Friday, May 30, 2008

US must understand nuances of situation in FATA

US must understand nuances of situation in FATA: Washington Times
* Zardari tells WT ‘it’s time to engage tribal leaders’
* Says US policy strengthened extremists
By Khalid Hasan, Daily Times, May 30, 2008

WASHINGTON: The United States needs assurances that Pakistan is not handing the Taliban and related groups even greater sanctuary in the region than they already enjoy, however, it must also understand the differences between “the many actors in this very important drama,” according to an editorial in the Washington Times on Thursday.

The newspaper also carries an interview given by Asif Ali Zardari to its columnist Harlan Ullman, in which the PPP co-chairman is quoted as saying, “The Government of Pakistan will never negotiate with terrorists, but we fully intend to engage tribal leaders who have been abandoned by the previous government and have been co-opted by extremists by coercion.

“We will engage them on the condition that they yield their arms and cease their attacks on the Pakistani military and on NATO and Afghan troops in Afghanistan.

“There will be zero tolerance for terrorism anywhere. We have tried confrontation; we have tried battling them; we have also tried ignoring them. It is now time to engage them.”

US policy:

Zardari said that for much too long the US viewed South Asia through “very myopic, short-term glasses.”

In the 1980s dictatorships were sustained in Pakistan under the rationale of the Cold War. In this young century, dictatorship has been sustained under the guise of the so-called war on terror.

This policy has strengthened the extremists and turned the people of Pakistan away from the US.

The US-Pakistan relationship must be more than a military marriage of convenience. It must be based on shared values and mutual respect.

PPP, PML-N

On the question of the restoration of the sacked judges, Zardari told the American journalist, “Both the PPP and the PML-N want the restoration of the judiciary as it existed before emergency rule was imposed by President Pervez Musharraf.

“The PML-N wants it done by decree, and my party wants to accomplish the restoration as part of a significant judicial reform legislative package that will totally modernise and liberalise the structure of civil society in Pakistan.

“We expect that the National Assembly will consider and enact this comprehensive judicial reform package before the end of June.”

This constitutional package aims to restore the key elements of the 1973 Constitution … the power to dismiss governments was never meant to be in the hands of the president.”

Differences:

As for differences that have cropped up between the PPP and its coalition partner the PML-N, Zardari said, “The coalition has some internal dissonance, but that is the nature of democratic debate.

“The PML-N is still in fundamental agreement with the major initiatives and thrusts of the government. I think people have also misunderstood the level of disagreement on the judges’ issue.”

Regarding relations with India, the PPP co-chairman said India and Pakistan were created out of the same cloth.

“We share the same language, the same food, and much of the same culture..… South Asia must become an economic condominium of open markets and open borders. The outstanding issue of Kashmir has yet to be resolved, but it is an issue that must be resolved to the satisfaction of all parties.”

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Premier Seeks More U.S. Aid For Pakistan: WSJ

Premier Seeks More U.S. Aid For Pakistan By Zahid Hussain
The Wall Street Journal, May 29, 2008

Pakistan 's new prime minister said he is urging the U.S. to increase its economic and defense assistance to help strengthen his country's newly elected democratic government.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani also said he is willing to work with President Pervez Musharraf, a main U.S. ally in its battle against Islamist terrorism, but he would let his party decide whether to try to force the president from office.

Mr. Musharraf is facing mounting pressure from his political opponents to resign or face removal from office. Earlier this week, the new government introduced measures designed to reduce the president's powers to dismiss the government and dissolve parliament.

Mr. Gilani said further U.S. assistance "will help deliver a democracy dividend to the people" after Pakistan held landmark elections for a new parliament in February.

He also said further aid is needed to help provide political and economic stability as the nation seeks to fight terrorism. Pakistan has received more than $11 billion from the U.S. , most of which has gone to the military, since it joined the U.S.-led fight against terrorism following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Mr. Gilani didn't specify how much further assistance Pakistan is seeking. He made his case for further aid during a recent meeting in the Middle East with President Bush.

Mr. Gilani said the use of military means alone to try to stamp out militancy from Pakistan 's hinterlands would never bring peace. "We need to review our strategy to deal with the situation in the tribal region," he said.

Western intelligence agencies contend that Pakistan 's tribal region has become a major operating center for the al Qaeda terrorist organization and a launching pad for assaults on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's troops in neighboring Afghanistan .

Mr. Gilani, 55 years old, heads a fractious coalition government led by the Pakistan People's Party of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

The new government has taken a different tack in the battle against terrorism than that followed by Mr. Musharraf. Mr. Gilani's government has been negotiating with militants and exchanging prisoners.

The latest accord came Wednesday, when the government signed a peace deal with a Taliban militant group in the Mohamand tribal region near the Afghan border. The deal includes a pledge from the militants' leader not to target security and government officials, a government official said.

Mr. Gilani said the government is talking only to the tribesmen who renounce violence and surrender their weapons. But U.S. and NATO officials argue that the peace deals have allowed militants time to regroup.

The prime minister said Pakistani forces would remain deployed along the border. And he emphasized the need to increase the strength of Afghan troops on the Afghan side of the border, saying there is an inadequate force to protect against border crossings.

Eight weeks after a new coalition government was formed, Pakistan continues to reel from internal political strife. The coalition that emerged from February's elections began to fall apart after a major coalition partner -- the Pakistan Muslim League (N) led by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif -- pulled its ministers from the cabinet.

The PPP and Mr. Sharif disagreed over how to restore judges ousted by Mr. Musharraf when he declared a temporary state of emergency late last year.

The fate of Mr. Musharraf and how the government should deal with him has added a further destabilizing element.

Mr. Gilani said he would maintain a working relationship with Mr. Musharraf for now. "I have no problem working with him, but will go by the party's decision," the prime minister said.

Dr. A Q Khan Speaks to BBC

Disgraced nuclear expert speaks By Syed Shoaib Hasan
BBC News, Islamabad, May 28, 2008

The disgraced Pakistani nuclear scientist, AQ Khan, has said that allegations he passed on nuclear secrets are false.

In a rare interview, he said that there was pressure put on him to accept the charges "in the national interest".

Four years ago he admitted passing on nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya.

He confessed to using Pakistan as the hub of a large proliferation network. He was then put under house arrest.

'Not free'

President Pervez Musharraf granted him a full pardon, but Western countries believe he did not come clean on the scale of his nuclear activities.

"These are all false allegations," Dr Khan told the BBC Urdu service.


Dr Khan quoted politicians and a former army chief, who said the allegations against the scientist were false and there had been pressure on him to confess.

When asked why he was put under pressure, he said: "If one person takes responsibility, you save the country."

Dr Khan was speaking by telephone from his home in Islamabad.

He said, despite the government's promises, he was still not a free man.

"Freedom means I could go out and meet people."

He said that the stance of the new government was that it could not release him as it did not arrest him.

Forthcoming release

"If it keeps on like this, whenever a government comes in power and says we can't undo what the previous government did, there will be no freedom for anyone," he said.

"When a government takes power it becomes the new government's responsibility."

Asked who was preventing him from being released, his reply was unequivocal.

"There are guards outside, army guards," he said.

Dr Khan has recently been allowed to leave his residence and go out on selective trips, although officials have said he will remain under tight security with no access to foreign investigators

A ban on him talking to the media has also been removed in recent days.

These are believed to be preliminary steps before his forthcoming release.

The move is being anxiously watched by officials from Western nations, especially the United States.

They are keen to question Dr Khan over his the exact scope of his nuclear weapon leaks and are especially keen to investigate his alleged links with al-Qaeda.

He said that when the time comes, he might speak out about the circumstances surrounding his confession.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Gen Kayani looks Musharraf in the eye: Countdown begins...

Gen Kayani looks Musharraf in the eye By Muhammad Saleh Zaafir
The News, May 29, 2008

ISLAMABAD: Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani held an extremely important meeting with President Pervez Musharraf at the Army House Rawalpindi late on Wednesday.

The meeting continued till after midnight lasting more than three-and-a-half hours. This was their longest one-on-one encounter. The meeting, which was significant in view of the current political and security situation in the country, gained further importance as it took place after day-long consultations of the Army chief with his important commanders.

Brigadier Faheem Rao has taken over the command of the Triple-One Brigade in place of the president's loyal commander Brigadier Aasim Bajwa. The commando unit looking after the security of the Presidency has been changed with another unit.

Highly placed sources told The News late on Wednesday evening that President Pervez Musharraf has made up his mind to call it a day and he can make an announcement in this regard any time. His closest aides are of the view that after losing all hope of survival in power the president has made up his mind to lead a retired life.

Sources said though the president's official spokesman denied this impression, Musharraf has no option left but to quit. The president has already been asked by 'important officials' not to think about any step that may further aggravate the already fragile political situation in the country. Musharraf has consented to leave the Army House immediately and he may move to the President House within 48 hours before calling it a day.

"There is no question of any extra-constitutional step by him or on his behalf. The president has lost the capacity to invoke constitutional provisions like 58-2 (b), dissolving the assembly and the government. The question of introducing an impeachment motion would not come as the president will leave office and get a safe passage. The drop scene of the drama that started on March 9 last year is bound to appear any time soon," the sources said.

Meanwhile, Brigadier Aasim Salim Bajwa, who served President Pervez Musharraf as his military secretary in his initial days and was considered to be the most loyal Army officer of the president, was made commander of the Triple-One Brigade, which is responsible for the security of the president, federal capital and Rawalpindi, by President Pervez Musharraf before relinquishing the office of the Army chief. This Brigade has always played a main role in staging coups in the past.

Brigadier Bajwa also provided Musharraf admirable assistance in tabulation of his book 'In the Line of Fire'. He was due to take part in war-course in August this year but is now proceeding for another course to the United States next week. Brigadier Faheem Rao has been appointed Commander Triple-One Brigade. He has already taken over the charge of the Brigade, the sources said.

Misreading the Arab Media: NYT

Op-Chart
Misreading the Arab Media
By LAWRENCE PINTAK, JEREMY GINGES and NICHOLAS FELTON
New York Times, May 25, 2008

“ARABIC TV does not do our country justice,” President Bush complained in early 2006, calling it a purveyor of “propaganda” that “just isn’t right, it isn’t fair, and it doesn’t give people the impression of what we’re about.”

The president’s statement, along with the decision by the New York Stock Exchange to ban Al Jazeera’s reporters in 2003, is a prime example of how the Arab news media have been demonized since the 9/11 attacks. As a result, America has failed to make use of what is potentially one of its most powerful weapons in the war of ideas against terrorism.

For proof, in the last year we surveyed 601 journalists in 13 Arab countries in North Africa, the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula. The results, to be published in The International Journal of Press/Politics in July, shatter many of the myths upon which American public diplomacy strategy has been based.

Rather than being the enemy, most Arab journalists are potential allies whose agenda broadly tracks the stated goals of United States Middle East policy and who can be a valuable conduit for explaining American policy to their audiences. Many see themselves as agents of political and social change who believe it is their mission to reform the antidemocratic regimes they live under. When asked to name the top 10 missions of Arab journalism, they cited political reform, human rights, poverty and education as the most important issues facing the region, trumping Palestinian statehood and the war in Iraq. Overwhelmingly, they wanted the clergy to stay out of politics. And, aside from the ever-present issue of Israel, they ranked “lack of political change” alongside American policy as the greatest threats to the Arab world.

Though many Arab journalists dislike the United States government, more than 60 percent say they have a favorable view of the American people. They just don’t believe the United States is sincere when it calls for Arab democratic reform or a Palestinian state, as President Bush did again this month in Egypt.

Make no mistake, the Arab press has many flaws, including being subject to state control; only 26 percent of our respondents said they felt their fellow Arab journalists “act professionally” and only 11 percent said they were truly independent in their work. Nevertheless, Arab news outlets are more powerful and free today than at any time in history. If the next administration is going to try to reach out to the Arab people, it won’t get far by blaming the messenger.

Lawrence Pintak is the director of the Kamal Adham Center for Journalism Training and Research at the American University in Cairo and the author of “Reflections in a Bloodshot Lens: America, Islam and the War of Ideas.” Jeremy Ginges is an assistant professor of psychology at the New School for Social Research. Nicholas Felton is a graphic designer in Brooklyn.

Amnesty International Critises the US for Supporting Musharraf's Emergency Imposition in November 2007

Amnesty International condemns US, China in report
By MEERA SELVA – AFP, May 28, 2008

LONDON (AP) — The United States is shirking its duty to provide the world with moral leadership and China is letting its business interests trump human rights concerns in Myanmar and Sudan, a human rights group said Wednesday.

Amnesty International's annual report on the state of the world's human rights accused the U.S. of failing to provide a moral compass for its international peers, a long-standing complaint the London-based group has against the North American superpower.

This year it also criticized the U.S. for supporting Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf last November when he imposed a state of emergency, clamped down on the media and sacked judges.

"As the world's most powerful state, the USA sets the standard for government behavior globally," the report said. It charged that the U.S. "had distinguished itself in recent years through its defiance of international law."

As in the past, the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay came in for criticism. Irene Khan, Amnesty's secretary-general, appealed for the American president elected in November to announce the jail's closure on Dec. 10, 2008, the 60th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights.

The State Department had no immediate comment on the report, but said the U.S. was justified in detaining enemy combatants at Guantanamo to prevent them from returning to the battlefield. The State Department has previously said Amnesty uses the U.S. as "a convenient ideological punching bag."

Emerging power China came in for a few punches, too. The report said China had continued shipping weapons to Sudan in defiance of a U.N. arms embargo and traded with abusive governments like Myanmar and Zimbabwe. It said that China's media censorship remains in place and that the government continues to persecute rights activists.

The report also accused China of expanding its "re-education through labor" program, which allows the government to arrest people and sentence them to a manual labor without trial.

But Amnesty said it detected a shift in China's position: In 2007, China persuaded the Sudanese government to allow U.N. peacekeepers into the Darfur region and pressured Myanmar to accept the visit of a U.N. special envoy.

Khan told The Associated Press that it was much easier to grapple with human rights problems when the West and China worked together.

"China has the leverage to work with certain governments," she said ahead of the report's release. But she said China needed to use that leverage responsibly.

"China is clearly a global power. With that comes global responsibility for human rights. It needs to recognize that economic growth is not enough," Khan said.

The Chinese Embassy in London referred a query about the report to Beijing officials. A woman who answered the phone at the Foreign Ministry in Beijing said the ministry would look into the report. She refused to comment further or to give her name or position.

China has rejected previous such reports. It says its human rights record has improved in recent years.

Amnesty International said people are still tortured or ill-treated in at least 81 countries, face unfair trials in at least 54 and are denied free speech in at least 77.

But the report also highlighted an increase in mass demonstrations around the world, citing that as a positive sign of a growing willingness by people to fight for their rights.

"Black-suited lawyers in Pakistan, saffron-robed monks in Myanmar, 43.7 million individuals standing up on Oct. 17, 2007, to demand action against poverty, all were vibrant reminders last year of a global citizenry determined to stand up for human rights and hold their leaders to account," it said.

‘If you carry out a suicide attack, you will not die’

‘If you carry out a suicide attack, you will not die’
* Pakistani teenager detained in Afghanistan narrates how he was brainwashed by clerics
Daily Times, May 28, 2008

KABUL: A 14-year-old Pakistani “suicide bomber”, who is currently in an Afghan intelligence agency’s detention, was convinced by clerics that if he carried out a suicide attack, he would not die, according to a report published in Chicago Tribune on Tuesday.

Shakirullah, who is from Barwan village in North Waziristan, said he agreed to carry out a suicide attack on foreign troops in Afghanistan.

“They said, ‘They’re only foreigners. They’ll die, and you won’t’,” he told the newspaper correspondent, referring to his clerics.

He said he did not know how to drive a car or read a book, and that his only schooling was four months in an Islamic madrassa. Shakir was arrested allegedly in a car filled with explosives.

The report said that it was impossible for the Tribune reporter to independently verify the story because Western journalists were not allowed to visit the Tribal Areas. But it added that Shakir told the tale of his recruitment willingly and calmly, under no apparent pressure.

Intelligence sources said they don’t yet know what will happen to Shakir. If he is sent to Pakistan, he could be killed or recruited again, the report said.

“Everyone is so sad about this kid,” said one Afghan official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of his job.

The boy said he was recruited in March by two clerics from his madrassa, just after he finished learning to recite the Quran.

Because the book is in Arabic, Shakir said he had no idea what any of the words meant, but the clerics told him the next step to becoming a good Muslim was to blow himself up near foreign forces in Afghanistan.

The report quoted Shakir as saying that his clerics had told him that if he was a good Muslim, he would survive the attack. When he came home, he would be well paid and have everything he wanted.

“They said it was required because I finished the Quran,” Shakir said. “I didn’t want to go. They didn’t let me talk to my family,” he added.

He said he was driven across the border to Khost, an eastern Afghan city near the border and a US military base.

Shakir said that a medical student from another Afghan city and a cleric showed him several times how to drive a car and took him to sermons for three nights.

But before Shakir could launch an attack - on March 20, to coincide with the Afghan New Year - the explosives-filled car stalled in a dry riverbed.

Afghan security forces stumbled upon it and arrested Shakir, the cleric and the medical student.

Shakir said he doesn’t want to attack anyone anymore. “I don’t even know what jihad is,” he said. “I really want to go home.”

Has the bomb helped us? By M B Naqvi

Has the bomb helped us? By M B Naqvi
The News, May 28, 2008

Today is the tenth anniversary of Pakistan's test explosion of nuclear weapons in Chagai ordered by then prime minister Mian Nawaz Sharif. The tests were in response to India's actions of May 11 when it tested five nuclear devices.

Let's get one thing clear. All test explosions are basically military threats to the enemy: On May 11 and 13, 1998, India was threatening to nuke Pakistan if it did not stop its proxy war in Indian-held Kashmir. Pakistan's reply was, We too will nuke you; come on. Both India and Pakistan paid a price in sanctions that in fact hurt Pakistan more than they did India.

A second truth about the Bomb is that it unavoidably causes its intended enemy to reply in kind and a competitive build up of atomic weaponry ensues. Western bomb-making was aimed at communist powers. Nobody could mistake that communists' nukes were aimed at Western targets. Israeli nukes are meant to annihilate Arab states or Iran. India's enemy remains ambiguous: it could be China or Pakistan. This mystery is intended. But irrespective of what L K Advani, the BJP's prime minister-in-waiting, may say, circumstantial evidence suggested that the BJP decision in 1998 was Pakistan-centred.

Anyhow, Pakistanis should make honest cost-benefit analysis of the Bomb. Why Pakistan decided to have atomic weapons should not be difficult to understand. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto meant what he said when he said that "we will eat grass" but have the Bomb. What he said has happened because the people of this country are close to doing just that. It is time to ascertain the costs and benefits that it has given to Pakistan's security. Pakistan achieved the ability to enrich uranium in 1984. By 1986 it was able to threaten India with a possible nuclear response if Operation Brass Tacks grew into an invasion. Next came the Kargil adventure in which, the Americans inform us, Pakistan readied its missiles with nuclear warheads and asked India not to go too far. However, Nawaz Sharif managed to extricate Pakistani troops from those heights with American help. Far from being an achievement, it was a political and military defeat despite Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.

The Agra talks are irrelevant here, but 2002 is not. That year the Vajpayee government threatened an all-out invasion and sent the Indian army on the borders in ready-to-attack mode. Again Pakistan threatened some 13 times in the first few months that it would launch nuclear weapons if India's troops crossed the international border – and India refrained from doing that. But overall judgement on the matter should be based on several factors: effective American mediation and that Delhi's purpose was to coerce Pakistan into giving up its proxy war in Kashmir. Finally, the Indians got what they wanted: a firm promise from Pakistan that the mujahideen would not be allowed to cross over into Indian-controlled Kashmir, with probable American guarantees.

This is not a glorious record in terms of national security; Pakistan has been unsuccessfully seeking concessions out of India since 2004 in negotiations. The fact of the matter is that the Bomb has helped neither in war nor in peace time.

In all the above cases the Indians knew that Pakistan had the Bomb. Also, India's generals must have known that there is no defence against nuclear weapons and if Pakistan had launched its arsenal the losses would have been unacceptable. How could they then dare to blatantly threaten Pakistan in 2002? And the answer to that is that they were obviously not overly afraid of the Pakistani Bomb. Perhaps, by 2002, if not 1999, the Indians reasoned that the maximum Pakistan can do is to take out a few Indian cities? Let it. But India, with a second-strike capability, could retaliate decisively. Pakistan comprises seven or eight urban-industrial centres and India must have felt that it could wipe out all of them. Hence, can any Pakistani government or general really take the risk of launching nuclear weapons against India, knowing that in consequence most of Pakistan could be destroyed? Thus, Pakistan's Bomb has amounted to what one could call a bluff.

And with this the much-hyped deterrent value of nuclear weapons has been dealt a mortal blow. The only plus point was in 1986 when Pakistan threatened India with a nuclear strike and the Indians retreated. But that has not prevented India from credibly threatening Pakistan with a conventional invasion, in full confidence of gaining a victory and knowing that Pakistan, when the chips are down, would not nuke India. Thus, India's conventional superiority again becomes relevant. In that sense, our costly nuclear arsenal is more or less irrelevant for our national security, if not completely a minus point.

Politically, Pakistan has paid a huge price. Far from being an important or respected country, it is now seen as an American satellite. The kind of micro-managing that the Americans are doing in Pakistan politics is an abject lesson. Besides, minor EU countries continue advising it what to do and what to avoid in forming a government after an election. How much lower can it sink? As for economics, look at the state of our economy today. How does having nuclear weapons help us in any way – with a massive current account deficit and rampant inflation? Those who think that the cost of the arms race with India does not play a key role in all of this are sadly mistaken. Since resources are limited, those that are diverted to the upkeep of the nuclear arsenal and the defence budget means that less are available for socio-economic development.

It is time that Islamabad rids itself of its nuclear arsenal – in the responsible that for instance South Africa has done. Even the size of the conventional army is too big for a country like Pakistan. Leveraged by help from the US (which allows the latter to achieve its own geo-political aims), the army continues to threaten democracy because of its repeated interventions.

The writer is a veteran journalist and freelance columnist. Email: mbnaqvi @cyber.net.pk

‘Pakistan gets less than half of what it spends’

‘Pakistan gets less than half of what it spends’: Anti-terror efforts
By Anwar Iqbal, Dawn, May 28, 2008

WASHINGTON, May 27: What Pakistan gets as reimbursement for its efforts to combat militants along the Afghan border is less than half of what it spends, diplomatic sources say.

Under a programme known as the Coalition Support Fund, the US military reimburses Pakistan for terrorism-related operations, particularly by the army and the air force.

A US Government Accountability Office report issued last week said that of $5.8 billion in US support for anti-terrorism efforts in the Fata between 2002 and 2007, about 96 per cent had gone towards reimbursing the Pakistani military, three per cent on border security and one per cent on development aid projects.

Talking to Dawn, sources said the $5.8 billion Pakistan received from the CSF was reimbursement of what the country had already spent.

“It is not easy to deploy 100,000 troops in a troubled area,” said one diplomatic source. “Look, how the Americans are spending billions of dollars on maintaining troops in Iraq. If the Americans feel that the Iraq war is draining their resources, imagine how it affects Pakistan.”

Noting that Pakistan has lost almost 1,000 soldiers in the fight, sources complained that the CSF does not compensate for the loss of life. There is no provision for supporting the families of the slain soldiers either.

“The life of every human being is precious,” said a diplomatic observer. “But the death of a Pakistani soldier gets no mention in the international media and that’s why people in the West feel that Pakistan is not doing enough.”

The CSF does not cover depreciation of equipment either, such as the Cobra helicopters used to monitor the Pak-Afghan border. The Pakistanis, however, are compensated for the money they spend on the soldiers, for fuel, ammunition and for flying sorties. Responding to the claim in the official US report that Pakistan was not spending the money it received from the CSF on development, a source said that this money was not meant for development.

“It is reimbursement and the Pakistanis are at liberty to use it for whatever they want to use it for,” the source said. “But the $750 million Pakistan is going to receive now is for the development of the Fata and the Americans will have every right to hold Pakistan accountable for that.”

Sources said that the continued criticism of the US reimbursement policy has forced the Bush administration to place new restriction on the disbursement of funds. “Payments have been delayed. Pakistan has not yet been reimbursed for some of the money it spent last year,” a source said.

Although put on the defensive by the US media and Congress, some Bush administration officials have recently pointed out that it was wrong to ask Pakistan to explain how they use the reimbursements.

US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte told a recent congressional hearing that what Pakistanis receive from the CSF is their money and the US cannot tell them how to use it.

But the GAO notes that the Bush administration has stepped up its oversight of the direct security assistance in recent months.

From 2004 to early 2007, it deferred or rejected an average of just over 2 per cent of Pakistan’s reimbursement claims. But for the most recent set of claims, between March and June of 2007, that amount jumped to 20 per cent.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

US Senator Feingold wants Pakistan's judges restored

Sen. Feingold wants Pakistan's judges restored
By NAHAL TOOSI – AFP, May 27, 2008

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — A top U.S. senator on Tuesday urged Pakistan to quickly restore dozens of judges ousted by President Pervez Musharraf, wading into a subject that has pushed the country's new coalition government to the verge of collapse.

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.), one of several American lawmakers visiting Pakistan this week, also said it was important for the United States to engage the country's various political parties to make up for the past "mistake" of relying solely on Musharraf.

"This is a terribly important country for the United States and vice versa," Feingold said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I've indicated to everybody we want to strengthen the relationship between our two countries."

Musharraf, long an ally of the U.S. in the war on terror, purged the benches of some 60 judges and declared emergency rule last year to avoid legal challenges to his presidency.

Anti-Musharraf parties headed by Asif Ali Zardari and Nawaz Sharif won February elections. Both want to restore the judges, but Sharif has argued it can be done through a simple order from the prime minister, while Zardari wants to link their return to constitutional reforms.

The dispute led Sharif to pull his ministers from the Cabinet earlier this month.

Feingold said he was not trying to side with a particular party. But his take on the situation after talking to several observers, as well as the deposed chief justice of the Supreme Court, was that coupling the judges' return with other matters was not necessary.

"Other reforms may well be appropriate," he said. "At an absolute minimum — and first — I am calling for these judges to be reinstated.

"It is a matter of whether the legal system in Pakistan is perceived around the world as one that is based on the rule of law. It's also one of the most important issues to the people in Pakistan."

Also Tuesday, Zardari met with Sharif to court his support for a set of constitutional reforms designed to strip Musharraf of many of his powers.

Zardari's party last week unveiled some details of the package, including ending Musharraf's right to dissolve parliament and appoint military chiefs. The proposed reforms would also pave the way for the ousted judges to return.

Sharif's party has reserved formal comment on the package until it sees the full draft, but its members again indicated on Tuesday that restoring the judges was their top priority.

Feingold declined to say whether Musharraf, a retired army chief, should go.

"What we don't want to do is to continue what we were doing before, which is to make our whole policy based on a relationship with Gen. Musharraf," Feingold said. "That was a mistake. That had a very undemocratic flavor to it."

The senator, who serves on the Senate foreign relations, intelligence, and judiciary committees, said he was keen on improving the relationship with Pakistan, where anti-American sentiment is rampant, in order to combat terrorism.

But he said he shared the skepticism in Washington about the new government's efforts to pursue peace deals with militant groups in Pakistan's regions bordering Afghanistan.

U.S. officials have warned such deals could simply give militants time to regroup and intensify attacks on American forces in Afghanistan.

Pakistan's prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, on Tuesday urged the United States to share more intelligence in the fight against terrorism.

In response, Feingold told the AP, "Both Pakistan and the United States should improve our information and intelligence-sharing activities."

Associated Press correspondents Munir Ahmad and Sadaqat Jan contributed to this report.

A Case of Exploding Mangoes - A Book Worth Reading



EXCERPT: The invisible hand
Dawn, May 25, 2008
Excerpted with permission, the novel re-imagines the conspiracies and coincidences leading to the mysterious 1988 plane crash that killed Gen Zia.

A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammad Hanif
Knopf, May 2008


YOU might have seen me on TV after the crash. The clip is short and everything in it is sun-bleached and slightly faded. It was pulled after the first two bulletins because it seemed to be having an adverse impact on the morale of the country’s armed forces. You can’t see it in the clip but we are walking towards Pak One, which is parked behind the cameraman’s back, in the middle of the runway. The aeroplane is still connected to an auxiliary fuel pump, and surrounded by a group of alert commandos in camouflaged uniforms. With its dull grey fuselage barely off the ground, the plane looks like a beached whale contemplating how to drag itself back to the sea, its snout drooping with the enormity of the task ahead.

The runway is in the middle of Bahawalpur Desert, six hundred miles away from the Arabian Sea. There is nothing between the sun’s white fury and the endless expanse of shimmering sand except a dozen men in khaki uniforms walking towards the plane. For a brief moment you can see General Zia’s face in the clip, the last recorded memory of a much photographed man. The middle parting in his hair glints under the sun, his unnaturally white teeth flash, his moustache does its customary little dance for the camera, but as the camera pulls out you can tell that he is not smiling. If you watch closely you can probably tell that he is in some discomfort. He is walking the walk of a constipated man.

The man walking on his right is the US Ambassador to Pakistan, Arnold Raphel, whose shiny bald head and carefully groomed moustache give him the air of a respectable homosexual businessman from small-town America. He can be seen flicking an invisible speck of sand from the lapel of his navy-blue blazer. His smart-casual look hides a superior diplomatic mind; he is a composer of sharp, incisive memos and has the ability to remain polite in the most hostile exchanges. On General Zia’s left, his former spymaster and the head of Inter Services Intelligence General Akhtar seems weighed down by half a dozen medals on his chest and drags his feet as if he is the only man in the group who knows that they shouldn’t be boarding this plane. His lips are pinched and, even when the sun has boiled everything into submission and drained all colour out of the surroundings, you can see that his normally pale skin has turned a wet yellow. His obituary in the next day’s newspapers would describe him as the Silent Soldier and one of the ten men standing between the Free World and the Red Army.

As they approach the red carpet that leads to the Pak One stairway you can see me step forward. You can tell immediately that I am the only one in the frame smiling, but when I salute and start walking towards the aeroplane, my smile vanishes. I know I am saluting a bunch of dead men. But if you are in uniform, you salute. That’s all there is to it.

Later, forensic experts from Lockheed will put the pieces of crashed plane together and simulate scenarios, trying to unlock the mystery of how a superfit C130 came tumbling down from the skies only four minutes after takeoff. Astrologists will pull out files with their predictions for August 1988, and blame Jupiter for the crash that killed Pakistan’s top army brass as well as the US Ambassador. Leftist intellectuals will toast the end of a cruel dictatorship and evoke historic dialectics in such matters.

But this afternoon, history is taking a long siesta, as it usually does between the end of one war and the beginning of another. More than a hundred thousand Soviet soldiers are preparing to retreat from Afghanistan after being reduced to eating toast smeared with military-issue boot polish, and these men we see in the TV clip are the undisputed victors. They are preparing for peace and, being the cautious men they are, they have come to Bahawalpur to shop for tanks while waiting for the end of the Cold War. They have done their day’s work and are taking the plane back home. With their stomachs full, they are running out of small talk; there is the impatience of polite people who do not want to offend each other. It’s only later that people would say, Look at that clip, look at their tired, reluctant walk, anybody can tell that they were being shepherded to that plane by the invisible hand of death.

The generals’ families will get full compensation and receive flag-draped coffins with strict instructions not to open them. The pilots’ families will be picked up and thrown into cells with blood-splattered ceilings for a few days and then let go. The US Ambassador’s body will be taken back to Arlington Cemetery and his tombstone would be adorned with a half-elegant clichĆ©. There will be no autopsies, the leads will run dry, investigations will be blocked, there will be cover-ups to cover cover-ups. Third World dictators are always blowing up in strange circumstances but if the brightest star in the US diplomatic service (and that’s what was said about Arnold Raphel at the funeral service in Arlington Cemetery) goes down with eight Pakistani generals, somebody would be expected to kick ass. Vanity Fair will commission an investigative piece, the New York Times will write two editorials, sons of the deceased will file petitions to the court and then settle for lucrative cabinet posts. It would be said that this was the biggest cover-up in aviation history since the last biggest cover

The only witness to that televised walk, the only one to have walked that walk, would be completely ignored.
Because if you missed that clip, you probably missed me. Like history itself. I was the one who got away.

What they found in the wreckage of the plane were not bodies, not serene-faced martyrs, as the army claimed, not the slightly damaged, disfigured men not photogenic enough to be shown to the TV cameras or to their families. Remains. They found remains. Bits of flesh splattered on the broken aeroplane parts, charred bones sticking to mangled metal, severed limbs and faces melted into blobs of pink meat. Nobody can ever say that the coffin that was buried in Arlington Cemetery didn’t carry bits of General Zia’s remains and what lies buried in Shah Faisal mosque in Islamabad are not some of the remains of the State Department’s brightest star. The only thing that can be said with certainty is that my remains weren’t in either of those coffins.

Yes, sir, I was the one who got away.

The name Shigri didn’t figure in the terms of reference, the investigators from the FBI ignored me and I never had to sit under a naked bulb and explain the circumstances that led to me being present at the scene of the incident. I didn’t even figure in the stories concocted to cover up the truth. Even the conspiracy theories which saw an unidentified flying object colliding with the presidential plane, or deranged eyewitnesses who saw a surface-to-air missile being fired from a lone donkey’s back didn’t bother to spin any yarns about the boy in uniform with one hand on the scabbard of his sword, stepping forward, saluting, then smiling and walking away. I was the only one who boarded that plane and survived.

Even got a lift back home.

If you did see the clip you might have wondered what this boy with mountain features is doing in the desert, why he is surrounded by fourgenerals, why he is smiling. It’s because I have had my punishment. As Obaid would have said, there is poetry in committing a crime after you have served your sentence. I do not have much interest in poetry but punishment before a crime does have a certain sing-song quality to it. The guilty commit the crime, the innocent are punished. That’s the world we live in.

My punishment had started exactly two months and 17 days before the crash when I woke up at reveille and without opening my eyes reached out to pull back Obaid’s blanket, a habit picked up from four years of sharing the same room with him. It was the only way to wake him up. My hand caressed an empty bed. I rubbed my eyes. The bed was freshly made, a starched white sheet tucked over a grey wool blanket, like a Hindu widow in mourning. Obaid was gone and the buggers would obviously suspect me.

You can blame our men in uniform for anything, but you can never blame them for being imaginative.

[* * *]

General Zia always felt a holy tingling in the marrow of his backbone when surrounded by people who were genuinely poor and needy. He could always tell the really desperate ones from the merely greedy. During the eleven years of his rule, he had handed out multimillion-dollar contracts for roads he knew would dissolve at the first hint of monsoon. He had sanctioned billion-rupee loans for factories he knew would produce nothing. He did these things because it was statecraft and he had to do it. He never got any pleasure out of it. But this ritual of handing over an envelope containing a couple of hundred rupees to a woman who didn’t have a man to take care of her made him feel exalted. The gratitude on these women’s faces was heartfelt, the blessings they showered over him were genuine. General Zia believed that Allah couldn’t ignore their pleas. He was sure their prayers were fast-tracked.

A television producer with an eye for detail walked up to the Information Minister and pointed to the banner that was to serve as the backdrop for the ceremony.

President’s Rehabilitation Programme for Windows, it read.

The Information Minister knew from experience that a spelling error could ruin General Zia’s day and his own career. General Zia photocopied the newspaper articles, even those praising him, and sent them back to the editors with a thank-you note and the typos circled in red. The Information Minister placed himself strategically in front of the banner and refused to budge during the entire ceremony. This was probably the first and the last time that the Information Minister was not seen in the official TV footage in his usual place and in his usual mood; he had always stood behind his boss with his neck straining above General Zia’s shoulders and always grinned with such fervour that it seemed the nation’s survival depended on his cheerful mood.

‘Pray for Pakistan’s prosperous future and my health,’ General Zia said to a 75 year old widow, a shrivelled apple of a woman, a deserving veteran of these ceremonies and hence the first one in the queue. ‘Pakistan is very prosperous,’ she said, waving the envelope in his face. Then she pinched his cheeks with both her hands. ‘And you are as healthy as a young ox. May Allah destroy all your enemies.’

General Zia’s teeth flashed, his moustache did a little twist and he put his right hand on his heart and patted the old woman’s shoulder with his left. ‘I am what I am because of your prayers.’

General Zia, occupied for the last few days with the security alert triggered by Jonah’s verse, felt at peace for the first time in ages. He looked at the long queue of women with their heads covered, with eyes full of hope, and realised they were his saviour angels, his last line of defence.

Brigadier TM stood out of frame and bristled at the way these women were disobeying his instructions. But the camera was rolling and Brigadier TM had enough television manners to stay out of the picture, control his anger and focus on the end of the queue where a catfight seemed to be in progress.

Most of the women in the queue knew why it was taking the President so long to hand out a few hundred rupees. The President was in a talkative mood, enquiring after the health of each woman, patiently listening to their longwinded answers and asking them to pray for his health. The one hour and thirty minutes scheduled for the ceremony were about to run out and more than half the women were still waiting in the queue. The Information Minister thought of stepping forward and asking the President if, with his permission, he could distribute the rest of the envelopes, but then he remembered the misspelt word he was covering and decided to stay put. Brigadier TM looked at his watch, looked at the President chattering away with the women, and decided that the President’s schedule was not his problem.

The First Lady wasn’t getting the sisterly support she had expected from the other women in the queue. ‘Begums like her bring us a bad name,’ the woman in front of the First Lady whispered to the woman ahead of her, making sure that the First Lady could hear. ‘Look at all the gold this cow is wearing,’ the woman said, raising her voice. ‘Her husband probably died trying to keep her decked out in all that finery.’

The First Lady pulled her dupatta even further over her head. She tightened it across her chest in a belated attempt to hide her necklace.

Then she realised that to these women she must appear a fraud, a rich begum pretending to be a widow coming to feed off the official charity.

‘My husband is not dead,’ she said, raising her voice to the point where ten women in front of her could hear. The women turned round and looked at her. ‘But I have left him. And here, you can have these.’ She removed her earrings and unhooked her necklace and pressed them both into the reluctant hands of two women standing in front of her.

The whisper travelled along the queue that a woman at the back was distributing gold.

General Zia’s right eye noticed the pandemonium at the back of the queue. With his left eye he sought out the Information Minister. He wanted to find out what was happening, but the minister was standing in front of the backdrop as if guarding the last bunker on a front line under attack.

An incredibly young woman, barely out of her twenties, shunned the envelope extended towards her by Zia, and instead removed the dupatta from her head and unfurled it like a banner before the camera.

Free Blind Zainab, it read.

General Zia shuffled back, Brigadier TM rushed forward with his right hand ready to draw his gun. The television cameras cut to a close-up of the shouting woman.

‘I am not a widow,’ she was shouting over and over again. ‘I don’t want your money. I want you to immediately release that poor blind woman.’

‘We have set up special schools for the blind people. I have started a special fund for the special people,’ General Zia mumbled.

‘I don’t want your charity. I want justice for Zainab, blind Zainab. Is it her fault that she can’t recognise her attackers?’

General Zia glanced back and his right eyebrow asked the Information Minister where the hell he had got this widow. The Information Minister stood his ground; imagining the camera was taking his closeup, his mouth broke into a grin. He shook his head, and composed a picture caption for tomorrow’s papers: The President sharing a light moment with the Information Minister.

[* * *]

Zainab didn’t feel like the other inmates on death row; they prayed, they cried, they obsessively followed the progress of their petitions for mercy, and after their last appeal was denied, they turned their attention to the afterlife and started seeking forgiveness all over again. Zainab had committed no crime and she was comfortable in her cell — called the black cell because it accommodated deathprisoners — and she lived in it as if it was her home. She had woken up this morning, cleaned her cell, massaged her pregnant cell mate’s feet and put oil in her own hair.

After feeding the birds she would visit other cells, which were not black cells, and massage the feet of two other pregnant prisoners. ‘Why would anyone want to kill a poor blind woman?’ was her recurring answer to all the excitement that her lawyer and other women’s groups outside the jail were creating about her death sentence. Even the jailer respected her for her politeness, the way she helped other prisoners and taught their children to recite the Quran.

Zainab was the jail superintendent’s favourite prisoner and it was she who had given her the pair of sunglasses that so infuriated General Zia. ‘They will protect you against the sun.’ Zainab had accepted them with a smile without complaining, without showing any self-pity, without pointing out that sunlight couldn’t enter the dead white pools that were her eyes. Behind the plastic sunglasses her eyes were all white. She had been born without corneas.

There was the obvious talk of bad omens when she arrived in this world but her face was so luminous and her other faculties so intact that she had been accepted as an unfortunate child and she had made the most of her circumstances.

Even now that she had become the first woman to be sentenced to death by stoning under new laws, she had shown a puzzled fortitude that baffled women activists who were fighting her case in the courts and on the streets. ‘Stoning?’ she had asked after she was sentenced. ‘Like they do to the Devil in Mecca during Haj? They have been doing it to him for centuries and they haven’t been able to kill him. How are they going to kill a healthy woman like me?’

After wearing the sunglasses for a few days Zainab had started liking them; they helped her with the headaches she got after standing in the sunlight for too long. And the other prisoners’ children always giggled when she took them off to show them her milk-eyes.

Zainab heard a pair of wings flapping, heavier than the wings of the sparrows. She heard her sparrows flutter in a panic but they didn’t fly away. Some hovered in the air, others moved away from her. Her hand stopped throwing the crumbs for a moment, feeling protective towards her sparrows, not wanting to give to the crow what was theirs. Then she remembered a crow from her childhood who had kept her company on many a dark day. Another bad omen, the villagers had said, but it was good company for her and she would always save some bread for him. Could it be the same crow? Her hands started to break the jail bread and throw it out again. What if the crow was really hungry? All the prisoners and even some of the jail staff, she knew, fed these sparrows.

She heard the jailer’s footsteps coming towards her. She could tell from the way she walked that the jailer was bringing bad news. She tried to ignore the guilt in the approaching footsteps and continued to feed the bird. She could tell that the crow had taken over the area. The sparrows had flown away except for two who were still skirting around the circle claimed by the crow, rushing in to pick on a piece when the crow’s back was turned and dashing back to a safe distance. She could feel on her fingertips that their wings were poised for escape. She could also tell that it was more of a game they were playing, to see, if one distracted the crow, how close the other one could get.

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Baitullah Mehsud Speaks...

Afghan jihad will continue: Mehsud
By Alamgir Bhittani, Dawn, May 25, 2008

KOTKAI (South Waziristan) May 24: Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud on Saturday ruled out the possibility of cooperating with a UN probe into the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, saying the world body was not neutral.

“The United Nations is not a neutral body. It is subservient to the United States. I don’t expect it to conduct an impartial enquiry,” the leader of the Pakistani Taliban said. “We will not work with it.”

Addressing a press conference at the Government High School at Kotkai, the only building intact amid bombed out houses, the short-statured, burly militant commander questioned the UN role in Muslim countries, pointing to the situation in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Palestine.

Baitullah denied that he was involved in Ms Bhutto’s assassination.

“Her father and two brothers had also been killed. Do we know who killed them? Politicians have their own rivalries. They know who their enemies are,” he said.

A court in Rawalpindi has implicated Baitullah Mehsud in Benazir’s murder and declared him a proclaimed offender in the case.

The ardous journey took journalists from Bannu to Mirali in North Waziristan and onwards to Kotkai, escorted by heavily armed Taliban.

From North to South Waziristan, security forces were conspicuous by their absence. In South Waziristan, even the personnel of the traditional Khasadar force were nowhere to be seen.

Baitullah vowed to continue the ‘jihad’ against the US and its allies in Afghanistan but said that his fighters constituted just a fraction of an ‘overwhelmingly Afghan Taliban force’. “Ninety-five per cent of them are Afghans”, he said.

When he was asked if the peace agreement would deter cross-border infiltration into Afghanistan, he said: “Islam does not recognise any man-made barriers or boundaries. Jihad in Afghanistan will continue.”

The Taliban leader termed the tapes that purportedly linked him with Ms Bhutto’s murder technical gimmickry. “Science has developed so much that I am sure they (intelligence agencies) can produce the same tape with (President) Musharraf’s voice.”

Inside a classroom, surrounded by more than a hundred heavily armed guards, Baitullah acknowledged that peace talks were under way with the government

But he said that Pakistan government should prove that it was a sovereign state which took its own decisions and was not subservient to the US.

“I am afraid this peace agreement will meet the same fate as that of the previous accords if Pakistan does not prove that it is a sovereign state and takes its own decision.”

Baitullah was referring to the 2005 peace agreement signed in South Waziristan which collapsed in a few months.

He said that the conflict between Pakistani Taliban and the government was ‘harming Islam and Pakistan’. “The sooner it ends the better it will be.”

He described President Musharraf as the ‘root-cause’ of all violence in the country and thought that the situation would straighten out after he stepped down.

Acknowledging his involvement in suicide bombings, he said: “Infidels have nuclear arms which are weapons of mass destruction. We have suicide bombers who are target-oriented.” Baitullah, however, denied the presence of any training camps in his area.

The Taliban commander also denied his involvement in the abduction of Pakistan’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Tariq Azizuddin. The ambassador, he claimed, had been abducted by another militant group.

“But since the group sympathises with us, they thought it fit to demand the release of our men”, he argued. He insisted that the government had not released any Afghan nationals in exchange for Mr Azizuddin. “The government said that they did not have Maulvi Obaidullah or Mansoor Dadullah in their custody. People who had been released are locals. One of them is my close associate,” he said.

He claimed ‘holding’ between 40 and 50 other government officials.

He said that he was proud that the US had listed him as an enemy. “I am glad they have listed me as their enemy because I fight for the supremacy of Islam, jihad and support the oppressed.”

A new drugs crisis in Afghanistan

A new drugs crisis
By Peter Beaumont, The Guardian, London

AFGHANISTAN, struggling with a huge indigenous drug problem, has a new crisis. Its drug treatment centres — particularly in the capital, Kabul — are being inundated by heroin-addicted former refugees, many forcibly expelled from neighbouring Iran and Pakistan.

The new dimension to Kabul’s spiralling problem of opiates abuse is most visible in the war-ruined shell of the city’s Russian Cultural Centre, a warren of rubble and faeces-strewn rooms, where each night hundreds of addicts and street children come to sleep.

It is a place of disturbing images. Outside, men play cricket while addicts lie dozing. Inside, users gravitate to the dark places, crawl into disused turbine pipes to smoke heroin from foil or crowd into tiny rooms underground. The youngest and most nimble scale the walls like rock climbers to reach places beneath the roof where they sleep for safety. The most far gone inject their wasted legs and arms in full view of the passing traffic.

Of the dozens approached about how they came to be addicts, only one man was not a returnee from Iran, while the rest had first taken heroin there. The stories were strikingly consistent: they had fled the violence of the civil war or the Taliban era with their families, often being required to work long hours in Iran doing tough jobs.

Many told how unscrupulous employers offered them the drug, telling them it would make their work seem easier — and how in the end they had been rounded up and thrown back across the border, some after brutal treatment in Iranian detention.

At Kabul’s Nejat treatment centre a few can qualify for one of the handful of beds after attending a series of awareness workshops. Mohammed Wali, 30, from Bagram, is typical. He was admitted a week before with five others; all say they became addicted in Iran. ‘I left Afghanistan during the time of the Taliban,’ said Wali. ‘I am lucky in that I have a family to support me, although I am ashamed to say that I stole from them.

By bad luck I am addicted. When I was working in Iran my employer was giving us opium to make us work harder. For the first 20 days I was given it for free, then I was told that I would have to pay for it. I was spending my earnings on the drug.’

The scale of the problem is revealed by the men’s recollections. ‘Ten to 12 of us were addicted by the time we returned to our village from Iran,’ said Mohammed. Syed, another who was expelled, recalls: ‘Six people working in my factory, including two of my brothers and three other villagers, were addicted.’

At the cultural centre the addicts smoke scorpion — a mixture of hashish and heroin — or shoot up, often with discarded needles found in the filth. ‘I was working in the construction industry and I was walking home when they grabbed me and sent me to the barracks,’ said one addict. ‘They kept me there three days. Among the 300 people there, 200 I would guess were addicts.’

Others recalled similar numbers of addicts — usually citing between two-thirds and three-quarters of those held in detention. While many of those expelled complained of insufficient food during their detention, some claimed they were beaten, and showed faint scars on shins and burn marks on wrists and arms. Their claims were impossible to verify.

‘We are being swamped,’ said Dr Tariq Suliman, director of the Nejat centre, the first Afghan charity to tackle addiction when it was set up 16 years ago. ‘We have a waiting list of 1,000 to 2,000 people at any one time. We offer a syringe exchange programme, have a mobile outreach programme, and offer abscess treatment [a consequence of injecting impure heroin into veins].

‘The biggest problem now is the returning addicts. It is a tsunami coming to this country,’ Suliman said. ‘For every addict we estimate that the issue impacts on up to five family members. And 90 per cent of the new addicts that we are seeing are coming from Iran. In the past two years we have just seen the graph rocket. The problem is compounded by the fact that donor agencies will not commit to support our activities in the long term. They will fund a project for a year, but they will not commit to 10 years. And that is the scale of the problem. It is out of control.’

Back at the cultural centre, Ali Raza, an addict thrown out of Iran, is berating a group of boys watching him inject — twice in each arm. He looks 70, but says he is 50. ‘We are the worst,’ he slurs. ‘Don’t come here. Don’t walk on the way we passed by. Everyone hates us. Don’t even take one puff.’

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Benazir-like tragedies can happen again, warns US

Benazir-like tragedies can happen again, warns US
Dawn, May 27, 2008

BAGRAM AIR BASE (Afghanistan), May 26: Pakistan should strike back at ‘terrorism’ or it will see more attacks like the one that killed former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, US Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff said on Monday.

Extremists in Pakistan are a threat to that country as well as Afghanistan, he said when asked about Islamabad’s peace talks with pro-Taliban militants.

And it was important for the Pakistan government to see that “it ensures control and strikes back against terrorism,” he told reporters at the US military base at Bagram, 60km north of Kabul.

“Otherwise they’re going to see more of the kind of tragedies that they saw when Benazir Bhutto was assassinated or some of the bombings we’ve seen in the last several months in Pakistan and here in Afghanistan as well,” he said.

Chertoff was at the Bagram air base for a ceremony to award US citizenship to 44 troops from 12 countries serving in Washington’s war on terror launched with the invasion that toppled the Taliban from power in Kabul in 2001.

The secretary said there had been progress in the fight against extremists. However determination was still needed to “push back the enemy that is still trying to re-establish itself in some parts of Afghanistan, still threatening the young democracy we have here,” he said.

Afghanistan has seen a sharp rise in violence in the last year, even as the US and Nato have poured thousands of new troops into the country. The US now has some 33,000 troops in Afghanistan, the most ever.—Agencies

Pakistan’s Governance Imperative: Paula R. Newberg

Pakistan’s Governance Imperative
Paula R. Newberg, May 2008, MIT Centre for International Studies
Cambridge, Mass.

After the kind of year that no country ever wants, with its government in crisis, repression replacing even the most remote notion of good government, political assassination, and terror standing in the wings, Pakistan elected a new parliament in February. Led initially by a coalition of three parties previously deemed outcasts by President Pervez Musharraf, its cabinet of familiar political faces quickly agreed in principle, and at least in public, on a compelling and daunting political agenda. It reversed some emergency rulings, negotiated a hasty truce with insurgents living in the contentious tribal agency of Waziristan—and then broke down on divisive issues left to them by Musharraf.

Domestic politics and foreign policy alike are now fair game for ambitious politicians long removed from power. This isn’t the first time that civilians have inherited the detritus of a military-led state, and past success has been elusive at best. Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gillani therefore faces not only the problems created by Musharraf’s national security state, but also the accumulation of decades of mangled constitutions, mixed civil-military law, weakened state institutions and fragmented political parties. Today’s refreshing, if cautious good will nonetheless reflects a political order that was fragile and complex before Musharraf’s 1999 coup d’etat, and remains so now.

The recent blur of pronouncements, plans and policies reflects this history as it touches on Pakistan’s perennially sensitive topics: jumbled electoral rules, imbalances between provincial powers and central government authority, political corruptions long deemed acceptable, and a testy relationship between parliament and the president. Parliament is understandably keen to replace the opacity of Musharraf’s tenure with a transparency that matches Pakistan’s avid, 21st century media, and in so doing, cement the coalition’s public image.

But daily life in Pakistan is increasingly punctuated by targeted, violent incidents and a prevailing insecurity that has not diminished since Musharraf’s government was defeated. Ever-present, hard to diagnose and equally hard to fight—a product of misalliance and miscalculation, equal parts foreign and home-grown—Pakistan’s anxious security problems could easily dominate the new government’s agenda. Certainly the effects of Pakistan’s engagements in Afghanistan’s thirty years of war and the spillovers of global terror are searing reminders that neither past antagonisms nor allegiances disappear when new governments are born.

At first glance, stopping violence would seem to be the highest priority for parliament and voters alike. But it is Pakistan’s governance—the incomplete compact wrought among its people and provinces in an often-abused constitutional order—that requires fixing first. The imbalances and inequities built into the country’s current governance are not only problems themselves, but affect every effort to stop violence at its source, and rationalize foreign policy.

Counterintuitive? Perhaps. But this coalition came into office at a time of immense opportunity: so much that is wrong has become so obvious to so many that the deeply seated problems of the state are now part of common political parlance. That fact alone represents a challenge to the stability and efficacy of civilian government. After all, coalitions—particularly among parties known more for their mutual enmity than their newly found amity—are rarely as sturdy as they need to be. If the government can ultimately rise above the fissures that have been exposed already to seek stability more than separate political gain, the Pakistani state may have a chance to set a course that it can, finally, navigate.

Politics and the State

It has been left to the new parliament to tackle hard problems: how to restore judges who were fired by Musharraf; protect the often notional independence of the judiciary and repair the constitution; ensure rather than compromise (or undercut) citizen rights; repair immediate resource shortfalls and resolve long-term differences of economic ideology; revisit the over-arching structure of the federal compact; and, of course, decide what to do about Musharraf, whose determination to remain in office seems to mock the new government’s future. These issues literally forced the winter’s election, and cry out for prompt resolution.

The peculiar demands of the coalition’s internal compromises both illuminate and slow progress in all these areas. The Muslim League (PML) campaigned zealously to restore the judges, for example, and its stalwart commitment (and perhaps savvy political allegiance) to this restoration was too much for the People’s Party (PPP). The PPP was slow to embrace this matter; its tense histories with judges tend to color passions on this subject, and the late Benazir Bhutto’s reluctance to challenge Musharraf continues to shadow the party’s negotiations on fundamental problems of judicial autonomy. Each party has followed different economic policies during their previous tenures in office. Ambition more than principle may resolve these issues—but also underscores the ease with which any Pakistani coalition can turn brittle and unyielding.

The first order of business, of course, was to ensure that this unanticipated coalition could make government really work, but in the wake of its first major disputes, the coalition challenged its own fate. Old time politicians beholden to families and feuds lead parliament, the cabinet and the provincial assemblies, but it is the party leaders who announce policy and personnel decisions, host diplomats and negotiate intra-coalition agreements. After many years in the wilderness, the parties are flexing their muscles, but their relationships to state institutions are uneasy. Just when the stature of parliament needs strengthening after nine years of injury under the rule of a general, it is Asif Zardari (PPP), Mian Nawaz Sharif (PML) and Asfandyar Wali Khan [Awami National Party (ANP)] whose names dominate the headlines. Political parties are essential to frame national discussions on programs for progress; parliament, however, must lead the government. The first blush of electoral success, however, led almost inexorably to policy differences. But serious rethinking about the quality of governance is already overdue.

In this sense, history is repeating itself, but as a cautionary tale. In its sixty years of independence, Pakistan’s politics has almost always been in conflict with major state institutions. The military and the bureaucracy have taken a dim view of politicians, who in turn have treated these institutions as impediments to their programs and prerogatives. No state institution has escaped the high-handedness of party rule; no party has survived the reflexive wrath of military and bureaucratic control, and too many politicians have died, sometimes at the hand of the state. The simple concepts of representation, political participation and honest constitutionalism are so eroded that Pakistan’s history is usually narrated as a contest between those who seek power and those who wield authority. The space between them—under both civilian and military governments, with rare independent adjudication from a frequently pliant judiciary—has nurtured corruptions of many sizes and shapes.

The luxury of bad governance is no longer an option. Pakistan’s population is growing at a rapid rate, and health care, literacy, education and jobs are too scarce. The economy has grown but the poor have not benefited, economic opportunity is uneven, and tensions between the rural and urban sectors cannot help but increase over time. Recent street riots over power shortages and looming shortfalls in the food supply are bound to occupy the new government’s attention far more than it anticipated.

Expanding the Borders of Governance

And then there is Pakistan’s place in the world. Its domestic governance is a function of its foreign policy, and its regional and global roles are a function of the way it governs itself. This is evident in the way its taxes are raised, its budgets configured, and its revenues are augmented from abroad. It is most painful, perhaps, in the ways that the state exercises its authority in the peripheries.

Here again, history is close at hand. Pakistan’s independence arrived with three concurrent problems of political reach and all led to regional conflict: the political dispensation of the former Indian princely states, of which Kashmir’s disputed status is the last unresolved case; the political and economic imbalance between East and West Pakistan, which led to a terrible war that partitioned the country; and the contentious mixed-governance of the tribal agencies—and Balochistan—on the western border.

The semi-autonomous tribal area is today’s fulcrum for Pakistan’s security and governance. Lodged between the Northwest Frontier Province and Balochistan, and literally configured as a porous zone that facilitated dissension and occasional conflict with Afghanistan, this frontier has long been a haven for the state’s sub-rosa activities. It is home to tribes that straddle a formal border delineated in 1893, which has made it possible for Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, foreign fighters and superpowers to ease the movement of people, money, goods, services, weapons and ideology. Conveniently for Islamabad, residents of the tribal agencies have never been fully-fledged citizens of Pakistan. The noxious Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR), a precursor and unfortunate substitute for constitutional rights, made it possible for Pakistan and its allies to stage wars with implausible deniability.

This is a place where foreign and domestic politics converge. It is changeable and changing: its population and economy reflect centuries of migration of people and capital, particularly in the past three decades, and political allegiances span not only the formal boundaries of neighboring states but also the informal phenomena of mobility peculiar to porous frontiers. After decades of dispersion and diaspora, Afghanistan’s refugee economy spans Asia, the Middle East and beyond; with weak governance in southwest Asia, it’s hard to know how any state—let alone Pakistan or Afghanistan—can capture these revenues and thereby build stronger local economies. Today, the border has become an urgent issue for the coalition government. Although the tribal agencies are usually portrayed as a signal element in Pakistan’s fight against Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other terrors, the problematic border embodies the challenge of learning how to govern a region defined by movement.

It’s hard to tell this from foreign coverage of the region. The United States, with Pakistan, used this region for their fight against the Soviet Union in the 1980s, but both have failed to gain traction against insurgents during their post-2001 battles. The coalition government has already abolished the FCR, but did so without much consultation in the region. This is a symptom of divergent interests—tribal leaders want to end corruption and the power of state-appointed political agents, the central government wants a quick fix to end an enormous headache. The U.S. has lobbied to incorporate the tribal areas into Pakistan’s body politic—not simply to extol citizenship rights on their merits, but to make the area more accessible to Pakistan’s military and punish more easily those who transgress current policy. (A quick look at the U.S. foreign aid budget to the region tells the story: 98 percent of assistance to this remote, poverty-stricken area is for the military.)

It won’t be easy to translate theory and campaign promises into practice, and it may not work. Allies and the surrounding region are likely to be impatient, and there is good reason to worry that Pakistan’s voters will tire of terror long before the government sorts itself out. Indeed, a hasty treaty with insurgents—distressingly similar to one that failed two years ago—already conflates motion with progress. And familiar worries will continue to plague the government: no one knows what the army—thus far unusually cooperative—will do if a new political compact doesn’t show immediate progress. The whims of a truculent president who refuses to step down are unknown, too. If parliament can’t survive the enormous pressures of this transition to civilian government, these policies, if not the parliament itself, may be short-lived.

Pakistanis need civilian leaders to defy their own, and the world’s low expectations for its success. For now, however, the government must first demonstrate that after decades of living with coercion, all Pakistani citizens have claims on the state that the state can and will honor. To begin this process might just transform the way that Pakistan acts in the world, and thinks of itself.

Paula Newberg is a specialist in governance, development and democracy, and has written extensively about law, politics and foreign policy in south and southwest Asia for almost thirty years.

Saturday, May 24, 2008

US favours civilian control of Pak spy agencies

US favours civilian control of Pak spy agencies
The News, May 24, 2008
By Tariq Butt

ISLAMABAD: The United States has told top political leaders of Pakistan including the ruling coalition partners that Washington supports civilian control of military and intelligence operations, including the money spent on them.

A document titled US Mission Pakistan, prepared by the American Embassy Islamabad, that was distributed during separate briefings to leaders of different political parties outlined the US goals as: “To strengthen a long-term, multi-dimensional US-Pakistan relationship: support the new coalition government; support civilian control of military and intelligence operations, including budgets; combat extremism that threatens US and Pakistan; and assist economic development to improve the lives of the Pakistani people.”

Briefings based on this document, a copy of which is available with The News, have been given to top leaders of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) PML-Q, Awami National Party, Jamiat Ulemae Islam (JUI) and others including Asif Zardari, Nawaz Sharif and Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain.

Regarding law enforcement training and assistance the document said the US government has trained over 6,500 law enforcement personnel with over 1,000 courses in 2007 alone. Courses are conducted in the US, Pakistan and other countries.

Programmes include FBI National Academy (for senior law enforcement officials), post-blast investigation, anti-terrorism VIP protection, police management, investigative enhancement, academy development, civil disturbance management, explosive recognition and international standards.

The FBI has offered investigative, forensic and laboratory assistance for counterterrorism cases to help identify the sources and methods of attack on Pakistani citizens. Regarding security assistance and sales, the document said foreign military sales or FMS (total caseload exceeds $5 billion) includes Cobra helicopters, night vision goggles, TOW missiles and radios for the Pakistan Army; P3 aircraft and Harpoon missiles for the Pakistan Navy; and 18 F-16 fighters, 6 C-130 transports and radars for the Pakistan Air Force.

The assistance also included foreign military financing of $300 million per year (2005-2009). An amount of $14 million was spent on education and training of 761 students in 2002-2008 and $3.8 will be utilised for the same purpose for 200 students in 2009-2010.

Coalition support funds paid to-date are $5.6 billion: covers reimbursement cost for GWOT (global war on terrorism) related operations; $1.2 billion legal authority/year; cash payment deposited in Pakistan’s treasury; Pakistan is the largest recipient; average claim exceeds $100 million per month; last payment $281.7 million paid in February 2008 for March-June 2007 claims; ODRP (Office of Defence Representative, Pakistan) validating 75 per cent of claims in past year; and validating: rations, clothing, medical support, maintenance, ammunition, transportation, etc.

About border security and Frontier law enforcement, the document said since 2002 the American government has provided vehicles, bullet-proof vests, helmets, generators, night-vision goggles and communications equipment to law enforcement agencies: Frontier Corps North West Frontier Province (NWFP) $20 million; Frontier Corps Balochistan $22 million, Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) $9 million and Coast Guard $2 million.

Construction began in early 2007 on the $5 million Levy training centre in Jamrud, Khyber Agency, and an additional $7 million has been allocated to support training and equipment requirements for the Levies.

The US government has financed the construction or refurbishment of 150 border outposts of the Frontier Corps, Frontier Constabulary and Levies. Over 500 km of roads and over 800 small irrigation and electrification projects have been completed throughout the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) and NWFP. Work is currently in progress on an additional 472 km of roads and 18 steel bridges in Fata. An amount of $5 million has been provided in support of the creation of a construction management unit within Fata secretariat to manage the construction of roads in Fata.

Military assistance for Fata for 2007 consisted of $29.4 million to support expansion of Frontier Corps by 8 wings, provide communication and night vision equipment; develop a Frontier Corps training centre at Warsak and establish border coordination centres at Torkham and Lwara and hopefully in Pakistan within the coming year.

In 2008, an amount of $145 million has been allocated for Frontier Corps construction, training and equipment special forces (SSG): $31 million (2007 and 2008) to improve capacity to target militants with minimal civilian causalities with SSG ground and aviation training and communications and other non-lethal equipment.

The document also lists US mission Pakistan’s elections support, Fata Development Strategy, Reconstruction of Opportunity Zones, counter narcotics programmes, USAID’s $2.3 billion in development assistance from 2002-07, public affairs programmes, the mission’s funding in fields of energy, human rights and economic, commercial and agriculture affairs.

Zardari Vs. Musharraf

Highlights of Zardari’s interview
Daily Times, May 23, 2008

* Musharraf is a ‘relic of the past’

* People want Musharraf out of power

* Doffing uniform does not make Musharraf legal president

* Proposed constitutional reforms will curtail president’s powers including 58 (2b)

* Coalition in politics is a selfish phenomenon

* ‘I’d rather go now than take all the difficult decisions and go after 15 months or two years’

* India should reduce army deployment in IHK

* Pakistan can be a ‘force-multiplier’ for India

* ‘I can feed India and the world’

* PPP and PML-N want to do away with visa restrictions for India

* ‘I’ve requested India to help us with request to UN for Benazir Bhutto’s assassination probe’

Terrorist violence down, support for Qaeda on the wane: study

Terrorist violence down, support for Qaeda on the wane: study
* Canadian academics say downswing result of counter-terrorism efforts, global Islamist networks’ infighting, Muslim rejection of violence, extremist ideology, repressive policies
Daily Times, May 23, 2008

PARIS: Global terrorist violence declined markedly in 2007 and popular backing for Al Qaeda is slipping, according to the authors of a Canadian study based on US statistics.

The study — ‘Human Security Brief 2007,’ authored by lecturers at Simon Frazer University in Vancouver — reports that terrorism fatalities were down by around 40 percent in 2006 compared to 2001, and dropped even further in mid-2007 according to preliminary data. The figures were based on three US sources: the National Counter-terrorism Centre, the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism and the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism at the University of Maryland. The study describes a “dramatic collapse in popular support throughout the Muslim world” for Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network. The analysis stands in stark contrast to US and British security analysts’ and intelligence agencies’ conclusions based on the same data. The British and US experts have concluded that the threat of terrorism, particularly Islamic terrorism, is on the rise.

The study points to more widespread and coordinated counterterrorism efforts, “bitter doctrinal infighting” within the global Islamist networks, and Muslims’ rejection of terrorists’ “indiscriminate violence, extremist ideology and harshly repressive policies” for the downswing. After looking at the results of polls carried out last year in the Arab and Muslim world, especially Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the report says support for terrorism appears to be waning.

For the study’s main author Andrew Mack, Al Qaeda’s drop in popularity in the Arab and Muslim world is due to the rejection of extremist ideology, particularly after “the terror groups’ gratuitous and indiscriminate violence against their co-religionists”. “By deeply alienating the very publics whose support is critical to their cause, the Islamists have become their own worst enemies and created conditions that will likely bring about their eventual demise. “Al-Qaeda and its affiliates are far from being eliminated, but the strategic outlook for the terror network is bleak,” he said.

The Canadian academics decided not to include the victims of the Iraq conflict in the study. “The intentional killing of civilians in wartime is not normally described as terrorism, but as war crimes or crimes against humanity,” said Mack. The researchers also cited the number of fatalities rather than numbers of attacks in their study because deaths were deemed to be a better indicator of the human costs of terrorism, while “definitions of what constitutes an attack vary considerably.” The study is available on the Internet at www.humansecurity.info. afp

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Preserving Coalition Government Key to U.S. Objectives in Pakistan: Lisa Curtis

Preserving Coalition Government Key to U.S. Objectives in Pakistan
by Lisa Curtis, Heritage Foundation, WebMemo #1935, May 21, 2008

A power struggle is underway between Pakistan People's Party (PPP) co-chairman (and widower of Benazir Bhutto) Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan Muslim League/Nawaz (PML/N) leader Nawaz Sharif, and President Pervez Musharraf. This struggle threatens to unravel the newly elected coalition government and plunge Pakistan back into political chaos.

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani is desperately trying to maintain the integrity of Pakistan's coalition government. Zardari and Sharif have failed to agree on a formula to restore judges deposed by President Musharraf last November, and as a consequence, nine PML/N ministers have submitted their resignations, which the Prime Minister has refused to accept.

The U.S. should support Gillani's efforts to keep the coalition intact, which involves fulfilling election promises, including the reinstatement of deposed judges. Continued cooperation between the PPP and the PML/N is the best hope for stabilizing Pakistan as it copes with economic and terrorism challenges that threaten further political unrest.

Building on Election Success

Pakistanis largely greeted the February 18 elections that brought the coalition government to power with jubilation. The elections were viewed as an indictment of Musharraf's policies, particularly his crackdown on civil society following the November 3, 2007, emergency decree during which the Supreme Court bench was dismissed, judges and political activists were jailed, and the press was stifled. As part of their agreement to rule in coalition, Asif Zardari and Nawaz Sharif agreed to restore the deposed judges by April 30.

Pakistanis are therefore confused by the PPP's backtracking on restoring the judges. There is a perception that the party is under U.S. pressure to avoid steps that might threaten President Musharraf's hold on power.

The resignation of nine PML/N ministers represents a tremendous loss for the coalition government. Their departure will degrade its ability to deal with the economic, energy, and terrorism crises facing the country. Pakistan currently faces power outages lasting six–eight hours per day throughout the country and spiking food prices that threaten to bring people into the streets. No party can handle these challenges alone. Maintaining the "grand alliance" of the strongest political parties will prevent Pakistan from sliding back toward political unrest.

Firefighting Against Militants in the Northwest

The most dangerous development in Pakistan is the advance of Taliban-backed militants in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and some of the settled areas of the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP). The new civilian government, in tandem with the Army, is pursuing negotiations with hard-core militants. Among them is Baitullah Mahsud, who is accused of masterminding the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and several other suicide bombings throughout the country.

The government hopes that negotiations will separate tribal leaders from the extremists and encourage them to turn against the terrorists. The problem is that the tribal leaders don't have the wherewithal to confront the extremists, and the negotiations so far only seem to have strengthened the radicals in the region.

The Pakistani government says that it needs time for the negotiations to bear fruit and is ready to back the negotiations with force if necessary. The danger lies in promoting a negotiating process that legitimizes the extremists and increases their influence.

There are signs that this is already happening. Media reports indicate that the Pakistani government has agreed to allow Taliban-backed militants to establish Shariah law in Malakand Division, which would essentially block the people of this region from appealing the decisions of the Shariat Court to the Peshawar High Court or the Pakistani Supreme Court. It appears that the government may be negotiating away the people's rights despite the fact that religious parties suffered a major electoral defeat in the NWFP. Allowing Taliban-backed militants to demand political changes through force undermines the legitimacy of the elected government and will be viewed by the militants as a victory in their efforts to turn Pakistan into a Taliban-like state.

NATO commanders signaled their concern about the negotiations last week and noted that increased attacks in eastern Afghanistan—up 50 percent from the same time last year—were due partly to insurgents' ability to find safe haven in Pakistan's border areas.

Awareness among Pakistanis about the terrorist threat from the tribal border areas is increasing. Pakistanis are beginning to understand that the Taliban-backed elements are competing for political power with the Pakistani state. Some even acknowledge that the battle between Pakistani authorities and the violent extremists in the border areas is pivotal to the future of the province, if not to the future of Pakistan itself.

Strategic Approach Needed

Instead of engaging in tactical negotiations to buy time, Pakistan needs to develop a strategic approach to dealing with the Tribal Areas that is closely coordinated with and supported by the U.S. Islamabad and Washington must develop a strategy that relies on economic, political, and military tools to undermine the terrorists in the region.

In addition to implementing large-scale economic development programs in the FATA, the U.S. should move forward expeditiously on Reconstruction Opportunity Zone (ROZ) legislation that was introduced in the U.S. Senate on March 13, 2008. The ROZs are meant to encourage investment in and around underdeveloped tribal areas by permitting certain products produced there to enter the U.S. duty-free. Delays in moving ahead with this initiative in the U.S. are creating mistrust in Pakistan about U.S. commitment and undermining the broader U.S. objective of winning hearts and minds through social uplift programs.

The U.S. should also support efforts to bring political reform to the FATA, including incorporation of the region into Pakistan proper in order to increase government writ in the areas. The leadership of the PPP and Awami National Party (ANP), currently ruling the NWFP, supports implementing the Political Parties Act in the FATA, which would extend Pakistani election laws to the region and encourage political activity. Political parties are currently prohibited from operating in the FATA, and a political agent, or federal bureaucrat, runs the affairs of each of the seven FATA agencies. There are 12 seats reserved for FATA members in the National Assembly and eight in the Senate. However, parliament has no authority to legislate on matters concerning FATA, and the FATA legislators wield little authori­ty.

Finally, the U.S. should speed up plans to provide counterinsurgency training to Pakistani paramilitary troops stationed in the FATA. The training of Pakistan's Frontier Corps is scheduled to begin this summer, but it should have started long ago. Washington must encourage Pakistani security forces to remain on the offensive in the border areas until the terrorist threat dissipates. The alternative—relying solely on American military action in the FATA—risks destabilizing Pakistani politics in favor of the extremists and could leave the U.S. facing a far larger terrorist threat in Pakistan than it faces today.

Conclusion

The political maneuvering in Islamabad over the deposed judges is distracting the Pakistani government from dealing with the grave challenges facing the country, especially the burgeoning Taliban threat in the Northwest.

President George W. Bush's meeting with Prime Minister Gillani on Sunday in Egypt during the World Economic Forum highlighted U.S. support for the new democratically elected civilian government. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently noted that the "absence of freedom is one of the conditions that produces terrorism" and that Pakistan's transition to democracy "could not be more affirming of everything that President Bush believes about the power of democracy, the power of those principles, and their power to defeat terrorism long term." Now that the new government is facing challenges in its transition to democracy, Washington can best support Gillani's efforts to keep the coalition together by allowing him to fulfill the government's election promises, including reinstatement of the deposed judges.

Washington also must level with Pakistani civilian and military leaders on its concerns over the government's approach to the rising terrorist threat in the northwest border areas. Washington should emphasize that it stands ready to assist Pakistan in its fight against the terrorists as long as the government avoids negotiations that strengthen the Taliban's ability to conduct attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan and/or al-Qaeda's ability to project terrorism throughout the world.

Lisa Curtis is Senior Research Fellow for South Asia in the Asian Studies Center at The Heritage Foundation.