge in this town in the eastern state of Chattisgarh.

Or one piece of it. India’s Maoist rebels are now present in 20 states and have evolved into a potent and lethal insurgency. In the last four years, the Maoists have killed more than 900 Indian security officers, a figure almost as high as the more than 1,100 members of the coalition forces killed in Afghanistan during the same period.

If the Maoists were once dismissed as a ragtag band of outdated ideologues, Indian leaders are now preparing to deploy nearly 70,000 paramilitary officers for a prolonged counterinsurgency campaign to hunt down the guerrillas in some of the country’s most rugged, isolated terrain.

Pakistan strikes deep into al-Qa'ida territory

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 03:26:54 -0700

Omar Waraich | Sherwangai | Oct 30

The Independent - In the mountains of Waziristan, the army claims to have recovered passports of extremists with links to the September 11 and Madrid attackers. Does this mean they are finally closing in on Osama bin Laden himself?

After a sweep of a militant stronghold in the lawless tribal region of South Waziristan, the Pakistani army has recovered passports purportedly belonging to two leading al-Qa'ida figures, including a member of the notorious Hamburg cell that orchestrated September 11.

Among a pile of documents, photographs, weapons and computers seen by The Independent yesterday in Waziristan, is a German passport belonging to Said Bahaji, the logistical expert of the notorious German terror cell that orchestrated the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

Bahaji, 34, who is of Moroccan descent, obtained the passport just days before September 11 and used it to travel to Pakistan according to the information stamped in the document.

It was not possible to verify the authenticity of the passports, nor to establish the fate of their apparent holders. If they are authentic, the documents would prove that South Waziristan, a bastion of the Pakistani Taliban, has also been a sanctuary for foreign Jihadists and key al-Qa'ida figures in Pakistan. Major General Athar Abbas, the military's chief spokesman said the documents were being made public to demonstrate the presence of foreign militants in South Waziristan which borders Afghanistan.

A Spanish passport, also recovered, purportedly belonged to Raquel Burgos Garcia. According to a student card, she is the wife of Amir Azizi, a Moroccan terrorist suspect who has been linked to both the September 11 attacks and the Madrid bombings.

The documents were apparently found after the capture of the village of Sherwangai on 20 October. The take- over came after three days of intense fighting in the dusty, barren and expansive Waziristan wilderness, at the start of an anti-Taliban offensive launched under intense political pressure from the United States. "We moved in as a battalion at night to take the terrorists by surprise," Lieutenant Colonel Inam Tarar said yesterday. As he spoke, mortar shells were being blasted into a village across a gorge nearby.

The Pakistan army would not say whether the apparent holders of the passports had been killed in the current offensive, had died earlier, or escaped. The German passport, number L 8642163, was issued in Hamburg on 2 August 2001. It matches that on an Interpol-United Nations Security Council Special notice with the exception of the first digit. The photograph in the passport matches that on the notice as well, but was not laminated.