Bol Ke Lab Azad Hain Tere – 2012
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BBC: Iranian border guards detained in Pakistan
Pakistani police have detained three Iranian border guards after they allegedly crossed the border, killing one man and wounding another in a car they had been chasing, officials say.
Police say the guards were arrested on suspicion of entering Pakistan and killing a Pakistani national.
One report suggests the men were being pursued because they were involved in cross-border smuggling.
There has been no comment on the incident as yet from Iranian officials.
It happened in an isolated border area of Pakistan’s Baluchistan province and Iran’s Sistan-Baluchistan region. Details about the sequence of events are unclear.
Pakistani officials say the Iranian guards pursued the men into Pakistan and were trying to take them back to Iran.
Iranian forces opened fire on the vehicle the men were travelling in, police allege.
“Both Pakistanis were injured and one later died. Pakistani troops at the border surrounded the Iranians and have taken them into custody,” Saeed Ahmad Jamili a local police official told the AFP news agency.
It is unclear whether the guards were detained and the Pakistani men retrieved on Pakistani or Iranian soil.
Tribune: Contempt of court notices issued to Awan, other PPP leaders
ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court has issued contempt of court notices to Babar Awan and other PPP leaders who were present at the press conference on the memo case.
The PPP leaders who have been issued similar notices by the court includes Khursheed Shah, Firdous Ashiq Awan and Qamar Zaman Kaira.
Awan and the others are now expected to submit their explanatory replies to the court by January 13.
The orders were issued today by a Supreme Court two member bench comprising of Justice Ijaz Afzal and Justice Ather Saeed.
Earlier, Awan had addressed a press conference following the apex court’s decision to form a one-member commission headed by former FIA DG Tariq Khosa to probe the Memogate case, rejecting the decision and questioning its motives.
On December 30, while delivering a verdict on the maintainability of memo case petitions, the chief justice termed the press conference contemptuous and called for its transcript in his chamber.
The Supreme Court in its order had said that the order of the court was criticised “contemptuously.”
Geo: By Ansar Abbasi: How did Musharraf become a billionaire?
In a successful but dubious journey from rags to riches, the former dictator and now the self pro claimed messiah of the people of Pakistan, General (retd) Pervez Musharraf, has become a billionaire.
There is no indication as to who funds him and how he became fabulously rich but the retired general has accumulated billions in offshore accounts besides the property that he has already purchased in foreign lands or inside Pakistan.
Musharraf, who intends to return to Pakistan by the end of this month after seeking the required guarantees from Washington and Riyadh, has a lot of money to spend for his political campaign and his launching as “the best option for Pakistan”.
A source, having a close association with the former dictator, confided to The News that Musharraf has at least seven to ten offshore accounts in Dubai and London containing huge cash in dollars, sterling pounds and dirhams.
In his memoirs – In the Line of Fire – Musharraf admitted that he had come from a really humble background where they did not have enough money but now he pays at least half a million rupees as monthly salary to his personal staff residing inside Pakistan.
According to the source, besides having foreign bank accounts, Musharraf has also made huge saving investments abroad to earn large profits. The source said that in just one Dubai based online trading service — MMA — Musharraf had US$ 1,600,000 (Rs 145 million) last year. Musharraf’s account number, according to the source in this company, is AV77777.
In the Union National Bank, which is an investment bank in Abu Dhabi, Musharraf and his spouse Sehba Musharraf, have a joint account No 4002000304, in which the amount mid last year was almost UAE Dirhams 17,000,000 ( Rs 391 million).
In the same bank- the Union National Bank- the same duo, Mr and Mrs Musharaf have another joint account No 400200315, which is a dollar account. This particular account last year contained US$ 535,325 (Rs 48 million).
In yet another UAE Dirham account in the same financial institution — the Union National Bank — Sehba and Musharraf had almost UAE Dirhams 7,600,000 (Rs 174 million) last year. The account No is 4003006700.
In the fourth account, No 4003006711, in the Union National Bank, the duo had UAE Dirhams 8,000,000 (Rs 184 million).
In the fifth account, No 4003006722 in the same bank — the Union National Bank — Musharraf and his wife had US$ 8,000,000 (Rs 728 million).
In the sixth account, No 4003006733, Mrs Sehba Musharraf and Mr Pervez Musharraf had UAE Dirhams 8,000,000 (Rs 184 million) last year.
In the seventh account, No 4003006744, in the same Union National Bank, the duo holds UAE Dirhams 8,000,000 (Rs 184 million).
In their eighth account in the same bank — the Union National Bank Abu Dhabi — the duo had US$ 1,300,000 (Rs 118 million).
During the initial few months of his taking over as a military dictator following his coup against the Nawaz Sharif government, General Musharraf did make his wealth public, which hardly contained any cash but only some plots in different parts of the country. Musharraf claimed to be the Mr Clean of Pakistan.
How did he become a billionare is a million dollar question. The same question when asked to Musharraf’s spokesperson and his party’s information secretary Fawad Chaudhry Advocate told The News that all the accounts of Pervez Musharraf, whether abroad or in Pakistan, are declared accounts.
“There is not a single hidden bank account like Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari”, he added.
Fawad Chaudhry said that when an Army Chief retires, he gets pensionary benefits worth Rs 400 to 500 million.
Moreover, he added that Bill Clinton and Pervez Musharraf are the highest paid speakers in the world, therefore he earns a handsome amount through lectures.
He clarified that Musharraf’s bank accounts do not have billions of rupees in them.
Geo: Pir Pagara passes away in London
Spiritual Leader of Hur Community and Chief of Pakistan Muslim League (Functional) Pir Pagara breathed his last at the age of 83 here on Tuesday, Geo News reported.
Pir Pagara was taken to a hospital in London for treatment after suffering from an infection following his surgery in Karachi a few days ago.
Born in Pir Jo Goth, Sindh in 1928, Pir Pagara spent a major part of his life actively engaged in Pakistan’s politics.
R.I.P Saaeen. Another chapter closes in politics. Nawabzada 1st, then benazir and now pagara.
Huq maghfirat kare ajab azad mard tha
Tribune: Jamshed Dasti quits PPP
MUZAFFARGARH: Jamshed Dasti on Wednesday announced that he has quit Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and added that he will be resigning from his National Assembly seat too.
Dasti said that he will not be joining any political party and will contest the elections independently in the future.
He lashed out at Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar and alleged that she had taken over Muzaffargarh and everything was being done according to her will. He added that Khar had never visited her constituency.
Dasti claimed that corrupt officers had been posted in his constituency and he had been raising his voice against this. He said he complained to Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani on a number of occasions, but no one listened to him.
He said that his resignation had been sent to the party leadership.
In June, 2011 , Dasti had resigned from the National Assembly in protest over government inaction to repair dykes and embankmentsin his constituency, stating that he had made this decision due to the Punjab government’s negligence in not securing the embankments and dykes of Taliri canal in Muzaffargarh.
He had been elected from the Muzaffargarh NA-178 constituency.
Lo voh bhi keh rahe hain ke bay_nang-o-naam hoon — LOL
hota hai shab-o-rooz tamasha mire agay
Tribune: Altaf Hussain says he is ready to talk to the Taliban
KARACHI: Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) chief Altaf Hussain on Thursday announced that he is ready to talk to the Taliban for the sake of Pakistan, Express News reported.
Hussain appealed to the Taliban leadership and fighters to understand “the conspiracies of the enemies.”
The MQM has been staunchly against the Taliban and have run multiple campaigns against them in the past.
It had earlier been reported that ‘secret talks’ between Pakistan’s security agencies and the local Taliban – who have reportedly splintered down into many different groups – had entered a decisive phase.
Both sides were hoping that negotiations would culminate in a ‘lasting’ agreement to help restore peace in the country’s lawless tribal lands.
Geo: Pakistan mourns young genius Arfa Karim’s demise
LAHORE: In what could simply be described as an enormous loss for Pakistan, Arfa Karim, the world’s youngest Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP), Saturday night, lost the battle of life after remaining admitted here at Combined Military Hospital for 26 days, Geo News reported.
Arfa Karim was only sixteen years old.
Her funeral prayers will be offered on Sunday at 10 AM in Cantt area.
Arfa Karim remained in intensive care at Combined Military Hospital (CMH) after suffering an epileptic seizure and cardiac arrest a few weeks ago. After battling for life for 26 days, one of Pakistan’s brightest brains left this world for good.
Arfa’s father Colonel (Retd) Amjad Karim Randhawa, while takling to Geo News, said that, she had gone nowhere; she was still alive for her cause was alive. Going forward, Col Randhawa vowed to materialize her dreams.
To a question, he said that Arfa got the best of the medical treatments available, adding he was satisfied with it.
Born in 1995, Arfa Karim got the honor of World’s Youngest Microsoft Certified Professional when she was only 9 years old in 2004. Bill Gates, the Chairman of Microsoft, invited Arfa to visit the Microsoft Headquarters in the USA in the age of 10 only.
Later, in August 2005, Arfa was also honored by the Pakistan Government for the Fatima Jinnah Gold Medal in the field of Science and Technology which she received from then Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. She was also honored with Salaam Pakistan Youth Award in 2005 which has been set up by Pakistan’s only Nobel laureate Dr Abdul Salam. Moreover, Arfa has won the Presidential Award for Pride of Performance.
Arfa represented her country Pakistan on a variety of international fora. She was also included as the honorable guest by IT Professionals of Dubai for two weeks stay in Dubai. During that trip, Arfa was awarded by a number of medals and awards from various tech societies and computer companies working in Dubai.
Amazingly, she was certified for flying a plane at a flying club in Dubai at the age of 10.
Arfa also participated in Microsoft keynote session in the Tech-Ed Developers Conference held in Barcelona, in 2006. The theme of the conference was “Get ahead of the game” and Arfa was in fact a great example of being ahead of the game.
Geo: SC to hear Asghar Kan petition in Feb
ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court (SC) has announced February 29 as possible date for Asfgar Khan case involving ISI distributing money among politicians, Geo News reported Monday.
In 1996 a human rights petition was filed by Air Marshal Asghar Khan (retd) in the Supreme Court of Pakistan (HRC 19/96) against the retired Chief Of Army Staff General Mirza Muhammad Aslam Beg, the former Inter Services Intelligence chief retired Lt-General Asad Durrani and Younis Habib of Habib and Mehran Banks, relating to the disbursement of public money and its misuse for political purposes.
Aamir released from Prison. Thank God, come home man.
Tribune: Hizbut Tahrir links: Court martial initiated against Brigadier Ali Khan
Security officials claimed on Saturday that the Pakistan Army has initiated a court martial against Brigadier Ali Khan, who was arrested in May last year for his alleged ties with the banned militant outfit Hizbut Tahrir (HuT), Associated Press reported.
Two senior security officials revealed the news on condition of anonymity, but did not provide further details.
Brigadier Khan had opted to be tried by court martial after an inquiry board informed him that the allegations leveled against him had been substantiated. He had asked the concerned officials to prove the allegations against him before the court.
The brigadier was charged for his alleged ties to extremist organisations, including the banned UK-based organisation HuT. A day later, four army majors were also arrested for their alleged links with HuT.
Tribune: Adiala prisoners’ case: Seven prisoners presented before SC
Resuming the Adiala missing prisoners’ case on Monday, the Supreme Court sought written explanations from the Inter-Services Intelligence and Military Intelligence chiefs, Judge Advocate General (JAG) and Chief Secretary Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Ghulam Dastagir Khan asking why the prisoners were not presented on court’s earlier order.
Seven prisoners who were sought by the court earlier were presented before the court today.
The court told K-P chief secretary to submit a comprehensive report entailing the details of the detention within four days to the Registrar Office of the Supreme Court, while JAG, MI and ISI were told to submit their reports on March 1.
Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry inquired about the prisoners and asked where they were before January 26. K-P chief secretary replied saying that he did not have knowledge regarding the whereabouts of the prisoners.
The chief justice criticised his statement and said, “A provincial chief secretary should be aware of everything that happens in the province.”
“You should know where the Taliban are stationed and where an operation is carried out against them. You should have knowledge about the province,” said Chief Justice Chaudhry.
Counsel of ISI and MI chiefs Raja Irshad informed the court that, complying with the court’s orders, the prisoners were moved to Islamabad to be presented before the court.
Counsel of the prisoners Advocate Tariq Asad informed the court that during the confinement which lasted for more than a year, the prisoners were not exposed to the sunlight which worsened their health.
Advocate Asad further told the court that three out of the seven prisoners are suffering from kidney failure, while the rest diagnosed with other chronic diseases.
The court asked the counsel of ISI and MI chiefs if both the agencies had the constitutional authority to detain the civilians.
The chief justice said that the condition of the prisoners was rueful and that once the report is submitted, the court will determine if the detentions were lawful or not.
Defence of Human Rights Chairperson Amina Janjua prayed to the court that orders for the release of all the missing persons should be issued.
The three-member bench, headed by the chief justice, had served notices to the ISI and MI chiefs on January 25 to explain the circumstances behind the deaths of the prisoners.
The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa governor was directed to present a report through the provincial chief secretary on the condition of the prisoners who are hospitalised in Peshawar and Parachinar.
The civilians had been facing a court martial under the Army Act on charges of attacking the General Headquarters (GHQ) and ISI’s Hamza Camp base.
They were picked up from Adiala Jail by intelligence agencies after they had been acquitted of the charges by the court.
Four of the 11 detainees – Muhammad Amir, Tahseenullah, Said Arab and Abdul Saboor – died in the custody of the ISI and MI.
Geo: Marvi Memon joins PML-N
LAHORE: Marvi Memon, the former MNA of PML-Q, has announced to join PML-N today in a press conference flanked by Nawaz Sharif today, Geo News reported.
Marvi had tendered her resignation from the National Assembly (NA) and her party on the principle of not wanting to be part of corrupt and incompetent treasury benches, setting new standards in today’s politics.
While addressing her plans she said it took me three years to understand that politics is not possible in an establishment-sponsored party.
‘My first encounter with PML-N was when I saw them fighting for democracy against President Musharraf. I found PML-N top leadership very down to earth, serious, and wise on national issues.’
‘I found PML-N a matured political party as compared to others and meeting with Nawaz Sharif removed all doubts.’
If Chaudhry Brothers apologized to the nations we will induct them into PML-N, Nawaz said. We have rendered sacrifices not those who are raising slogans for change.
Another capable person joins wrong party. Sheikh waqas, khuwafa rafiq and marvi should leave PML. Ant gonna do ne good sitting with Mr. Dithering fool and Mr. 10%.
Geo: SC to indict Babar Awan in contempt case on March 20
ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court (SC) has announced to indict Babar Awan contempt case on March 20, Geo News reported.
A two-Judge bench comprising Justice Ejaz Afzal Khan and Justice Athar Saeed issued the order.
The SC on March 1st had reserved its verdict over a contempt issue pertained to addressing a press conference at Press Information Department by Babar Awan, former law minister and PPP vice president, after December 1 initial order of the SC on memo matter.
During previous hearing Barrister Syed Ali Zafar, counsel for Babar Awan, had submitted a written reply with the bench saying that his client Dr Babar Awan, always held the judiciary in the highest esteem and would never even think or imagine of uttering anything which was derogatory to any court whatsoever.
He had apprised the bench that his client being a senior advocate of the Supreme Court firmly believed that if he scandalized the court in any manner, he was in fact defaming himself as the courts and lawyers were two wheels of the same chariot and disrespect of one would lead to the loss of other.
Clarifying his position, the counsel said that on December 1, 2011, his client along with other office bearers of the PPP, attended the conference against the leadership of Pakistan Muslim League-N headed by Nawaz Sharif, which was a political opponent party.
Geo: ECP disqualifies Waheeda Shah for 2 years, declares election void
ISLAMABAD: Announcing a landmark verdict on Wednesday, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) disqualified Pakistan People’s Party’s candidate Waheeda Shah for two years and declared her election on PS-53 Tando Muhammad Khan null and void.
The ECP had earlier reserved the judgment in the much talked-about case till Wednesday.
Chief Election Commissioner Justice (retd) Hamid Ali Mirza chaired the proceedings while Election Commission Members Justice (retd) Riaz Kayani (Punjab), Justice (retd) Fazlur Rehman, Shahzad Akbar Khan (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) and Roshan Ali Essani were also part of the event.
Waheeda Shah had slapped a Presiding Officer Habiba Memon and Assistant Presiding Officer Shagufta Memon in a polling station of PS-53 Tando Muhammad Khan during by elections of last month in the presence of a DSP.
The video footage of the incident that was repeatedly played by news channels shocked the entire nation.
The issue was taken up by the ECP which announced its historic verdict today that is being hailed by all segments of the society including politicians, the civil society and human rights activists.
The Chief Justice of Pakistan also took suo motto notice of it and Waheeda Shah apologized for the shameful treatment she meted out to the officers of ECP. The case is still underway and it is yet to be seen what action the Supreme Court takes against her.
On Tuesday, Waheeda Shah did not turn up at the Election Commission Secretariat in spite of a summon served on her by the ECP. Her lawyer said his client’s reaction was the result of a misunderstanding.
Ifran Shah, the DSP in whose presence Waheeda Shah slapped the polling officers in Tando Muhammad Khan was also suspended by the IG Sindh on Tuesday.
He was taken to task for taking no action and standing as a silent spectator as the incident unfolded in front of him.
Geo: PPP call shutter down strike in Tando Muhammad Khan
The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has announced a shutter down strike for Thursday against the Election Commission’s decision regarding Waheeda Shah.
Waheeda Shah had been declared ineligible to contest elections for two years by the Election Commission for slapping an assistant presiding officer and other polling staff during by-elections.
The election results for PS-53 were also declared null and void.
On February 25, Waheeda Shah had slapped the Presiding Officer Habiba Memon and Assistant Presiding Officer Shagufta Memon in a polling station of PS-53 Tando Muhammad Khan in the presence of a DSP.
sharam tumko magar nahi atee
Tribune: Waheeda Shah didn’t slap, she pressed: Raja Riaz
LAHORE: Opposition Leader in the Punjab Assembly Raja Riaz said on Thursday that Waheeda Shah Bukhari did not slap anyone, she just “pressed” the presiding officer with her hand.
Speaking to the media outside the Punjab assembly, Riaz said that injustice was done to Bukhari, a widow, and that the slapping incident was “exaggerated” by the media.
“She’s a widow, she was bereaved and had to contest the election while she was traumatised. The media played a negative role in Waheeda’s case,” he said.
He said that the media manipulated the video and played it repeatedly which made it look like Bukhari slapped the staffer several times.
Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah, in response to Riaz’s statement, said that she does not hold the right to slap somebody because she is a widow.
Sanaullah said that the decision taken by the Election Commission of Pakistan was “just and appropriate”.
He further said that the verdict is an example for those who try to oppress the masses on the pretext of democracy.
Plz plz let me “press” Raja Riaz aka dungar
Second that. I would love to press his chubby cheeks every morning plus his scalp with my designer shoe!
I wonder what the Election Commission did to the DSP. I think Kana Justice should have sent him to jail along with IG police.
LOL now he is kaana kyun Asghar Khan case main u r leader noora in trouble :p
Geo: Javed Hashmi made PTI president: Imran
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan on Monday said that Javed Hashmi had been made the party’s President, Geo News reported.
Imran Khan made a formal announcement of making Javed Hashmi President of PTI during a press conference in Lahore. He said that PTI’s Central Executive Committee made this decision.
On the occasion, Nawabzada Mansoor Ali Khan also announced to join PTI after disbanding Nawabzada Nasrullah’s Pakistan Democratic Party.
On the issue of taking extortion money in Karachi, the PTI Chairman said the city was facing destruction and that anyone who stands against extortion must be supported.
He said if it was to be believed that the ‘Tsunami’ had gathered momentum because of former ISI Chief Lt. Gen. (Retd.) Ahmed Shuja Pasha, then it should have lost all its force now. “It has now become clear as to which party the ISI extended its help to; it was PML-N (Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz),” he maintained.
He said he would quit politics if anyone could prove he had taken even a single penny (from an intelligence agency).
In a derogatory remark, Imran Khan said it was the ‘achievements’ of People’s Party that helped trigger the PTI’s Tsunami.
He said the people had a right to know about the politicians who had been doing politics with their tax money.
Imran Khan disclosed that ISI had also played a role in the general elections of 2002 and that ‘we had also received an offer of gifts’ on that occasion.
He called Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman ‘the biggest hypocrite’.
Imran Khan reiterated his party’s stance on Nato supplies, saying the supply line must not be restored.
Guardian: Nuclear watchdog chief accused of pro-western bias over Iran
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the nuclear watchdog at the heart of the growing Iranian crisis, has been accused by several former senior officials of pro-western bias, over-reliance on unverified intelligence and of sidelining sceptics.
Yukiya Amano, a veteran Japanese diplomat, took command of the IAEA in July 2009. Since then, the west’s confrontation with Iran over its nuclear programme has deepened and threats of military action by Israel and the US have become more frequent.
At the same time, the IAEA’s reports on Iranian behaviour have become steadily more critical. In November, it published an unprecedented volume of intelligence pointing towards past Iranian work on developing a nuclear weapon, deeming it credible.
However, some former IAEA officials are saying that the agency has gone too far. Robert Kelley, a former US weapons scientists who ran the IAEA action team on Iraq at the time of the US-led invasion, said there were worrying parallels between the west’s mistakes over Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction then and the IAEA’s assessment of Iran now.
“Amano is falling into the Cheney trap. What we learned back in 2002 and 2003, when we were in the runup to the war, was that peer review was very important, and that the analysis should not be left to a small group of people,” Kelley said.
“So what have we learned since then? Absolutely nothing. Just like [former US vice-president] Dick Cheney, Amano is relying on a very small group of people and those opinions are not being checked.”
Other former officials have also raised concern that the current IAEA is becoming an echo chamber, focused on suspicions over Iran’s programme, without the vigorous debate that characterised the era of Amano’s predecessor Mohamed ElBaradei.
They point to Amano’s decision, in March last year, to dissolve the agency’s office of external relations and policy co-ordination (Expo), which under ElBaradei had second-guessed some of the judgments made by the safeguards department inspectors.
Expo cautioned against the publication of IAEA reports that the Bush administration might use to justify military action. Some inspectors believed that amounted to censorship and western governments said it was not the agency’s job to make political judgments.
ElBaradei’s advisers from Expo were moved sideways in the organisation, and the department’s functions have been absorbed by the director-general’s office. “There has been a concentration of power, with less diversity of viewpoints,” a former agency official said, adding that Amano has surrounded himself with advisors who have the same approach to Iran.
Hans Blix, a former IAEA director general, also raised concerns over the agency’s credibility. “There is a distinction between information and evidence, and if you are a responsible agency you have to make sure that you ask questions and do not base conclusions on information that has not been verified,” he said.
“The agency has a certain credibility. It should guard it by being meticulous in checking the evidence. If certain governments want a blessing for the intelligence they provide the IAEA, they should provide convincing evidence. Otherwise, the agency should not give its stamp of approval.” Blix said he could not say for certain whether that had happened under Amano’s watch.
The IAEA would not comment on the criticisms, under a policy which avoids entering public debate.
Western diplomats in Vienna, where the IAEA has its headquarters, defended Amano’s management, pointing out that much of the material on weaponisation had been previously raised when ElBaradei ran the agency, albeit in less detail, and was based on 1,000 pages of documentation.
“It is arguable that ElBaradei was a slightly more benefit-of-the-doubt operator than Amano,” one diplomat said. “He might have fretted more about making judgments on evidence because he didn’t have 100% confirmation. Amano says, ‘I don’t have 100% certainty, but it makes no sense saying nothing until a smoking gun is visible.’ ”
Some of the controversy around Amano’s management dates to his election in 2009, when he narrowly beat Abdul Minty, a South African diplomat who championed the interests of developing countries organised in the Non-Aligned Movement, in a campaign which became a geopolitical contest between North and South.
“Amano’s director-generalship began under a bad star,” said Mark Hibbs, a nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The election was extremely polarised and bitter. Minty clearly appealed to states who see themselves as underdogs and have-nots. Amano was supported by the US and others who saw him as rolling back the IAEA’s political aspirations under ElBaradei to a more technical agency.”
The acrid taste left by the election was heightened by the US diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks which revealed Amano’s assiduous courting of American support. In an October 2009 cable, the US charge d’affaires, Geoffrey Pyatt, wrote: “Amano reminded [the] ambassador on several occasions that he would need to make concessions to the G-77 [the developing countries group], which correctly required him to be fair-minded and independent, but that he was solidly in the US court on every key strategic decision, from high-level personnel appointments to the handling of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.”
In an earlier cable in July that year, the Americans recount discussions with Amano on the future of officials, particular in Expo, “some of whom have not always been helpful to US positions”. Last year, the named officials were moved to other jobs, out of the inner core which drafts the quarterly reports, like the controversial one on Iran in November.
Hibbs argues that some degree of reorganisation was desirable and inevitable given the heated public battles under ElBaradei. “Many states’ diplomats were appalled that a small number of officials in the two [IAEA] departments were at war with each other and at the extent they were prepared to use the media to get their points across,” he said.
Under Amano, internal debates have generally not leaked, and he has centralised the organisation, insisting that most public statements come from his office. But this has not stop controversy from enveloping the agency, just as it did under ElBaradei. In the first major crisis of the Amano tenure, the Fukushima nuclear disaster following the Japanese tsunami a year ago, he was widely blamed for not acting quickly and aggressively enough.
Criticism over the agency’s outspoken comments on Iran has also focused on the director-general. Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, a Washington-based non-proliferation organisation, said: “The main beneficiaries of the Amano reign have been US policy and the Japanese nuclear power industry. There has been no space between Amano and Barack Obama, and he withheld serious criticism of the industry during the Fukushima crisis.”
He added: “On Iran, the difference is like night and day. ElBaradei constantly sought a diplomatic solution, while Amano wields a big stick and has hit Iran hard and repeatedly.”
On the other hand, Cirincione added, ElBaradei’s more restrained approach had not succeeded in persuading Iran to suspend its enrichment of uranium in line with UN security council demands.
The facts of that accelerating enrichment programme are generally not disputed, only the intentions behind it. Cirincione also said new information has come to the IAEA’s attention during Amano’s stewardship, which may warrant the more detailed report on the possible military dimensions of the programme issued in November.
Even Kelley, a fierce critic of the agency, said in a recent commentary that “[Iran] claims to have given up its nuclear weapons ambitions, yet repeatedly acts as if it has something to hide. I am a sceptic; I suspect the Iranians may have an ongoing weaponisation programme. And the uncertainty must be resolved.”
Kelley argues that with war and peace in the balance, as well as the IAEA’s credibility, anything it publishes must be thoroughly verified. In particular, he questions the agency’s focus on a bus-sized steel vessel supposedly installed in an Iranian military site at Parchin in 2000, which the November report said was for “hydrodynamic experiments” – testing shaped, high-explosive arrays used to implode the spherical fissile core of a warhead and start a chain reaction. Kelley disputes the agency’s logic.
“You don’t do hydrodynamic testing of nuclear bombs in containers,” he said. “All of such tests would be done at outdoor firing sites, not in a building next to a major highway.”
Kelley also says the suggestion in the November report that weapons experimentation could be continuing is based largely on a single document, which ElBaradei had rejected as dubious. In his memoir, The Age of Deception, ElBaradei talks about documents supplied in 2009 by Israel, the authenticity of which was questioned by the agency’s experts.
Western government officials argue that with the use of advanced fibre optics, a containment vessel could be used to perfect the timing of explosive arrays, and say that evidence that has surfaced during Amano’s tenure had added to the credibility of the Israeli document. However, the judgment of the US intelligence community is that weapons development ceased in 2003.
Jim Walsh, an expert on the Iranian nuclear programme at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that US intelligence had become more certain over recent years in its judgment that Iran ceased weaponisation work in 2003.
“Amano has been way out in front of the US on this,” Walsh said. “I think if the agency is going to be a neutral player in this – and we need a neutral player to make the sort of judgements that have to be made – it will have to be more conservative that the national governments on this.”
The issue is critical. While there is no doubt that Iran is in contravention of US security council resolutions, and there is substantial evidence that the country had an organised weapons project up to 2003, the claim that work has continued has added to the sense of urgency that has fuelled the western oil embargo, due to take effect in less than four months, and threats of military action.
Laban Coblentz, ElBaradei’s former speechwriter and a collaborator on The Age of Deception, said that huge stakes could rest on the nuances with which the IAEA director-general interprets the evidence.
“It is a very difficult place to be sitting,” Coblentz said. “Amano and ElBaradei were looking at the same allegations. They have both said to their people: please pursue this. All that is the same. The other thing that is the same is that so far the most substantial allegations have not been verified. What has changed is the willingness to publish those allegations that have not been verified as a tool to pressure the Iranians to come to the table.”
Waris Hussain: The unraveling blindfold of justice
The New Yorker: Our Men in Iran?
From the air, the terrain of the Department of Energy’s Nevada National Security Site, with its arid high plains and remote mountain peaks, has the look of northwest Iran. The site, some sixty-five miles northwest of Las Vegas, was once used for nuclear testing, and now includes a counterintelligence training facility and a private airport capable of handling Boeing 737 aircraft. It’s a restricted area, and inhospitable—in certain sections, the curious are warned that the site’s security personnel are authorized to use deadly force, if necessary, against intruders.
It was here that the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) conducted training, beginning in 2005, for members of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a dissident Iranian opposition group known in the West as the M.E.K. The M.E.K. had its beginnings as a Marxist-Islamist student-led group and, in the nineteen-seventies, it was linked to the assassination of six American citizens. It was initially part of the broad-based revolution that led to the 1979 overthrow of the Shah of Iran. But, within a few years, the group was waging a bloody internal war with the ruling clerics, and, in 1997, it was listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department. In 2002, the M.E.K. earned some international credibility by publicly revealing—accurately—that Iran had begun enriching uranium at a secret underground location. Mohamed ElBaradei, who at the time was the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear monitoring agency, told me later that he had been informed that the information was supplied by the Mossad. The M.E.K.’s ties with Western intelligence deepened after the fall of the Iraqi regime in 2003, and JSOC began operating inside Iran in an effort to substantiate the Bush Administration’s fears that Iran was building the bomb at one or more secret underground locations. Funds were covertly passed to a number of dissident organizations, for intelligence collection and, ultimately, for anti-regime terrorist activities. Directly, or indirectly, the M.E.K. ended up with resources like arms and intelligence. Some American-supported covert operations continue in Iran today, according to past and present intelligence officials and military consultants.
Despite the growing ties, and a much-intensified lobbying effort organized by its advocates, M.E.K. has remained on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations—which meant that secrecy was essential in the Nevada training. “We did train them here, and washed them through the Energy Department because the D.O.E. owns all this land in southern Nevada,” a former senior American intelligence official told me. “We were deploying them over long distances in the desert and mountains, and building their capacity in communications—coördinating commo is a big deal.” (A spokesman for J.S.O.C. said that “U.S. Special Operations Forces were neither aware of nor involved in the training of M.E.K. members.”)
The training ended sometime before President Obama took office, the former official said. In a separate interview, a retired four-star general, who has advised the Bush and Obama Administrations on national-security issues, said that he had been privately briefed in 2005 about the training of Iranians associated with the M.E.K. in Nevada by an American involved in the program. They got “the standard training,” he said, “in commo, crypto [cryptography], small-unit tactics, and weaponry—that went on for six months,” the retired general said. “They were kept in little pods.” He also was told, he said, that the men doing the training were from JSOC, which, by 2005, had become a major instrument in the Bush Administration’s global war on terror. “The JSOC trainers were not front-line guys who had been in the field, but second- and third-tier guys—trainers and the like—and they started going off the reservation. ‘If we’re going to teach you tactics, let me show you some really sexy stuff…’ ”
It was the ad-hoc training that provoked the worried telephone calls to him, the former general said. “I told one of the guys who called me that they were all in over their heads, and all of them could end up trouble unless they got something in writing. The Iranians are very, very good at counterintelligence, and stuff like this is just too hard to contain.” The site in Nevada was being utilized at the same time, he said, for advanced training of élite Iraqi combat units. (The retired general said he only knew of the one M.E.K.-affiliated group that went though the training course; the former senior intelligence official said that he was aware of training that went on through 2007.)
Allan Gerson, a Washington attorney for the M.E.K., notes that the M.E.K. has publicly and repeatedly renounced terror. Gerson said he would not comment on the alleged training in Nevada. But such training, if true, he said, would be “especially incongruent with the State Department’s decision to continue to maintain the M.E.K. on the terrorist list. How can the U.S. train those on State’s foreign terrorist list, when others face criminal penalties for providing a nickel to the same organization?”
Robert Baer, a retired C.I.A. agent who is fluent in Arabic and had worked under cover in Kurdistan and throughout the Middle East in his career, initially had told me in early 2004 of being recruited by a private American company—working, so he believed, on behalf of the Bush Administration—to return to Iraq. “They wanted me to help the M.E.K. collect intelligence on Iran’s nuclear program,” Baer recalled. “They thought I knew Farsi, which I did not. I said I’d get back to them, but never did.” Baer, now living in California, recalled that it was made clear to him at the time that the operation was “a long-term thing—not just a one-shot deal.”
Massoud Khodabandeh, an I.T. expert now living in England who consults for the Iraqi government, was an official with the M.E.K. before defecting in 1996. In a telephone interview, he acknowledged that he is an avowed enemy of the M.E.K., and has advocated against the group. Khodabandeh said that he had been with the group since before the fall of the Shah and, as a computer expert, was deeply involved in intelligence activities as well as providing security for the M.E.K. leadership. For the past decade, he and his English wife have run a support program for other defectors. Khodabandeh told me that he had heard from more recent defectors about the training in Nevada. He was told that the communications training in Nevada involved more than teaching how to keep in contact during attacks—it also involved communication intercepts. The United States, he said, at one point found a way to penetrate some major Iranian communications systems. At the time, he said, the U.S. provided M.E.K. operatives with the ability to intercept telephone calls and text messages inside Iran—which M.E.K. operatives translated and shared with American signals intelligence experts. He does not know whether this activity is ongoing.
Five Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated since 2007. M.E.K. spokesmen have denied any involvement in the killings, but early last month NBC News quoted two senior Obama Administration officials as confirming that the attacks were carried out by M.E.K. units that were financed and trained by Mossad, the Israeli secret service. NBC further quoted the Administration officials as denying any American involvement in the M.E.K. activities. The former senior intelligence official I spoke with seconded the NBC report that the Israelis were working with the M.E.K., adding that the operations benefitted from American intelligence. He said that the targets were not “Einsteins”; “The goal is to affect Iranian psychology and morale,” he said, and to “demoralize the whole system—nuclear delivery vehicles, nuclear enrichment facilities, power plants.” Attacks have also been carried out on pipelines. He added that the operations are “primarily being done by M.E.K. through liaison with the Israelis, but the United States is now providing the intelligence.” An adviser to the special-operations community told me that the links between the United States and M.E.K. activities inside Iran had been long-standing. “Everything being done inside Iran now is being done with surrogates,” he said.
The sources I spoke to were unable to say whether the people trained in Nevada were now involved in operations in Iran or elsewhere. But they pointed to the general benefit of American support. “The M.E.K. was a total joke,” the senior Pentagon consultant said, “and now it’s a real network inside Iran. How did the M.E.K. get so much more efficient?” he asked rhetorically. “Part of it is the training in Nevada. Part of it is logistical support in Kurdistan, and part of it is inside Iran. M.E.K. now has a capacity for efficient operations that it never had before.”
In mid-January, a few days after an assassination by car bomb of an Iranian nuclear scientist in Tehran, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, at a town-hall meeting of soldiers at Fort Bliss, Texas, acknowledged that the U.S. government has “some ideas as to who might be involved, but we don’t know exactly who was involved.” He added, “But I can tell you one thing: the United States was not involved in that kind of effort. That’s not what the United States does.”
ET – Pervez Hoodbhoy: Americans and Saudis: hands off Pakistan’s pipeline please!
Now and then, as though out of sheer boredom, the United States shoots itself in the foot and loses the occasional goodwill it creates with aid programmes. Consider the latest: Secretary Hilary Clinton says that “As we are ratcheting up pressure on Iran, it seems somewhat inexplicable that Pakistan would be trying to negotiate a pipeline with it”. Appearing before Congress, she threatened that sanctions could be imposed by the US on Pakistan’s precarious economy, and these would be “particularly damaging” and “further undermine their economic status”.
One wonders why Mrs Clinton finds Pakistan’s attempt to tap into its gas-rich neighbour “inexplicable”. In fact, there is no mystery. Half of Pakistan’s energy needs are met from gas, but only 30 per cent of gas is domestically produced. Natural gas runs the country’s electricity generating plants, powers its factories, and is used as fuel for cars, buses and trucks.
Without additional energy supplies, social chaos and disruption lies in the months and years ahead. Electricity shortfalls sometimes reach as high as 6,000MW, meaning that 40 per cent of the demand is unmet. Daily blackouts have gutted industrial production, closed markets, and CNG is rationed in spite of a huge price hike. Power riots broke out two weeks ago in Lahore. In October, protesters against power outages held up a train in Gujranwala, ordered passengers onto the platform, and set three coaches on fire.
Iran’s gas could be critical for avoiding mass rioting and social breakdown. Should it actually come through, the proposed 56 inch diameter, 2,100-kilometres long IP pipeline would deliver a whopping 750 million cubic feet of gas per day from Iran’s South Pars gas field, located near Iran’s southern city of Asalouyeh. This could become Pakistan’s jugular vein or, more accurately, its windpipe.
Expectedly, Secretary Clinton’s threats have drawn a strong reaction from Pakistani officials and leaders, with each trying to stand taller than the other. All this comes at a time when Pakistan-US relations are at a dangerous low. Quite apart from everything else, threatening Pakistan is poor diplomacy because it is reacting to something that, at the moment, is no more than a possibility.
Although the pipeline project’s formal completion date is December 2014, a detailed feasibility plan is still being worked out and the source of funding is unclear. In July 2011, President Ahmadinejad has offered to fund construction of the 761 kilometres inside Pakistani territory. Iran declared at the time that it had laid the pipeline on its side to within 50 kilometres of Pakistan’s border. But the Iranian offer has to be taken with a good pinch of salt because Iran’s economic difficulties are rapidly mounting. China’s largest bank, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, has backed out from its earlier commitment. Currently the Pakistan government is negotiating with Gazprom, the Russian gas and oil giant. Nothing is clear.
The threats to Pakistan clearly violate the principle of fairness. Let’s say that Iran is indeed a “bad guy”, and that it is wrong to trade with bad guys. But, by this logic is it okay for the US to conduct $500 billion dollars of trade with China annually, a country that it alleges — perhaps correctly — of violating human rights? What about the planned $80 billion US arm sales to Saudi Arabia, a country that officially does not accept the right to religious freedom and treats its women abysmally? The IP gas pipeline, on the other hand, involves a piddling $1.5 billion and brings obvious advantages to Pakistan.
US antagonism to the IP pipeline comes, of course, because of Iran’s nuclear programme. This is why India, China and Turkey are also being hectored into reducing their imports of Iranian crude oil. In 2008, US pressure forced India to pull out of the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline, also known as the “Peace Pipeline”.
Suppose, for argument’s sake, Iran’s secret agenda is indeed that which the US alleges — i.e. to make nuclear weapons. If true, I find it personally regrettable. The world needs less, not more, nuclear weapons. It is in Iran’s long-term interest to shelve such ambitions and get on with improving the lives of ordinary Iranians. Yet, in all fairness, there are nine other nuclear states in the world with America’s perennial ally, Israel, being among them.
But let us not blame the Americans alone. Another nation has now stepped in to discourage the construction of the IP pipeline. The kings and princes of Saudi Arabia — who had earlier urged the US to destroy Iran’s nuclear programme by launching military strikes and “cut off the head of the snake” — are making their presence felt here in Islamabad.
Two weeks ago, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s deputy foreign minister, Prince Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, sought to persuade Pakistan to abandon the IP pipeline and cancel electricity/oil import deals with Iran. Although details have not appeared in the press, Abdul Aziz apparently offered some kind of a financial bailout as the quid pro quo.
But Pakistan needs energy security, not more loans. The Saudi attempt to create divisions and distrust with a neighboring country is plainly insidious and deserved a riposte from Pakistan’s leaders — one no less stout than the one delivered to the Americans. The Saudi plan is just as unworkable as the TAPI pipeline, which the US is pushing as an alternative to the IP pipeline. TAPI would run through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. But with Afghanistan likely to be embroiled indefinitely in civil war after 2014, only a wild optimist can believe that a pipeline traversing its hostile and intractable terrain could provide secure oil supplies.
It is time for the US to get real and know that countries will pursue their goals rather than those preferred by Washington. John Foster Dulles is dead, as is Ronald Reagan — strong-arm tactics have seen their day. Instead American diplomacy needs to show sensitivity, and factor in the needs of the countries it deals with. Else the U.S shall isolate itself away from a goal that is truly important, the fight against global terrorism.
MQM files lawsuit against Kashif Abbasi
K arachi: Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) has filed a lawsuit against ARY and famous anchorperson Kashif Abbasi for allegedly maligning MQM Chief Altaf Hussain.
The lawsuit worth Rs. 10 billion is expected to be heard by Sindh High Court in the next week.
The law suit was served on 15th March, 2012.
MQM’s Deputy Convener, Dr. Farooq Sattar filed the law suit against ARY News and the famous anchorperson Kashif Abbasi, who hosts a show “Off the Record” on the same channel.
Talking to the media, Dr. Farooq Sattar, called this event as a part of maligning MQM and its leader Altaf Hussain.
The lawsuit requests the court to order an immediate and unconditional apology to the complainant from the defendant, which should be telecast on both national and international television and also order the defendant to pay ten billion rupees as defamation charges.
The row started after an argument between the two in Kashif Abbasi’s program “Off the Record” telecasted on February 29, 2012. Kashif Abbasi, in the show, quoted a news story in which it was said that dozens of politicians including Altaf Hussain benefited from the Mehran Bank scandal and got Rs. 20 million, upon which the representative of MQM, Waseem Akhtar burst out in anger and started an argument with the host.
When contacted, Kashif Abbasi explained the story and presented his viewpoint to Saach.tv and stated that filing for defamation is MQM’s democratic right. Every party has the right to approach the courts.
He said that this current law suit is not the only one filed against him. There have been many other law suits filed totaling around 160 billions. Describing the context, Kashif Abbasi said that he did not insinuate that Altaf Hussain took the money. He only quoted a news story of The News in which Altaf Hussain’s name was mentioned and to which Waseem Akhar produced a story of Jang newspaper which had the name of Altaf Hussain Qureshi rather than Altaf Hussain (MQM Chief). Kashif Abbasi disclosed that the news story of The News categorically talks about Altaf Hussain, the MQM Chief, as MQM is written in front of his name.
Kashif Abbasi told that after his February 29, 2012 program, he came under a barrage of criticism from MQM. He did another program on 5th March, 2012 to set the record straight and in that program he explained his reason for mentioning Altaf Hussain among the alleged list of people who took money from agencies. He quoted many people including Naseerullah Babar, who on the floor of the house mentioned Altaf Hussain and many others including Younus Habib himself suggesting that Advocate Yousuf gave money to Altaf Hussain.
MQM has been questioning the stance of Kashif Abbasi over the statement of Brig. (r) Imtiaz who excluded Altaf Hussain from the list of people taking money. But Kashif Abbasi is of the view that one person cannot give a verdict and declare anyone guilty or innocent. This is the work of Supreme Court and let the Supreme Court do it.
Kashif Abbasi reiterated his stance on the issue and said that he owns what he presented and is firm over his facts.
George Monbiot: Imperialism didn’t end. These days it’s known as international law
The conviction of Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia, is said to have sent an unequivocal message to current leaders: that great office confers no immunity. In fact it sent two messages: if you run a small, weak nation, you may be subject to the full force of international law. If you run a powerful nation, you have nothing to fear.
While anyone with an interest in human rights should welcome the verdict, it reminds us that no one has faced legal consequences for launching the illegal war against Iraq. This fits the Nuremberg Tribunal’s definition of a “crime of aggression”, which it called “the supreme international crime”(1). The charges on which, in an impartial system, George Bush, Tony Blair and their associates should have been investigated are far graver than those for which Taylor was found guilty.
The foreign secretary, William Hague, claims that Taylor’s conviction “demonstrates that those who have committed the most serious of crimes can and will be held to account for their actions.”(2) But the International Criminal Court, though it was established ten years ago, and though the crime of aggression has been recognised in international law since 1945, still has no jurisdiction over “the most serious of crimes”(3). This is because the powerful nations, for obvious reasons, are procrastinating. Nor have the United Kingdom, the United States and other western nations incorporated the crime of aggression into their own legislation. International law remains an imperial project, in which only the crimes committed by vassal states are punished.
In this respect it corresponds to other global powers. Despite its trumpeted reforms, the International Monetary Fund remains under the control of the United States and the former colonial powers. All constitutional matters still require an 85% share of the vote(4). By an inexplicable oversight, the United States retains 16.7%, ensuring that it possesses a veto over subsequent reforms(5). Belgium still has eight times the votes of Bangladesh(6), Italy a bigger share than India and the United Kingdom and France between them more voting power than the 49 African members(7). The managing director remains, as imperial tradition insists, a European, her deputy an American.
The IMF, as a result, is still the means by which western financial markets project their power into the rest of the world. At the end of last year, for example, it published a paper pressing emerging economies to increase their “financial depth”, which it defines as “the total financial claims and counterclaims of an economy”(8). This, it claimed, would insulate them from crisis.
As the Bretton Woods Project points out, emerging nations with large real economies and small financial sectors were the countries which best weathered the economic crisis, which was caused by advanced economies with large financial sectors(9). Like the modern opium war it waged in the 1980s and 1990s – when it forced Asian countries to liberalise their currencies, permitting western financial speculators to attack them(10) – the IMF’s prescriptions are incomprehensible until they are understood as instruments of financial power.
Decolonisation did not take place until the former colonial powers and the empires of capital on whose behalf they operated had established other means of retaining control. Some, like the IMF and World Bank, have remained almost unchanged. Others, like the programme of extraordinary rendition, evolved in response to new challenges to global hegemony.
As the kidnapping of Abdul Hakim Belhaj and his wife suggests, the UK’s foreign and intelligence services see themselves as a global police force, minding the affairs of other nations. In 2004, after Tony Blair, with one eye on possible contracts for British oil companies, decided that Gaddafi was a useful asset, the alliance was sealed with the capture, packaging and delivery of the regime’s dissenters(11).
Like the colonial crimes the British government committed in Kenya and elsewhere(12), whose concealment was sustained by the Foreign Office until its secret archives were revealed last month(13), the rendition programme was hidden from public view. Just as the colonial secretary, Alan Lennox-Boyd, repeatedly lied to parliament about the detention and torture of the Kikuyu(14), in 2005 Jack Straw, then foreign secretary, told parliament that “there simply is no truth in the claims that the United Kingdom has been involved in rendition.”(15)
Reading the emails passed between the offices of James Murdoch and Jeremy Hunt, it struck me that here too is a government which sees itself as an agent of empire – Murdoch’s in this case – and which sees the electorate as ornamental. Working, against the public interest, for News Corporation, the financial sector and the billionaire donors to the Conservative party, its ministers act as capital’s district commissioners, governing Britain as their forebears governed the colonies.
The bid for power, oil and spheres of influence that Bush and Blair launched in Mesopotamia, using the traditional camouflage of the civilising mission; the colonial war still being fought in Afghanistan, 199 years after the Great Game began; the global policing functions the great powers have arrogated to themselves; the one-sided justice dispensed by international law: all these suggest that imperialism never ended, but merely mutated into new forms. The virtual empire knows no boundaries. Until we begin to recognise and confront it, all of us, black and white, will remain its subjects.
ET: Babar Awan stripped of all PPP posts
ISLAMABAD: Former law minister Senator Babar Awan’s days as a Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) member seem numbered.
In a telling blow to Awan, the party leadership on Tuesday decided to take away his last official post within the party fold. Party officials confirmed to The Express Tribune that Awan was no longer the finance secretary of the party, nor the senior vice president.
Rukhsana Bangash, political secretary to President Asif Ali Zardari, will now serve as the party’s finance secretary, sources claimed. Furthermore, after losing his posts, Awan will no longer be able to participate in any of the party’s Central Executive Committee meetings. Awan’s name was also removed from the CEC members of the PPP.
In addition, Awan’s younger brother Ghulam Farooq, who was earlier made an adviser to the ministry of postal services, also resigned. He had also served as the prime minister’s adviser on law. Earlier in the day, the party also shifted its central secretariat from Awan’s house to a new location. PPP central secretariat had operated out of Awan’s home for about 11 months.
“We have shifted our office from F-8/4,” an official said while adding, Senator Jahangir Badar will inaugurate the new office today (Wednesday).
Elevated as vice president of the PPP in December last year, Awan had drawn the ire of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leadership ever since his refusal to appear before the Supreme Court to testify in the contempt of court hearing against Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani. On March 31, the PPP leadership removed Awan from Parliamentary Committee on National Security (PCNS).
Geo: Clinton ‘hurt’ by charges of anti-Islam US bias
DHAKA: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday she was deeply hurt by charges that the United States was biased against Muslims, staunchly defending her country’s record in protecting minorities.
Clinton, visiting the world’s third largest Muslim-majority country Bangladesh, was asked by a student at a public forum about perceptions that the United States was against Islam.
“That hurts me so much,” Clinton said. “It’s a painful perception to hear about and I deeply regret that anyone believes that or propagates it.”
Clinton said that the decade of US-led war was “self-defence” after the September 11, 2001 attacks by Al-Qaeda and said extremists “perverted” the teachings of Islam.
“Is there discrimination or prejudice in the United States like in every society and country in the world? Unfortunately yes. Human nature has not changed dramatically,” she said.
“There is discrimination against people of different religions, of different races, of different ethnic groups all over the world… but I don’t think that it is at all fair to hold up the United States” over discrimination, she said.
“I believe that the United States through our laws and through our constant political dialogue has gone probably farther than anywhere else in the world in trying to guarantee legal protections for people. I would like to see more countries do more to protect the rights of minorities,” she said.
The United States has long had a cooperative relationship with Bangladesh, which is known for its moderate brand of Islam and has a significant population of religious minorities.
But Clinton is the first US secretary of state to visit Bangladesh since 2003 amid concern over political infighting that has long polarised the country. (AFP)
I think i will let ur hubby answer u
Geo: Mumtaz Bhutto’s SNF merged with PML-N
RATODERO: Chairman of Sindh National Front (SNF) Mumtaz Ali Bhutto has announced to merge SNF with Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) here today while addressing a workers’ convention, Geo News reported.
Mumtaz Bhutto was addressing a gathering here where PML-N president Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif will also speak shortly in connection with the anti-government campaign.
The merger became possible as both parties were willing to take steps against the incompetent government.
The PML-N would give at least five tickets to members of the other party for the upcoming general elections. Also, there are chances that the SNF chairman, Mumtaz Bhutto, might be appointed as the central chairman of the PML-N.
ET: Punjab Assembly passes South Punjab, Bahawalpur province resolutions
LAHORE: The resolutions pertaining to the creation of the South Punjab province and the restoration of Bahawalpur province were unanimously approved in the session of the Punjab Assembly held today, Express News reported.
Both resolutions were submitted by Punjab Law Minister and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Rana Sanaullah.
The opposition in the Punjab Assembly, led by the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), had called for a session today (Wednesday) where a resolutions pertaining to the creation of new provinces were to be tabled.
Usually, the opposition benches as opposed to the government benches call for a Punjab Assembly session due to poor law and order situation, wheat procurement issues or inflation. But the opposition specifically called for a session demanding the formation of a South Punjab province.
Following the opposition’s move, Rana Sanaullah had submitted the resolutions on Tuesday.
Guardian: If there were global justice, Nato would be in the dock over Libya
Libya was supposed to be different. The lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan had been learned, David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy insisted last year. This would be a real humanitarian intervention. Unlike Iraq, there would be no boots on the ground. Unlike in Afghanistan, Nato air power would be used to support a fight for freedom and prevent a massacre. Unlike the Kosovo campaign, there would be no indiscriminate cluster bombs: only precision weapons would be used. This would be a war to save civilian lives.
Seven months on from Muammar Gaddafi’s butchering in the ruins of Sirte, the fruits of liberal intervention in Libya are now cruelly clear, and documented by the UN and human rights groups: 8,000 prisoners held without trial, rampant torture and routine deaths in detention, the ethnic cleansing of Tawerga, a town of 30,000 mainly black Libyans (already in the frame as a crime against humanity) and continuing violent persecution of sub-Saharan Africans across the country.
A year after the western powers tried to make up for lost ground in the Arab uprisings by tipping the balance of the Benghazi-led revolt, Libya is in the lawless grip of rival warlords and armed conflict between militias, as the western-installed National Transitional Council (NTC) passes Gaddafi-style laws clamping down on freedom of speech, gives legal immunity to former rebels and disqualifies election candidates critical of the new order. These are the political forces Nato played the decisive role in bringing to power.
Now the evidence is starting to build up of what Nato’s laser-guided bombing campaign actually meant on the ground. The New York-based Human Rights Watch this week released a report into the deaths of at least 72 Libyan civilians, a third of them children, killed in eight separate bombing raids (seven on non-military targets) – and denounced Nato for still refusing to investigate or even acknowledge civilian deaths that were always denied at the time.
Given the tens of thousands of civilians killed by US, British and other Nato forces both from the air and on the ground in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen over the last decade, perhaps Nato commanders prefer not to detain themselves with such comparative trifles. And Human Rights Watch believes that, whatever the real number of civilians directly killed by Nato bombing, it was relatively low given the 10,000-odd sorties flown.
But while Nato’s UN mandate was to protect civilians, the alliance in practice turned that mission on its head. Throwing its weight behind one side in a civil war to oust Gaddafi’s regime, it became the air force for the rebel militias on the ground. So while the death toll was perhaps between 1,000 and 2,000 when Nato intervened in March, by October it was estimated by the NTC to be 30,000 – including thousands of civilians.
We can’t of course know what would have happened without Nato’s bombing campaign, even if there is no evidence that Gaddafi had either the intention or capability to carry out a massacre in Benghazi. But we do know that Nato provided decisive air cover for the rebels as they matched Gaddafi’s forces war crime for war crime, carried out massacres of their own and indiscriminately shelled civilian areas with devastating results – such as reduced much of Sirte to rubble last October.
There were also Nato and Qatari boots on the ground, including British special forces, co-ordinating rebel operations. So Nato certainly shared responsibility for the deaths of many more civilian than its missiles directly incinerated.
That is the kind of indirect culpability that led to the conviction last month of Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia, in the UN-backed special court for Sierra Leone in The Hague. Taylor, now awaiting sentence and expected to be jailed in Britain, was found guilty of “aiding and abetting” war crimes and crimes against humanity during Sierra Leone’s civil war in the 1990s. But he was cleared of directly ordering atrocities carried out by Sierra Leonean rebels.
Which pretty well describes the role played by Nato in Libya last year. International lawyers say legal culpability would depend on the degree of assistance and knowledge of war crimes for which Nato provided cover, even if the political and moral responsibility could not be clearer.
But there is of course simply no question of Nato leaders being held to legal account for the Libyan carnage, any more than they have been for far more direct crimes carried out in Iraq and Afghanistan. The only Briton convicted of a war crime over the bloodbath of Iraq has been Corporal Donald Payne, for abuse of prisoners in Basra in 2003. While George Bush has boasted of authorising the international crime of torture and faced not so much as a caution.
Which only underlines that what is called international law simply doesn’t apply to the big powers or their political leaders. In the 10 years of its existence, the International criminal court has indicted 28 people from seven countries for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Every single one of them is African – even though ICC signatories include war-wracked states such as Colombia and Afghanistan.
That’s rather as if the criminal law in Britain only applied to people earning the minimum wage and living in Cornwall. But so long as international law is only used against small or weak states in the developing world, it won’t be a system of international justice, but an instrument of power politics and imperial enforcement.
Just as the urgent lesson of Libya – for the rest of the Arab world and beyond – is that however it is dressed up, foreign military intervention isn’t a short cut to freedom. And far from saving lives, again and again it has escalated slaughter.
Mariq Waqar ET: I’m still proudly ghairatmand
This article is in response to Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy’s piece titled “Let us become — proudly — bayghairat” published in this newspaper on May 6. The writer believes that dangerous appeals to honour — an anachronistic concept originating from herding societies — have historically made nations pave the way for their own doom. But modern nations, with beliefs in reason and science, are able to make more practical decisions that ensure their progress and well-being.
It is contradicting that the examples Dr Hoodbhoy gives to justify the dangerous ‘tribal’ notion of honour are of the most modern societies of their times. Nazi Germany was vastly industrialised and urbanised with a very high literacy rate and a thriving civil society. The Germans were no bunch of herders existing in the pre-Newtonian era. In fact, in Nazi Germany, so firm was the faith in science that the system of racial eugenics, designed for justifying the superiority of the Aryan race and achieving racial purity, was promulgated under the garb of ‘scientific truth’. Similarly, Japan was one of the earliest nations to modernise and prior to WWII, had undisputedly become a ‘mass society’ with strongly rooted modern values of individualism, materialism and efficiency.
So, why is it that such modern nations deliberately treaded the path of ruin because of their supposedly ‘backward’ notion of honour? It might be easier for Zaid Hamid and Imran Khan to rouse the gullible ‘traditional’ masses of Pakistan by invoking their ghairat but why did such a strategy work so effectively in the most literate and developed of nations?
Even if we accept Dr Hoodbhoy’s viewpoint, his examples imply that human values won’t suddenly disappear as traditional societies transition into modern ones. Ideas like honour, love, and jealousy reflect the essence of humanity but are often relegated to the domain of sentimentality and irrationality by science. And they will not just be supplanted by rational cost-benefit considerations as we move away from what Dr Hoodbhoy terms tribalism.
Moreover, Dr Hoodbhoy appears to discount the possibility that a distinction between empty talk of sacred norms, like honour, by manipulative politicians and their actual strategic motives can exist. Deducing by his logic, then, the US intervened in Afghanistan and Iraq during the new millennium not for strategic interests but for the sake of bestowing freedom and liberty to the local population. And more than a decade later, we are perfectly aware of the rampant destruction of life and property that American presence has inflicted on both countries — all of which befell, according to Dr Hoodbhoy’s rationale, at the behest of normative considerations.
So, if the nuclear physicist is quick to curse honour for giving nations the pain of war, will he also denounce liberal values of liberty and freedom —‘fruits of the modern world’— for such rampant devastation and death? But alas! In today’s age, when writers often consider modernity an elixir, it’s rather easy to blame traditional notions like honour and religion for causing widespread suffering. Yet, to do the same for liberal values is considered absurd. For the lack of a convincing argument to do otherwise, I will hang onto my ghairat — at least, for now.
ET: ‘Islamic Front’: Apolitical religious bloc to fight sectarianism
Top leaders of the country’s politico-religious parties are set to launch a new apolitical front on Monday in an effort to put the genie of sectarianism back into the bottle.
The proposed Islamic Front will be launched at a daylong conference in Islamabad and will try to resolve myopic sectarian differences by harmonising Friday sermons in the country’s mosques.
It will also lobby for the implementation of the recommendations of the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII), the apex constitutional body which advises the government on the Islamic status of the country’s laws.
“Nearly 40 leaders and representatives of politico-religious parties and groups have been invited to the conference, titled Ummah Unity and Islamic Solidarity,” Qazi Hussain Ahmed, former chief of the Jamaat-e-Islami, told The Express Tribune.
He preempted the impression that the front would be a rival of the right-wing bloc, the Defence of Pakistan Council, or that it would be the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal reincarnated.
“It’ll not be a political grouping or an electoral alliance. It’s going to be an ideological platform which will work for safeguarding national interests and guide the nation in religious matters,” Ahmed said.
Asked about the rationale for a new right-wing bloc in the presence of DPC, Ahmed said that the Islamic Front would try to settle sectarian differences and bring different schools of thought close to each other.
“Balochistan, Gilgit-Baltistan, Karachi and some tribal regions are in the grip of sectarian violence. Religious scholars will try to extinguish the fire of sectarianism and save innocent lives,” he added.
The front will have a ‘reconciliation commission’ which will take immediate steps to resolve internal disputes. A general council, having representation from all schools of thought, will be constituted to explore the possibility of gelling together an Islamic Solidarity Front.
An ‘education commission’ will also be formed which will conduct researches and liaise with different schools of thought in order to bring them closer to each other.
A subcommittee will offer guidelines to prayer leaders for Friday sermons in light of the Holy Quran and traditions of the Prophet (pbuh), so that the clerics focus more on moral, economic and social problems of society.
“The committee will try to create conformity in sermons,” the former JI chief said. A central secretariat will be established and resources and manpower will be put at its disposal for this purpose.
“The front will organise a peaceful constitutional struggle to push the government for the implementation of CII’s recommendations,” he added.
Ahmed said that in face of an onslaught from secular forces and a Western cultural invasion, it is necessary to protect the Islamic ideology of Pakistan. And for this purpose, it’s necessary to harmonise the voices coming from the country’s mosques.
Top scholars from Deobandi, Barelvi, Ahle-Hadith and Shia schools of thought will attend the conference. They include Maulana Fazlur Rahman (JUI-F), Hafiz Muhammad Saeed (Jamaatud Dawa), Allama Sajid Ali Naqvi (Millat-e-Jafria), Maulana Samiul Haq (JUI-S), Munawar Hasan (Jamaat-e-Islami), Owais Noorani and Sahibzada Abul Khair (JUP), Alama Muhammad Amin Shaheedi (Wahdat-e-Muslimeen), Sahibzada Fazal Karim (Sunni Council), Sahibzada Sultan Ahmad Ali (Tanzimul Arifeen), Hafiz Akif Saeed (Tanzim-e-Islami), Qari Hanif Jalandhri (Wifaqul Madaris), Pir Haroon Gilani (Tehrik-e-Faizan Aulia), Mufti Muneebur Rahman (Chairman Central Moon-Sighting Committee), Maulana Abdul Malik (Ittehadul Ulema), Allama Ibtesam Elahi Zaheer (Jamiat Ahli-Hadith) and Senator Sajid Mir (Markazi Ahle Hadith).
Dawn: ‘Muhajir Suba’ movement shrouded in mystery
KARACHI, May 20: The mysterious but rapidly spreading movement — at least in the form of graffiti, billboards and demonstrations — for the creation of a separate province for ‘Muhajirs’ by dividing Sindh has created a huge dilemma for the Urdu-speakers’ biggest representative party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM).
Officially the MQM remains committed to the unity of Sindh, but many of its senior members have started to admit that the top leadership is coming under immense pressure from the lower cadre and other sections of the ‘muhajir’ community on the issue. The growing pressure is either for solving their problems, or for agreeing with the idea of a separate province to be carved out of Sindh. The last few months have seen an unexplained, albeit mysterious, political development in Karachi, and partly in Hyderabad, where a hitherto unknown organisation has started a campaign for the creation of a separate province. It began with some wall chalking (graffiti) on the main thoroughfares for a ‘muhajir suba’. Except for some Sindhi nationalists, most people in Karachi ignored such graffiti. The theory that the Muttahida may have been behind the campaign subsided when the issue was raised in the Sindh assembly and the MQM openly supported a resolution against the division of Sindh and supported the call for the unity of the province. However, most Sindhi nationalists remained suspicious of this silent movement, and a few even described it as a well-planned move.
Since the Sindh government condemned the campaign for the division of Sindh and ordered removal of graffiti about ‘muhajir suba’ some of the wall chalking was erased by the authorities. However, many officials admitted that the wall chalking was so widespread that it might take them weeks, if not months, to remove all of it. And then there was no guarantee that it will not reappear in the areas dominated by the Urdu-speaking community.
Interestingly, the last weeks have given a completely new dimension to this apparently leaderless campaign for the division of Sindh. Like the leadership of this mysterious ‘tehreek (movement)’, the contours of this so-called province also remain unknown. Whether they are asking for Karachi to be turned into a separate province, or would like Hyderabad and the area in between the two cities to be part of this so-called ‘muhajir suba’ is not clear.
However, the speed with which the walls of Karachi have been painted with demands for a ‘muhajir suba’, the manner in which well-designed billboards have started to appear on the main roads of the city, and the way big and small demonstrations and rallies have started to come out in Korangi and other ‘muhajir’-dominated areas, has given rise to a feeling that even if the MQM is not orchestrating this campaign, it is certainly not willing to quell it. Though still quite vocal in their statements about the unity of Sindh, and for a lasting relationship between the native Sindhis and Urdu-speaking ‘new Sindhis’ or ‘muhajirs’, many senior MQM leaders are of the view that frustrations found among many residents of Karachi cannot be ignored outright.
Senior MQM leader, Raza Haroon, maintained during a TV talk show that the party’s position was abundantly clear about the unity of the province. He even went to the extent of saying that merely through ‘wall chalking’ a new province cannot be created. However, he too claimed that the pressure about the failure to fulfil the demands of the people of Karachi was so intense that it was difficult to ignore such feelings.
A more elaborate policy statement came from Dr Farooq Sattar, who is the deputy convener of MQM’s Rabita Committee. “MQM is against
the division of Sindh,” he said while talking to Dawn from Australia. “The party is of the firm view that both the large entities — Sindhis and Muhajirs — should jointly run the affairs of the province,” he said. His view was that the party’s efforts were to alleviate the misgivings if there were any. But he too did not shy away from raising the concern about what he believed was feeling of alienation. While insisting on the need to maintain harmony, Dr Sattar said the PPP government had given some 60,000 jobs during its tenure, and the leadership should ponder how many were given in the constituencies of MQM.
Another prominent leader of MQM’s parliamentary party in the National Assembly, Haider Abbas Rizvi, also echoed what Dr Sattar said.
“The MQM’s policy is quite clear in this respect. It does not want the division of Sindh,” he said. But according to him, there is a need to understand why such voice (about ‘muhajir suba’) is being raised. “We have seen that after the 18th Amendment, powers were devolved to the provincial capitals, but they stuck there and were not devolved further, to the ground level,” Mr Rizvi said. Haider Abbas Rizvi was of the view that if powers were devolved in places like Multan and other parts of the Seraiki belt, or in Peshawar and Abbottabad, then people of these areas would not have any serious grievances. According to him, “in Sindh not only powers have not been devolved, the local bodies elections had not been held”. Another major issue, he pointed out, was that of the quota system which he said was discriminatory in nature in Sindh province, and was making many people in the urban areas extremely anxious.
Although such senior leaders of the MQM do not shy away from raising the concerns of the Urdu-speaking community or others living in the urban areas of the province, their official position is that they would do their utmost to keep Sindh united.
But many sources within the organisation say that pressure was mounting on the leadership about the widening gap between the promises made to them and the failure of the present dispensation in fulfilling them. These sources say that if the trend is not checked, the possibility of MQM supporters taking an extreme action cannot be ruled out.
Other analysts describe this as a very dangerous development. They point towards the fears of many Sindhi nationalists who believe that the entire campaign for ‘muhajir suba’ has been orchestrated by the MQM, either to gain more concessions, or to create grounds for the creation of such a province once a Seraiki or South Punjab province is created. According to some of the front-ranking leaders of Sindhi nationalists, such a campaign in Karachi and Hyderabad is not possible without the support or backing of the MQM.
However, MQM leaders vehemently deny such accusations, and instead blame what they call ‘narrow nationalists’ for ignoring Altaf Hussain’s call for accepting the Urdu-speakers as ‘new Sindhis’.
Whatever be the factors behind this new campaign, or whoever are the forces for starting the movement for the division of Sindh, most observers are of the view that in days to come this may create new, and perhaps more dangerous divisions in Sindh’s volatile politics.