The Agonist - Pakistan

The Surge in Afghanistan

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 02:20:46 -0800

The US will soon double the number of its troops in Afghanistan from about thirty thousand to sixty thousand, and several other NATO countries will also up their troop levels. The move comes with little surprise and considerable bipartisan support, but with little public discussion of the aims and likely outcomes. Evocative as the move is with similar events in Iraq that are generally (though perhaps uncritically) credited with bringing stability there, it is hoped that a similar outcome will come about in Afghanistan, where the situation has deteriorated badly while US attention has been focused on Iraq and Iran.

Islamabad Hotel Reopens Three Months After Blast

Sun, 28 Dec 2008 06:30:43 -0800

Islamabad | December 28

Reuters - The Marriott Hotel in Islamabad reopened Sunday just over three months after it was virtually destroyed in a suicide truck-bomb attack that killed 55 people.

The hotel is a stone's throw from parliament and the presidency and is a favorite haunt of politicians, diplomats and wealthy Pakistanis.

Its owner, Sadruddin Hashwani, said at an opening ceremony the blast on September 20 was an attack on Pakistan itself.

"We have expressed our resolve that we will not bow before the enemies of Pakistan," said Hashwani, who was fulfilling a promise to reopen by the end of December.

The government said last week an al Qaeda-linked militant group called the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi was behind the attack.

Taliban ban female education in Pakistan's Swat district

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 03:29:37 -0800

Islamabad | Dec 24

DPA - Islamic militants have imposed a ban on female education and warned teachers of severe consequences if any girl is seen heading for a school in the restive Swat district of Pakistan's North Western Frontier Province, residents said on Wednesday.

The announcement was made on Friday by a spokesman of radical cleric Maulana Fazlullah - who has waged armed struggle to impose Taliban rule in the district - on a pirated FM radio frequency regularly used by the militants.

'All the private and government schools have been given a 15-day deadline to close down the female education facilities. They have also banned women from visiting markets,' Mohammad Osman, a school teacher and social worker, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

'We have no choice but to follow the orders. The government cannot give us protection. Taliban have established a parallel government in 90 percent area of the district and they execute everyone who opposes them,' he added

The failed Muslim states to come

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 18:49:16 -0800

Spengler | Dec 16

Financial crises, like epidemics, kill the unhealthy first. The present crisis is painful for most of the world but deadly for many Muslim countries, and especially so for the most populous ones. Policy makers have not begun to assess the damage.

The diplomatic strategy of the industrial nations now resembles a James Clavell potboiler, in which an earthquake interrupts a hopelessly immured plot. Moderate Islam was the El Dorado of the diplomatic consensus. It might have been the case that Pakistan could be tethered to Western interests, or that Iran could be engaged peacefully, or that Turkey would incubate a moderate form of Islam. I considered all of this delusional, but the truth is that we shall never know. The financial crisis will sort them out first.

The Mumbai attack(2) and its aftermath

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 01:38:30 -0800

December 4

Pakistan snubs India over terrorist 'suspects'
Vikram Dodd | New Delhi

Guardian - Pakistan's president yesterday rebuffed India's key demand that he hand over 20 alleged terrorists, as the US intensified its efforts to ease tensions between the two nuclear powers in the wake of last week's terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

Speaking from Delhi, the visiting US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, told Pakistan it had a "special responsibility" to help India's investigation into the terrorist attacks. Washington also sent its most senior military official to Islamabad to hammer home the same message.

Western powers, led by the US, are trying to stop tensions between the two countries spilling over after last week's attacks in Mumbai, which killed more than 170 people. India and Pakistan have fought three wars and had numerous skirmishes in the past 60 years.

India has demanded that Pakistan stop providing sanctuary to 20 people it alleges are linked to violence against it. But Pakistan's president, Asif Ali Zardari, yesterday appeared to reject this demand, saying the 20 would be tried in Pakistan if there was evidence to charge them.

Please use this thread as a continuation of The Bombing of Mumbai

U.S. Urges Pakistan to Cooperate in Mumbai Probe

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 06:28:31 -0800

Somini Sengupta | Mumbai | December 3

New York Times - As the United States tried to calm tensions between India and Pakistan on Wednesday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pressured Pakistan to cooperate fully in the effort to track down those responsible for the bloody attacks in Mumbai last week.

At a news conference in New Delhi, she also raised for the first time in public the possibility that Al Qaeda may have played a role. But she declined to blame Al Qaeda unequivocally for the assault which claimed more than 170 lives and was blamed by India on militants in Pakistan.

Pakistan's ISI: the world's number one sponsor of terrorism

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 09:55:35 -0800

By Hannes Artens

When I put my article on Pakistan that referred to the Mumbai attacks in just a subordinate clause online last Thursday, no one could imagine the horrendous scope of the unfolding mayhem in India's financial capital. Six days later the death toll is close to 200 innocent victims and more than 300 wounded. The November 26-29 simultaneous terror attacks on the Oberoi and Taj hotels and at least half a dozen other targets are justifiably termed "India's 9/11", not only for the number of casualties, but also for the symbolism of targets and the high sophistication and disciplined conduct of the operation.

While reports and analyses in the media continue to contradict each other and rumors and idiotic accusations of false flag operations (CIA, Mossad, the usual suspects) keep flooding the internet and the blog scene busy, mounting evidence seems to point to an indirect involvement of Pakistan, the notorious Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) to be more precise. If proven well-founded, this connection will put the two nuclear powers on collision course and constitute the first major challenge for the Obama administration.

Talk of India-Pakistan war

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 19:14:28 -0800

There are feverish talks happening here in India about going out for a war with Pakistan due to last week's terrorist attacks in Bombay.

Here is my analysis (first 3 paras' content are also repeated in one of my comments in the Bombay post on Agonist front page) :

Pakistan's ISI is perhaps the worst official agency in the world that cleverly aids terrorists' activities and has been doing so for many years. For India to put pressure on Pakistan's current democratic pressure is being foolish. The ISI in Pakistan, closely affiliated to the Pakistani military, is a law unto itself and has to be tackled directly bypassing whoever is the Pakistani government. For this, in fact, India should shed its cowardliness and take on the United States of America that in the past and even now (discreetly though) has looked the other way if not actively coordinated with the ISI.

And if the US can attack Taliban inside Afghanistan, and if Israel can carry out operations inside its neigbouring countries including Palestine, and if Russia can carry out operations inside Georgia, then India can too carry out operations in the mountains of Pakistan where these terrorist groups receive their training.

Rajesh lives in NW Bombay. More after the jump.

Trade reopens after 60 years along Kashmir's 'Berlin Wall.'

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 04:01:11 -0800

Mark Sappenfield | Baramullah, Indian Kashmir | Nov 26

CSM - Ghulam Rasul Butt believes the solution to Kashmir could begin with 1,038 boxes of apples.

That's what he sent to Muzaffarabad in Pakistani Kashmir on Oct. 21, marking the historic reopening of trade between the two halves of Kashmir – split between India and Pakistan – for the first time since 1947.

Trade, Mr. Butt says, could succeed where UN resolutions and three wars have failed. From cement to natural gas, India and Pakistan are turning to commerce to help forge common ground. The trade is largely symbolic, but it represents the first seeds of trust between the nuclear-armed enemies, whose squabbles have continually unsettled the region – including Afghanistan.

Kashmir trade "will help end the prolonged animosity between the two countries," says Butt, the president of the Kashmir Valley Fruit Growers Association.

Renewed trade across Kashmir's so-called Line of Control (LoC) – the 450-mile ribbon of Himalayan frontier that splits Kashmir and is lined on either side by nearly 1 million troops – is the most dramatic example of a gradual strengthening of economic ties between India and Pakistan. It is part of a broader trend.

Ringed by Foes, Pakistanis Fear the U.S., Too

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 17:29:48 -0800

Jane Perlez | Islamabad | Nov 23

NYT - Pakistan’s fight against the Taliban, some Pakistanis say, is a distraction so the Americans can grab the country’s nuclear weapons.

A redrawn map of South Asia has been making the rounds among Pakistani elites. It shows their country truncated, reduced to an elongated sliver of land with the big bulk of India to the east, and an enlarged Afghanistan to the west.

That the map was first circulated as a theoretical exercise in some American neoconservative circles matters little here. It has fueled a belief among Pakistanis, including members of the armed forces, that what the United States really wants is the breakup of Pakistan, the only Muslim country with nuclear arms.

“One of the biggest fears of the Pakistani military planners is the collaboration between India and Afghanistan to destroy Pakistan,” said a senior Pakistani government official involved in strategic planning, who insisted on anonymity as per diplomatic custom. “Some people feel the United States is colluding in this.”

That notion may strike Americans as strange coming from an ally of 50 years. But as the incoming Obama administration tries to coax greater cooperation from Pakistan in the fight against militancy, it can hardly be ignored.

This is a country where years of weak governance have left ample room for conspiracy theories of every kind. But like much such thinking anywhere, what is said frequently reveals the tender spots of a nation’s psyche. Educated Pakistanis sometimes say that they are paranoid, but add that they believe they have good reason.

Iranian diplomat kidnapped in volatile Pakistan city

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 23:23:30 -0800

Faris Ali | Peshawar | Nov 13

Reuters - Gunmen kidnapped an Iranian diplomat in northwestern Pakistan's Peshawar on Thursday, officials said, soon after a U.S. aid worker was killed in a city hit hard by an Islamist insurgency spreading from Afghanistan.

The diplomat's driver was killed in the attack.

Suspicion for the attack, a day after the U.S. aid worker was killed, will inevitably fall on the Taliban and affiliated Sunni Muslim militant groups such as al Qaeda, who hate Shi'ite Muslims and predominantly Shi'ite Iran almost as much as the West.

US embarrassed as Taliban steal Humvees

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 07:29:16 -0800

Bruce Loudon | Nov 12

The Australian - TALIBAN militants were driving around in captured US army Humvee armoured vehicles in Pakistan's tribal region close to the historic Khyber Pass last night after hijacking more than a dozen supply trucks travelling along the vital land route that supplies coalition forces in Afghanistan.

The capture of the Humvees - these days the symbol of US intervention in Iraq and elsewhere - is a serious embarrassment to US commanders of the coalition forces.

Pakistani reporters in the area said the militants unloaded the Humvees from shipping containers on the backs of the trucks and drove off in them, after decorating them with flags and banners of the banned umbrella organisation Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, which is led by Baitullah Mehsud. Mehsud is closely allied to Osama bin Laden and the Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

The reporters said the hijackings had taken place "in clear view of (Pakistani) paramilitary personnel" deployed at the nearby Jamrud Fort, who "did not take any action".

"All this happened on the international highway (linking Pakistan with Afghanistan) and you can imagine the implications this can have for us," an official told Pakistan newspaper Dawn.

Officials said the trucks had been hijacked without a shot being fired.

** Pakistan aims to recapture trucks stolen in Khyber

The Iran-Saudi Cold War

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 07:39:41 -0800

James Brazier | Nov 6 | Diplomatic Courier

There has been no Western outcry against Saudi Arabia's mediation between the Taliban and the Afghan government. On the contrary, the Mecca talks were accompanied by senior British and U.S. officials indicating that such discussions were an evitable part of ending the war in Afghanistan. Only one country has denounced the meeting as an unacceptable capitulation to terrorism and extremism: Iran. This position reflects the untold story of Iran's tussle with Saudi Arabia for regional influence.

Saudi Arabia agrees to bail out Pakistan

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 18:41:34 -0800

LaHore | Nov 7

Daily Times[Pak] - Saudi Arabia has agreed to bail out cash-strapped Pakistan with ‘substantial oil supply’ on deferred payment and cash assistance, according to a Dawn News report on Thursday.

Another report by the Online news agency said Saudi Arabia had agreed to provide ‘tangible assistance’ to ‘ease Pakistan’s balance of payment pressure’ and has assured the visiting Pakistani delegation of investing more than $1 billion in the livestock and agricultural sectors.

“Foreign Minister Shah Mehmoud Qureshi is expected to announce the Saudi package in Islamabad on Friday,” Dawn News said.

Online said the Saudi leadership also said they would increase hiring of Pakistani labour and would provide more financial assistance through the Friends of Pakistan initiative.

** Pakistan seen needing IMF even with Saudi oil help

Bomb hits Pakistan tribal elders

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 05:58:12 -0800

Nov 6

BBC -

A bomb has killed at least nine people and wounded nearly 40 at a gathering of tribal elders in the Pakistani tribal area of Bajaur, hospital staff say.

The bomb went off when the tribal elders were gathering to draw up a plan to drive militants out of their area as part of a government anti-Taleban plan.

Bajaur is a crucial hub for insurgents, with access routes to Afghanistan and the rest of Pakistan.

Hospital staff say they expect the number of casualties to increase.

Officials say that the bomb - detonated by remote control - targeted members of the Salarzai tribe as they were discussing ways to evict the Taleban from their area. They say that a senior tribal elder, Sazlal Karim, was among the dead.