۔— اے ایف پی فائل فوٹو

پشاور: مہمند ایجنسی کی تحصیل حلیم زئی میں منگل کی صبح نجی موبائل کمپنی کا ٹاور دھماکہ خیز مواد سے تباہ کردیا گیا۔

 تاہم حکام کے مطابق، دھماکے کے نتیجے میں کسی جانی نقصان کی اطلاع موصول نہیں ہوئی۔

 دھماکے کے بعد سیکیورٹی فورسز نے سرچ آپریشن کے دوران ٹاور کے قریب رہائش پذیر مقامی صحافی سید باچا کو حراست میں لے لیا جبکہ اس کے ساتھی کفایت کو گرفتار کرنے کے لئے مہمند پریس کلب کا گھیراﺅ کر لیا۔

 پریس کلب میں موجود صحافیوں کی مداخلت پر کفایت کو سیکیورٹی فورسز کی تحویل میں دینے کی بجائے پولیٹیکل انتظامیہ کے حوالے کیا گیا۔

 پریس کلب کے صحافیوں نے واقعے کے خلاف احتجاج کرتے ہوئے ایجنسی ہیڈ کوارٹر غلنئی میں پشاور باجوڑ روڈ کو ایک گھنٹے کے لئے بند رکھا جو بعد میں پولیٹیکل انتظامیہ سے مذاکرات کے بعد کھول دی گئی۔

پاکستانی فوجی عسکریت پسندوں کا ٹھکانہ ڈھونڈتے ہوئے– رائٹرز فوٹو –.

عسکریت پسندگی پاکستان کے وجود کے لیے خطرہ ہے۔ یہ ملک کا چہرہ بگاڑ کر اسے دنیا سے دور کررہا ہے۔ اس سے نمٹنے کے لیے ہم مزید تاخیر کے متحمل نہیں ہوسکتے۔

ہمارے پاس دو مواقع ہیں۔ چاہے تو ہم جسمانی طور پر عسکریت پسندی کو للکاریں اور اس سرزمین کا قبضہ دوبارہ حاصل کریں جو ان کے ہاتھوں گنوا بیٹھے ہیں یا پھر ہم اُن سے مذاکرات کرکے امید لگاسکتے ہیں کہ حالات بہتر ہوجائیں گے، جیسا کہ پہلے بھی کئی بار کوشش کی جاچکی ہے۔

جیسا کہ کوئی بھی شخص قطعیت سے یقین رکھ سکتا ہے کہ جس بہت بڑے بھنور میں اس وقت ہم الجھے ہوئے ہیں وہ عسکریت سازی کا نتیجہ ہے۔ ایک خیال یہ بھی ہے کہ صورتِ حال کی ذمہ داری فوجی قیادت کے کندھوں پرعائد ہوتی ہے جو لوگوں کو با حفاظت ماحول فراہم کرنے میں ناکام رہی ہے۔

پہلے قدم کے طور پر فوج کو چاہیے کہ وہ اپنے اندر اس بات پر بحث کرے اور فیصلہ کرے کہ آیا رقم اور فوجیوں کی زندگیوں کے حوالے سے، پاکستان کی سرزمین پرامریکی ڈرون حملے کیا منافع بخش ہیں۔ ڈرون حملے جو ملک کے بدترین دشمنوں اور قتل عام کے ذمہ داروں کے خلاف کیے جاتے ہیں۔

یا پھر وہ سمجھتے ہیں کہ ہماری سرزمین پر ہونے والے یہ ڈرون حملے ہماری خودمختاری اور سلامتی کے خلاف ہیں اور انہیں بند ہونا چاہیے، خاص کر اس صورت میں کہ جب ان حملوں کے نتیجے میں بے گناہ شہریوں کی بھی ہلاکتیں ہوتی ہیں۔

یقیناً ڈرون حملے دونوں ملکوں کے درمیان فوجی تعلقات میں نہایت اہم اور باریک رشتے کے پہلوؤں کو ظاہر کرتے ہیں۔

صورتِ حال نہایت واضح اور صاف ہے۔ سن دو ہزار کی دہائی کے وسط میں پہلی بار پاکستان پر ڈرون حملوں کی نظیر سامنے آئی۔ اس وقت ملک پر مشرف کی حکومت تھی۔ وہ اوران کے بعد، موجودہ حکومت اور پھر فوج، مذمت تو اس کی سب نے ہی کی مگر حملے بدستور جاری و ساری ہیں۔

اس سے دو باتوں کا تعین ہوتا ہے: شاید ہم یہ تاثر دینا چاہتے ہوں کہ امریکا طاقت کے نشے میں چُور ایک ایسا مغرور ملک ہے جو اپنے سب سے بڑے اتحادی کی بھی نہیں سنتا۔ اس طرح کے تاثر سے ملک میں امریکا مخالف پھیلتے ہوئے جذبات کو ہوا ملتی ہے۔

عوامی رائے پر مشتمل تمام برے بڑے سروے یہ بتاتے ہیں کہ پاکستان میں سب سے زیادہ ناپسندیدہ غیر ملکی قوت امریکا ہے۔ یہ بہت زیادہ دور کی بات نہیں کہ جب یہ کہا جائے گا کہ ہماری حکومت یا پھر فوج امریکی اتحادی کے طور پر اس کے بہت قریب بھی ہے مگر نفرت بھی کرتے ہیں۔

ہماری دو رخی سرکاری پالیسی کچھ کرنے کے بہت کم آپشن پیچھے چھوڑتی ہے۔ ہم اتحادی سمجھے جانے والوں سے برگشتہ ہو کر تعلقات ختم کررہے ہیں ساتھ ہی ہم اس بارے میں اپنے لوگوں کو باقاعدہ طور پر یہ بتانے میں بھی ناکام رہے ہیں۔

یہ لاگت اور منافع جیسے اصول پر مبنی تجزیہ ہوگا۔ ہمیں اس ضمن میں ایک سے دوسرے کی طرف جانا ہوگا تاکہ رائے لے کر فیصلہ ہو کہ ہم نے کون سی راہ اختیار کرنی ہے یا کسے ترجیح دی جائے گی یا دی جانی چاہیے۔

وکی لیکس سے یہ بات سامنے آچکی ہے کہ ہم امریکا اور باقی دنیا سے کچھ اور کہتے ہیں اور اپنے لوگوں کو جو بتاتے ہیں وہ بالکل اس کے برعکس بات ہوتی تھی۔ یہ روش تباہی کی ترکیب ہے، اس سلسلے کو فوری طور پر ختم کردینا چاہیے۔

یہاں ان لوگوں کی بھی کمی نہیں جو سمجھتے ہیں کہ پاکستان میں عسکریت پسندی کی وجہ دہشت گردی کے خلاف جنگ میں پاکستان کی طرف سے امریکا کا ساتھ دینا ہے۔

یہ نقطہ نظر پاکستان کی بڑی سیاسی قوتوں بشمول حکومت کے ساتھ شیئر ہونا چاہیے۔ بعد ازاں، اس حوالے سے ہماری حالیہ پالیسی پر کھلے عام بحث ہونی چاہیے کہ اس کی خوبیاں یا خامیاں کیا ہیں اور اس کے خدوخال کیسے ہونے چاہئیں۔ یہ لوگوں کا حق ہے کہ وہ کسی بھی پالیسی میں تبدیلی اور اس کے نتائج کے بارے میں جان سکیں۔

ان تمام حقائق کے ساتھ اس بات میں کوئی شبہ نہیں کہ عوام یہ جانے بغیر کہ پالیسی میں ڈرامائی تبدیلی کیسی ہوسکتی ہے، وہ اس کے خواہاں ہیں۔ حالانکہ گزشتہ اگست کے وسط میں فوج کے سربراہ جنرل کیانی واضح طور پر کہہ چکے ہیں کہ دہشت گردی کے خلاف جنگ پاکستان کی اپنی جنگ ہے۔ انہوں نے یہ بھی کہا تھا کہ ایک مسلح اقلیت کو یہ حق نہیں کہ وہ اسلحے کے زور پر باقی ماندہ مہذب معاشرے پر اپنا نظام تھوپے۔

سوات میں ملالہ یوسف زئی پر حملہ، صوفی بزرگوں کے مزاروں کی بدستور بے حرمتی، طالبان کے زیرِ کنٹرول علاقوں میں ان کے خلاف بولنے والے کو ختم کردینا، کرم ایجنسی یا اور دوسری جگہوں پر شیعوں کا قتل ۔۔۔ یہ سب وہ انتباہ ہیں جو نشاندہی کرتے ہیں کہ ہم شیطانی نرغے میں ہیں۔

کیا ہم اس وقت کے منتظر ہیں کہ جب مسلح طالبان ہمارے فوجی اہلکاروں کے سر قلم کرنے کا سلسلہ دوبارہ شروع کردیں یا پھر خود کش بموں کا تیز سلسلہ دوبارہ سرگرم ہو۔ وہ جو ایک اسلامی خلافت قائم کرنے پر متفق ہیں، وہ اپنے مقصد کے حصول میں ان تھک ہیں مگر ان کے عمل پر ہمارا ردِ عمل ویسا نہیں، جیسا ہونا چاہیے تھا۔

اب یہ سوچنا ہمارے فوجی منصوبہ سازوں کا کام ہے کہ آیا وہ ان کی باقی ماندہ پناہ گاہوں کا قلع قمع کرنے کے لیے پیش قدمی کرے کہ جہاں بیٹھ کر وہ منصوبے بناتے اور براہ راست ہمارے خلاف آپریشن کرتے ہیں۔

کیا یہ بہتر آپشن ہوگا یا پھر اس عفریت کی کمر توڑنے کے لیے لگا تار مگر اہدافی اور مخصوص آپریشن کا سلسلہ جاری رکھنا موثر ثابت ہوگا۔

ہوسکتا ہے کہ ہمارے لیے اس بات کی اہمیت نہ ہو مگر افغانستان میں قیامِ امن کے لیے حقانی نیٹ ورک کے خلاف کارروائی کی ضرورت ہے۔ اگر ان کے مسلح دستے افغانستان میں حملے کرتے ہیں تو ان کے قدموں کے نشان پیچھے کی طرف شمالی وزیرستان کی طرف جاتے ہیں جو یقینی طور پر ہماری خود مختاری کے دعوے پر ایک دھچکا ہے۔

سرحد پار حملے یقیناً کسی بھی فوجی جواب کو دعوت دینے کے مترادف ہے۔ کیا ہم ان پر اتنا اثر رکھتے ہیں کہ اُنہیں قائل کرسکیں کہ وہ افغانستان پر حملے کرنا چھوڑ دیں، بالخصوص اس صورت میں جب اگر ہم اپنے لیے امریکی اتحاد سے علیحدگی کا آپشن چُنتے ہیں تو؟

ضرورت اس بات کی ہے کہ ہم منظر کی تمام جہتوں کا جائزہ لیں، نیز تمام امکانات اور ناکام مذکرات کی وجوہات پر بھی تفصیل  سےغور کریں۔

جنرل کیانی کو چاہیے کہ وہ آگے بڑھتے ہوئے ملک کی تمام سیاسی قوتوں آگاہ کریں کہ انہیں یہ کیوں کہنا پڑا تھا کہ دہشتگردی کے خلاف جاری جنگ ہماری اپنی ہے۔ انہیں چاہیے کہ وہ پوری ایمانداری سے اس ادارے کی تمام خوبیوں، خامیوں اور درپیش مشکلات سے بھی انہیں آگاہ کریں، جس کی وہ سربراہی کرتے ہیں۔

اس کے ساتھ ہی حکومت، الیکشن کمیشن اوراگر ضرورت پڑے تو عدلیہ اور فوج کو بھی آنے والے انتخابات کے انعقاد کے لیے اپنے عزم کو دہرانا چاہیے اور ان خدشات کا سدِباب کرنا چاہیے جس کا اظہار بعض سیاسی قوتیں آئندہ انتخابات کے انعقاد کے حوالے سے کرتی رہی ہیں۔ انہیں خدشات ہیں کہ دہشت گردوں کے خلاف کسی فوجی آپریشن سے انتخابات موخر ہوسکتے ہیں۔

اب تو شدت پسندی کی مخالف بعض سیاسی جماعتیں بھی انتہا پسندوں کے خلاف دبی زبان میں بات کرنے کا سوچ رہی ہیں۔ اس لیے اگر ایک بار شدت پسندوں اور ان کے محفوظ ٹھکانوں کا صفایا ہوجائے تو ہمارے معاشرہ سکھ کا سانس لے سکے گا۔ اس وقت شدت پسندی اور عدم برداشت سے معاشرے کے ہر طبقے کو تقریباً ایک جیسے خطرات کا سامنا ہے۔

یہ چند خیالات ہیں۔ صورتِ حال نہایت سنجیدہ ہے۔ کوئی شخص خیال اور سوچ پر بالادستی قائم کرنے کا دعویٰ نہیں کرسکتا۔ انتخابات ہونے دو، خیال پیش کرو اور آگے بڑھو۔

معجزے کے انتظار میں ہاتھ پہ ہاتھ دھرے بیٹھے رہنے سے حالات بہتر نہیں ہوتے بلکہ تساہل اس گڑھے کی طرف ہی دھکیلتا رہے گا جو ہم نے خود اپنے لیے کھودا تھا۔

مصنف ڈان کے سابق ایڈیٹر رہ چکے ہیں

abbas.nasir@hotmail.com

انگریزی سے اُردو ترجمہ: مختار آزاد

The BJP Ram Rath Yatra started from Somnath and ended at the Ram Janmabhoomi in Ayodhia. BJP leaders converted an air-conditioned van into a chariot and brought hundreds of Karsevaks to the site of Babri Masjid. The assembled yatrees demolished Babri Mosque to build Ram Temple and Lal Krishan Advani demolished congress in the centre and built the first BJP government.

-Illustration by Sabir Nazar

The Yatra of Imran Khan is going start from blue area of Islamabad, close to parliament house – the house of the idol of western democracy (Taghut). This modern day temple of Somnath on Constitutional Avenue is the mother of all evils. The yatrees march will proceed towards Balkasar, Talagang, Mianwali, D I Khan and then move towards South Waziristan. The yatra will end at Kotkai in South Waziristan, the janam bhomi of Taliban hero, Hakemullah Mehsud who survived the dastardly Americans illegal drone strike. Yatres would include foreign journalists, true blooded liberals, gaddi nasheens and my feudal lords of Multan, Islamic human rights activists, and fibre optics revolutionaries from all across Pakistan.

-Illustration by Sabir Nazar

The march will protest in front of American bases and the CIA headquarters in South Waziristan from where drones are being operated. The great Captaan will have three rings of defense for his safety. The rest of the marchers will be protected by the prayers of their family members. Shah Mao Tse-tung and Javed Chou En-lai will lead the public under the protection of the prayers offered by their sufis at the shrines of Multan. All other foreign minister candidates will follow KM Qasoori in Beaconhouse school buses.

-Illustration by Sabir Nazar

The Taliban have offered protection to Imran khan and his yatrees. The government of the United Emirates of Taliban will also provide protection to the visiting Pakistani yatrees in South Waziristan against the attacks of Black water, CIA, and uncircumcised RAW agents. The yatra is, however, not allowed by the foreign forces of political administration and the army of Pakistan.

-Illustration by Sabir Nazar

This is will be Imran Khan’ first foreign visit to the Emirates of Taliban. The foreign delegate of yatrees will be taken to the shrines of Baitullah Mehsud, Naik Mohmmad, Ilyas Kashmiri where they will place flower garlands and offer fatiha. The founding fathers of the Emirates of Taliban were innocent civilians who were killed by illegal drone attacks. The innocent civilians will present a guard of honour to welcome the peace delegate at the border of Pakistan and South Waziristan. The delegates will also attend the flag hosting ceremony, like we see at the Wagha Border in Lahore. After paying a visit and offering fatiha for great teacher, Qari Hussain the yatree will gather in Kotkai to celebrate Sunday holiday. After the sermon by Captan yatree, he will proceed to see the model village built by the army in Kotkai on the entry border of South Waziristan.

-Illustration by Sabir Nazar

Yatrees will also visit hospitals that were built by cutting surrounding mountains during the Afghan Jihad of Zia ud din Ayubi; these hospitals will be replicated in Bani Gala and Margalla hills in Islamabad. Foreign journalist will visit universities in South Waziristan and bring with them guiding syllabi for the uniform, one syllabus to be introduced in Pakistan when PTI comes into power.

Imran will lead them back to Islamabad for a peace conference that would be presided by Soofi Mohammad of Malakand Agency. As we all know, all roads lead to Islamabad, whether from Kargil, Jalalabad, Srinagar or Waziristan. The political mileage from this yatra will yield dividends in Islamabad.

-Illustration by Sabir Nazar

All we need to do is to cast our vote for the gaddi nasheens of Multan and shedatulli. And I promise, within the next 19 days, corruption will disappear like horns disappeared from the head of donkey. The Taliban will lay their arms at the deep mid wicket in front of Caliph Imran Khan; the economy will be running like Sir Agha Waqar Khan’s car, the tax net will catch all the big fish that didn’t vote for PTI. And most importantly, justice will finally be provided by our honorable Jirga elders; and the grand court of jirga/punchayat elders will be shifted to Meerwala, Muffargargh, adjacent to Mukhtaran Mai’s school.

The author left architecture for painting but ended up as a cartoonist and now writes Hijjo. He is the jack of all trades.

The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.

پولیس ہیلپ لائن۔ —فائل فوٹو

پشاور: پشاور متنی پولیس اسٹیشن اور چیک پوسٹوں پر عسکریت پسندوں کے حملے کے بعد جوابی کارروائی میں چار عسکریت پسند ہلاک ہوئے۔

جبکہ حملے میں اے ایس آئی سمیت چار پولیس اہلکار زخمی اور ایک بکتربند کو نقصان پہنچا۔

عسکریت پسندوں نے گزشتہ رات پشاور کے متنی تھانے اور فرنٹیئر روڈ پر قائم چیک پوسٹوں پر بڑا حملہ کیا۔

ذرائع کے مطابق پولیس کی جوابی کارروائی میں چار عسکریت پسند مارے گئے۔

حملے میں زخمی ہونے والے چاروں پولیس اہلکاروں کو لیڈی ریڈنگ اسپتال منتقل کردیا گیا جہاں ان کی حالت خطرے سے باہر بتائی جاتی ہے۔

دوسری جانب شہر میں مزید دو بم ناکارہ بنادئے گئے۔

طالبان بندوقیں لیئے ہوئے ۔ فائل تصویر رائٹرز

چترال: تحریک طالبان پاکستان کے عسکریت پسندوں نے پاک افغان سرحد پر سیکورٹی فورسز کی چیک پوسٹوں پر حملہ کیا ہے۔

سرکاری حکام نے حملے کی تصدیق کرتے ہوئے بتایا کہ جوابی کارروائی میں نو عسکریت پسند مارے گئے۔

ذرائع کے مطابق دونوں جانب سے ہلکے اور بھاری ہتھیاروں کا استعمال کیا گیا۔

پاکستانی طالبان کے ترجمان احسان اللہ احسان کے مطابق چترال کے علاقے بونی میں سرحدی چوکیوں پر عسکریت پسندوں نے ایک بڑا حملہ کیا ہے۔

امریکی ڈرون: رائٹرز تصویر

میرانشاہ: پاکستان کے شمال مغربی قبائلی علاقے میں عسکریت پسندوں کے احاطے میں تین امریکی ڈرون حملوں میں پندرہ عسکریت پسند ہلاک ہوگئے۔

سیکیورٹی افسران کے مطابق تین امریکی ڈرون نے دتہ خیل میں چھ میزائل داغے۔ دتہ خیل میرانشاہ سے پنتیس کلومیٹر کے فاصلے پر ہے جو کہ افغان بارڈر کے قریب شمالی وزیرستان کا ایک اہم شہر ہے۔

پشاور میں ایک سینیئر سیکیورٹی افسر نے اے ایف پی کو بتایا کہ ایک مکان پر میزائل داغنے سے نو عسکریت پسند ہلاک ہوئے۔ جب انہیں نکالنے کے لیئے لوگ وہاں پہنچے تو دوسرا حملہ ہوا جس میں تین افراد ہلاک ہوئے۔ جبکہ تیسرے ڈرون حملے میں مزید تین افراد ہلاک ہوئے۔

ان کا کہنا تھا کہ تین امریکی ڈرون طیاروں نے چھ میزائل داغے جس میں کم سے کم پندرہ عسکریت پسند ہلاک ہوئے۔

مزید دو سیکیورٹی افسران نے تین ڈرون حملوں کی تصدیق تو کی ہے لیکن انھوں نے اے ایف پی کو بتایا کہ حملے میں کم سے کم بیس عسکریت پسند ہلاک ہوئے۔ دوسرے افسر کا کہنا تھا کہ وہ تمام عسکریت پسند اس مکان میں افغانستان میں جنگجوؤں کو بھیجنے کی تیاری کررہے تھے۔

خیال رہے کہ دتہ خیل کو طالبان کمانڈر حافظ گل بہادر کا ایک اہم گڑھ مانا جاتا ہے۔ ان پر یہ الزام ہے کہ وہ جنگجوؤں کو افغانستان میں موجود نیٹو افواج سے لڑنے کے لیئے بھیجتے ہیں۔

امریکا کی سلالہ چیک پوسٹ ہر حملے کے لیئے معافی مانگنے کے بعد سے اور نیٹو رسد کے بحال ہونے کے بعد یہ پہلا ڈرون حملہ ہے۔

یاد رہے کہ امریکی افسران اسے عسکریت پسندوں کے خلاف چھڑی جنگ میں ایک اہم ھتیار سمجھتے ہیں۔

اس کے علاوہ اسی نوعیت کے حملے میں بروز اتوار چھ عسکریت پسند ہلاک ہوئے تھے۔

صدر آصف علی زرداری۔ فائل فوٹو

اسلام آباد: امریکا کو بروز جمعہ یہ باور کرادیا گیا ہے کے جب تک وہ پاکستان سے سالالہ حملہ کے لیے جس میں چوبیس پاکستانی فوجی پچھلے سال شہید ہوئے تھے معافی نہیں مانگیں گیں جب تک پاکستان اور امریکا کے تعلقات بھی بحال نہیں ہوسکتے۔

ایوان صدر کی طرف سے جاری کردہ بیان میں صدر آصف علی زرداری نے افغانستان اور پاکستان کے لئے خصوصی ایلچی مارک گراسمین کی قیادت میں امریکی وفد کے ساتھ ہونے والی ملاقات میں کہا کہ “پاکستان جمورہیت کے راستے امریکا سے اپنے تعلقات بحال کرے گا۔۔۔لیکن اب امریکا کی باری ہے کہ وہ سالالہ حملہ کےمعاملے کو حل کرے”۔

صدر آصف علی زرداری نے اشارۃٍ یہ بات بھی واضع کردی کہ اگر امریکا سالالہ حملہ کی معافی مانگ لیتا ہے تو پاکستان بھی نیٹو سپلائی کی بندش ختم کرنے پر سوچ سکتا ہے۔

ہم نے انٹر ایجنسی کے مشاورت کا عمل شروع کردیا ہے جس میں بڑے پیمانے پہ انٹرنیشنل سیکورٹی اسسٹنس فورس اورشمالی بحر اوقیانوس ٹریٹی آرگنائزیشن   (آئی ایس اے ایف اور نیٹو) کی سپلائی کے اوپر غور کیا جارہا ہے، صدر آصف علی زرداری نے کہا۔

جبکہ امریکا چاہتا ہے وہ معافی مانگنے کے بجائے پاکستان کو نیٹو سپلائی کی بحالی پر شکاگو کے سربراہی اجلاس میں شرکت کے لیے مدعو کرے۔

امریکہ کے ساتھ تعلقات کے لئے بات چیت میں مصروف دیگر حکام نے یہ بھی کہا ہے کہ امریکا کا معافی نہ مانگنے کی وجہ سے اسلام آباد میں مذاکرات کا پہلا دور ضائع گیا۔

]]> http://x.dawn.com/2012/04/19/blue-books-missing-from-ministry/ Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:03:34 +0000 Munawer Azeem http://x.dawn.com/2012/04/19/blue-books-missing-from-ministry/

— File Photo

ISLAMABAD: Three ‘blue books’ containing secret information about important people (VVIPs and VIPs) and diplomats are missing from the Ministry of Interior.

Reliable sources said on Wednesday the ministry had recently delivered 1,250 ‘blue books’ to the departments concerned, but their delivery record and three books were missing. It is suspected that the books have been stolen.

The sources said the issue was being considered as a major security lapse.

Officials concerned informed their seniors who issued directives that the matter be investigated and the missing books traced.

The ‘blue book’ also contains details of sensitive installations. It carries matters relating to protocol and steps to be taken in the event of a disaster or an emergency.

A Pakistani rescue worker is seen through the bullet-riddled window of a passenger train following an attack by unknown gunmen in Mach near Quetta.—AP Photo

KARACHI: It is a chilling scene once one realises what is going on, the real horror coming from the cool and unhurried manner of the killers.

Passengers are forced off a bus by what appear to be militants. As a jihadi anthem blares in the background the militants surround them and force them to sit on the ground. Seconds later they open fire with Kalashnikovs, with the resulting carnage being graphically recorded.

A young boy is then seen clasping his hands and begging for mercy. A militant answers by calmly shooting him dead. Another militant walks around the bodies — slowly and deliberately firing into them, to ensure no one escapes. When it’s all over; the camera lens points to the ground as a militant, seen in the shadow, pumping his fist in delight.

This is a video — now posted on the internet — of the massacre of Hazara Shia pilgrims in Balochistan’s Mastung district last year.

For Pakistan’s government, Balochistan remains the most prominent policy failure. Violence has continued to escalate across the province since the PPP-led coalition took power in 2008.

A battle between nationalist insurgents and the Pakistani state is now a dirty and no-holds-barred war in which hundreds of civilians have been killed.

The latest disturbing trend is the increased targeting of Shias, especially the Hazara community. Over a hundred people belonging to them have been shot dead in the province.

The trend is disturbing as Balochistan has always been among the more tolerant of Pakistan’s provinces and sectarian attacks remained rare until 2001.

All that changed after extremist groups such as Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan and Jaish-i-Mohammad were banned by General Pervez Musharraf in 2002. A crackdown by the regime followed, forcing their most dangerous militants and ideologues to move to the tribal region.

Punjabi Taliban

Here they came in contact with Taliban militants; both influenced each other and a new sectarian breed came into being in the form of the Punjabi Taliban, now led by Asmatullah Muavia and loyal to Hakimullah Mehsud.

Initially based in South Waziristan, the Punjabi Taliban were ousted after the military operation in 2009. In reprisal, they carried out high-profile attacks such as the one on GHQ in Rawalpindi. Sources say that that particular incident was the turning point and led to a re-think by the establishment.

Security officials — who wish to remain anonymous — say this was because the GHQ standoff was resolved not just by army commandos but mainly through negotiations by Maulana Mohammad Ahmed Ludhianvi, chief of the SSP, who convinced those inside to surrender.

Army officials dismiss these claims. They say military action broke the siege and that the so-called Punjabi Taliban remains their number one enemy.

It may well be that both stories are true, as one security official points out. Ludhianvi’s intervention — while crucial — was definitely only limited to the GHQ attack. He appears to have little control over the Punjabi Taliban leadership, which continues to wreak all sorts of havoc across Pakistan.

Official protocol

However, it’s also clear that Ahmed Ludhianvi now enjoys official protocol. The SSP and Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat, Sipah-i-Sahaba’s current title, are both supposedly proscribed, yet these organisations hold rallies in major cities with ease where arms are openly displayed.

Today it’s clear that the SSP and Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, an even more extreme sectarian outfit, are inter-linked. Maulana Ludhianvi admitted as much to the BBC when he said in an interview that Malik Ishaq, the LJ chief, was released on his guarantees and that the notorious militant now answers to him.

Since Malik Ishaq’s release it’s become easier for the LJ leaders to move around, and they have since started expanding and setting up cells in Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan.

These cells are made of locals and have been greatly strengthened, especially in Balochistan — where they operate independently of the LJ central command. There the traditionally secular Baloch — and particularly Brahui — are increasingly turning to the radical Islamist militancy espoused by SSP/LJ.

Security officials — and Shia leaders — say this turn of events is complemented by the growth of sectarian madressahs there. Perhaps the largest Sipah-i-Sahaba seminary outside southern Punjab is in Mastung, in the heart of territory controlled by the Raisani tribe.

Another major reason, according to Shia leaders, is the alleged support by intelligence agencies to groups of pro-government Baloch tribesmen.

Most of these have dual identities — the second being outright sectarian and extremist. It is no surprise, then, that the largest of the groups is considered to be the de facto Lashkar-i-Jhangvi in Balochistan.

All that is perhaps irrelevant for the intelligence agencies, whose main aim is the tried tactic of using religion to suppress nationalism.

Led by a close relative of a senior politician from the province, some of LJ Balochistan’s more high-profile attacks include the killing of Baloch nationalist leader Habib Jalib Baloch and the attacks on the Hazara Shias pilgrims in Mastung.

A senior member of the group accepts it has been involved in attacks to protect the Baloch community – it denies it’s carried out attacks on Shias.

“We are only carrying out defensive actions against people who are supported by foreign intelligence services. The Baloch people are with Pakistan – it’s just that they are scared of the militants.”

He adds that while their group isn’t anti-Shia — the community has elements that act as agents of Iran in Pakistan and they should refrain from this.

Complicity

But Baloch nationalist leaders say a perception is being built up that the Baloch community are targeting the Hazara.

“The Baloch have always been a secular people – it’s the Pashtuns rather than us who have had problems with the Hazaras,” says Nawabzada Jamil Bugti.

“What’s happening is with the complicity of the agencies – everybody knows that the areas where most of the attacks take place – like Mastung – have several FC checkposts nearby.”

“How can the killers escape without their knowledge – or consent?”

While insisting that the Baloch as a whole are not involved in the killings, Nawabzada Bugti acknowledges that some Baloch may be involved.

“The agencies are doing what they did in Bangladesh – where they created groups such as Al Badr and Al Shams.”

“Here it’s the groups like the Baloch Musalla Difa Tanzeem – who regularly target Baloch leaders.”

“If they can kill their own people – what’s to stop them from killings Hazaras on the orders of the agencies?”

Increasingly, it’s LJ Balochistan that has the deadliest militants in the country, men such as Saifullah Kurd and Ramzan Mengal, each responsible for dozens of killings.

Both men added to claims of official complicity when they escaped from maximum-security Anti-Terrorism Force jail in Quetta’s heavily guarded cantonment area. Security officials say they continue to enjoy patronage by some senior Baloch tribal leaders. Hazara leaders in Quetta openly accuse prominent members of provincial Baloch government of allegedly protecting sectarian killers.

But others claim that tribal leaders have no choice; they are increasingly being held hostage to pressure from intelligence agencies and their own increasingly militant Sunni tribesmen. Whatever be the real reason, Balochistan is now being regarded as the biggest, and safest, sanctuary for the country’s fiercest sectarian militants.

The writer is the BBC’s correspondent in Karachi. The views expressed here are his own and not necessarily those of the BBC.

Capital inflows are taking place through proxy bank accounts in which transactions were taking place at the national and international level. — File Photo

KARACHI: Pakistan’s intelligence agencies have informed the government that the outfits banned in Pakistan and abroad were gaining momentum due to the supply of capital in the form of domestic and international currency, a BBCUrdu report said.

According to a secret report obtained by BBCUrdu, the outfits were operating through proxy bank accounts in Pakistan in which transactions were taking place at the national and international level.

Organisations such as Jaish-i-Mohammad, Tehrik-i-Islami, Millat-i-Islamia Pakistan, Ghazi Force, Hizbut Tahrir, Jamiatul Furqan and Khairunnisa International Trust were operating bank accounts using varying identities, the report said.

The report indicated fears that these banned outfits could regain strength through this process.

Some of these banned outfits are also working under the cover of the social organisations, the report said.

In the light of this information, the interior ministry has ordered the monitoring of suspected bank accounts.

Earlier, the government had frozen bank accounts that were being operated by 24 banned outfits.

Moreover, banks accounts belonging to four outfits that were banned by the United Nations had also been frozen by the government.

In the light of terror threats, the police on Tuesday decided to initiate aerial surveillance of the federal capital.—File photo

ISLAMABAD: In the light of terror threats, the police on Tuesday decided to initiate aerial surveillance of the federal capital, DawnNews reported.

Islamabad’s surveillance through helicopters would begin today and is expected to continue until Feb 5.

The police officials involved in the surveillance would be provided with equipment for security and would be in contact with the staff on ground through wireless sets.

According to sources, the decision to begin the capital’s aerial surveillance was taken in light of terror threats.

Eariler on Monday, swarms of paramilitary troops and city police combed the Margalla Hills after two suspects in custody spoke of militants hiding there to strike the city.

Security sources said the suspects’ words were taken seriously as they were arrested in the widespread hunt for the miscreants who fired rocket on the Pakistan Military Academy in Abbottabad last Friday.

Senior police officers confirmed that the combing operation was launched overnight after the two suspects, picked up in Taxila on Saturday spoke about the presence of militant hideouts on the hills under interrogation.

The banned Baloch Republican Army claimed responsibility for the attack and said its men had taken away an FC man, along with weapons. - File Photo

QUETTA: Gunmen killed five soldiers in a pre-dawn attack on a checkpost of the Frontier Corps in Dera Bugti district on Thursday.

The banned Baloch Republican Army claimed responsibility for the attack and said its men had taken away an FC man, along with weapons.

According to officials, the armed men attacked the checkpost in Kachhi canal area, some 20km south of the Sui gas filed, at about 4.30am.

The attackers, armed with rockets and automatic weapons, opened fire on the soldiers after encircling the checkpost. The five soldiers, a non-commissioned officer among them, were killed on the spot.

The officials said the checkpost caught fire after the attack and two of the FC personnel were burnt to death. The assailants took away four G-3 rifles, one light machine gun and other small weapons.

Security officials confirmed that one FC man was missing and said the bodies of five FC men, two of them burnt, were found at the scene.

Soon after the incident, a heavy contingent of Frontier Corps rushed to the site and shifted bodies to hospital. The bodies were later sent to their native towns. They were identified as Abdul Rauf, Sher Jan, Abdul Wali, Ayaz Khan and Ghulam Haider.

The officials said security forces had cordoned off the area and launched a massive search operation to arrest the killers.

It was the fourth attack on FC personnel in Balochistan over the past two months. The earlier attacks had claimed the lives of over 45 security personnel.

Calling from an unknown place, Baloch Republican Army spokesman Sarbaz Baloch claimed that BRA had killed 10 personnel and taken away an FC man alive. “Our men also torched three government vehicles and snatched weapons,” he said.

AFP quoted a security official as saying that six soldiers had been killed. He said that at least 10 gunmen were involved in the attack. “They came on motorcycles and took away all the weapons after killing the six FC men,” he said.

Four insurgent hideouts were also destroyed by security forces’ shelling in the tribal region, DawnNews reported. - File Photo

KARACHI: Nine militants were killed and four insurgent hideouts were destroyed in shelling by security forces in the Orakzai tribal region, DawnNews reported on Tuesday.

Clashes between security forces and militants are ongoing in upper and central Orakzai.

In upper Orakzai’s Mamozai area, four militants were killed and two insurgent hideouts were destroyed during heavy shelling by security forces.

Moreover, in central Orakzai’s Ali Sherzai area, five militants were killed and two insurgent hideouts were destroyed by security forces’ shelling.

—File Photo

LOS ANGELES: The US Central Intelligence Agency has suspended drone missile strikes on gatherings of low-ranking militants in Pakistan due to tensions with that country, The Los Angeles Times reported.

Citing unnamed current and former US officials, the newspaper said late Friday the undeclared halt in CIA attacks is aimed at reversing a sharp erosion of trust between the two countries.

US-Pakistani relations deteriorated last month after a series of US air strikes killed 24 Pakistan soldiers near the border with Afghanistan.

A joint US-Nato investigation concluded that a disastrous spate of errors and botched communications led to the deaths. Pakistan has rejected the findings.

The pause in the missile strikes comes amid an intensifying debate in the administration of President Barack Obama over the future of the CIA’s covert drone war in Pakistan, the paper said.

The CIA has killed dozens of al-Qaeda operatives and hundreds of low-ranking fighters there since the first Predator strike in 2004, but the program has infuriated many Pakistanis, the report noted.

Some officials in the State Department and the National Security Council say many of the airstrikes are counterproductive, The Times said.

They argue that rank-and-file militants are easy to replace, and that Pakistani claims of civilian casualties, which the United States dispute, have destabilized the government of President Asif Ali Zardari.

Some US intelligence officials are urging the CIA to cut back the paramilitary role it has assumed since the September 11, 2001, attacks to refocus on espionage, the paper pointed out.

They suggest handing the mission to the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command, which flies its own drones and conducts secret counter-terrorism operations in Yemen and Somalia, The Times noted.

Pakistani shopkeeper Mohammad Hasib sits in his newly built shop on Wednesday, November 23, 2011, in Peshawar, Pakistan. - AP Photo.

PAKISTAN: Mohammed Hasib lost his older brother in a car bombing two years ago that destroyed their small shop selling woman’s accessories and killed more than 100 people. He has since rebuilt and business is improving, thanks to a significant drop in militant violence in Pakistan this year.

The number of people killed in suicide attacks in Pakistan in the first 11 months of 2011 dropped almost 40 per cent compared to the same period last year, according to data compiled by the Pak Institute for Peace Studies. Deaths from all attacks by militants fell nearly 20 per cent.

This trend contrasts with rising violence in Afghanistan, where a suicide bomber killed 56 people outside a Shia Muslim shrine in Kabul on Tuesday who were marking a major Islamic holy day. A Pakistan-based group, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al-Alami, reportedly claimed responsibility for the attack, although the validity of the claim could not be verified.

The most notable drop in Pakistan has been in mass-casualty attacks in large cities outside the northwest, such as Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi. Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik actually thanked the Pakistani Taliban on Tuesday for not staging attacks in the country during Ashura, when Shias commemorate the death of Imam Hussein.

Despite the decline, violence still takes a large human toll in the country in daily attacks, and no one is claiming victory. Nearly 1,700 people were killed in ”terrorist” or ”insurgent” attacks throughout November, according to the institute, excluding those in Baluchistan that were mostly carried out by nationalists, not militants. More than 670 people were killed in suicide attacks. The numbers killed in the same period last year were around 2,100 and 1,060, respectively.

”The situation has improved, but people are still scared,” said Hasib, 30, whose shop is located in the northwest city of Peshawar’s Mina bazaar. ”It will take time for people to fully recover.”

The bombing on October 28, 2009, was so devastating that all Hasib was able to find of his brother, Mohammed Salim, was his identity card, in a gutter across the street from their shop. Hasib sold his house to rebuild the shop and married his brother’s widow to take care of her and her two children, a common practice in some parts of Pakistan.

Peshawar, located on the edge of the tribal region and close to the Afghan border, has been the worst hit major Pakistani city. Police, army and civilian targets were bombed almost daily toward the end of 2009 after the military carried out a major offensive in South Waziristan, the Pakistani Taliban’s main sanctuary in the tribal region.

”You can’t imagine how terrible those days were for us,” said Waris Khan Afridi, 58, president of the trader’s association in Peshawar’s Saddar bazaar. ”There were times when the bazaar was deserted and even shopkeepers weren’t coming.”

Afridi and others said business has improved significantly over the last year, but is still down relative to the period before the Pakistani Taliban began their insurgency in earnest in 2007. The Saddar and Mina bazaars were bustling during a recent trip, packed with women buying new clothes for Pakistan’s wedding season.

The last major attack in Peshawar was in mid-September when a bomb planted on a motorcycle exploded in a market selling music and movies, killing five people.

Hasan-Askari Rizvi, a Pakistani political and defense analyst, said military operations in the tribal region and in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province since the spring of 2009 have disrupted the militants, making it more difficult for them to train suicide bombers and transport them outside the northwest.

”The operations have not been able to eliminate the militants altogether, but they have certainly weakened them,” said Rizvi.

The military has carried out offensives in every part of the tribal region except North Waziristan. But no area is fully under control, and the government has struggled to undertake the kind of reconstruction and development that could address some of the root causes of militancy.

Mohammed Amir Rana, director of the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, said he believes US drone attacks are the chief reason behind the drop in violence. The attacks have killed key Taliban and al-Qaida commanders, something Pakistani military operations have largely failed to do.

While the resurgence of violence in Karachi is a recent phenomenon, the rest of Pakistan had been engulfed in senseless violence since 2003. No fewer than 36,000 Pakistanis have died in violent deaths in the past eight years, making Pakistan the hotbed of religious, political, and ethnic violence.

Whereas 189 fell victim to violent death in 2003, the number of violent deaths swelled to 11,704 during 2009. Though the number of deaths dropped significantly in 2010, it appears that violence is resurging again in 2011.

Source: South Asia Terrorism Portal, (http://www.satp.org)

Not all victims of the senseless violence are civilians or the security force personnel. In fact terrorists and insurgents constitute the largest group of those who died a violent death in Pakistan. Since 2003, 21,680 terrorists have been reportedly killed in Pakistan. Surprisingly, Pakistan is no safer today even after such a massive death toll has been exalted on the perpetrators of violence.

Many in Pakistan and abroad see these numbers with suspicion. First, the very number (21,680) appears grossly exaggerated. Even if the proclaimed number of terrorists killed is around 22,000, one cannot ascertain how many of those who were labelled as terrorists were in fact collateral damage, i.e., innocent civilians ending up at the wrong place at the wrong time.

The recent claims by the US authorities that no civilian has died in recent drone attacks in Pakistan is one such example of an engineered narrative of war that tries to paint death and destruction in a clinically humane way by portraying all victims as murderous terrorists. Admitting death of bystanders, school children, and women would present an uglier, yet a true and perhaps unacceptable picture of war.

The policy to paint all dead as terrorists inflates the number of terrorist deaths and underreports the death of civilians. Even with the deflated stats, almost 11,200 civilians and 3,840 security personnel have died in Pakistan since 2003. For a nation that is not in a state of war with a foreign power, such a large number of violent deaths are indicative of a civil war.

While Pakistan is not the only country facing domestic discord and extreme violence, it has though evolved into one of the most violent places in the world. A comparison with other neighbouring states in South Asia suggests that violent deaths in Pakistan now account for 79 per cent of all violent deaths in the region. In 2005 alone, violence in Pakistan accounted for merely 10 per cent of the violent deaths in South Asia.

Source: South Asia Terrorism Portal, (http://www.satp.org)

As the violence escalated in Pakistan in the recent past, the number of civilians and security force personnel who lost their lives to extremist violence declined relative to terrorist deaths. In 2003, for instance, 6.6 civilians and security force personnel died in extremist violence for each dead terrorist. This ratio fell below 1 for 2008, 2009, and 2010 as a result of military operations in FATA and Khyber Pukhtoonwa against militants. However, the spike in civilian deaths in 2011 has reversed the trend suggesting more dead civilians and security personnel than the militants

Source: South Asia Terrorism Portal, (http://www.satp.org)

The last few years of violence in Pakistan is similar to what had transpired in Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan government in 2009 responded with all its might to tackle Tamil Tigers who have been orchestrating a militant separatist campaign.  In 2009 alone, 11,000 civilians and 1,300 security force personnel lost their lives due to violence. In the end, the Sri Lankan government was able to destroy the Tamil Tigers and kill their leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran.
While the Sri Lankan example of successfully tackling the extremists sounds optimistic, the militancy in Pakistan is much more complicated and multifaceted to be dealt decisively in the short term.

*This is the first half of a three-part article.

Murtaza Haider, Ph.D. is the Associate Dean of research and graduate programs at the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University in Toronto.  He can be reached by email at murtaza.haider@ryerson.ca

The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.

A fourteen-year-old Afghan boy, Noor Mohammad, who was a would-be suicide bomber, speaks during a news conference in Kabul on May 7, 2011. - Reuters Photo

WASHINGTON, June 27: The US State Department`s report on human trafficking, released on Monday, underlines a new problem in Pakistan: militants using children to carry out their dirty work.

The report otherwise places Pakistan in tier 2: Countries which do not fully comply with the minimum standards for dealing this menace but are making significant efforts.

The State Department warns that the international fight against human trafficking, from abuses of migrant workers to organised prostitution networks, lost ground in the past year. The number of countries failing to comply with international standards to prevent human trafficking almost doubled to 23. Pakistan is not among them.

“The problem of modern trafficking may be entrenched, and it may seem like there is no end in sight,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a statement delivered with the report. “But if we act on the laws that have been passed and the commitments that have been made, it is solvable.”

As many as 27 million men, women, and children are “living in a state of modern slavery,” she said.

The reports says that in Pakistan, “non-state militant groups kidnap children or coerce parents with fraudulent promises into giving away children as young as 12 to spy, fight, or die as suicide bombers” in the country and in Afghanistan.

“The militants often sexually and physically abuse the children and use psychological coercion to convince the children that the acts they commit are justified,” the report adds.

Disabled children and adults are forced to beg in Iran. Girls and women also are sold into forced marriages; in some cases their new “husbands” move them across Pakistani borders and force them into prostitution.

NGOs and police reported markets in Pakistan where girls and women are bought and sold for sex and labour.

A bomb attack on security forces severely wounded at least two security personnel in Upper Orakzai Agency on Thursday. The bomb was said to be detonated through a remote-controlled device. – Photo by AP

KHAR: Scores of armed militants crossed the border from Afghanistan on Thursday and stormed a village in the country’s tribal belt, killing five civilians, Pakistani officials said.

The militants targeted Mamond village in Bajaur district, which borders the Afghan province of Kunar, despite the presence of Pakistani security checkpoints erected to check Taliban militants.

“Some 250-300 militants targeted civilians in Mamond. At least five civilians, including two women were killed,” local government official Fazle Akbar told AFP.

Akbar said three women were also wounded in the attack, which took place about 65 kilometres northwest of Khar, the main town in Bajaur.

“We have sent army and paramilitary troops to the area as we got reports that militants are still present there,” a security official told AFP.

“Some militants were also killed when troops in the area responded, but we do not know the number of casualties yet,” the official said.

On June 1 and June 3, hundreds of militants besieged an area in Pakistan’s northwestern district of Upper Dir on the Afghan border, sparking prolonged fighting that killed at least 34 people.

Earlier in the day, a bomb attack on security forces severely wounded at least two security personnel in Upper Orakzai Agency, DawnNews reported. The bomb was said to be detonated through a remote-controlled device.

More than 4,400 people have been killed across Pakistan in attacks blamed on Taliban and other extremist networks over the last four years.

Exchange of fire continued in an attack by militants on security forces in Bajaur Agency on Thursday. At least two people were reported dead in the clash. – Photo by AP

UPPER ORAKZAI: A bomb attack on security forces severely wounded at least two personnel in Upper Orakzai Agency on Thursday, DawnNews reported.

The bomb was reported to be detonated through a remote-controlled device.

Meanwhile, sources reported that at least two more people were dead in an attack by militants in the Mamond area of Bajaur Agency. The exchange of fire between militants and security forces continued at the time of the report.

This spate, spasmodic for some months, has acquired a familiar pattern: wanton aggression against citizens and precision targeting for spectacular impact is the strategy of choice the terrorists have adopted. Four streams have caused this new torrent of terror.

The first stream is that of the premature declaration of victory against the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan by the political and military establishment. Anxious to prove to the world the efficacy of a homegrown counter-terrorism strategy, Pakistan’s rulers have taken their eyes off the long-term aspects of domestic terrorism.

The government has tirelessly claimed credit for defeating terrorists. The army too has got busy putting up posters of victory all around. A dangerous complacency has crept into handling simmering currents in the vast lands of Fata, the Frontier Regions and the adjoining districts.

Instead of following a comprehensive and sustained campaign to build on the Malakand success, small and limited kinetic operations with the short-term aim to disrupt and dismantle local terrorist networks have been pursued.

Call it battle fatigue, paucity of resources, troops’ shortage or incomplete planning, the momentum generated by the clean sweep against Fazlullah’s men in Swat has been allowed to peter out. Local militias around Malakand, and elsewhere, who at one point were on run, are now re-energised and playing the game of death.

The second stream flows out of the first. This relates to the inadequate closure of military operations in the Fata region. North Waziristan is where the Taliban are concentrated. Here they rule with impunity. South Waziristan is stable but still precarious.

There is no satisfactory explanation available as to what happened to South Waziristan’s militants. If they are not all killed, and if they are not in de-radicalisation centres, learning to live as law-abiding citizens, where exactly have they gone? And if they are around, then the battle is far from over.

In the Orakzai, Kurram, Bajaur, Khyber and Mohmand agencies and the Frontier Regions work is still in progress. Nowhere are closure dates marked on the calendar. Leadership, local and regional including Mullah Fazlullah from Swat, is still at large.

Small cadres of militants continue to exhibit the capacity to wreak local-level havoc. They have guns, grenades, suicide bombers, IED experts, and they are resolved to fight on.

This toxic situation has left open in the public mind the possibility of the return of the Taliban. It has made local leaders, who sided with the army and the FC against the militants, suspicious of the seriousness of these operations. Worse, local instability has provided fertile ground for crime and terrorism to be grafted on to each other and grow as a deadly hybrid. A frightening formation has emerged of kidnappers, killers, drug pushers, sectarian outfits, former jihadis, Sharia enforcers and foreign elements. They are marching on the country.

The third stream causing the new wave of terror is the civilian leadership’s clumsiness in discharging its responsibility. The army’s hard hits against Taliban sanctuaries have dispersed the militants. Most of them have moved out to urban areas in small platoons connecting with their brothers and sisters in arms in large urban centres.

This has produced what can be termed the urban terrorists’ facebook. They know each other’s activities and get inspiration from what the other is doing. Sometimes they facilitate each other with useful advice and even active support. This is a sophisticated challenge.

Unfortunately, there has been zero planning to deal with the militants’ diaspora. Precious little preparation has been done to secure urban centres. No police reform of any consequence has been carried out. No resources have been positioned. No institutional decision-making process has been initiated.

Forums like the National Counter-Terrorism Authority have become dead-beat institutions, a far cry from taking the lead in dealing with terrorism. Immersed in the politics of survival, right from the president down to the minister of interior, the civilian leadership has been least prepared to take any initiative to prevent the network of urban terrorism from gaining ground. For them, dealing with the judges is far more important than fighting the killers.

Muddying the waters further has been the fourth stream of vicious sparring between the PPP and the PML-N in Punjab — the largest playing field for terrorists. Alternating between comedy and tragedy, Punjab’s political scene is the biggest barrier in the way of devising a long-term national strategy to combat terrorism.

A perpetual war of words is on about everything under the sun — from the sharing of timely information on the movement of terrorists to the supply of resources to collective planning. Joining the fray, the Muslim League of the Chaudhries has been just as frivolous in its approach towards terrorism.

No less benighted and nasty is politics in Sindh, whose epicentre Karachi has quietly slipped into its dozen-body-bags-a-day past. Karachi’s violence is multifaceted. More have died in Karachi than in acts of terrorism in the entire country in the last six months. This violence that is city-specific has hijacked the debate on terrorism on the national scale. Side by side political opportunism is reigning supreme.

The provincial PPP-led strike in Sindh against the Supreme Court’s decision to remove the National Accountability Bureau head is one example. It is bizarre to see the ruling party act like a mindless opposition party, vitiating the environment, spreading fear.

This fractured, disunited and warring leadership has provided an enabling environment that all criminal elements wish for.

The terrorists relish it even more: they hunt best in chaos and confusion.

The writer is a senior journalist at DawnNews.

In this picture taken on Nov. 22, 2010, people take part in an auction of skins donated by people in Lahore. - Photo by AP.

LAHORE, Pakistan: Militants in Pakistan should reap a cash bonanza from selling skins of animals slaughtered on a sacrifice day, with hundreds of thousands of dollars expected to reach a group linked to the 2008 Mumbai attackers, according to an ex-member of the group and leather industry workers.

Volunteers for Jamaat-u-Dawa, a charity suspected of having served as a front for the group behind the Mumbai attacks, were collecting bloodied skins across the country after this year’s Eid al-Adha, or Feast of Sacrifice. Their work shows the deep roots it and other banned groups have in Pakistan.

Militants behind attacks in Pakistan and across its borders in Afghanistan and India get funds from extortion, drugs, kidnappings and donations from foreign sympathizers. But some of the money comes by way of charities, including those collecting hides to raise funds. In past years also, they have sold hides to raise funds.

Wealthy Muslims sacrifice animals on Eid al-Adha and distribute most of the meat to the poor. Over this year’s holiday, which fell last week, Pakistanis sacrificed around five million sheep and goats and one million cows, according to the country’s tanners association.

The skins are of no use to those who kill the animals, but are snapped up by tanneries.

At auctions in the coming days, a cow hide is expected to sell for between $40 and $50, while sheep and goat skins will fetch around $7 a piece.

Skins collected last week will account for around 45 per cent of the needs of Pakistan’s leather industry this year, the tannery association said. Factories make coats, gloves and other goods for export, and the trade is the second largest foreign exchange earner for the country.

Militant groups are not the only ones to benefit from hide sales. The leading hide collector in Karachi, the country’s largest city, is its ruling party. Another major beneficiary is a cancer hospital for the poor run by Imran Khan, a cricketer turned politician. Sunni Therik, a religious group that is opposed to militants, also collects. Some people give their hides directly to the poor, who sell them.

Groups and their sympathizers are in a good position to collect the skins. The typically run religious seminaries that have thousands of children and youth who can go door-to-door to collect them from people happy to have them taken from their front porch. Often, people bring animals to be sacrificed directly to mosques attached to them.

”These are the people whom I trust and these are the people who do the best work for charity,” said Illahi Shaikh, as he directed a team of butchers cutting up his two cows outside Jamaat-u-Dawa’s main mosque in the capital, Islamabad.

”So what if America calls them terrorists, I don’t care,” he said.

The United Nation’s listed Jamaat-u-Dawa as a terrorist group soon after the Mumbai attacks, saying it believed it was an alias for Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani outfit believed to have carried out the strikes. India, Washington and other Western nations have made similar allegations.

Islamabad initially moved against the group, sealing its offices, freezing assets and rounding up leaders. But it has since scored a few wins against the government in court and is up and running again. It sometimes uses a different name, a tactic employed by other banned groups to try to evade attention.

Abdullah Muntazir, a former Jamaat-u-Dawa spokesman who now runs an institute researching militancy, said in 2009 it earned about 100 million rupees, or around $1.2 million at current exchange rates, from hide sales.

”The revenue is likely to increase this year,” he said. ”The group has got more popularity due to its charity work in the wake of the recent floods.”

Yahya Mujahid, Jamaat-u-Dawa’s current spokesman, contested that figure, saying the group sold 25,000 skins that year, but did not say how much it earned or give any more details.

Mohammad Ilyas, who works at the animal skin market in Lahore, where Jamaat-u-Dawa is based, said in 2008 he processed and salted the group’s hides at their headquarters, which he said numbered around 100,000 pieces. In 2006, the group sold 103,000 skins to Shafi Tannery, said Mohammad Sharif, the company’s accountant.

Those figures appear reasonable given that the cancer hospital run by Imran Khan said it collects around 50,000 skins a year. While popular with many wealthy Pakistanis, the hospital’s charitable trust does not have the national reach of Jamaat-u-Dawa and related groups, especially in the small towns and villages of highly populated Punjab.

In Islamabad alone this year, the group collected 2,500 skins on the first day of the three-day holiday, members of the group at the Quba mosque said. They were piled up in a heap outside the building. The capital is home to less than one million people and is not a stronghold of group.

ISLAMABAD: Militants in Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal area on Tuesday issued a statement claiming that skirmishes had broken out early in the morning when the military tried to enter Miranshah, the tribal headquarters. There was no official confirmation.

The United States has placed Islamabad under intense pressure to launch an operation in North Waziristan, which it views as the command and control center of al-Qaeda and from where the powerful network of Jalaluddin and Sirajuddin Haqqani is based for its operations in Afghanistan.

Pakistan has over the past year marched into several other tribalareas to take on militants, including Swat and South Waziristan, but at present a peace agreement is in place between Taliban-led militants in North Waziristan and the military.

However, al-Qaeda linked militants have informed Asia Times Online that a battle in North Waziristan is inevitable to avenge atrocities that the militants claim the military has inflicted on children in the tribal area. The incident took place last week in a brief clash between the army and militants.

The al-Qaeda linked militants are spoiling for a fight even though the chief of the Taliban in North Waziristan, Hafiz Gul Bahadur, has said that last week’s contact would not affect the ceasefire.

The militants also want to head off any attempt by the government to create a split in their ranks. In one effort, Islamabad has put in motion an operation that includes a former Iraqi intelligence official who now works for the Saudis, former officials of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and a former Taliban commander who was once a member of parliament.

“It is not an issue of whether the Pakistan army wants a military operation or not. The issue is related to their capacity,” Muhammad Umar, a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban in North Waziristan, told Asia Times Online in a telephone interview. Muhammad Umar is an alias for a non-Pashtun from Punjab province.

“They [the army] are already under siege in North Waziristan. Troops are sitting at checkpoints and cannot even fetch water for themselves from a nearby stream if the militants, positioned all around the mountains, open fire on them.”

The situation in North Waziristan is clearly highly volatile as the militants are not united. Many, especially those allied with the predominately Pashtun Haqqani network, want to concentrate all of their efforts on Afghanistan, hence the peace accord with the army. Al-Qaeda-linked militants, including Punjabis, see the state as their enemy, in addition to the foreign forces across the border.

The recent abduction of influential powerbrokers highlights the problem. On March 25, retired squadron leader Khalid Khawaja, a former ISI official, traveled to North Waziristan to interview Sirajuddin Haqqani and Waliur Rahman Mehsud. He was accompanied by Colonel Ameer Sultan Tarrar, also a former long-time ISI official and once Pakistan’s consul-general in Herat in Afghanistan. Tarrar is nicknamed “Colonel Imam” by the mujahideen as he was instrumental in helping raise the Taliban militia.

The men have not been seen since and Punjabi militants calling themselves the “Asian Tigers” said they had seized the men. Subsequently, Asia Times Online received several video clips of Khawaja speaking. (See Confessions of a Pakistani spy Asia Times Online, April 24, 2010.)

The militants believe Khawaja was a part of a joint international operation trying to isolate the al-Qaeda-linked militants.

Asia Times Online has leaned that Khawaja and Colonel Imam wanted to hammer out a formula of peaceful coexistence between militants and the military in North Waziristan, and in the broader context to seek a way for the US to withdraw from the region in such a manner that the Taliban would have a role to play in Afghanistan and Pakistan would have a friendly government in Kabul.

The initiative was stopped in its tracks with the abduction of the peacebrokers and in the video clips Khawaja, most likely under duress, spoke out against Pakistan’s military establishment.

The message between the lines from the militants is that the role of the Pakistan army in Afghan affairs through any Islamist or non-Islamist cadre is over; that is, the war is exclusively between the West and Muslim militants, and no “referee” is required.

Two sides of the story

Khawaja was retired from the air force in the late 1980s after he wrote a letter to the then-president, General Zia ul-Haq, in which he called him a hypocrite for not enforcing Islam in Pakistan. He then went to Afghanistan and fought alongside Osama bin Laden. He was a recruiter and trainer of Pakistani fighters for the resistance against the Soviets.

After his forced retirement, Khawaja was active in politics, from trying to stitch together an Islamic election alliance in 1988 against the Pakistan People’s Party’s government to the so-called Operation Khilafat, an alleged plot of some military officers and jihadis to stage an Islamic revolution in Pakistan in the mid-1990s.
Khawaja and former US Central Intelligence Agency director James Woolsey worked unsuccessfully after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US to prevent the invasion of Afghanistan.

Khawaja tricked a radical cleric into being arrested during the crackdown on the Taliban-sympathetic Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in the capital, Islamabad, in mid-2007. Yet he has been active in providing support to the families of members of al-Qaeda who have been arrested or killed. Earlier this year he filed a case that prevented captured Taliban commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar from being handed over to the Americans or the Afghan government.

Depending on the issue, Khawaja is clearly not afraid to act in the establishment’s interests, or against them, and he is equally comfortable speaking to Americans or with the ISI.

Along with an American friend, Mansoor Ejaz, who was close to right-wing Republicans, Khawaja worked on a project for peace in South Asia. In this regard he gave a detailed interview to Asia Times Online to promote his theme that the international proxy war in the region should be stopped. (See The pawns who pay as powers play June 22, 2005.)

Before his ill-fated trip to North Waziristan, Khawaja spoke to Asia Times Online, saying that a few veterans of the Afghan jihad (against the Soviets) were now coming together.

“It would be premature to tell you the details, but I will soon give you a breaking story about a mechanism under which these suicide attacks in Pakistan will be stopped completely,” Khawaja said. He also pointed to the involvement of a renowned Arab, Mehmud al-Samarai, earlier wanted by the Americans for financing militants in Iraq but now known to be helping Saudi Arabia’s peace efforts in Afghanistan.

Pakistani Taliban spokesman Umar gave his version of Khawaja’s trip to North Waziristan.

“Khalid Khawaja, Colonel Imam and a [former] Iraqi intelligence agent [Mehmud al-Samarai] and Shah Abdul Aziz [a commander during the Taliban regime and a former member of parliament] visited North Waziristan about a month and a half ago. They were all old mujahids who fought against the Russians, therefore they were all treated with respect. However, everybody noticed their suspicious activities,” Muhammad Umar told ATol.

“They met the chief of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan [Pakistani Taliban] Hakeemullah Mehsud, Mufti Waliur Rahman Mehsud [chief of the Taliban in South Waziristan] and the Khalifa Sahib [Sirajuddin Haqqani]. Khawaja brought with him a list of 14 commanders and he tried to convince Hakeemullah Mehsud and Waliur Rahman Mehsud that all those commanders, including Qari Zafar [a leader of the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi] and others are Indian plants among the mujahideen and the Taliban should get rid of them. Both Hakeemullah and Waliur Rahman were tolerant of those allegations against their own commanders and they were silent. However, these people did some other things which made them suspicious,” Umar said.

“They tried to convince Hakeemullah Mehsud and Waliur Rahman Mehsud to stop attacking the Pakistan army and discussed a mechanism to target NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] supply lines only. They offered to help Hakeemullah set up pockets in different parts of the country from where they could attack NATO supplies going to Afghanistan.

“Shah Abdul Aziz was then spotted asking people the names of the militants who [last December] attacked the Parade Lane Mosque in Rawalpindi [several army officers were massacred along with 17 of their children]. At the same time, the visiting group met with Khalifa Sahib and urged him to keep his connection with the army. They asked him what kind of weapons he required and they would arrange it for him,” Umar said.

Umar said that during Khawaja’s first visit, he used Mufti Mehsud’s four-wheel drive vehicle. A few days after Khawaja and the others returned to Islamabad, the same vehicle was hit by a drone.

“You know that the Pakistan army aims to keep the Taliban divided as good and bad Taliban. The Afghan Taliban are good for them and the Pakistani Taliban are bad. We don’t have such distinctions. If we get proof that a person has a connection with the ISI, whether he is bad or good, he is an enemy. As far as Khawaja is concerned, he confessed that he was sent by an ISI officer. We have reports that he frequently meets with the CIA and arranges meetings of other people with the CIA in return for money,” Umar said.

“Khawaja and the others left North Waziristan with assurances that he would soon come back with a British journalist. We all compared notes and concluded that he had come with an agenda and he would come back again. As was expected, he came back and we caught him immediately. The journalist he brought with him also worked for the ISPR [Inter-Services Public Relations) for documentary-making projects. Therefore, they were all the Pakistan army's assets and our enemies and they will be dealt with according to their crimes. It has been decided," Umar said.

The Pakistan army, the Americans and the militants each have their own plans, and they are all at a critical juncture.

Pakistan's military anticipated that the US would be defeated in Afghanistan and therefore there was no need to wage all-out war in the Pakistani tribal areas. Rather, they wanted to keep operations at a level where hostilities would remain minimal and once the Americans left, Pakistan and the militants would restore their traditional strategic relations.

"That illusion went away under General Kiani's command," a senior US official told Asia Times Online in reference to Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Pervez Kiani.

"The militants showed so much hostility that the military had to wage an all-out war against them. However, the situation in North Waziristan terrifies them [the army]. Sirajuddin Haqqani has a strong 4,000 armed militia [besides Hafiz Gul Bahadur's men, al-Qaeda, Uzbeks, Chechens and other militias]. The army thinks that if they launch an operation in North Waziristan, the militants will occupy South Waziristan again and the military will be unable to fight them,” the official said.

However, the Americans aim to provide full support through their unmanned drones, which target militant leaders, as they have been doing for some while. The aim is to eliminate the major Taliban networks and support bases and then make preparations for a US withdrawal from the region.

However, as illustrated by the Khawaja case, sections of the militants are in no mood to talk, other than through the barrels of their guns.

At the heels of Pakistan’s offensive against militants in South Waziristan, terrorists brazenly staged an attack on military headquarters this weekend. Commandos responded swiftly, taking out 9 of the militants, capturing their ring leader and freeing 39 hostages. Despite success in ending the siege, the incident demonstrates a worsening Af-Pak situation and beseeches a new strategy.

Our administrations new strategy is defined by an increase in troops to Afghanistan, focusing military efforts squarely on Al Qaeda (less focus on Taliban) and expanded funding to Pakistan by way of the Kerry Lugar bill. And while the troop surge and emphasis on Al Qaeda are debated at length in D.C., the Pakistani media is abuzz on the Kerry Lugar bill. There are calls by The Awami League Party (representing the NWFP regions & a predominantly Pashtun population) that the bill allow for an “uninterrupted flow of non military assistance” while other politicians vouch against the legislation altogether. Tehrik-e-Insaaf chairman Imran Khan  said the bill “enslaves” Pakistan and can only benefit the top echelons of government referring to past corruption allegations on senior government officials. Similarly, pundits were all over Pakistani television in the past week, echoing concerns about corruption, lack of support to the military, too many strings attached to funding, and how the bill threatens sovereignty. This morning Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi flew to D.C. to discuss theseconcerns just as rumours that Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States is losing his post becayse of not entirely positive comments regarding the Kerry-Lugar legislation. Suffice to say, the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Actmeant to  extend a new strategic hand of cooperation to Islamabad is not off to the positive start intend

In fact, Senator Kerry’s office directly responded to popular skepticism in a recent report.

• Addressing concerns that the bill would invade state soveriegnty: Senator Kerry explains the bill funds “schools, roads, energy infrastructure and medical clinics” and that “those seeking to undermine” a US/Pakistan in that endeavor are doing so to “advance narrow partisan or institutional agendas“.
• Regarding the idea that the legislation comes with too many strings attached, Kerry emphasizes that the $7.5 billion annual pledge is for “unconditioned non military aid” and comes with “strict measures of financial accountability“ referring specifically to Executive Branch oversight on the use of these funds.

This is contentious to Pakistan because it’s maybe the first time external oversight is imposed on assistance from the United States. And while the bill does a great job of outlining funds for social infrastructure intended to find it’s way to everyday citizens, on the issue of sovereigty, the real sticking point is regarding a potential subversion of the Pakistani military. Senator Kerry insists that the bill’s:

• “focus is on nonmilitary assistance to the people of Pakistan“ and military aid is contingent to “cooperation on nonproliferation“. However, the bills funding is rooted in ”significant efforts towards combating terrorist groups” and the “Pakistani military not subverting the political or judicial process“ to ensure ”common goals“ of ”security and democracy“.

This irks Pakistani’s for a number of reasons. Firstly, there’s ambiguous wording. “Cooperation on nonproliferation” is vague enough to translate as potentially linking funds to Pakistan giving up their right to maintain armaments comparable to neighboring India. Similarly, “significant efforts toward combating terrorism” gives no reference for how this will be measured.

On the Pakistan side, the worry is that  ”significant efforts”, according to their definition might not match a U.S. definition of success. Plus there might continue to be a disagreement on the idea of “combating terrorism”. It’s a contention we’ve seen play out as D.C. repeatedly called for heightened efforts on combating the Taliban, quitely but surely opposing Pakistan’s attempts at negotiating with those groups rather than employing just a military offensive, (a policy we’re now reverting).

Also, delinking assistance from the military is unprecedented and freightening to some because while it is necessary to develop schools, and social, democratic infrastructure for long term development, in the immediate term there are widespread security breaches with weekly suicide attacks, an ever growing incursion from Afghan militants on the northern border and drone attacks that result in collateral damage.

So Pakistans concerns echo a need for both immediate security and long term development, but not at the expense of one another.

Keep in mind, the widely held, and all but true notion that Pakistan is perhaps the only place where the military controls a country, and not vice versa. That idea is rooted in that their military is historically the strongest, most stable and legitimately accepted institution. Let me emphasize that last part: it’s historically the most legitimately accepted institution in Pakistan in an absence of stable democratic institutions never having developed. Meaning, in times of economic, social and political uncertainty, the military has historically responded most efficiently in alleviating situations since 1947. Whether one accepts the idea that the military creates a perpetual cycle of uncertainty within which to assume power periodically, or the military responds to the shortcomings of civilian governments in the absence of democratic instiuttions (chicken & egg argument), either way, the military’s been relatively effective in handling crises in Pakistan in comparison to civlian regimes. So given the current enviornment of insecurity, people are weary of a hopeful promise for “long term” moves toward “democracy” that might comes at the expense of insufficient assistance to their military who has a capacity to alleviate immediate security concerns.

I think democracy is the ultimate route to security for Pakistan, but despite Executive branch oversight and our “long term” commitment defined by only 5 years of funding, Pakistan’s concerns are understandable. Given a long history of cooperation, Pakistan is more used to US assistance through bilateral relations with a Republican government in DC (think General Zia/Raegan, General Musharraf/Bush, Ayub Khan/Eisenhower, Yahya/Nixon) and the Kerry Lugar bill is a staunch reverasal of our foreign policy with Islamabad. Perhaps finding value in previously crafted policies to Pakistan in combination with our current legislative proposals is an optimal solution to quelling the enahanced concern of our enhanced cooperation.