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14 militants arrested in Khyber Agency




At least 10 militants have been killed and 14 others arrested in Khyber Agency on Saturday.

Recovered cache of arms and ammunitions from Shalobar area of Bara Tehsil were also shown to the media. The weapons included Indian guns and explosives from China among others.

A large quantity of IEDS, anti-aircraft guns and jihadi literature were also recovered from the possession of militants and wwere shown to the media.

According to the FC officials, ten militants were killed while 87 others were arrested during the operation in Khyber Agency in the last 24 hours.

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Posted by worldissues Saturday, December 12, 2009 0 comments

Pakistan as a security state





Over the years, several readers state asked me why Pakistan must fright an criticize as of India. They insinuate to facilitate as we are less than no threat from our eastern neighbour, our armed forces may possibly realignment extra of its troops to the Afghan border anywhere extreme fighting is vacant on, and anywhere our embattled units may perhaps do with reinforcements.

For the solve to this question, we requisite to write into the secret recesses of the Pakistani security establishment’s psyche. The younger generations on together sides of the border noticeably have no absolute realization of the resentment and slaughter that attended partition.

I was three when we indoors in Karachi commencing New Delhi, and the story of how our work out was attacked on the way is segment of the species lore. I allow a nebulous recollection of Liaquat Ali Khan’s legendary native tongue in which he critical his fist in India’s direction in a show of defiance. He was assassinated shortly thereafter, in 1951.

For just a brief moment, step hooked on the shoes of a major army police man surveying the strategic scenario as of his GHQ in Rawalpindi, shortly taking into account the birth of Pakistan. He sees a large, hostile neighbour to the east. East Pakistan is separated as of West Pakistan by over 1,000 miles of Indian territory. Hordes of refugees are flooding crossways the border. countless of the services possessions to facilitate were to be transferred to Pakistan have been blocked by India.

Soon subsequently partition, hostilities begin in Kashmir, confirming the establishment’s the pits fears more or less Indian intentions. by no means care with the purpose of taking into consideration the original do violence to launched by tribesmen keen on Kashmir to relief their Muslim brethren, it was the Pakistan defense force to facilitate played a chief role. In the thinker of on the whole Pakistanis at the time, this was a legitimate promotion to be the cause of Muslim-majority Kashmir interested in the fold.

equal as a child, I remember inquiry constant hearsay as regards how India sought to ‘undo’ partition, and was waiting for the new state to collapse. Newspapers were a lot full of statements by leaders on together sides of the border hurling threats and accusations at each other.

Against this setting of panic about and paranoia, it is painless to see why the Pakistani leadership reached to the West to sustain security. India had by now traditional close relations together with the Soviet Union, and plates had not in good health commencing decades of chaos caused by war and civil strife.

each magnificence has collateral concerns, and needs wealth to speak to them. The undertaking of the leadership is to work out how utter to be had income preference be not speaking between the imperative of guarding state frontiers, and the wants of the population. In a democracy, these competing burden on the exchequer are mediated done parliament. But at what time the armed seizes check of the state, it can dictate the size of the cake it requirements for itself.

In Pakistan, where we now boast all the outer trappings of democracy, the militia has completed yes indeed with the purpose of chosen governments are too weak to challenge it either on the question of reserve allocation, or concluded primary security-related policies. The new army-inspired furore on the Kerry-Lugar Act is an indication of the grip the generals have on real power.

done the years, the military came to perceive to facilitate not together as of outer threats, it also had to guard not in favor of internal weakness. In the eyes of the military establishment, the supporting group of pupils and the free system were equally sources of instability, and in this way had to be held in reserve below exact check. What it disastrous to see (and at a standstill does not) is with the intention of its own repetitive interventions experience done more to weaken the fabric of the state than any added factor.

By appropriate the self-appointed guardian of ‘Pakistan’s ideological frontiers,’ the mass took on a third role, and one for which it needed the cooperation of the Islamic parties.

This suited the mullahs perfectly, as it acceptable them to move forward their reactionary agenda in a Muslim people where they were regularly thumped at the polls. This marriage of convenience was sacred during the Afghan war while jihadis on or after around the world flocked to fight the godless Soviet Union.

Generations of litter officers at the armed forces conservatory at Kakul have been educated with the purpose of India is the eternal enemy; and that civilians are a basic evil who have to be endured, but never trusted. A part of this teaching is the notion with the intention of one Muslim soldier is match to 10 Hindus.

These are the officers now manning the highest positions of the defence forces. They are furthermore the ones who have an effect on Pakistan’s foreign relations, especially with nations upsetting our security.

In the 1990s, when India ready quick economic strides, it became fair to even our martial establishment to facilitate Pakistan may well no longer compete in terms of predictable armed forces power. While we matched India’s nuclear programme at crippling expense, we may perhaps not save up and our traditional foe in terminology of planes, tanks and men.

higher than all, we had vanished the technological verge with the purpose of American missiles had given us. existence of sanctions triggered by our nuclear programme lie in the wake of the anti-Americanism so as to infects our police man corps, and throughout them, much of our media.

In tidy to refurbish the military balance, our establishment turned to the army of jihadis raised to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. what time the Kashmiri uprising began spontaneously following rigged elections in the too late 1980s, Pakistan reacted by elementary instruction Kashmiri choice fighters, and then infiltrating Pakistani terrorists belonging to various jihadi outfits. India responded by sending in some host divisions. This apt our generals fine, as they had joined down sticky to partially a million Indian soldiers by carriage in just a few thousand jihadis.

In Afghanistan, Pakistan’s fend for of the Taliban in this episode held out the contract of a biddable government in Kabul. These policies were curved on their head by 9/11, when all forms of terrorism began to be viewed as abhorrence by the intercontinental community. The Americans, in particular, put huge pressure on Musharraf to halt his use of Islamic holy warriors as proxies.

But old way of life die hard. India is still seen as the honestly foe. Above all, Pakistan’s generals are convinced that preferably fairly than later, the Americans pray be required to pull out out because of flagging broadcast support, a good deal as they did beginning Vietnam. In this scenario, they are reliable India would be asked to tread in to make sure that the Taliban do not send back to Kabul.

Should this happen, Pakistan would be enclosed by Indian forces, and this is the self-assurance state’s worst nightmare.

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A Long War With an Uncertain Outcome





The week spent on Capitol Hill by Administration officials explaining President Obama's Afghan surge has produced much predictable politicking. Republicans tried in vain to coax Gen. Stanley McChrystal into admitting their claim that Obama had denied him the resources he needs to win; and Democrats tried in vain to prod Kabul Ambassador Karl Eikenberry to reiterate his argument against a troop surge. Everyone stayed on message, but in explaining how the strategy might work, Generals McChrystal and David Petraeus made clear that U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan is not likely to end any time soon, or to produce a "victory" in the sense that Americans have used the term since World War II.

By declaring an intention to begin drawing down U.S. troops in July 2011 as Afghan security forces begin to take charge, Obama's West Point speech was criticized for giving the Taliban reason to lie low and wait out the Americans. It also, some argued, did little to discourage U.S. allies from hedging their bets — Pakistan's continued coddling of the Afghan Taliban, and President Hamid Karzai's reliance on self-serving warlords.

But the congressional testimony of those who will implement Obama's strategy makes clear that July 2011 is only an aspirational deadline. The decisions on the timing and scale of any troop withdrawal will be entirely conditions-based, McChrystal made clear, and he won't hesitate to ask for more troops if he thinks the situation demands it. (He didn't think it would, he assured legislators.) Still, the idea that any significant drawdown will be possible in 18 months requires a leap of optimism, given the state-of-play on the ground.

Indeed, if the key to withdrawing U.S. troops is the readiness of Afghan forces to take over, President Karzai on Tuesday had some sobering news. With "maximum effort," he said in Kabul, his own army would "hopefully" be in a position to provide security for the country five years from now. And, he hastened to add, simple economics dictated that an Afghan army big enough to take over from the Americans would have to be paid for by Washington for another 15 to 20 years.
Discussing deadlines right now was pointless, Petraeus suggested on Wednesday. A year from now, he said, Washington will have a better idea of whether the strategy is working. In the interim, the CENTCOM chief warned, things will get worse before they get better, and nobody should expect rapid progress. "Success will require steadfast commitment and incur significant costs," McChrystal added. "The sober fact is that there are no silver bullets."

What "Winning" in Afghanistan Means

All the senior figures in the Administration, when asked, insist they're in Afghanistan to win. It was left to McChrystal to warn Congress not to expect 1945-style unconditional surrender by the Taliban. In fact, the Taliban may not even be defeated in the sense that Americans typically use the term — McChrystal himself preferred words such as "disrupt" or "degrade." The general clearly recognizes that the Taliban are part of the fabric of Afghan life, and are unlikely to be eliminated. Victory, he said at one point, "could be similar to politics, where you defeat the other party in an election but you don't wipe them out." At another point, he defined the goal of the mission as "to prevent [the Taliban] from doing what they want to do," i.e. sweeping back to power in Kabul.

Right now, as McChrystal has repeatedly made clear, the insurgents are actually winning. The urgency of sending reinforcements is to stop them from overrunning any population centers, to halt their momentum and ultimately to fight them to a standstill. That would give space for the development of Afghan governance and security forces, but it would also enhance prospects for some sort of political solution. Karzai has already reached out to the Taliban leadership through intermediaries in Saudi-brokered talks that have gone nowhere.

It's generally acknowledged by Western officials that the outcome in Afghanistan will require a political solution that integrates most of those currently fighting for the Taliban. Right now, however, the Taliban have no interest in seeking compromise because they believe they can regain control of Afghanistan on the battlefield. Only if they're fought to a standstill, goes the argument, and if Taliban commanders see more to gain and less to lose in some form of power sharing, might they be prepared to settle for less than restoring what they lost when the U.S. invaded in 2001.

Even getting to that point is an uncertain bet, and will involve much tough fighting. The Administration has always insisted that its goal is to prevent al-Qaeda from renewing its sanctuaries in Afghanistan, and it was notable that McChrystal emphasized the importance of capturing or killing Osama Bin Laden in defeating al-Qaeda. By setting up Bin Laden's elimination as a benchmark of success, McChrystal raises an intriguing possibility. The U.S. commander led the Special Operations unit that eliminated Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. If the war in Afghanistan is going to end on terms that are not an entirely comfortable fit with the American public's definition of "victory," eliminating the leader of al-Qaeda could be used to make up the difference.

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Need to take back Jinnah Pakistan.....






The detail is that Pakistan exists and has existed for 62 years — in what nature is fully a further matter. urging on that slash pray never cease, and they should not as it abortive at the start to withstand off in the real direction.

A authoritative argument has been finished by a few of the many who responded to stay fresh week’s row contrary to the refrain ‘bring nether Jinnah’s Pakistan’ — with the purpose of we should be looking and touching forwards fairly than retreating.

A contradict argument to this is to facilitate beginning before long when its birth the nation retreated 300 time insertion itself in mindset and religious-political intent back in the age of the Emperor Aurangzeb. (Had it elected to leave 400 time to the age of Akbar the awful it would have been on the pull up and courteous path.)

by way of the relatively recent coming on of the Taliban we say retreated equal additional in time, back to the 11th century and the Hashishi who well thought-out murder a devout due and who dreamed up in seventh heaven visions of paradise sooner than setting out to face martyrdom.

Having retreated and firmly embedded itself, if the terrain is put at the take-off point of Jinnah’s Pakistan we will take part in in piece of information advanced. here is no second day Mohammad Ali Jinnah to control us but we do have his lexis and his example to look to. The fact is that, for whatsoever reasons and through what on earth circumstances, Mr Jinnah managed to do pardon? few men give completed — he created a people and in doing so changed the stream of history. Professor Stanley Wolpert’s opens the preface to his book Jinnah of Pakistan along with this reminder.

All excessive men are controversial, so Jinnah, is substantially controversial equally in his own settle and particularly in the rural area out of which Pakistan was fixed (some 940,000 sq.km.). He learnt his politics on or after Dadabhoy Naoroji, Phirozshaw Mehta, Motilal Nehru, Gopal Gokhale and other men of substance.
His alleged motives for having done what he did show a discrepancy from the austere accusation of a grab for rule to the aura with the intention of he was caught in a sub- of his own making and counter to his private self-control the creation of Pakistan was strained upon him. My belief and so as to public by many is, intentional I'm sorry? we all know, to the Muslims of undivided India were a subject minority, Jinnah’s attachment was to facilitate in an self-reliant India they would become even more browbeaten and face even additional discrimination and therefore receive stumbling block as a society in building much of themselves.

Jinnah’s intent was to construct a homeland turning the minority addicted to a majority, not question to discrimination and challenges. He estimated the Muslims of his country to riot above themselves, to go in with the prevailing world, effort and prosper, in a terra firma open from bigotry, imbued with tolerance for their fellow human beings of no substance what did you say? creed or race. Such was his intent, of this I come up with no doubt. pardon? he subsequently had to work with after the birth of Pakistan caused him grief. His motive and intent being honourable, no blame can clip to him for where Pakistan find’s itself today.

He may enjoy failed, as all others did, to anticipate the horrors of partition, and the group migration and slaughter with the intention of took place, but three days prior to the birth of his territory he was quieten optimistic, he static had hopes with the purpose of he may well sway the hearts and minds of the men who would be the future law makers.

Apart on or after with the intention of most prominent of quotations from his Aug 11, 1947 tongue to the constituent assembly, once he made it in large quantities translucent that religion, caste or creed tolerate nil to do with the commerce of the state, a passage that nearly everyone fortuitously is quoted together with frequency in our push and media and in all books on paper about Jinnah, we must also bear in mind the language he beam nether in February 1935 to the fundamental Legislative school assembly when he told the members with the intention of “religion should not be allowable to befall addicted to politics … faith is merely a difficulty between man and God”.

A day later, he announced at a Muslim League meeting with the intention of the mistrust of constitutional safeguards for Muslims “was not a sacred question, but wholly a supporting problem”. All this was put paid to in stride 1949 by the men who followed him.

pardon? else did he discriminate these men to whom he was bequeathing a country? He told them that the first levy of a authority is to inflict and insist law and charge to look after the lives, properties and religious beliefs of the citizens. Not an awkward task, but one which successive governments come up with abortive to achieve. We are today paying heavily for their corruption and incompetence.

Jinnah came down brutal on inducement and corruption — he called them “a poison”. yet again he was thwarted. In his extremely lifetime the men who would start the country were devious and stealing, erroneously declaring properties owned in India so that they could grab come again? was absent abandoned by the Hindus who had fled. Dishonesty, join and shoplifting were quantity of Pakistan’s birth pangs and as well as the years they have blossomed exponentially.

The rot and ruin can only be retrieved if we have the will and skill to observe the words of the man who made us.

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Posted by worldissues Sunday, November 8, 2009 0 comments

New Zealand's turnaround delights Vettori














The New Zealand captain Daniel Vettori believes his team’s conscious effort to improve in key areas helped them beat Pakistan and level their three-match series at 1-1.



They may have been beaten by 138-runs in the first match on Tuesday but the Black Caps hit back with a clinical performance in the second on Friday to win by 64 runs — a turnaround which delighted the New Zealand captain.


‘I think we wanted to improve on some key areas, made a conscious effort and it’s pleasing that we were able to turn around in a couple of days; now we must keep the pressure on Pakistan,’ said Vettori after the win.


The third and final match will be played on Monday.


New Zealand rode on a return-to-form century by Brendon McCullum (131) who added 126 for the second wicket with Martin Guptill (62) which built the foundation of an imposing total of 303-8 in 50 overs.


‘The partnership between McCullum and Guptill set up the victory for us, enabled us to achieve a 300-plus total and put pressure on Pakistan,’ said Vettori, who also identified Scott Styris’s three wickets in two overs as the turning point.


Pakistan got off to a solid start of 77 between Salman Butt (59) and Khalid Latif (45) and were 124-2 when Styris, bowling for the first time in nearly 13 months, grabbed three wickets off just 10 balls.


‘I was trying to get some quick overs,’ said Vettori of his decision to bowl Styris.



‘Those turned out to be the most influential overs. Scott came into the game to impress and did at a time when Pakistan were coming hard on us.’



Vettori praised his team’s fielding.


‘If you look at a couple of catches and Guptill’s run out of Butt then you realise that these can swing games your way,’ said Vettori.


Man-of-the-match McCullum said he wanted to prove his worth as opener.


‘There was some pressure on me coming into this match,’ said McCullum, who was relieved of vice-captaincy to improve his batting form.



‘Vice-captain or not, I am a senior player and wanted to prove my worth as an opener.’



McCullum, whose only one-day hundred (166) came against Ireland last year, said scoring his second was a big relief.


‘Probably I tried to be too aggressive at times, but this time I found the right tempo,’ said McCullum.


Pakistan coach Intikhab Alam blamed his team’s defeat on poor bowling and fielding.


‘We had a bad day,’ said Alam.



‘We probably gave away 30-40 extra runs and that made the difference. We must improve our fielding because New Zealand is one of the best fielding sides in the world, on a par with South Africa.’



Alam defended his decision to promote Shahid Afridi (no runs) and Kamran Akmal (four) to fourth and fifth in the batting order.


‘They were my decisions,’ admitted Alam. ‘Both batted well in the first match but didn’t click in the second.’

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Posted by worldissues Saturday, November 7, 2009 0 comments

Highest cost of ‘ghairat’









The people like Imran Khan have been frothing at the mouth against the Kerry-Lugar act, insisting that we reject the $7.5bn, five-year aid package (extendable to 10 years). Our cricketing hero was holding forth on an Urdu channel the other evening, claiming that we could easily raise this amount by cutting expenditure and recovering money stashed abroad by corrupt elements.


According to him, we should not sell our ghairat so cheaply, and learn to stand on our own feet. But no such objections are ever raised when the IMF or the World Bank impose strict conditionalities on how their loans are to be spent. For years, we have accepted, often under duress, tough fiscal measures as part of these loan packages. And here we are, getting an outright grant of $1.5bn a year without any strings, and we are screaming like infants being forced to swallow a draught of bitter medicine.


Here’s sobering news for those who think it would be a simple matter to get this kind of money for the social sector: nearly 90 per cent of the non-development federal budget is spent on subsidies, defence and debt servicing, leaving around 10 per cent for administrative costs and the social sector. And if Imran Khan thinks crooks are going to queue up to return their ill-gotten wealth, he has a higher opinion of them than I do.

This is the kind of muddled, ill-informed thinking that marked our media’s interaction with Hillary Clinton recently. Watching the American secretary of state talking to some of the leading lights of our private TV networks, I was struck by how angry they all looked. Ms Clinton, on the other hand, was relaxed and articulate. She reminded me of a patient adult, gently chiding and cajoling a bunch of sulking teenagers.


One well-known anchor with an Urdu channel, his face contorted with rage, virtually shouted at her: ‘Do you know how many bases the United States has in this country?’ Smilingly, Ms Clinton countered: ‘Do you know how many billions of dollars the United States has given Pakistan?’And this is the bottom line. As both Ms Clinton and Senator John Kerry have said, if Pakistan doesn’t want the money, nobody is forcing it down our throats. But it seems that we want the money and keep our ghairat at the same time. For a country that has been surviving on external assistance for decades, the sudden realisation that we should stand on our own feet is odd.


Nawaz Sharif, rejecting the Kerry-Lugar act, asked how long we would go around with a begging bowl. I recall his ‘kashkol tor do’ (‘break the begging bowl’) campaign when he was in power in the 1990s. Thousands of ordinary Pakistanis (including my late mother, much to my chagrin) responded and sent personal savings to support this initiative. Nobody knows what happened to this money, but it certainly did not help in ending our aid dependency.


Interestingly, all those demanding that we reject the offer of American assistance are sleek and well-fed. In this entire long-winded debate, I have not heard anybody say one word about the illiteracy, poverty and disease the aid package is meant to reduce.

Critics have said that in the past, such initiatives did not make any difference, and things have not improved as a result of foreign aid. We forget that with our population growing as fast as it has in the past, we have created our own problems. The reality is that today, there are four times more Pakistanis than lived here in 1947. Without any foreign assistance, there would have been widespread starvation.


It is certainly true that huge amounts have been frittered away on useless projects, while much of this assistance has ended up in the personal accounts of politicians, bureaucrats and generals. Hence the American insistence on monitoring how money disbursed under the KLA is actually spent.


This entire bad-tempered discussion reveals the intensity of anti-Americanism that has been whipped up by a large section of the media. Virtually no anchor in Urdu chat shows challenges a panellist and asks him or her for proof for the most outlandish assertions. So widespread have these perceptions of American ill intentions become that a friend’s driver casually said the other day that the Americans were arming the Taliban. When I asked him why Washington would arm the foe that was killing US soldiers, he had no reply beyond ‘I read it in a newspaper.’

We have been so blinded by our rage against America that we forget that currently there is a clear convergence of interests between their goals and ours. Both countries want peace in Afghanistan and Pakistan; and both are fighting the forces of darkness. So while our approach and tactics may differ, we need to get along well enough to coordinate the fight more effectively.

In the real world, you do not have to love your allies to conduct a successful military campaign. In the Second World War, the Soviet Union fought with the US and Britain to defeat Hitler. Nazi Germany was the common foe, and the threat it posed brought the communists into the anti-fascist alliance. Clearly, there was no love lost between the USSR and the West, but common interests drew them together.


Critics of the act assert that this assistance is being offered in America’s self-interest, making it sound like an accusation that proves Washington’s bad faith. Actually, all countries act in their own self-interest. In this case, the American Congress and the administration are convinced that in order to stabilise Pakistan, it is necessary to address the many social and economic problems we are struggling with. And without a viable Pakistan, Afghanistan cannot be fixed. Hence the Kerry-Lugar act.


Who in Pakistan can possibly close his eyes to the reality of the situation we face today? Unless power generation is enhanced quickly, the economy will soon collapse completely. Parents are often forced to send their children to madressahs because there are not enough schools. Here they are often brainwashed into joining the terrorists who are threatening to destroy the state.

Large sums are needed to overcome these and other challenges. But money alone won’t solve these problems: political will and a consensus are needed. What we don’t need are mindless slogans of ‘go America go!’

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